Dispatches From the "Students for Academic Freedom" Conference

My Take on the "Debate"

PreparationG — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 18:47:24 EST

It was 10 in the morning on my fourth day cavorting amongst conservatives at the Omni Shoreham. I was tired, sick, hung over, and the preposterousness of things witnessed had me starting to question my mission. Thankfully, DH had once again provided free food, including much-needed coffee, and though my legs felt like they each weighed 200 pounds, I opened up my notebook and soon thereafter, my eyes.

There was a panel before the debate, but it's not really worth mentioning, because it featured Gib Armstrong talking about the left hating freedom and a few college-age Horowitz minions kissing his ass, bitching about college bureaucracy (not actual cases of political bullying), and plugging their national on-campus right-wing organization. Some guy's cell phone went off (he actually answered it), and I think I saw a couple playing Sudoku. I felt more hungover by the end of the panel.

When the debate began, I counted 43 people in the room. Horowitz once again reiterated his desire for this to be a non- or bi-partisan issue, that all that matters is what abuse goes down in the classroom. It's true--if Horowitz had found a few lefty or non-political students whose feelings had been abused by conservative professors, I would have taken him more seriously. If he had found some professors who could speak to the bullying tactics that some of the colleagues use in the classroom and in intradepartment politics, I would have taken him more seriously.

Instead, the only professor present was his opponent in the debate, Cary Nelson, who obviously also found it very hard to take Horowitz's cause seriously. His opening argument had a sardonic, playful tone that suggested he thought he probably had better things to do, but it came off much more engaging that Horowitz's opening rant about affirmative action, or something.

Academic Freedom Conference: David Horowitz Says Hello From Alternate Universe

Rao — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 16:09:49 EST

The Second Annual Academic Freedom Conference came to an unceremonious close with a "debate" between David Horowitz and President of the American Association of University Professors Cary Nelson. And by "debate," I mean "an oppurtunity for Horowitz and his supporters to make ad hominem attacks against the AAUP and liberals."

Horowitz chided Nelson for not partaking in intelligent discourse on at least three occasions, and, each time, preceeded to call the AAUP anti-freedom, supporters of terrorists, or holocaust deniers. And I guess that's what passed for intelligent discourse, since one of the 30 people still in the room after the debate confronted Nelson about AAUP taking "a third of its budget" from terrorist groups. My guess is that the only way this could have been less intelligent is if Horowitz and co. insulted the moderator -- oh wait, that happened. Now Scott Smallwood of the Chronicle of Higher Education knows that he, too, is opposed to academic freedom.

Horowitz had obviously lost his grip on reality, but by his closing statements, he really let loose. He began by complaining that he was only one man and therefore couldn't be expected to actually verify anything he says (even though he has his own magazine, a student organization, and a budget of $14.5 million). He then went on a tangential rant about how corporations are funding....liberals? Some great moments:

"Everyone knows that businesses fund liberals."
So thats why businesses gave over $600 million to Republican candidates in 2004, $200 million more than they gave to Democrats and more than 65% of the republican party's budget. It was an elaborate ruse, some sort of double-cross -- good work, Horowitz!

"Businesses do business, not politics."
Just because the Students for Academic Freedom can't walk and chew gum at the same time, doesn't mean that corporations can't do it. They gave more 60% of all political donations in 2004, totalling more than $1.5 billion and far surpassing any other group.

"95% of all CEO's are liberal."
This is just a dirty, dirty lie. Business associations provide more than 80% of their political donations to Republicans, and CEO's of the automotive, tobacco, food, chemical and waste industries all give substantially more money to Republicans than Democrats. Out of top 20 most pro-Democratic industries, the only groups with CEOs to speak of are the entertainment and media industries.

Now this all would have been insulting if anyone cared. But Cary Nelson, who looks like Santa Claus raised in the 60's, spent the whole debate chuckling, and our undercover blogger contigent already had their brains melted by four hours of wingnuttery. So congratulations, David Horowitz, you successfully preached to the choir and that one guy watching you on C-SPAN. You can put this one in the win column.

Academic Freedom Conference: Islamo-Fascism AND Free Food!

PreparationG — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 06:25:49 EST

Judging from the blogs from last year's Students for Academic Freedom Conference, I wasn't expecting much, meaning many students nor much substance. But this year the organizers were smart--the opening reception was not only very shrewdly held at the end of CPAC (the Conservative Political Action Conference, also live blogged for Campus Progress), but featured that hunky piece of man Rick Santorum, as well as free food and FREE ALCOHOL. That's right, free alcohol at an event about an issue that centers on college kids. If you're a poor young Republican lamenting the end of CPAC and wondering where to pre-game for your evening at these Adam's Morgan bars you keep hearing about, do you have any other option?? Sure there were hardly any name tags for pre-registered participants, but I'll be damned if the line for on-site registration wasn't wrapped around the hallway, with most getting a good look at the cheese, crackers, chicken, pasta, Budweiser, and Santorum awaiting them.

For those of you who aren't familiar with David Horowitz and the Students for Academic Freedom, it is a movement to temper the perceived leftist professors' monopoly on the academy by introducing an Academic Bill of Rights that would legally protect a student from being the subject of political abuse by his professor. Teachers naturally oppose it because they don't want to be the subject of political abuse by David Horowitz. But seriously, while Horowitz claims that his is a non-partisan effort merely to protect students against professors acting terribly unprofessionally, the activities of the Students for Academic Freedom certainly seem to serve more as a forum to voice wider complaints about what they see as the leftist or even socialist slant of the actual content of these professors' courses. There is a fear, thereby, that Horowitz's effort could amount to the modern-day McCarthyist witchhunt of leftist teachers. I'm here to tell you guys, you don't have much to worry about.

