If you browsed a bookstore, you would quickly run across books warning of liberal academia’s orthodoxy over us brainwashed students. One such website is CampusReform.org, whose stated purpose is to “revolutionize the struggle against leftist bias and abuse on college campuses.” Conservative activists say universities like UCSB are “platforms for a virulent orthodoxy,” where students “are no longer taught how to think but are told what to think.”
The two above quotes are from David Horowitz’s published books. Horowitz’s books have titles like Indoctrination U and One-Party Classroom. Horowitz is a frequent speaker at UC Santa Barbara and is scheduled to speak in late May. The preparations for Horowitz’s speaking event this month have generated a lot of controversy. Horowitz’s 2008 speaking appearance was preceded by his full-page advertisement in the Daily Nexus accusing the UCSB Muslim Student Association (MSA) of associating with terrorist organizations. Yes, Horowitz prepared to speak by paying for an advertisement accusing UCSB students of working with Islamist terrorists. Such accusations without facts aren’t going to engender a warm welcome from the UCSB student community. However, the secret is conservative activist speakers do not want a warm welcome from the student community.
These speakers, like Horowitz, use these agitation and propaganda tactics to paint students as leftist/socialist/communist radicals. The last David Horowitz appearance was preceded by a deliberately inflammatory ad in the Daily Nexus. How did the students respond to this taunt? The response was an embarrassingly typical Pavlovian-response: shouting and cursing at Horowitz as he repeated his accusations while speaking. The slandered students acted exactly as Horowitz’s published work portrayed them: demagogic and unable to talk to. The news coverage centered on a liberal audience shouting down a conservative speaker and the dishonesty of Horowitz’s accusations received much less media coverage. The focus falls upon students looking like the free speech oppressors rather than examining David Horowitz’s malicious dishonesty. And that is exactly what Horowitz wanted in order to further his political agenda.
Why are national conservatives like David Horowitz inciting students with slander and pushing this narrative of professors indoctrinating students? Conservative activists’ strategy is as follows. First, paint an objective, professional institution as a liberal politically correct police state. Second, exaggerate exceptions to professionalism (i.e., a UCSB professor getting arrested for protesting in 2010) and manipulate the facts (i.e. CampusReform.org equates the fewer number of conservative UCSB groups with political discrimination against conservatism). Conservative activists’ goals are to pressure professors and students to silence themselves more and more.
Our teachers are not out to brainwash students and my conservative-activist friends are not disadvantaged at UCSB. Two recent studies in the Political Science and Politics Journal prove my point. Mack Mariani and Gordon Hewitt found in 2008, “while faculty orientation is overwhelmingly liberal, student orientation … is not significantly different than the population at large.” In 2009, April Kelly Woessner and Matthew Woessner studied how students reacted to a professor’s political ideology and concluded, “there is no evidence that an instructor’s views instigate political change among students.” Until my conservative friends in the College Republicans are ready to host speakers who argue based on researched fact instead of incendiary and hominine attacks, I cannot believe their speaker’s honesty.
David Horowitz is not speaking at UCSB to win an argument. David Horowitz is speaking in order to incite backlash and controversy. He wants us to yell and generate controversy. If we who don’t believe our fellow Muslim students “support a second Holocaust” (Horowitz at UCSB, 2008), attempt to shout down Horowitz, he wins. Let Horowitz speak and stand by his words. Let there be no distracting walkouts or shouting or crying. Let the only outburst be Horowitz’s own verbal attacks on UCSB students because his words will condemn him the most in the public eye.
Daily Nexus liberal columnist David Kornahrens won’t play Horowitz’s game.
Excellent analysis, I could not agree more with David’s analysis.
right on the mark David. Also just to add for any students who are going and are part of MSA: have an answer to the question you know he is going to ask. (Will you renounce Hamas and Hezbollah). He asks it every time to any student who goes up to oppose him. Have an answer ready so he does not catch you off guard (Why your answer isn’t immediately “I do not support the violent actions taken by either of those groups” is beyond me, but since that typically is not the response, have one prepared!)
