Horowitz Agonistes
From Marita, in comments to yesterday’s post:
Any of you catch the latest (blog? post?) at FrontPageMag?
Mr. Horowitz provides us with this:
In any case, the professor has evidently learned nothing since from my response to his first post which reminded him that the bien-pensant among us, particularly professors of literature, generally read books before they review them. Here’s how Berube’s response to that idea begins: “Um, no, David, you poor thing. [Oh, did I mention that Michael imagines himself a humorist?] “That’s wasn’t a book review. This is a book review.” (Emphasis Michael’s.) But then he writes: “I got my impression of your ‘book’ … from hearing about my own entry in it.” From “hearing about” his own entry?OK, so is he seriously so intellectually dishonest that he’s willing to claim that the remainder of the post, rather than the link, constitutes a book review?. . . Or should I take the more charitable view that maybe he hasn’t quite got the hang of this whole internet thing yet?
Marita, this is not an either/or kind of blog. We like to think in terms of both/and. Horowitz is intellectually dishonest, as we’ve established time and again, and he’s kind of clueless about how the Internets work. There’s always the possibility of a Third Way, as well: one could imagine that Horowitz is so bag-of-bricks stupid as to think that the “this” in “this is a book review” referred to yesterday’s post rather than to my recently-published review of Theory’s Empire (there, that should make it clear). But personally, I don’t buy it.
We might also consider the possibility that Horowitz is kind of unethical, as Marita suggests when she notes that he took one of his critics who wrote to him directly, and responded by publishing her email address. Decent people consider that kind of thing either very childish or very vile, you know. Or maybe both!
But who knows? Perhaps, at long last, Horowitz is beginning to come truly and fully unhinged, as Chris Clarke notes. Here’s Chris (single indent), followed by Horowitz (double indent):
OK, this is funny.
In DHo’s latest, he says:
You need to stop fantasizing that ‘leftwing fascists’ are attacking you,” says the very professor who calls me a liar without checking the facts.Is the perception of widespread attacks a fantasy of mine? ... if you Google the words “McCarthy +David Horowitz” you will find over 400,000 references. Not to belabor the point but the most recent issue of the The Chronicle of Higher Education, the principle journal of academic administration, carries as its lead feature, a piece by leftist Ellen Schrecker called “Worse Than McCarthy.” The article purports to be about me and people like me. A version of it was read at the Temple Hearings.) It’s Berube who is the fantasist if he really believes I am not under attack.
For those of you who didn’t follow the link in Michael’s post, he was referring to an exchange I had with Horowitz in which I said:
Hey, maybe you could stage a fake attack on yourself in an airport washroom! That worked for Morton Downey Jr. when HIS fifteen minutes of lukewarm fame was fading.
Oh, wait, I’m wrong. It didn’t.
and Horowitz replied:
Thanks to leftwing fascists like yourself I don’t need to fake attacks on me.
So either DHo really equates criticism in web-based articles with physical assault, or he’s a mendacious O’Reilly wannabe.
Again, Chris, I see no need to fall into the logocentric trap of the binary either/or. Horowitz obviously considers “McCarthy+David Horowitz” Google hits to be a form of physical assault (they are called “hits,” after all), and he’s a mendacious O’Reilly wannabe. And I think Ben Alpers deserves some kind of door prize for writing, in yesterday’s comments, that “DHo spends most of his $300k/year time frenetically Googling himself to see what others are saying about him.” Bingo, Ben! (Second prize goes to the commenter who wrote, “it’s really kind of amazing that Horowitz seems unable to resist the slightest taunt, even a light-hearted, good-humored one.")
But you know, dear friends, I resent being called “the very professor who calls [Horowitz] a liar without checking the facts.” The truth—and I use the term advisedly—is that I called Horowitz a liar while hyperlinking to the facts. Horowitz lied about the student in Colorado, he lied about the biology professor who allegedly showed Fahrenheit 9/11 to his class, he has lied about me (actually, the line about how my “entire political focus since 9/11 has been in getting our terrorist enemies off the hook” comes closer to actual slander), and—I can’t believe I forgot this one!—he lied—to O’Reilly, on one of his many Fox News appearances—about his speaking engagement at Hamilton College. Or, as Horowitz put it at the time, “I fibbed about my invitation to Hamilton and about my Academic Bill of Rights . . . because it was truer to say that I had to be invited by students . . . than to say the faculty there—the Kirkland project in particular, which is what we were talking about—would invite me.”
