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115 of 136 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Of Rights and Character Assassination, February 18, 2007
Should Conservadom, in the spirit of positive reinforcement, ever decide to create awards for its most valuable commentators, it is quite likely that David Horowitz will be summoned to the podium each and every year until the time of his death. Few other figures have so resolutely, and creatively, battled the left over the course of the past two decades.
The cure Horowitz offers to the propagandizing of the bottom10 percent of the professorate is called The Academic Bill of Rights. The context and story behind Indoctrination U is the author's attempt to gain publicity for the proposition. Having it enacted by state legislatures was never his primary goal. What he sincerely desired was for universities to preemptively adopt its essence into their own bylaws.
The Bill itself is reproduced in an appendix. Its language is well-crafted and rather innocuous, yet one would never know this from the reaction it received from its critics. They dubbed it "crazy, Orwellian, a witch hunt," and totalitarian in nature. Their disparagement is perhaps a ruse to better enable them to protect their own privilege as tenets like, "No faculty shall be hired or fired or denied promotion or tenure on the basis of their political or religious beliefs" is not the stuff of McCarthyism. Although, should it be rigidly interpreted, a clause like, "Faculty will not use their courses for the purpose of political, ideological, religious or anti-religious indoctrination" would completely threaten the activists' way of life. Commandments like that are far more threatening than having their beloved Fairness Doctrine applied to network news broadcasts or NPR.
Those who actually discussed the initiative were generally dismissive. One proclaimed it a "solution in search of a problem." How much better off the country would be if such a view was correct. The liberal arts programs within our universities have become leftist bastions whose purpose is no longer to pursue truth. Unlike with the sciences, whose colleges are the finest in the world, numerous liberal arts departments have become completely politicized and are little more than ad hoc centers of agitprop.
Many of our tenured luminaries even question whether there is such a thing as truth or objectivity at all. Their skepticism makes for all kinds of classroom mischief as they idolatrously worship the troika of race, class, and gender. What "social justice" should mean is that the citizenry has the right to keep what they've earned, but, in the mouths of radicals, it is morphed into a description of government's attempt to pit one social group against another via an arbitrary, and authoritarian, redistribution of wealth scheme. Political correctness functions as the academy's Cerberus. It tyrannizes the marketplace of ideas and uses wonderland logic to turn its critics into peddlers of hate speech.
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33 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The New McCarthyites , April 3, 2007
In "Indoctrination U - The Left's War Against Academic Freedom" (2007), author and academic David Horowitz explores the pervasive influence within most major universities of radical-left professors who, all too often, do not teach but rather engage in a systematic program to impose their views upon their students. Horowitz and his organization's goal is to persuade all universities in America to uphold long-established principles of impartiality and excellence, and to honor academic freedom. He feels that a professor's private political views should be kept out of the classroom (as has been the case until recently), and that courses should be taught with a view towards providing all sides of academic issues so that students are encouraged to think for themselves.
Horowitz' central point is that "students have a right to expect professional (and not political) behavior from their professors in the classroom." To accomplish this objective, Horowitz and his organization have been urging the adoption of a new "Academic Bill of Rights."
Despite the non-radical nature of his proposal, which is very similar to a "Declaration of Principles of Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure" that has been in effect at American universities since 1915, Horowitz and his proposals have been met with vehement opposition and personal vilification by well-entrenched organizations and unions of college professors. Administrators and trustees, perhaps "too busy" with fund-raising and not wanting to make waves, have refused to get involved.
As a result, many individual courses, even entire college curricula, have been designed to further and propagate the views of left-leaning college professors - who, all too often (as Horowitz points out in example after example) regard America as a racist, imperialist country intent on "oppressing" "people of color." They have no respect for opposing points of view, are often not qualified to speak on the issues on which they expound, bring their political views into the classrooms, and castigate, in the most uncivil terms, anyone, whether student or hapless conservative faculty member, who disagrees with their viewpoint and outlook. Guest speakers invited to campuses are, in most cases, chosen for their friendly (read: radical) political persuasions; conservatives are not welcome - and, indeed, professors often encourage students to disrupt the speaking engagements of those few conservatives who are occasionally invited.
The book is both scary and a scathing indictment of what our universities have become - and now these same individuals are spreading their views among high school students. The reaction to Horowitz' criticisms is also troubling; he is attacked personally, his views and proposals are grossly misrepresented, and no tactic is ignored in the extreme left's efforts to discredit Horowitz and his proposals for less bias and more diversity in college education. He is a favorite villain on many extreme liberal blogs, and he is routinely excoriated as a "McCarthyite witch-hunter" who's views are not worthy of consideration.
Here is just one example of the kind of advocacy that's going on in our universities: From the official department website of the Women's Studies Department at University of California at Santa Cruz, on "employment opportunities" for those who major in Women's' Studies: "With a background in women's and minorities' histories and an understanding of racism, sexism, homophobia, classism and other forms of oppression, graduates have a good background for work with policy-making and lobbying organizations, research centers, trade and international associations, and unions. Graduates' knowledge about power relationships and injustice often leads them to choose careers in government and politics, because they are determined to use their skills to change the world..."
I was stunned by the examples Horowitz provided regarding the indoctrination and proselytizing that today poses as education in the "halls of higher learning," and the efforts expended by many professors to inculcate their views in their students. Of course America has its faults, just like any other country. However, many of these professors are entirely ashamed of our country, and believe that America is an evil imperialist, trying to exploit "peace-loving Muslims" (and Muslim terrorists are routinely excused as "freedom fighters"). The words "oppression" and "imperialistic" crop up in their speeches and writings repeatedly. The U of Colorado professor Ward Churchill, who infamously attacked the victims of 9/11, calling them "little Eichmanns," is but one of many.
This book - and the situation that exists in our universities, as related by Horowitz - delivers a devastating indictment of how our "institutions of higher learning" are being run today. I knew that some of this existed, but was shocked by its pervasiveness and the boldness of those who are pursuing their odd and one-sided agenda. It should be read by every American of every persuasion. Whether your bias is Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, please don't listen to the rantings of the bloggers and do NOT judge Mr. Horowitz until you have read this book.
R. Block
Westlake Village, CA
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67 of 80 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A corrective to the overwhelming leftist hegemony of the modern university..., February 27, 2007
As someone who spent a good chunk of my academic life fighting the leftist obsession with stamping out any view that challenged the dominant leftist mindset, Horowitz has been an academic godsend.
It's almost impossible to imagine that the academy, of all places, does not welcome diversity of opinion if that opinion doesn't toe the left-of-center line. Once upon a time, you might be able to argue against it and not have to pay a grade penalty. That simply doesn't exist anymore.
There aren't enough centrists and conservatives in universities where you actually have an alternative. The point isn't to AGREE; the point is to encourage open debate and scrutiny.
All well and good, but as Horowitz says, there's only one train of thought running through the American academy, and it's the Totalitarian Express. If you aren't a leftist, if you don't agree with leftism, if you dissent from the leftist line, you will, sooner rather than later, pay an academic penalty for it.
That's why so much of this book focuses on an Academic Bill of Rights. It's a bullwark against a single student being steamrolled by the leftwing juggernaut that rules and runs modern academia. I can see it being of use to open debate, rather than stifle it, and the dissenting student, with it.
I just thank God that the left didn't have its act together as it does now when I went to school (back in antediluvian 1990). Yeah, the left ran the joint, but there was still a chance to have a healthy debate. From what I see now, my college years apparently really ARE the "good old days"!
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