Be afraid, be very afraid: 101 Most Dangerous - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

H2O2 · #1 02-28-2006, 03:41 PM

Published on Tuesday, February 28, 2006 by the Seattle Times
Peace Class Lands UW Prof on List of "Most Dangerous"
by Nick Perry

Who would have thought someone teaching peace studies could make anyone's "most dangerous" list?

Such is the fate of University of Washington psychology professor David Barash, who's profiled in a new book called "The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America" by conservative commentator David Horowitz.

The book's jacket warns: "We all know that left-wing radicals from the 1960s have hung around academia and hired people like themselves. But if you thought they were all harmless, antiquated hippies, you'd be wrong."

In an interview, Horowitz said some professors are introducing political opinion into what should be a disinterested pursuit of knowledge, endangering the entire academic enterprise. Some professors even endanger the safety of Americans by claiming that terrorists are freedom fighters, he added.

Barash is taking the listing in good humor:

"I was too young and inconsequential to make it to Nixon's enemy list 30 years ago, so I feel like I've arrived," he said.

Barash, a biologist by training, has taught at the UW for 33 years. As well as peace studies, he teaches animal behavior and evolutionary psychology. He said he felt honored to be mentioned alongside notable academics like Noam Chomsky, Paul Ehrlich, Michael Eric Dyson and Howard Zinn.

He says he's taken to signing his e-mails "Dangerous David." His family's calling him "Dangerous Dude" or just plain "Dangerous," and students think it's a hoot.

Horowitz said he included Barash because of a book Barash co-wrote called "Peace and Conflict Studies." Horowitz said the book defends violent revolution and incorrectly points to Cuba as a place where people's lives have been improved through such violence.

Barash said his profile in the book is full of misrepresentations and inaccuracies. For instance, it claims he blames the Cuban missile crisis on the psychology of President Kennedy — when in fact his book mentions many factors, including the Soviet Union's missile buildup.

"It's just a lie. He either didn't read the book or look it up," Barash said. "The whole thing is just a cartoon."

Horowitz said the immediate impetus for the book was the controversial comments made by University of Colorado Professor Ward Churchill last year.

In an essay, Churchill argued that some of those who died in the World Trade Center attacks weren't innocent victims because of their role in furthering American interests. Churchill went so far as to compare victims to a prominent Nazi.

One other academic from this state makes the list: associate professor Larry J. Estrada, director of American Cultural Studies at Western Washington University. Horowitz describes Estrada, who has written about U.S.-Mexican relations and border issues, as a "radical ethnic separatist."

Estrada said he thinks it's because he defended Churchill's right to free speech. Estrada described Horowitz as a "polemicist and pamphleteer" and not a serious scholar.

Barash said the book implies that academics like himself should be muzzled and exerts a subtle pressure on colleagues, donors and administrators to rein in faculty. He adds that he feels safe enough to say what he wants but wonders whether junior colleagues without tenure would feel the same.

"It should have a chilling effect," responds Horowitz. "They should behave as professionals."

The university with the most professors on the list, nine in all, is Horowitz's alma mater, Columbia University. When Horowitz was a student there he considered himself a Marxist. He said he lost confidence in liberal politics after a colleague was mysteriously killed — he suspects by the Black Panther organization.

Horowitz has more recently written several books and launched FrontPageMag.com, a conservative online magazine. This month the Fox News show "Hannity & Colmes" featured different professor profiles from his book every day for a week. None of the professors appeared on the show.

Horowitz said it's not the professors' political leanings that land them on the list, but the fact that they bring politics into the discussion at all. Asked why no conservatives made the list, Horowitz said most have been run out from liberal-leaning academia or are forced to lie low.

"I don't know of any conservatives who use the classroom for political agendas," he said. "The obvious reason is because they are too scared."

Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company

GermanStar · #2 02-28-2006, 04:02 PM

What -- no forum members made the list? Got to start working harder people!

kerry · #3 02-28-2006, 04:36 PM

There must be some kind of direct cosmic connection between Z's mind and mine, since I was just googling the list this morning. There were a couple of Coloradans on the list but I was surprised to see that the list did not include Ward Churchill at CU-Boulder. The archaeologist at DU known for his excavation of the Ludlow massacre site, made the list. I guess he was digging up a dangerous past. An Earlham College Peace Studies professor made the list. You know those Quakers, only outdone by the Amish in their radicalism.

H2O2 · #4 02-28-2006, 07:43 PM

I'd post yet another shameless cut-n-paste, but this one's too long. It's from one of my favorite media critics, and an alumnus of my alma mater.

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0228-21.htm

Ara T. · #5 02-28-2006, 08:55 PM

Since when have Americans been afraid of violent revolutions...

GermanStar · #6 02-28-2006, 10:02 PM

Harvard president's exit fuels debate over what price academic freedom?

BOSTON - Harvard University President Lawrence H. Summers, an Ivy League academic who served as treasury secretary President Bill Clinton's Cabinet, is an unlikely conservative martyr. But after announcing his plans to resign, it looks as if Summers is becoming just that.

In his five years as Harvard president, Summers has supported ROTC on campus, suggested that men may excel over women in the scientific elite partly because of genetics, and confronted a prominent professor, Cornel West, over the academic value of his rap CD.

He also has argued that the school's brilliant minds should spend more time teaching, and should work more closely together to solve real-world problems.

Conservatives, few of whom run top universities, adopted Summers as one of their own. Now many of them say Summers' downfall underscores how those schools have lost touch with the country.

"Larry Summers is a liberal, [but] he was trying to do the right thing," said David Horowitz, an outspoken critic of liberal faculty bias on campuses. "These universities have been taken over. It's 10 percent who got rid of him. They're hard-line Stalinists. They're not liberals."

Some moderates and even liberals hear at least some truth in what Horowitz says.

"It's unfortunate that it's seen as an issue of liberal vs. conservative, because real liberals are horrified by the academic hard left," said Harvey Silverglate, a Boston civil rights lawyer and author of the book "The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America's Campuses."

"Academic freedom can't survive the control by that cult," he said.

Summers said Tuesday he would step down rather than continue to grapple with Harvard's core Faculty of Arts & Sciences, which passed a no-confidence vote in him last March and was poised to take another one this week. An economics professor, Summers said he would return to teach at Harvard after a yearlong sabbatical.

Students had backed Summers - the Harvard Crimson student newspaper lamented his loss in an editorial - but there were signals before his resignation that the seven-member Harvard Corporation was growing weary of his clashes with faculty members.

Summers' spokesman could not be reached to comment.

Critics of Summers say the real issue was his confrontational management style, not his controversial comments or his ambitions for Harvard, which they say they generally supported. By the end, they insist, he had offended a diverse group of faculty.

"There's a real free-speech issue, but it's Larry squelching other people's free speech," said Daniel Fisher, a physics professor. "He's an incredible bully."

But many supporters saw politics in Summers' departure.

Law professor Alan M. Dershowitz has argued Summers was done in by a core group of faculty angered over his support for the military, Israel, and for his comments on women in science - the last of which he apologized for repeatedly.

"I'm clearly in the left 20 percent of the country, nationally. I'm a Ted Kennedy liberal," Dershowitz said. "In the Faculty of Arts & Sciences, I'm in the 10 percent side of the conservatives.

"That doesn't show I'm out of sync with the country," he said. "It shows how out of sync Harvard is."

Right-of-center pundits could not agree more, at a time when some conservative students feel under attack in the classroom for their beliefs. The Wall Street Journal's editorial page wrote: "Only on an American university campus" would Summers "be portrayed as a radical neocon."