That’s what Hamilton history professor Maurice Isserman got for inviting Horowitz to his campus, folks! He got himself his very own Horowitz Lie on national television. Maurice eventually replied in the pages of Academe. Whereupon Horowitz, being Horowitz, wrote to Academe to complain, capping off his letter by writing, “my only conclusion can be that Isserman must regret bringing David Horowitz to Hamilton.” (Given the strange third-person reference, it’s hard to know whether “Horowitz” was really the “author” of that letter.) To which Isserman replied:
I don’t regret bringing Horowitz to Hamilton College. What I do regret is that Horowitz is an unrepentant liar, and this fact is not better understood within the circles in which he still carries some measure of malign influence.
Touché, Professor Isserman.
Now, from today’s lengthy blog at FrontPage, it appears that Horowitz believes he holds himself to “a higher standard of honesty” (no, I am not making that up) because he refrained from repeating his Fahrenheit 9/11 lie at the recent hearing at Temple University: “I had been unable to verify it,” Horowitz writes. “Because I could not verify it I had stopped mentioning it long before the hearings started.”
Well, no, David, that doesn’t involve a higher standard of honesty. In fact, you’ve never really withdrawn the Fahrenheit 9/11 claim at all; you’ve merely whined, “I have a small staff and am unable to check every claim that is brought to me.” So you make claims you can’t verify. Then you stop for a bit. Then you make them again in another form, and blame your small staff for mistakes.
So, folks, insofar as Horowitz lies and lies and lies and lies, that makes him a “liar.” An unrepentant one, at that. And insofar as he writes “the principle journal of academic administration” rather than “the principal journal,” he’s sometimes kinda careless about what he writes, too. (What, you thought maybe I wouldn’t prounce on that one?)
Anyway, Marita, Chris, Ben, Maurice, and everyone—keep up the good work! At this rate, by the time David gets onto Hannity and Colmes for his week-long gig ("kind of like John and Yoko on the Mike Douglas Show,” writes Phil Klinkner, also of Hamilton College), he’ll be in a highly explosive state. That should be fun for the whole family.
Phew!
Yesterday’s post was arbitrary fun, as usual for a Friday. Today I think you’re stepping up your game, Prof.
Posted by on 02/11 at 01:40 PMI think DHo gets his stuff printed out and handed to him, so the links are just so many glyphs on paper. I’m just guessing: he may just get them written out in longhand on birchbark by some of minions . . . it seems pretty obvious he’s not reading them himself.
Posted by paul Beard on 02/11 at 01:53 PMif you Google the words “McCarthy +David Horowitz” you will find over 400,000 references.
Now, this didn’t sound right. And indeed, if you do this Google search correctly (with ‘David Horowitz’ as a single term), you only get about 135,000 references—which honestly should be enough for anyone.
But then, if you do the search incorrectly, you find over 400,000 references to pages containing all the words, ‘David,’ ‘McCarthy,’ and ‘Horowitz.’
Google illiterate or dishonest? Or, Google illiterate, dishonest, AND smelly and ugly?
Posted by Gavin M. on 02/11 at 02:11 PMIn all fairness to deez wingnutz, I blame Michael’s style sheet. There’s no difference, visually, between a link and bold text on this blog. In this case it’s probably an honest mistake on their part, unlike the other 999 times.
Posted by on 02/11 at 02:18 PMInterestingly, if you Google the words “David Horowitz” and “McCarthy” within the frontpagemag.com domain (which is his, is it not?), you get almost 350 hits. So my question now is: is he attacking himself, or just padding his stats? Or is it both?
Posted by on 02/11 at 02:22 PMAfter haunting this blog for as long as he has, Horowitz can reasonably be expected to recognize a link when he sees one.
Posted by Gavin M. on 02/11 at 02:26 PMAlso interestingly, you get 104,000 cites for ‘David Horowitz’ and ‘Martin Luther King.’
So clearly many consider him a civil-rights pioneer.
Posted by Gavin M. on 02/11 at 02:30 PMIt finally struck me this morning, that the only Kevin F, who could do nothing but spin his own singular criticism into vast webs of tit-for-tat elementary school tagbacks, must be that Federline character who would rather live in the blogsphere than take care of his wife, and three children.
I guess DaHo only pays him for weekdays though.
Posted by on 02/11 at 02:41 PMYou get about 110,000 Google hits for David Horowitz and Grateful Dead.
But if you restrict your search by adding the crucial qualifier “noodling,” guess what?
Posted by on 02/11 at 02:45 PMSo what does it mean that Google has 22,500 hits for DH and Gandhi but only 139 hits for DH and Jim Henson?
