Ahh, David Horowitz, former radical Marxist, and now right wing talking head, responsible for such gems as Islamofascism Awareness Week, and the book about dangerous academics.  I was thrilled to hear he’d be speaking at my alma mater, UCSB.

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.