Customer Reviews

The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America

5 star:		(71)
4 star:		(26)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(89)

 

 

It is obvious that many people do not like to have any challenge to the extremism existing in some colleges. Thats why there so many one star reviews of this book by people who obviously have not read it. While I don't always agree with the author's point of view, this is an intersting book and points out what one may be exposed to at colleges. Many professors seek indoctrination not education and free and open discussions of issues often are not allowed (if you oppose any position of some professors, you are considered a "hate monger"). I had a few crazed professors in the 1970s, but nothing as terrible as Ward Churchill or some of the others exposed in this book. I enjoyed the book and thought it was very readable. I do not think these 101 professors are representative of all college professors, most of whom are very good and seek to provide an education. This book does provide a fair warning for what is out there and takes the lid off of some often closely held secrets.

Former liberal David Horowitz takes aim at the Left again in The Professors. Not surprisingly, he will delight conservatives while failing to gain any converts among liberals. For those of us in the middle, The Professors is a mixture of positives and negatives.

Horowitz manages, at times, to entertain. The introduction to The Professors has an interesting recap of the Ward Churchill affair at the University of Colorado. Without a doubt, some of the professors Horowitz profiles are true cranks. Horowitz recounts the careers of some interesting radicals; for instance, you will read in The Professors that people at three separate institutions thought that it was a good idea to hire former Weather Underground terrorists. Another interesting point (at least to an academic) was how little actual scholarship some of these professors had to do to get tenure at some very prestigious schools.

In spite of the high points, the 101 profiles become boring very quickly. It amazes me that Horowitz can write a boring book about controversial political issues; but the Professors was just not that much fun to read. Many of the profiles sound redundant. For instance, Horowitz heavily focuses on academics who do not support Israel; I would estimate that about 40 of the 101 "most dangerous" professors have made statements about Israel that Horowitz dislikes. These profiles tend to all sound alike after you have read the first 8 to 10.

In my opinion, The Professors is worth skimming, but I would not invest the time to read it "cover to cover." It would be a good book to borrow from your local library.

Maligned, misunderstood, misquoted -- mostly by those who haven't read the book. The book is more of a report than an essay. It is the result of straightforward research, with tabular findings, without the artifice of statistical modeling. Any person can check the facts presented herein. It is a RED FLAG (pun intended). An urgent read, especially by parents. I bought extra copies as gifts. If one were to perform the research entailed here, or hire it to be done, it would cost many times what it is selling for.

David Horowitz's newest book, The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America. Horowitz edited and rewrote many of these entries, some of which originally appeared on a website devoted to uncloaking the identities and activities of the political left. The Professors is a compendium rather than a woven narrative, but its pages are always informative and occasionally quite stunning.

In these short, appalling mini-biographies we are made privy to the belief systems of those most responsible for the decline of the American university. Many of these academics were veterans of the counter-cultural experiment that was the 1960s, and they began their long march through the institutions after reaching adulthood. By blocking the hiring of their ideological opposition, they have created an environment wherein long disproven theories like Marxism and post-modernism are able to still flourish and emit their poison into the greater culture.

Their devotion to power and control may be totalitarian but it certainly has been effective. By denying that there is such a thing as "objectivity" they are able to repudiate the need to search for truth and turn their sections into clubs for aspiring radicals. They then excuse their actions by declaring their "engagement" and that teaching of all forms is "a political act." Veritas is replaced with opinion while students receive credit for attending rallies and writing papers about why George W. Bush is a war criminal.

The worst abuses occur in the liberal arts departments which are held prisoner to the race, gender, and class religion. Nowhere is the anti-intellectualism of these academics more prominently on display than in their racism. They claim to be "liberals," but the depth of their race-based hatred is startling.

Obviously the left will avoid reviewing this work. From my past dealings with them I believe they will summarily dismiss The Professors by labeling it a McCarthyist blacklist plot, and also that those figures discussed are in no way characteristic of college faculties on the whole.

Let me respond to the possible McCarthyist objection first. Although "Naming Names" is best practice in regards to university bias, David Horowitz does not have the power to blacklist anyone. What this work accomplishes is to merely give notice to those leftists who disguise themselves as "liberal" and excuse their propagandize with the phrase, "everything's political," that we're ready to highlight and respond to their transgressions. Identification should allow some students to avoid being subjected to their machinations. Hopefully, more and more moderates will become aware of the brainwashing in store for their children, and boycott colleges which allow lecturers to confuse activism for instruction.