Then there’s the postmodern slip of “Third Way” into this post while we’re discussing the confusion of pronouns with links. Does this depend on what the meaning of this is?
Posted by Sherman Dorn on 02/11 at 02:53 PMThere are some such searches that return null sets.
Posted by Chris Clarke on 02/11 at 02:54 PMDamn. That was supposed to be the results for “david horowitz” and “shining wit.”
Posted by Chris Clarke on 02/11 at 02:55 PMShucks. Try here.
Then noodle here.
Posted by on 02/11 at 02:58 PMGavin--that’s an amusing point about linking DH and MLK!
DH should sure drop that line of argument.
I don’t want to defend DH on THIS blog, but about the U of No. Colorado case:
As I understand it, DH published a student complaint that on a final exam in a criminology course in spring semester 2003 at UNC she was required to make the argument that Bush was “a war criminal.” She filed a formal grievance procedure with the university.
The professor involved said he’d destroyed all his final exams for the course (very odd: I never do that). As the faculty-member later (a year later) reconstructed the final question from memory, it read: “Make the argument that the military action of the US attacking Iraq was criminal?” (That is the exact quote, including grammatical errors, as handed out by the University of No. Colorado in the course of the controversy.)
I don’t think that the difference here is enough to call DH a “liar”. In fact, to me, there’s not much of a difference between what the student claimed was on the test, and which DH published, and what the faculty-member later claimed was on the test.
This Iraq question (an odd one for a survey course on criminology) was one of two optional questions which a student had to write on in the final exam in the crim course. There were two previous, required questions. The Iraq as war crime question (as reconstructed by the faculty-member) was question #4. The other optional question (#3) as reconstructed by the faculty-member, was: “Make an argument that would support gay marriages and gay families and explain how this additonal type of family could help prevent crime.” According to the faculty-member himself, in the copy of the exam distributed by the UNC administration, a student had to answer one or the other of these optional questions: make a case for gay marriage, or make a case that the Iraq war was a war crime.I support gay marriage myself, and do so openly on my campus. But forcing a student in one’s class to answer optional question #3 OR optional question #4, and those being the ONLY choices,well--it seems to me an exercize in sheer narcissism by the faculty-member, and enforces upon students the politics of the faculty member. It cannot be good pedagogy.
I hope others will agree.
best,
Art
Posted by on 02/11 at 03:07 PMJust when you think this couldn’t possibly get any better, well, it does. My personal favorite is Horowitz’s confusion over the use of “this” in your earlier post - misinterpreting a hyperlink is just too perfectly ironic for the head and founder of the “Center for the Study of Popular Culture”.
But these guilty pleasures aside, the underlying issues are troublesome. Despite David’s best attempts to undermine his own cause, he has generated a certain amount of traction for the sickly Orwellian “Academic Freedom” movement, particularly in quarters that see potential political currency. In that context, “The Professors” may be the best possible vehicle for a compelling, honest rebuttal, directly addressing the misrepresentation and frank slander that - given Horowitz’s record - we can safely assume is pervasive throughout his booklet.
The concern among academics - being the wimpy camp we are - will be that this course of action will only draw attention to Horowitz’s work (another calculation I think we can safely assume is more than a blip on David’s radar). To which the response should be, ‘fuck that!’. “The Professors” is a terrific opportunity to shine a spotlight on the true agenda of the founder of the ABOR, and if it yields Horowitz a few additional seconds of the attention he so desperately seeks, who cares. Go for it.
Posted by truth4achange on 02/11 at 03:15 PMTwo things:
Art Eckstein:As I understand it, DH published a student complaint that on a final exam in a criminology course in spring semester 2003 at UNC she was required to make the argument that Bush was “a war criminal.”
In a criminal justice course. Didn’t conservatives just finish telling us about a thousand times that often lawyers and the like are required to defend positions that they don’t necessarily hold themselves? Isn’t it reasonable to ask criminal justice students—many of whom will go on to work in fields relating to law, if not law itself—to engage in the same kind of project?
The Harrowing Wit hisself:… if you Google the words “McCarthy +David Horowitz” you will find over 400,000 references. Not to belabor the point but the most recent issue of the The Chronicle of Higher Education, the principle journal of academic administration, carries as its lead feature, a piece by leftist Ellen Schrecker called “Worse Than McCarthy.” The article purports to be about me and people like me.
I’m confused. I thought McCarthy was supposed to be a good guy now. And I thought DH was one of the people who keeps telling us that. How can he assume that comparing him to McCarthy an attack (putting aside the question of Google methodology, of course)? Shouldn’t he say something like “As an indicator of the high esteem in which I am held by the public at large, there are over 400,000 pages on the Internet thingy that mention me and McCarthy on the same page”?
