Open Letter from David Horowitz
[some of you will remember David as one of the leaders of the anti-war protestors of the Vietnam Era. If anyone should know what the left is up to David should]
Recently, one of the most liberal columnists in the nation sounded the alarm to her political allies, claiming that my efforts to promote academic freedom and intellectual diversity on college campuses are the greatest threats to their agendas.
Not the fact that Republicans control the White House, Congress and soon the Judiciary.
According to Ellen Goodman, that is a trifle compared to what I am doing. Goodman is the leftwing syndicated columnist and agenda setter who writes for The Washington Post, The Boston Globe and dozens of elitist papers.
Goodman writes, "While many of us assume that the right is busily targeting the highest court as their last unoccupied power base, a whole subset of conservatives is after higher education."
Then Goodman names names.
"One group led by David Horowitz has been pushing an `academic bill of rights' aimed at what is called liberal bias." Actually my bill of rights is viewpoint neutral. It will protect leftwing students from harassment by conservative professors and conservative students from harassment by "liberal" professors. The fact is, however, that thanks to a 30-year blacklist imposed by the left, 90% of college professors are political leftists, and in the coming years this imbalance is going to get even worse.
Goodman explains why I am so dangerous: "Conservatives have long regarded universities as the last spider holes of liberalism. They regard professors as lefty holdouts who spend their days indoctrinating the younger generation on the virtues of Che Guevara."
On this point Goodman is 100 percent accurate!
In her own article attacking me, she admits that the left wing continues to have a stranglehold on American college campuses as she writes:
"Two new studies point to campuses as oases of blue [state, liberal thinking]. The first, a survey of 1,000 academics, shows that there are seven Democrats for every Republican in the humanities and social sciences. The Democrat-Republican odds are 30 to 1 in anthropology and even 3 to 1 in economics."
"A second study of voter registration records shows that Democrats outnumber Republicans 9 to 1 on the faculties of` Berkeley and Stanford."
"And as a side dish, the Center for Responsive Politics reports that the biggest donors to John Kerry's campaign were employees from the University of California and from Harvard."
Goodman can't refute what we know to be true: College campuses have become a one-party state where leftists rule.
Introduce intellectual diversity and a competition of ideas on college campuses and the political left will have to come up with a whole new set of arguments or wither on the vine.
You can help me liberate our college campuses.
Go here to help!
My Conversion and the Center for Study of the Popular Culture
At the Center for the Study of Popular Culture (CSPC), we're fighting back.
I founded the CSPC because I know the danger posed by the left in general and the academic left in particular, the so-called "liberals" who can't tolerate a different point of view. Back in the 1960s, I was one of them. But I eventually saw that their agendas were anything but "progressive" -- as they like to describe themselves. They wanted the United States to lose the Vietnam War, just as they want America to be defeated in the war in Iraq today.
The anti-Vietnam left was successful. American withdrew from the battlefield in Vietnam and the Communists won, just as the left hoped. After the Communists won, they proceeded to slaughter two and a half million peasants in Cambodia and Vietnam. There were no protests from the left over that.
That's when I realized how destructive my fellow leftists (today's so-called liberals) were. That's when I renounced my leftist politics, voted for Ronald Reagan, and joined the conservative cause.
Today, leftist professors are openly calling for America's defeat in Iraq and in the war on terror. Robert Jensen, for example, is a professor at the University of Texas. As American marines engaged Sunni terrorists in a fierce battle in Falluja on December 03, 2004, Jensen wrote: "The United States has lost the war in Iraq, and that's a good thing.... I welcome the U.S. defeat... it's essential the American empire be defeated and dismantled."
Today, leftist professors assign exams with essay topics instructing students to "Explain why George Bush is a war criminal" (this actually happened at a university in Colorado).
Today, leftist professors are indoctrinating students to hate their country and to sympathize with terrorists.
Today, leftist textbooks are telling students that "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" and that "America is the greatest terrorist state."
That's why I have launched a campus crusade to end the indoctrination of American students and to restore educational values to our universities. I have created a national organization, Students for Academic Freedom, on 135 college campuses. We are moving legislation for an Academic Bill of Rights in more than 20 states. We have already changed the face of the educational system of Colorado, where the state university system has adopted the Academic Bill of Rights.
