Hooman Hedayati, a Campus Progress Student Representative, just published an op-ed in the Daily Texan in response to David Horowitz's appearance at the University of Texas-Austin tomorrow to promote his new book “One Party Classroom.” Here is a sample: 

Right-wing culture warrior David Horowitz has come out with yet another anti-academic-freedom book and accompanying campus tour. The book, “One-Party Classroom,” is a virtually unreconstructed rehash of his previous books, “The Professors” and “Indoctrination U.” In these works he announces the shocking news that they teach feminism in women’s and gender studies, social movements in courses on social movements, and Arab and Muslim culture and politics in Middle Eastern studies.

Hooman helped stop a previous Horowitizan effort in Texas a couple of years ago. His quick organizing and column was a major factor in the failure of legislation that would restrict the free exchange of ideas on campus. He is also helping to organize his campus's response to Horowitz's visit.

If you want to learn more about attacks on academic freedom and how to stop them, check out the Free Exchange on Campus Coalition. Campus Progress has been working with this coalition for years to stop right-wing attacks on students and faculty. If you would like to plan peaceful responses to David Horowitz on your campus, let us know at organize@campusprogress.org. 

 UPDATE: Check out video from the event below. Horowitz mentions Hooman's article and Campus Progress around 1:27:

David Horowitz, founder of Students for Academic Freedom, editor of conservative website FrontPageMag.com, and author of various liberal and conservative books, released his latest book, Indoctrination U, yesterday. 

Horowitz, a once influential writer and activist for the left, began speaking out for issues of the right in the late 1980’s.  His main focus today has been advocating for the ABOR, an 8 point plan to keep political bias out of the classroom.  This plan in theory is reasonable, professors shouldn’t be able to push their political views onto students, but in practice can be quite dangerous.  With the implementation of the AOBR any student who is ever offended by what their professor says in class can then call for disciplinary action against, including the dismissal of, that professor.  Furthermore, state legislatures have found that colleges and universities in over 20 states already have sufficient policies in place to protect students from infringements on their rights as students. 

But that has not stopped Horowitz from promoting his cause by calling out those he feels “indoctrinate” rather than educate.  First in his 2006 book, The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America, which named and mischaracterized courses and liberal professors on campuses across the United States.  Horowitz used poor internet research to make unsupported claims that these professors were indoctrinating students into their leftist activities.  He is now at it again with the release of Indoctrination U yesterday, blaming indoctrination for his inability to have his voice heard.  This time Horowitz skips the lists and uses this book as a public forum to publish stale speeches given at various colleges and universities, and to recycle old attacks on professors and departments.

Thanks in part to the work of Free Exchange on Campus (a coalition in which Campus Progress participates), David Horowitz's censorship legislation, the Academic Bill of Rights, hasn't moved forward in eight of the nine statehouses in which it's been introduced in 2007. But look out in Arizona, where a state senate committee just approved a bill that could fine, suspend, or terminate professors for:

• Endorsing, supporting or opposing any candidate for local, state or national office.

• Endorsing, supporting or opposing any pending legislation, regulation or rule under consideration by local, state or federal agencies.

• Endorsing, supporting or opposing any litigation in any court.

• Advocating “one side of a social, political, or cultural issue that is a matter of partisan controversy.”

• Hindering military recruiting on campus or endorsing the activities of those who do.

What's particularly fascistic here is the suggestion that professors can't even take a stance on "social, political, or cultural issues that are matters of partisan controversy." Could someone lose their job for suggesting gay people have the right to marry? Or that women have the right to have an abortion? Think about how this would stifle discussion in law school classrooms, for example, where questions of rights and morality are so central to interpreting the law.