By Bill Berkowitz
Oct. 8— At Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, “WANTED”
posters with a headshot of Professor Abel Alves appeared on campus a
few weeks back; a student who took Associate professor David Gibbs’
What is Politics? class at the University of Arizona claimed that Gibbs
“is an anti-American communist who hates America and is trying
to brainwash young people into thinking America sucks;” a political-science
professor at Metropolitan State College of Denver in Colorado says she
has been the target of death threats and hate e-mail in the wake of
the recent debate in the state over an Academic Bill of Rights; a University
of Georgia professor is being investigated after allegations he bullied
a conservative student. Revenge of the Nerds? Twenty-first century Gipper
brigades? No, and No. It’s the Horowistas—a small, hearty
and growing band of followers of right wing provocateur David Horowitz
and his Students for Academic Freedom. Since 9/11, spying in the name
of homeland security has become as American as baseball, cherry pie,
and listening to a Cat Stevens record. According to a recent report
in the San Francisco Chronicle, a relatively unknown branch of the Defense
Department called the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency is employing
its state-of-the-art aerial imaging equipment in service of homeland
security. Closer to home, David Horowitz and the Independent Women’s
Forum are scanning the nation’s college campuses in the name of
homeland security.
Horowitz, the head of the Los Angeles-based Center for the Study of
Popular Culture, and the conservative women at the Washington, DC-based
Independent Women’s Forum are focusing their homeland security
spying on a much more specific target, liberal academics. Together Horowitz
and the IWF have been cranking out advertisements and placing them in
a number of student newspapers across the country encouraging conservative
students to scan their campuses for so-called anti-American academics.
According to Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now!, the advertisements
running in student newspapers charge universities with being dominated
by liberal or left-wing professors. The ads “are paid for by well-funded
groups like Students for Academic Freedom—a Horowitz group—and
the Independent Women’s Forum,” Democracy Now! reported.
Two of the campaign’s first victims are Ball State’s Professor
Alves and David Gibbs, an Associate professor of History and Sociology
at the University of Arizona, who last spring taught a course entitled
What is Politics?
On the Ball State University campus, posters “announcing that history
professor Abel Alves was ‘WANTED’” was put up by Amanda
Carpenter, a senior, who said she put up the posters in order to attract
attention to her website, the Muncie, Indiana Star Press reported. The
professor’s “alleged offenses include indoctrinating freshmen
with liberal books, such as Fast Food Nation, and guest lectures by
the Humane Society.”
According to the newspaper, another Professor, George Wolfe, who teaches
peace and conflict resolution, was recently the target of a profile
in Horowitz’s online publication, FrontPage Magazine. The story
“accused Wolfe of giving students extra credit for going to Washington
to protest the war in Iraq and lowering the grade of a student who argued
in favor of a military response to the Sept. 11 attacks.” The university
denied that any credit had been given for merely attending an anti-war
demonstration.
On September 27, David Gibbs told Amy Goodman, the host of Democracy
Now! that his largely freshmen class “focuses on propaganda and
deception,” and he “emphasize[s] incidents of the government
lying and things like that.” When he taught the class last spring,
“the Independent Women’s Forum... put into the local student
newspaper, an advertisement that basically argued that there’s
a kind of left wing domination of the universities and students should
fight that with the strong implication they should monitor their professors
and report them, at least that’s how I read it.”
When Gibbs received student evaluations, “a student who said I’m
anti-American communist who hates America and is trying to brainwash
young people into thinking that America sucks,” said that “I
should be investigated by the FBI, and the FBI has been contacted.”
Later on, “another student on a web log during the summer said
he took my class and also said that he didn’t like my politics
and suggests that students shouldn’t take my class but should drop
by and try to disrupt it. There have been a number of instances like
that which I hadn’t had before.”
Although Gibbs said that he wasn’t sure or worried about whether
the FBI was contacted, he acknowledged that he thought it was “indicative
of a larger national trend, which is conservative activist groups with
lots of money and connections to the Republican Party trying to encourage
and even to some extent orchestrate students and local conservative
groups like those at the University of Arizona to go and basically harass
faculty if they don’t like their politics.”
Goodman pointed out that the full-page ads, similar to ones placed in
other college student newspapers, says: “Top ten things your professors
do to skew you. They push their political views, liberal opinions dominate,
they don’t present both sides of the debate, conservative viewpoints
practically non-existent. Classrooms are for learning, not brainwashing.
They force you to check your intellectual honesty at the door. They
make you uncomfortable if you disagree. Grading should be based on facts
not opinion. Education? More like indoctrination.”