Meet Brett Mock
I want to tell you a story about a young man's experience at Ball State University in Indiana.
His story shows two things so clearly.
First, it shows how political (and radical) colleges and universities have become.
Second, it shows why, in the post-9/11 world, they pose a grave danger to the future security of America.
And I want to show you how urgent it is for you to help me fight back.
Meet Brett Mock. He is a political science major at Ball State.
Last year he enrolled in a course called "Introduction to Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution."
He expected to study various ways of resolving conflict, including the use of military force.
Instead, he found a radical professor, George Wolfe, who believed that fighting back against violent aggression is never acceptable.
He told his class that even if a gang started shooting students on campus, they should not fight back "regardless of how many students would be lost in the shooting." He said the students should "hide until the gang runs out of bullets."
However, this pacifist philosophy didn't hold when it came to terrorism.
The textbook Professor Wolfe uses states that "terrorism" is a relative term depending on perspective, and that "often one person's `terrorist' is another's `freedom fighter.'"
In a section devoted to the 9/11 attacks on the United States, the authors sympathetically quote Osama bin Laden's characterization of Americans as "the worst terrorists in the world."
Other readings assigned in the course called U.S. policies the root cause of the 9/11 attacks and criticized U.S. military action in Afghanistan and Iraq - with no opposing views presented!
As we've come to expect from academic leftists, no opposing opinions were tolerated. Brett's grades were lowered when he wrote papers arguing against Professor Wolfe's beliefs, on the grounds that Brett clearly "didn't understand how peaceful resistance worked."
But when Brett, worried about his final grade, wrote a positive review of an anti-American book by Noam Chomsky, he received an A+ and 10 extra-credit points!
Professor Wolfe has no qualifications to teach such a course. He is a professor of the saxophone in the music department, with a doctorate in higher education and a course in mediation. He is also an advisor to a Buddhist peace cult. The President and Provost of Ball State have defended Wolfe's course and his credentials when challenged by us. That's why we're going to the legislature for help.
Professor Wolfe also leads some radical groups on campus and requires participation in one of these programs in order to receive full credit in his class.
And he gave extra credit to students who attended a paid trip to Washington, D.C., to protest the war in Iraq.
In fact, under the guise of teaching an academic course, the professor is indoctrinating students, recruiting them to his anti-American groups, and involving them in national leftist organizations.
Brett Mock objected to this bias and distortion, forcefully and articulately.
But as so often happens, the administration at Ball State defended Professor Wolfe and dismissed Brett's complaints, without even speaking to him in person. Is this just a fluke - one biased course at one college? Far from it!
Go here to contribute now! Brett Mock Is Not Alone
There are 250 "Peace Studies" programs like this one nationwide - teaching students to identify with America's terrorist enemies and to identify America as a "Great Satan" oppressing the world's poor and causing them to go hungry.
There are countless more professors giving their students the same anti-American indoctrination in other courses on other campuses.
And there are thousands of spineless administrators who refuse to stand up for academic freedom, fairness, and intellectual diversity.
Unfortunately, there are comparatively few students like Brett Mock. Brett ended up with a B+ in the course, since he soon realized he could succeed by simply parroting back the professor's line in his papers.
But he didn't stop speaking out against the course, and he is continuing to fight against this kind of indoctrination.
That's why I'm asking you to consider a special contribution right now to Students for Academic Freedom - to help students like Brett stand up for their rights and beliefs. Help us to get the Academic Bill of Rights passed in Indiana.
With these funds we will set up and fund chapters of Students for Academic Freedom on campuses across America.
With our support, chapters of SAF have full legal and logistical support - including our national organization to help publicize their activities and the shocking things colleges are up to.
Please follow this link to make your donation right now.
A Brainwashed Generation
Here is the vital question this story forces us to face:
How long can America - today at war with ruthless enemies - survive if its educational institutions continue to be subverted by radical leftists in this way?
America's colleges and universities are producing a generation of young people who are being taught that their country is a source of evil, that war is never justified, and that our enemies have truth and justice on their side.
Of course not all students are brainwashed into believing this. Yet it cannot be a coincidence that voters aged 18-29 were the only age group that voted in the majority for John Kerry (54-45 percent).
This is why ideologues like Ellen Goodman are so frightened by my activities. They know that they must keep alive their breeding grounds or their political agendas will fail.