“The response was an embarrassingly typical Pavlovian-response: shouting and cursing at Horowitz as he repeated his accusations while speaking. The slandered students acted exactly as Horowitz’s published work portrayed them: demagogic and unable to talk to…The focus falls upon students looking like the free speech oppressors rather than examining David Horowitz’s malicious dishonesty. And that is exactly what Horowitz wanted in order to further his political agenda.” If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck… So Horowitz claimed the opposition as “demagogic and unable to talk to” and then the opposition responded by with demagogic rhetoric and… Read more »
A thought experiment: If a student funded group publicly called for the extermination of gays or blacks (instead of Jews as MSA did at UCSD), do you think academia would permit them to continue their student funded activities? To ask the question is to anwer it. On May 10, 2010, Jumanah Albahri, an ex-officer of the Muslim Student Association (MSA) at the University of California-San Diego (UCSD), admitted during an event put on by Young Americans for Freedom and featuring David Horowitz as a speaker, that she supported a second Holocaust. During the exchange, Albahri also refused to condemn Hamas… Read more »
David Horowitz, the State of Israel was founded on the basis of an explicit, conscious plan of ethnic cleansing. Even pro-Zionist Israeli historians such as Benny Morris concede as much.
Will you are will you not condemn the State of Israel?
Edit: “Will you OR will you not condemn the State of Israel?”
*pffl* Castorp emolates a pathetic decades-old strawman. Benny Morris is a discredited revisionist crackpot. Unlike Horowitz’s factually correct assertions about Hezbollah today (not decades ago), Castorp can produce no evidence to support that moronic slander of Israel. None. Zero. Zilch. Nada.
Now answer the question: If a student funded group publicly called for the extermination of gays or blacks (instead of Jews as MSA did at UCSD), do you think academia would permit them to continue their student funded activities?
Try harder to avoid indulging fallacies.
Benny Morris, professor of history at Ben-Gurion University since 1997, has exhaustively documented that Israel was founded on the basis of ethnic cleansing.
He is also an enthusiastic supporter this cleansing.
I’m inferring that “discredited revisionist crackpot” must be some kind of synonym for “honest”.
Edit: “He is also an enthusiastic supporter OF this cleansing.”
No answer to the question? That’s what I thought.
I accept Castorp’s inability to address the issue (and continued resort to logically fallacious straman arguments) as evidence of Castorp’s intellectual bankruptcy.
Grade: F- (failed future)
*dismissed*
Castrop, You’re one of those dispicable anti-semites who will write and say anything irregardless of reality. The Muslim population in Israel is growing as a percentage of Israel’s total population and equals approximately 20% of that population. How does this jive with your ethnic cleansing bullsh*t? Furthermore the people who do practice ethnic cleansing (for real) are Muslims as seen here: I have listed the percentage of Muslim citizens in a handful of countries. In each of the countries listed the trends are toward the percentage of Muslims increasing, except, of course, where it is already 100% Muslim. Saudi Arabia:… Read more »
If a student funded group invited a speaker whose organization paid for a full page ad in the Nexus denouncing Hillel, and who publicly proclaimed “Jews are racists, Arab haters, and can’t live peacefully with others”, should academia permit THEM to continue THEIR student funded activities?
Kindly cite your evidence.
I have no idea what your alleging.
It’s simply what Horowitz has said but switching Arab and Jew. For someone who’s name is “Stop the MSA” I have a question for you, Can you name one speaker the UCSB MSA has brought in the last year (you can reach further back if you want) that has made accusations or statements against people groups, be they Jew, Christian, American, ext, that even comes close to paralleling Horowitz? And as for your “thought experiment” all the video proves is that one girl is an idiot and got heated up by him. Because she’s muslim, arab, and a woman should… Read more »
I see. So you’re using ‘tu quoque’ reasoning.