Horowitz’s mission
Refresher: David Horowitz, and his writing partner Peter Collier, were
well-known lefties in the 60s. Horowitz was a Black Panther supporter
and editor of Ramparts magazine, the premier left-wing publication of
the period. He and Collier, a co-founder of the Los Angeles-based Center
for the Study of Popular Culture, came out as Reagan Republicans in
a highly controversial 1985 Washington Post article called Lefties for
Reagan. Since then, Horowitz has blended Dr. Laura-like pomposity with
an extraordinary ability to fund raise and self-promote.
In one of his first campus-wide advertising campaigns, Horowitz launched
an anti-reparations campaign aimed both at thwarting what was becoming
a hot button issue—reparations for African Americans—and drawing
attention to his activities. His effort was highlighted by attempts
to place full-page advertisements headlined Ten Reasons Why Reparations
for Slavery is a Bad Idea—and Racist Too, in college newspapers
across the country. What started at the University of California, Berkeley,
on the last day of Black History Month, evolved into a full-blown promotional
and fundraising project for his organization.
Since 9/11, Horowitz has been a dynamic organizer. In the immediate
aftermath of the terrorist attacks, he lambasted California Congresswoman
Barbara Lee for having the temerity to be the only congressperson to
vote against giving President Bush a blank check for his war against
terrorism. In a column called The Enemy Within, Horowitz branded Lee
an “anti-American communist who supports America’s enemies
and has actively collaborated with them in their war against America.”
In late October 2001, Horowitz spent three hours on the radio program
of Dr. Laura Schlessinger — America’s erstwhile pop psychologist
before Dr. Phil took the reins — denouncing the “so-called
Peace Movement. As part of the National Call to SUPPORT the WAR,”
Horowitz told Dr. Laura’s audience that “campus leftists hate
America more than the terrorists.” The reason for this, said Horowitz,
is campus radicals view “The enemy of my enemy is my friend. They
are thrilled that the symbols of America were destroyed.”
Horowitz then launched another advertising effort, the “Think Twice”
campaign — a name seemingly derived from his “Second Thoughts”
project of the 1980s — which was aimed at convincing students on
college campuses not to protest against Bush’s war on terrorism.
In An Open Letter to the “Anti-War” Demonstrators: Think Twice
Before You Bring The War Home, Horowitz urged students to “think
again and not to join an ‘anti-war’ effort against America’s
coming battle with international terrorism.”
In 2002 he launched the National Campaign to Take Back Our Campuses,
and in a booklet titled “Political Bias in America’s Universities,”
Horowitz described “what’s wrong in academics today,”
and the “steps you and I can take to restore sanity to our colleges
and universities.”
Horowitz’s campus jihads could not take place without well-stuffed
coffers. His first post-conversion project, which he co-directed with
Peter Collier, was called “Second Thoughts.” Between January
1986 and January 1990, this project raised $950,000. As president of
the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, he has profited even more
handsomely: According to mediatranparency.org, between 1989 and 2002,
Horowitz’s outfits received 115 grants accounting for more than
$12,700,000. Right-wing philanthropic partners include the Allegheny
Foundation, Castle Rock Foundation (the Coors Family), the Lynde and
Harry Bradley Foundation, the Scaife Family Foundation, the Sarah Scaife
Foundation, and the Olin Foundation.
Independent women?
Founded in 1992, as a direct response to the Clarence Thomas hearings,
the Independent Women’s Forum Mission Statement aims “to affirm
women’s participation in and contributions to a free, self-governing
society.”
In a May 2002 piece for the Chicago Tribune, Chris Black wrote: “The
conservative women at the Independent Women’s Forum are cheering
the return of the guy. From their standpoint, the terrorist attacks
on the United States turned the feminist tide and brought back traditional
values, a retreat to home and hearth, and an appreciation for the manly
man.”
Between 1994 and 2002, the Independent Women’s Forum received more
than 70 grants worth more than $5 million from the Randolph, Castle
Rock, JM, Sarah Scaife, the John M. Olin Foundation and others, according
to mediatransparency.org.
David Horowitz told the Muncie Star Press that he “completely deplore[d]”
the “WANTED” poster, and that he doesn’t “demonize
these professors. I want them [professors] to do the right thing. I’ve
never called for the firing of a professor and wouldn’t.”
And in a bit of Rumsfeld-speak, Horowitz added that “When you deal
with students, you’re dealing with students.” In lieu of “WANTED”
posters, Horowitz’s Students for Academic Freedom provides students
with a manual that gives an example of a poster asking, “Is Your
Professor Using the Classroom as a Political Soapbox?” The manual
also provides “advice on how to create Web sites, get publicity,
file complaints, and spot abuses of academic freedom, such as using
university funds to hold one-sided, partisan conferences, and inviting
speakers to campus from one side of the political spectrum,” the
Muncie Star Press reported.
Source: WorkingForChange