I've spoken to many, many parents who were heartbroken when they innocently sent their children off to college only to see them indoctrinated instead of educated and turned into radicals by their professors.
At the Center for the Study of Popular Culture (CSPC), we're fighting back. There are 250 Peace Studies programs at universities across America, and they are virtually identical in substance and political agenda to the course at Ball State.
At Ball State, as at 135 other campuses, we have organized chapters of Students for Academic Freedom (SAF), a group dedicated to restoring academic freedom and educational values to America's institutions of higher learning, and ending the indoctrination of students by their professors.
The president of Students for Academic Freedom at Ball State is none other than Brett Mock.
Brett Mock took his complaints to our national SAF, and the group went directly to the administration on his behalf.
When they met with excuses, they and Brett continued to publicize the issues within the university. SAF also gathered information on the widespread abuse of academic freedom in other departments and courses in other Indiana universities.
And they are now working with Indiana's state legislature and state officials, informing them of the problem, and calling upon them to adopt the Academic Bill of Rights.
The Academic Bill of Rights Works
This document calls for academic freedom and intellectual diversity, protecting professors and students from having political or ideological orthodoxy imposed upon them.
As I have already mentioned, through the efforts of CSPC, the Academic Bill of Rights has already become the educational policy of the Colorado and is in the legislatures of 20 other states.
Students for Academic Freedom is a project of CSPC.
We set it up because the campuses are filled with courses like the one Brett Mock took - and with professors who refuse to entertain points of view opposed to their radical politics - and with spineless administrations who turn a blind eye to the propaganda that has replaced true teaching in so many courses.
SAF works on individual cases like Brett's, and on changing the overall intellectual climate on the campuses.
We stay alert for instances of leftist intimidation of students, classroom indoctrination, forcing students to express a certain point of view, violations of free speech, and other forms of political discrimination - and we've had some stunning successes, including:
Our victory in a reinstatement for a student at San Francisco State University after she had been expelled for political reasons.
Our campaigns to alert students and faculty to one-sided Palestinian conferences at Ohio State and Duke.
Our efforts to expose a teacher promoting wildly revisionist history at Indiana State, causing her to step down.
These are just a few of hundreds of successful actions.
And thanks to our relentless publicity and our promotion of the Academic Bill of Rights, the students at universities such as Columbia and Yale are becoming increasingly and vocally aware of the need for intellectual diversity.
After years of almost complete leftist domination of the campuses, we are beginning to turn things around.
But we need funds to continue this work. Students for Academic Freedom depends entirely on CSPC for its funding. And we at CSPC depend entirely on voluntary contributions from people like you.
This is why I'm hoping you will
make a credit card contribution right now of $25, $35, $50, $100 or even $1,000 if possible to the Center today to help us raise $175,000 as soon as possible.
The students who have been helped by us are incredibly grateful. Most of them have felt isolated and besieged by the oppressive leftist atmosphere at their colleges.
Many have found allies among the other students as a result of our publicizing their cases. Often new groups have formed that go on to do effective work.
So your contribution will be accomplishing two things: Besides helping to end the overwhelming leftist bias on campuses, you will be giving real moral support to courageous students like Brett Mock who have stood alone for their principles.
Brett and other students have expressed their appreciation - and often their amazement - that strangers would come to their aid.
But even though we don't all know each other personally, we're all in the same fight - you and I and these great students. This is why I am so hopeful that you will help us out so that we can help them.
Thanks in advance for whatever amount you can give.
Go here!
Sincerely,
David Horowitz, President & FounderCenter for the Study of Popular Culture
PS: The whole story of Brett Mock, his battle over the "Peace Studies" course, and what we are doing to help is a fascinating one with many more important details than I have space to tell you here.
When you make a tax-deductible contribution of $40 or more to CSPC's campaign, I'll send you a copy of Indoctrination or Education? - a pamphlet that tells the whole story of Brett Mock's ordeal at Ball State University - and also a copy of my new book, Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left. It's already sold out in many bookstores across the country, but I still have copies reserved for you. This is a value of almost $30 with no charge for shipping.
PPS: If you can make a tax-deductible donation of $100 or more, I will send you a free autographed copy of my book "Unholy Alliance."
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POSTED BY THIS BLOG EDITOR FYI "The fight for our nation is here and now!"