What makes it even harder to believe that Horowitz's is a "non-partisan" endeavor is how freely he lumps it together with the rest of his neocon politics. For example, his "Discover the Networks" campaign aims to track the funding for left-wing organizations, which he justifies by claiming that consciously or not, the left is aiding terrorists. Then there's the fact that his reception (at the end of the CONSERVATIVE Political Action Conference) featured absolutely no talk whatsoever of the issues that Students for Academic Freedom concerns itself with. Instead, Horowitz used the captive audience to plug his Terrorism Awareness Project, whose cause du jour is to coordinate multiple screenings of some movie about radical Islam's war with the West on the 4th Anniversary of "the liberation of Baghdad." If that's not a politically loaded term, I don't know what is. Horowitz then treated the audience to a flash video, which I swear is not intentionally a self-parody but highly recommend it for a chuckle...which is what it illicited from some (fellow conservatives!) in the room: Link

Academic Freedom Conference: Chairman Horowitz

Rao — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 17:21:31 EST

Finally, David Horowitz' membership in an American Maoist Communist group at Columbia University is paying off.

His attempt at indoctrination:

And Mao ZeDong's attempt at indoctrination (and violent revolution, I guess):

COINCIDENCE?

Rule number one of youth indoctrination: Don't call your philosophical manifesto the "little red book." Needless to say, David Horowitz broke this rule within 30 seconds of taking the mic at the Second Annual Academic Freedom Conference this Saturday -- and seriously, did a movement that wants to muzzle free speech on campus really need more authoritarian overtones?

Academic Freedom Conference: Haters of Freedom, Sign Up Here!

Rao — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 17:12:28 EST

Good news everyone! Democrats are invited to join the Students for Academic Freedom, and all they have to do is to concede that they are bad people who hate America! While Joe Lieberman may still want to join up, it was pretty clear to everyone at the conference that Democrats were either a) not fit to be in the presence of Mr. Horowitz or b) too busy aiding terrorists to come out to the conference.

David Horowitz introduced the second panel by saying that "it was always my ambition to make this a nonpartisan organization" -- and then the panel proceeded to tell us that we should join the College Republicans on campus and make 9/11 memorials that aren't "politically correct" like the liberals want (I'm still trying to figure out what the difference is between a liberal and a conservative 9/11 memorial). Only one speaker talked about professor bias at all, and even he explained that College Republicans was "a great organization."

Former Pennsylvania Rep. Gib Armstrong out-wingnut-ed the rest of the panel, though, by saying that "it's a great irony that people whose fundamental instinct is totalitarianism are called liberals." He also explained that liberals "hate freedom" because they want to allow professors to express their opinions in the classroom and that its no wonder that they support terrorists. He also said that "those who trade freedom for security deserve neither" -- which was totally irrelevant to the rest of his speech and a wonderfully ironic move for a Bush "let's wiretap and torture everything" Republican.

This is a conference where, when a veteran was explaining how he was called a "baby killer" by a socialist (who has no connection to the college's administration, but its somehow their fault anyway), a member of the audience called out "just like those abortionists!" Horowitz, who admits to getting millions of dollars from conservative donors, is pretending to be non-partisan; but when liberals are treated as totalitarian, evil, anti-american baby killers at his conference, its a hard sell.

Academic Freedom Conference: David Horowitz Loses to Sleep

Rao — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 16:01:53 EST

Against all odds, I was awake at 9 am on a Sunday morning to attend day two of the Second Annual Academic Freedom Conference. Unfortunately for David Horowitz, it seems like no one else decided to get out of bed. More than 200 people attended the start of the conference yesterday -- which, it is important to note, had an open bar -- but only 25 people showed up today, and most of them were members of panels or friends of David Horowitz. One of the panelists even chose to sleep in, forcing an embarrassing moment when Horowitz had to frantically search for a replacement speaker.

The first panel on faculty and administration "harassment" was basically an excuse for students to complain about professors who dared to express their political opinions. With a whole conference set up to combat the problem, you'd think there would be dozens of people ready to share their experiences, if not more. Horowitz, though, was only able to find eight people (including one who decided not to show up) who had anything to close to first hand experience of the issue. And even within this group, most didn't even have a real grievance with a professor, but were just reacting to rumors of liberal bias or just random people on campus:

Matt Sanchez, fighting the good fight against the International Socialist Organization, which is apparently synonymous with the administration of Columbia University.
Michael Abdurakhmanov, got into yelling match with the Muslim Students Association, blames Pace University.
Matt Ferrar, angry about the evil liberal professors that he's never had, angrier than the people who actually had these professors and who didn't feel the need to show up forth is conference.
Logan Fischer, pissed off that teachers might express their political opinions when they are not in class.
Jason Walter, skipped a class two days a week to go to ROTC training, is now angry that his professor gave him a D for the semester.
Ruth Malhotra, sued Georgia Tech because it was constraining her Christian duty to speak out against homosexuality, is now fighting the "Conservatives and Liberals Against Malhotra."
Brad Alexander, disagreed with his history teacher, who had the audacity to say that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

So, at a conference centered around the evils of liberal professors, David Horowitz wasn't even able to find one concrete and credible example of the problem. Maybe things will be better next year.