Or did they go too far and decide McCarthy was actually a bleeding-heart liberal, and now he’s bad again?
Posted by Dustin on 02/11 at 03:23 PMHey, this is a fun game! Googling “David Horowitz” and “Michael Berube” together yields 22,600 hits, but “David Horowitz” and “Art Eckstein” together yields a measly 43. But “David Horowitz” and “God” together yields a whopping 292,000. So, Art, I guess Michael can say “nearer my God to thee” to you!
I think. What the heck does “nearer my God to thee” mean anyway?
Posted by on 02/11 at 03:29 PMSo Horowitz finally admits he has a problem with his “small staff.” Did he get that from his analyst?
Posted by on 02/11 at 03:29 PMHave we tried googling “Berube” and God? That would be quite appropriate, according to many people on this blog! (I respect Michael, but not quite THAT much.) Someone do it!
Art
Posted by on 02/11 at 03:37 PMMy small but crack staff of Googlers reports 47 hits of “David Horowitz” and “Thomas McCarthy” (presumably the Northwestern philosophy professor and Habermas translator). As Habermas is a known critic of the Iraq war and hence a known Saddam-symp and Islamofascist-enabler, that means, uh, err, that means ... what exactly does that mean, anyway? I know it means something!
I’ll next put my small but crack staff of Googlers to work on “David Horowitz” and “Charlie McCarthy.” Results forthcoming.
Oh, hell, why post again? Here are the results: 138 hits! That means the public associates DH with a ventriloquist’s dummy almost three times as much as with a distinguished professor of philosophy! I think that’s got to mean something!
Wait, what’s that? My small but crack staff reports a whopping 21,800 hits for “David Horowitz” and “Eugene McCarthy.”
My small but crack staff needs to go lie down for a bit, but anyone else who can think of a prominent “McCarthy” should feel free. Who wants to do DH and Jenny McCarthy?
Hey, you know what I mean by “do.”
Posted by on 02/11 at 03:45 PMHorowitz may be a liar, but this blog seems to be populated by self-congratulatory windbags who have little else to do but blow their own horns about how “liberal” and “tolerent” they are when they are simply as narrow-minded and full of self-deceptions as their enemies.
David Horowitz and Michael Berube seem to share a common interest in each other; they should meet face to face, talk things out, and maybe even write a book together on the pleasures of self-laudatory blogging./
Posted by on 02/11 at 03:51 PMAnd then they should have sex, as we know they’re dying to.
Posted by on 02/11 at 03:53 PMTroll,
Before you degenerated into sex-jokes, I thought you had a good point here. Penn State should invite them both to a debate. Unfortunately, I think that Michael B. now dislikes DH so much that he wouldn’t agree, whereas Michael B. now appears in DH’s The Professors, which I find unfortunate, and it kills any hope of a personal contact.
best,
Art
Posted by on 02/11 at 04:06 PMAlright, I’ll admit it. I don’t have a small or a crack staff. It’s just me, a self-congratulatory windbag with nothing better to do on a Saturday but do silly Google searches.
Here are two last ones:
“David Horowitz” and “Joseph McCarthy”: 9,480 hits.
“David Horowitz” and “Jenny McCarthy”: 39,000 hits.
So here we have definitive proof: the public associates DH with a clever actress playing a blonde bimbo about 4 times as much at it associates DH with the former senator from Wisconsin.
What does all this mean?
Posted by on 02/11 at 04:06 PM"and it kills any hope of a personal contact.”
Well, not the sex part, actually. Maybe their mutual animosities prevent them from appearing together in public forums, but that doesn;t mean they can’t swing the sausage and play hide the baloney together.
Lots of people do it without liking each other: look at Lady Di and Prince Charles…
Posted by on 02/11 at 04:09 PMGoogling David Horowitz and Danish cartoons garners 70,600 hits. This proves two things: Danish cartoons are attacking D. Ho, and Michael Berube should debate D. Ho on the merits of western freedom of speech/dangers of European immigration controversy.
Take a stand now, I say!
Posted by on 02/11 at 04:41 PM’What does all this mean?’ -by John Protevi
it means you might be nutter who wastes their time googling things that make no sense. Dont worry, seems like most of your peers on this blog/log/dog are doing the same thing.
Is that all you Berube cult members have the mental fortitude to muster?
captcha word: peace
Posted by on 02/11 at 04:43 PM’David Horowitz’ and ‘McCartney’ yields 19,000 results, therefore many think of him as a gifted but somewhat mawkish songwriter.