Most illogical.
Grade: F- (failed future)
*dismissed*
For those interested in reading MSA’s dossier, watch “The Muslim Students Association and the Jihad Network” @
http://www.terrorismawareness.org/blog/244/the-muslim-students-association-and-the-jihad-network/
Don’t be an Islamo-supremacism parrot your whole life, Jaret.
And you used a strawman without answering one of my questions. We can agree what the girl said is deeply wrong, but how does that indict every independent MSA on every campus, specifically the one on this campus?
Please if you are going to make such claims back it up. Bring up a nexus article about a controversial speaker, provide a funding link between MSA and any other boogie man group that Horowitz claims they are related to, do something besides calling me illogical and dismissing my question.
It’s the Muslim Apologist, Jaret, doing what he does best.
Jaret, does anything here make you think the Muslims Student Association is actually not America’s ally?
http://www.terrorismawareness.org/blog/244/the-muslim-students-association-and-the-jihad-network/
Here’s a deal for all the poor, offended MSA supporters on campus:
Stop advocating on behalf of murdering innocent women and children and the intentional targeting of civilian centers and school buses with suicide bombers, stop supporting those who call for Israel to be wiped into the sea, and stop supporting those who elect terrorists as their leaders.
Do that, and we’ll stop reminding MSA about their Hamas-hugging.
Deal?
Could you please cite one place where the MSA or I have advocated bombing civilian centers and school busses? If there is such an article or speaker that they’ve invited I’d love to know about it *no one has answered my original question yet* Otherwise it seems to me you, like Horowitz, are strawmanning the UCSB MSA by likening them to murderers without an ounce of proof, and before you post up that same tired video, I can make a youtube video with a web of random organizations drawn together with a line too and say they are all the… Read more »
Frankly, Jaret’s reasoning skills are so poor that no real insights can be gleaned from further discussion.
Clearly, it’s time to break out the Billy Madison verdict:
Jaret,
I imagine your family is proud of you for supporting America’s enemies:
http://www.terrorismawareness.org/blog/244/the-muslim-students-association-and-the-jihad-network/
Have you ever thought about moving to Somalia where all your friends live? You might be happier there.
Here IS the MSA. Why is it California universities are always on the wrong side?
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2011/03/msa-pledge-of-allegiance-i-will-die-to-establish-islam.html
We should embrace the Religion of Peace because it makes campus life so exciting:
“Obama Drone Airstrike Kills Seven Jihadis in Pakistan”
http://www.dawn.com/2011/05/12/us-drone-strike-kills-five-in-n-waziristan.html
Barry walks warily down the street,
with his brim pulled way down low…
Jaret,
I have no idea where Horowotiz gets his ideas from:
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2011/01/people-picture-muslims-with-a-quran-in-one-hand-and-a-sword-in-the-other.html
http://freethoughtnation.com/contributing-writers/63-acharya-s/479-richard-dawkins-islam-is-one-of-the-great-evils-of-the-world.html
http://www.topix.com/forum/religion/islam/T9VLFM30K16SAHC66
Jaret,
Where does Horowitz get his ideas about Islamic supremacism?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtiKorMw9zg
Gosh, it sounds like Horowitz is doing nothing more than listening to Muslims ad parroting their words. Does that mean he’s a racist, xenophobic, boot-strapping Nazi, or does that make him an honest observer of Islam?
When David Horowitz was busy cheerleading for the fascist Contras in Nicaragua, with their proven track record of egregious torture and massacres of civilians, where was all his tolerance for human rights? He never had it. For most of his adult “career” he has been committed to supporting the most immoral U.S. foreign policies with an uncanny fervor. That meant supporting fascism and torture all over the third world, don’t even try to deny it when the CIA and the U.S. government have even admitted to it. Easy for him to support Contra death squads as a writer and lecturer… Read more »
How dare he provoke students with unusual ideas? A college is no place for such things!