H2O2 · #7 02-28-2006, 10:48 PM

Neither Dershowitz or Summers were/are liberals, or at the very least a considerable segment of their views would/could never be embraced by the vast majority of the conscious left. I've long despised the both of them. I say good riddance to the peckerwood, not so much for his viewpoint, but for his (lack of) people skills. The guy was a well recognized jerk.

Lebenz · #8 02-28-2006, 11:25 PM

It took just a few paragraphs in a budget bill for Congress to open a new frontier in education: Colleges will no longer be required to deliver at least half their courses on a campus instead of online to qualify for federal student aid.

That change is expected to be of enormous value to the commercial education industry. Although both for-profit colleges and traditional ones have expanded their Internet and online offerings in recent years, only a few dozen universities are fully Internet-based, and most of them are for-profit ones.

The provision is just one sign of how an industry that once had a dubious reputation has gained new influence, with well-connected friends in the government and many Congressional Republicans sympathetic to their entrepreneurial ethic.

The Bush administration supported lifting the restriction on online education as a way to reach nontraditional students. Nonprofit universities and colleges opposed such a broad change, with some academics saying there was no proof that online education was effective. But for-profit colleges sought the rollback avidly.

contnued ... http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/01/national/01educ.html?hp&ex=1141189200&en=fe2fa5683c560a6f&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Palangi · #9 03-01-2006, 01:53 PM

I haven't seen the book. Just judging by the apoplectic reaction of some leftist kollege perfessers on the Wide World Web, it appears that oxes are being gored, so perhaps I should pick up a copy.

Ward Churchill was on the first internet list I came across (www.campusprogress.org). I dunno if he is actually in the book or not, but if he isn't, he obviously he should be.

Just browsing the list (quite a rogues gallery of avowed Marxist / Commie revolutionaries) there are a few names I recognize, William Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, Bettina Aptheker, Hanoi Tom Hayden, Kathleen Cleaver, Angela Davis, Ron Kowabunga, etc. I remember seeing some of them pictured on the Post Office wall as federal fugitives. It seems that some of them went into hiding in Cuba, North Korea, Algeria, etc to avoid prosecution for various terrorist activities. Some of these folks were later captured and served prison time for their crimes. Then they became kollege perfessers.

Kirk Wanking once explained why it is a good thing to have these avowed Commies as kollege perfessers. He said it's OK because they are politically active (duh). He avoided a question about why we should allow convicted felons to serve as kollege perfessers. Anybody care to explain that one to me?

John Doe · #10 03-01-2006, 02:23 PM

Good for Dershowitz and Summers at least trying to create more of a balance. I have rarely agreed with Dershowitz on anything, and am glad a man of such zealous advocacy is on Summers' side.

Thanks for the initial post, otherwise I wouldn't have known about the book. I am sure the author appreciates the free publicity!

koop · #11 03-01-2006, 02:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Palangi

He avoided a question about why we should allow convicted felons to serve as kollege perfessers. Anybody care to explain that one to me?

Because we believe in the freedom to contract and the freedom of association and a bunch of other of those constitutional thinga ma bobs.

Palangi · #12 03-01-2006, 05:02 PM

So why don't we let convicted felons vote?

koop · #13 03-01-2006, 05:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Palangi

So why don't we let convicted felons vote?

You're just full of questions. Some states do, some don't. We let convicted felons work don't we?

Palangi · #14 03-01-2006, 05:21 PM

Oh?? What happens to lawyers who are convicted of felonies?

Should be the same for any other position of public trust.

kerry · #15 03-01-2006, 05:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Palangi

Some of these folks were later captured and served prison time for their crimes. Then they became kollege perfessers.

Kirk Wanking once explained why it is a good thing to have these avowed Commies as kollege perfessers. He said it's OK because they are politically active (duh). He avoided a question about why we should allow convicted felons to serve as kollege perfessers. Anybody care to explain that one to me?

Alexander Solzhenitsyn spoke at Harvard once. Do you have a similar complaint about his presence on a college campus? Would you object to Thoreau teaching a course?