Posted by Gavin M. on 02/11 at 04:44 PMHere’s what i got by googling Berube and ass-licker.
http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/marxism/2002w38/msg00031.htm
Posted by on 02/11 at 04:46 PMI wonder how many of the IP addresses of the Horowitzian commenters lead directly to the office of his small staff?
Posted by on 02/11 at 04:53 PMHow come Michael gets trolls like gifts from heaven, while we have to go out, like, constantly replacing ours?
Hey troll, get in the car. I totally have some candy in here.
Posted by Gavin M. on 02/11 at 04:56 PMRight you are! Michael simply screeches
“Fly, my pretties!”
and we start commenting. Commentating. Something.
Meanwhile, Michael jumps on his self-dilating broomstick (broom stick?) and sky-writes
SURRENDER DHOROWITZ
Posted by on 02/11 at 06:07 PMWhen you google “xanadu” and “david horowitz” you get 356 hits. Here’s the top two:
Stanford Review [v2.0] - Archive - Volume XXVI - Issue 6 - News For this year, Xanadu chose to include the confederate flag in their theme. ... in reference to David Horowitz’s anti-reparations advertisement.
BEST SELLERS July 8, 1984 - New York Times
14 8 DESCENT FROM XANADU, by Harold Robbins. (Simon & Schuster, $15.95. ... 2 132 THE KENNEDYS: An American Drama, by Peter Collier and David Horowitz. ...In case you’re wondering, I’ve got a special interest in Xanadu:
I’m not surprised that there is some intersection between DH and xanadu. The intersection of “xanadu” and “martin luther king” gets you 21,600 hits. The intersection of “kubla khan” and “david horowitz” gets you 54 hits. I’ll leave the intersection of “atilla the hun” and “david horowitz” as an exercise for the reader.
Posted by on 02/11 at 06:35 PMHaving grown tired of waiting for you sluggards, I finally googled “Michael Berube + God.” The answer was 232,000 hits!
Art
Posted by on 02/11 at 07:08 PMThanks, Art! So the finally results are:
DH + God = 292K
MB + God = 232KSo MB is 60K behind.
Come on, you fellow cult members! Let’s get page-making!
Posted by on 02/11 at 07:41 PM’David Horowitz’ and ‘Kathryn Lopez’ gives 22,400 results. Therefore, David Horowitz wants to kiss Kathryn Lopez 22,400 times!
Posted by Gavin M. on 02/11 at 07:42 PMThis just in!
“David Horowitz is God” = 2 hits
“Michael Berube is God” = 0 hits
This is shameful! Surely we all worship Michael more than his minions worship David!
Posted by on 02/11 at 07:43 PM"slander”?!
Ooh, Michael, be careful about going down that road…
Oh, and re. “lighthearted jest"--I’m not so sure that’s accurate (and I used it in my own comment yesterday because that was kind of my point, that the DHo defender totally mischaracterized Michael’s post, but alas, I didn’t make the irony there clear, even though I also compared Michael to Swift, who was not really known for lighthearted jocularity). I detect real venom here.
And I’m really enjoying it, I have to admit.
Posted by bitchphd on 02/11 at 08:04 PMI googled David Horowitz and chocolate pudding, and got 979 hits. What does that mean? Actually some of the hits involved chocolate rice pudding, which just sounds icky, but that could just be me.
Posted by on 02/11 at 08:07 PMHa ha! If you wish to be merry, Try Googling ‘David Horowitz’ and ‘pie.’
Posted by Gavin M. on 02/11 at 08:27 PMMB + JS = 131 results.
Posted by bitchphd on 02/11 at 09:11 PMI think this search says it all.
I didn’t even have to Photoshop her head in!
Posted by Chris Clarke on 02/11 at 09:24 PM’David Horowitz’ + ‘erection’ = 9,310 citations.
‘David Horowitz’ + ‘impotent’ = 19,000 citations.
Posted by Gavin M. on 02/11 at 09:56 PMWhew! I just got back from NYC after an eight-hour trip, and my stars, what a thread this is for a Saturday!
As always, the most severe critics should get the most love and attention.
this blog seems to be populated by self-congratulatory windbags who have little else to do but blow their own horns about how “liberal” and “tolerent” they are when they are simply as narrow-minded and full of self-deceptions as their enemies.
Yes, Troll (if that is your real name), you could say that, but what makes it so much fun is that this blog is populated by really witty self-congratulatory windbags. The very best kind of self-congratulatory windbags, if you ask me.