As for representativeness, Horowitz addresses this question in his third chapter. He convincingly postulates that universities are conformist by nature and that faculties are formed in the image of those who do the hiring. This is the method by which our campuses have reached the point of toxicity and where radicals reign supreme. Many times the "long short list" of potential candidates for positions is narrowed down by the department chair and reflect their ideological inclinations. The rest of the department is then presented with a fait accompli or a "pick any leftist you want" scenario when approving new colleagues. The law of group polarization causes colleges to become more and more left wing as, with no dissenting opinions to counter-balance it, the center moves to the extreme.

What one is left with upon completion of The Professors is a sense of sadness. Yes, it's easy to laugh about the don who believes that teaching proper English is akin to oppression, and of the gay professor who opens sections by announcing, "My name is Michael Vocino and I like d*ck," but somebody somewhere is having their bank account, prospects, and perceptions destroyed by this useless evangelizing. Just how many sections of "Gender, Nationalism, and War," "Hip-Hop Eshu: Queen B*tch 101-The Life and Times of Lil' Kim," "They've Killed Kenny," or "Feminist Geography" must one take before being considered truly educated? Such questions are best left unanswered if you're a comptroller at a liberal arts institution.

Students mortgage their futures to pay for classes which will only delude, demoralize, and miseducate them. Only the very young and impressionable could survey America and confuse bounty, liberty, and security with oppression, conspiracy, and hate; yet, novices are exactly the people whom these pseudo-intellectuals lord over. In light of this work and the admission that school is now all-too-often a place for indoctrination, perhaps the next time someone impugns the reader for questioning the patriotism of the left, quote to him or her the words of a scholar : "Under no circumstances, therefore, should we ever support the U.S. government or believe what it says." This can be more accurately applied to the multitude of pronouncements and publications emanating from our corrupted universities.

I have had not one but THREE classes with one of the professors on this list, and I'm signed up for another one next semester. That must mean I'm completely brain washed by now... or not.

The professor I've had from this book is one of the best I've had in the entire university. Rarely has a political issue ever come up in any class I've had with him. My class is filled with a mixture of international studies students and ROTC students, representing a wide array of political ideologies. All of these students are respected and equally likely to be successful based not on the leaning (left or right) or their thoughts, but rather on their ability to present original thought in a coherent and academic fashion. I find it quite hilarious that my professor even made this list, but it is clear that David Horowitz has a particular vendetta against any professor in the field of Islamic Studies, so perhaps this explains it. In any case, I'm proud to know one of these professors personally, and I must say that in this case, there is simply no way this guy is dangerous. I can't speak about all the other professors, but if my first hand experience is any indicator, I would take anything in the book with a grain of salt.

The bottom line is, this book's embarrassingly obvious bias doesn't matter. No one cares. Each semester, hundreds upon hundreds of students continue to take classes by these professors. Because we are educated, we have learned to think for ourselves (sometimes these professors help us learn to do that). We know how to draw our own conclusions about whether these profs are dangerous or not.

The university experience is a post-WWII phenomenon for us "little people." Before that, it was only the wealthy or the very promising to whom this precious opportunity was given. As with most things, making it available to everyone changes it to say the very, very least. The university system of modern times is a business. Nearly everyone ships their children, however thick they might be, off to get a first-class university education. These masters of SAT prep sessions and little else aren't going to line up at the Math, Science and Engineering departments so the Social Science departments are booming. Tuition funds pour in, along with alumni donations, state and federal grants and, in spite of Title IX's best efforts to the contrary, football and basketball revenues. A university professorship in the Social Sciences is one of the sweetest gigs there is, for the academic who knows how to milk it.

The university student enrolling in classes must rely on the university's materials in selecting courses, areas of study and the professors, assistant professors and teaching assistants who will provide instruction. Efforts to assemble a guide to faculty created BY and for students (and their parents) are met with academia's severest measures. Such faculty directories can not be produced, distributed or even possessed on any campus facilities (including electronic resources.) Horowitz's directory of the 101 looniest profs should be considered the first of many installments; a note of encouragement to student groups everywhere to storm the barricades and shine the harsh light of day on what their prospective teachers are all about. Students: CREATE AND PUBLISH A DIRECTORY OF YOUR SCHOOL'S FACULTY TODAY!