In fact, as I was Amtraking home this evening, I chanced to get temporary wireless access in the wilds of southeastern Pennsylvania, and I read the first 34 of these comments. I wound up laughing so loudly and embarrassingly that the conductor came and transferred me to the Dilating Car so I would not disturb my fellow passengers.
I am, however, deeply disappointed that no one has Googled “David Horowitz"+"Charlie McCarthy” (138 hits) or “David Horowitz"+"Mary McCarthy (200). Though of course that last pairing would lead us right back to the dread Lillian Hellman.
Now, as for Art. I told you (in comment 132 of the last thread) Art was all right. And he certainly deserves an answer to comment 14. Dustin’s reply in comment 16 is a useful start, but the key thing to remember here—and this is why the term “lie” is appropriate with regard to Horowitz’s account of the affair—is that the initial report of the Colorado “incident” was that a student was flunked by her liberal professor for turning in an essay on why Saddam was a war criminal after she was required to write an essay on why Bush is a war criminal. Horowitz’s initial account, which he offered on The O’Reilly Factor, can also be found (where else?) at FrontPage.com:
This year, for example, a criminology class at a Colorado university was given an assignment to write a paper on “Why George Bush Is A War Criminal.” Bad enough. But a student who chose to submit a paper on “Why Saddam Hussein Is A War Criminal” received a failing grade (for political incorrectness).
This is reasonably accurate, except for the part about the student, the part about the professor, and the part about the grade. She did not fail the course; her professor was a registered Republican; and the exam question was one of several.
This last point brings me to a larger observation about Horowitz’s jihad against academe. He and his allies treat college as if it were sixth grade with ashtrays: to hear them, you’d think that students were being strapped into chairs and made to attend classes in which they are graded on the enthusiasm with which they chant “all power to the Supreme Soviet.” But Jesus’s mother on a breakaway, folks, we’re talking about adults who choose their own colleges and their own courses—and who, in this case, chose to answer the (not required) Iraq/ war crime exam question. (Haven’t these people ever read Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose?) Quite apart from the valuable point Dustin makes, then—that it’s pedagogically useful to learn how to argue for things you don’t believe—there’s the broader point that the Horowitz campaign infantilizes the students on whose behalf it presumes to speak. The fact that some students are willing to be so infantilized does not speak well of them.
On the narrower point at issue, however, Art, I persist in claiming that the statement “a student who chose to submit a paper on ‘Why Saddam Hussein Is A War Criminal’ received a failing grade (for political incorrectness)” is a lie.
Thanks for stopping by. And for Googling “Michael Berube” and “God.” Though I want to note that “Michael Bérubé"+"God" yields 371,000 hits, which suggests that God is, as I have long suspected, French-Canadian.
Posted by Michael on 02/11 at 11:48 PMMichael, let me congratulate myself on comment #20 above, in which I did in fact google “David Horowitz” and “Charlie McCarthy”! We windbags take our self-congratulation seriously! So, good one, John!
Posted by on 02/11 at 11:57 PMSorry to be so apparently off-topic, but that’s a great review of Theory’s Empire, by the way. So simple thanks Michael, for sharing that.
Posted by Matt on 02/11 at 11:58 PMJohn, you have seized on a mere quirk in the format of this blog, and besides, the claim that “I am, however, deeply disappointed that no one has Googled ‘David Horowitz’+’Charlie McCarthy’ (138 hits)” was a mistake of the author’s, for which I am not responsible.
Truth is, though, I missed that because I was laughing at the Thomas McCarthy bit, for which you get double extra special self-congratulatory windbag bonus points.
And Matt, thanks very much. Still, I thought I needed to clarify the one-line Lacan-Baudrillard dismissal in comment 27 of the last thread. You know how these things go.
Posted by on 02/12 at 12:16 AM"David Horowitz” + abalone = 331 hits
“David Horowitz” + “the point however” = 229 hits
“David Horowitz” + “shea butter” = 188 hits
“David Horowitz” + “reach for my” = 178 hits
“David Horowitz” + “gabba gabba hey” = 153 hits
“David Horowitz” + “pet rock” = 141 hits
“David Horowitz” + buzkashi = 115 hits
“David Horowitz” + australopithecus = 51 hits
“David Horowitz” + “the ramparts we watch” = 7 hits
“David Horowitz” + “well grubbed” = 2 hits
“David Horowitz” + binturong = 1 hit
“David Horowitz” + “rich chocolaty goodness” = 1 hit.... just sayin’.
Posted by on 02/12 at 01:05 AM"David Horowitz"+"gabba gabba hey”? That’s just perverse, man.
Posted by on 02/12 at 02:08 AMGod has asked that you Googlebomb the Berube + God meme so he can get more discount hockey tix from his favorite perfesser.
Meanwhile, what’s the point in challenging Horowitz to a duel? A frontal lobotomy with a butter knife still wouldn’t reduce you to that shallow end of the gene pool, though it’d be more pleasurable than conversing with DH. Debating DH is sorta like shooting a 583 ft duck in a barrel, idn’t it?
Posted by KevinHayden on 02/12 at 03:15 AMDebating DH is sorta like shooting a 583 ft duck in a barrel, idn’t it?
But there aren’t that many perfect straight-men in the world—one has to cherish them and pay them proper attention.
Every couple of weeks, Horowitz comes around waving his arms and yelling, and Michael yanks his underwear over his head. Horowitz backs into wet paint, he slips on a banana peel, he falls into a wheelbarrow and clatters down a hill. “Curses!” he shouts, his voice dopplering away, “I’ll get you next time!”
And then of course a couple of weeks later… See, it’s one of your circular narratives. It’s foreordained. But that fact doesn’t exempt one of his responsibility to perform it.
Posted by Gavin M. on 02/12 at 03:46 AMNow that you’ve brought up Baudrillard, Michael, I’ll offer this speculation: D’Ho is Merlin. It’s like this.
Baudrillard is really Connecticut Yankee in reverse. Merlin was in his workshop and he inhaled some vapors a bit too deeply, lost his balance, tripped and fell, and when he woke up he was in Disneyland. Needless to say, he was very confused. Since he couldn’t make any sense of the world around him, he figured the locals couldn’t either. That’s when he started writing under the name of Jean Baudrillard. But, the confusion continued and he degenerated to become the mysterious cyberbeing, D’Ho.
It is, of course, but a step from D’Ho to Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh. What goes around, comes around. The eternal return.
Posted by on 02/12 at 08:30 AM"David Horowitz” + “nlf is gonna win” = 59 hits
Posted by on 02/12 at 08:40 AMI’m guessing “prounce” is a combination of “pounce” and “pronounce”, right? From context, anyway.
Posted by Patrick Nielsen Hayden on 02/12 at 10:13 AM"Prounce” is actually a new word invented by Horowitz earlier this week when he wrote, “the fact he is only reading a fund-raising letter . . . doesn’t prevent Berube from prouncing The Professors an outrage.” I prounced on it in the last post, much to Horowitz’s annoyance.
So the NLF is gonna win? Wow.
Posted by Michael on 02/12 at 10:25 AMI thank Michael for his kind words. Now to some substance: the UNC case.
Yes, the student in DH’s University of Northern Colorado case wasn’t ultimately flunked in the course, but this was because her initial low grade was raised to a B as a RESULT of an official university grievance process she instituted after receiving the low grade. Does anyone deny that the student instituted a formal grievance process after receiving a low grade and that she was successful in receiving a much higher grade than she initially received? (This is an unusual result, in my experience.)
Further, does anyone deny that during this grievance the professor involved revealed that he had destroyed all copies of the exam questions--an action which was a violation of university rules? This cannot be denied, because UNC itself said that the faculty-member did this, and had to reconstruct the final exam from memory. Michael, do you destroy your final exams? I don’t.
Further it turns out that while the question this student especially protested was indeed “optional”, it was optional only in this sense: it was one of two “optional” questions, ONE of which a student HAD to answer, and BOTH of which consisted of a REQUIRED defence of a position that was politically weighted far to the left. That I agree with the position in question #3 (gay marriage) is beside the point: there was no political variation in the questions required to be done, and students were thus FORCED on a final exam to defend one leftist position or--to defend another. DH was correct about this.
Michael, I think it’s a weak defense of this situation to speculate that the faculty-member did this in order to force students to defend (leftist) positions they disagreed with. What if some of the students were leftists? THEY weren’t so required. If this was the object of the exam, why wasn’t there an option in both question #3 and question #4 that forced a leftist to defend a conservative position? There was not.
Meanwhile, required question #1 on this test required the student to employ either a Marxist paradigm of the family and its relation to crime OR a paradigm of the family and its relation to crime that focused instead on “patriarchy” and ITS relation to crime (this is called “power control theory"). And required question #2 on this test required the student to discuss the benefits of feminist theory for the study of crime. Now combine these first two required questions with also being required to defend the propositions either in question #3 or question #4, and you see what kind of “test” this was.