Horowitz states in his introduction "This book is not intended as a text about left-wing bias in the university and does not propose that this bias is necessarily a problem. [But, the] professorial task is to teach students how to think, not to tell them what to think." Somehow, those who managed to read the entire book while standing in the aisle at the local bookseller also managed to miss that bit (they may have been put off by the scary roman numerals.)

Parents: Before you send your kids off to college next fall, write a letter to the president of their prospective universities and ask if you can publish a faculty and course directory based on student and parent observations. Be sure to leave yourself time to select a different school when you hear the reaction.

When the targets hack Amazon to change its title and write scathing lies about the book and author.

A must read for all Americans. Especially those contemplating College.

I have read this book and many of the reviews that rate it as only one star and I can already start to see the correlations between the illogical nonsense being spewed here in reviews and the indoctrination that goes on in colleges. I graduated from a State University four years ago with a Bachelor's degree and a private universtity two years ago with a Masters so I am pretty familiar with campus life and educational political leanings.
I also consider myself very well rounded and have read many works on both sides of the political spectrum.

The essence of Horowitz's arguments in this book and their translation into the reforms of the Academic freedom campaign are well founded.

Through my own experiences I have seen the left "army" on campuses at work. They seem to disregard and slander any opinions contrarian to their own and have zero tolerance for hearing anything they do not approve of. They will be overzealous in their attempts to quelch any form of communication that spreads ideas that do not follow their idealogies. This can be seen in the restrictive campus speech codes nationwide that are directly in conflict with our constitutional rights.The only purpose of these codes is to squash conservative opinion and not liberal.

I have never seen conservative groups work to ban free speech or conservative professors who turn their classromm into daily diatribes on the inequities of liberals in government. Yet the opposite can not be said for liberals.

While leftist rants should be expected in some Humanities classes as other reviewers have pointed out, leaving out opposite opinions only hurts education.

I am of the mindset that it is a professors job to present unbiased knowledge and facts so that students can walk away being able to analyze and form opinions of their own. In the 8 or so classes that I had to take in the humanities and socialism field I did not encounter this free exchange of ideas once. Conservative ideals and principals were glossed over while all emphasis was placed on left-leaning ideas.

The unfair and slanderous reviews here have only served to reinforce the opinions that I have of many liberal professors I have met and their "army" of followers.

1. They do not make logical arguments on government systems that stand up to historical scrutiny. (i.e they think Cuba is a bastion of humanity)
2. They tend to only study subjective disciplines where there are no absolute truths and thus they can't be judged as right or wrong.
3. All the humaities and socialism classes filled with liberals that I have taken are not even close to the intellectual challenge found in the disciplines of real knowledge where there is more of a conservative presence (science, economics, engineering, business).

Maybe if the students in today's universities were actually challenged and taught rather than being spoon fed ploitical idealogies this country would be in better shape.

Read this book if you have a childgoing off to college or if you are going soon yourself.

I also recommend the works of Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell, and Star Parker.

They offer the truth.

Once you get old enough, you begin to notice that people of extreme left or extreme right or extreme religion are much the same -- ideological zealots filled with hate and self righteousness. At various times some of these kinds of people get "activated" and become truly dangerous such as happening now in the Islamic extremes, but happened before in the German brown shirts or the Maoists etc.

Thus, normally I wouldn't touch a book like this, but you have to hand it to Horowitz -- shortly after his book came out, we were treated to the Duke false rape charge against the Lacrosse team scandal and as if on cue, out trots 88 "Professors" (one written up in this book) implying guilt and supporting protests urging castration of the athletic team. When I finally looked into it, many of these same "Professors" seem to profess mainly biased and reversed racist agendas but are amazingly unproductive academically -- aka they have lots of spare time on their hands. They are like a set piece in a Horowitz play. So, maybe I will take a look at this book ... in a bookstore.

"If anyone is is sure of something, don't believe them".

This book is a hilarious expose of several handpicked nutty professors from acadumia. As a graduate of an ivy league college myself, I think it's high time someone exposed the truth about the far left's stranglehold on the humanities departments in many of our elite universities.
Great read, and a great service to the tuition paying public from David Horowitz.