I think it is obvious what was going on here, and it seems to me that far from “lying”, DH got the story basically correctly. So I think, Michael, you should drop using this UNC case as an example of DH “lying.”
best,
Art
Posted by on 02/12 at 11:01 AMMr. Eckstein,
I have no way of knowing if any of the details you provide are true, so I’ll assume for the moment that they are. Given that, I disagree that asking students to build an argument, for any position, whether they agree or not, is a “weak defense” of this exam. Asking students to take a given position, even, or perhaps especially, one out of the mainstream, and applying the concepts developed in the course to explain that position, seems like a perfectly reasonable educational technique. Why should a student pursuing a higher education object to that? The faculty member wasn’t forcing her to believe anything, just requiring her to look at one position and understand how it might be defended. If we treat that as ‘bias’, and say that students should only have to think through positions they already hold, then why bother? And regarding ‘balance’, do we know how many students in the class already considered GWB a war criminal? In Greeley, CO, I’ll bet not many. Since only one grievance was filed, I’ll bet quite a few conservative students accepted the question for what it was (an educational exercise), plunged head, and learned something, and their personal beliefs were unchanged.Posted by on 02/12 at 12:22 PMArt,
I’m afraid that the information you have on the Northern Colorado case is incorrect (the facts in your post come from a statement made by Students for Academic Freedom, an organization founded by David Horowitz. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these “facts” have proven to be false.).
Following months of argument and counterargument about this case, Scott Jaschik at Inside Higher Ed did some solid reporting. He discovered that DHo’s story was essentially untrue.
Here’s what Jaschik concluded (summary reproduced from Mano Singham’s blog):
1. Gloria Reynolds, a university spokeswoman, acknowledged Monday that a complaint had been filed two years ago complaining of political bias by a criminal justice professor.
2. The professor who has been held up as an example of out-of-control liberal academics said in an interview that he’s a registered Republican.
3. The actual exam question was provided by the university and reads as follows:
“The American government campaign to attack Iraq was in part based on the assumptions that the Iraqi government has ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction.’ This was never proven prior to the U.S. police action/war and even President Bush, after the capture of Baghdad, stated, ‘we may never find such weapons.’ Cohen’s research on deviance discussed this process of how the media and various moral entrepreneurs and government enforcers can conspire to create a panic. How does Cohen define this process? Explain it in-depth. Where does the social meaning of deviance come from? Argue that the attack on Iraq was deviance based on negotiable statuses. Make the argument that the military action of the U.S. attacking Iraq was criminal.”
4. The student did not receive an F, and that although the instructions on the test said that answers were supposed to be at least three pages long, the student submitted only two pages on this question. Reynolds said there were clearly non-political reasons for whatever grade was given.
5. Reynolds said that the student never had to even answer this question. The test, she said, had four questions: two required questions and two others (including the disputed one) from which a student needed to select one.
6. Robert Dunkley, an assistant professor of criminal justice at Northern Colorado who was identified by Horowitz as the professor involved, said in an interview with Jaschik that politics had nothing to do with the student’s grade, and that the context of his course has been distorted. For instance, Dunkley said that the course focused on the relationship between deviance and being classified as a criminal. “We talked in class about how George Washington was considered a war criminal to the British,” he said. “We were going into the idea that different people define criminal behavior differently.â€? And in case there’s any confusion, Dunkley wants it known that he does not think the father of our country was a war criminal. “I’m an American citizen and I thank God for George Washington. Without George, we wouldn’t be here.”Following all this actual reporting, DHo wrote the now infamous piece entitled “Correction: Some of Our Facts Were Wrong; Our Point Was Right”, in which he essentially conceded that all of Jaschik’s reporting was accurate, but that he was sticking to the truthiness of his argument anyway.
DHo very much did not get this story correct, seems not to have tried very hard at the time to have gotten it correct, and, having been corrected, stands by his essentially false story. “Lying” seems like a pretty accurate description of his behavior in this matter. Carry on, Michael.
Posted by on 02/12 at 12:34 PMDear alwsdad:
1. U of No. Colorado has a quite active anti-war movement, and a very active Chicano Rights movement. I know people who teach there. I doubt that any of the activists who might’ve taken this exam learned anything from the final exam that they didn’t already believe. Your description of what students are “probably” like at UNC, on the other hand, seems to me to have no basis in evidence, other than an a priori prejudice about what Greeley, Colorado might be like.
2. Regarding forcing students to write essays defending positions they don’t agree with: while there is theoretical value to doing this every once in a while, EVERY question on the final exam in question did this, and EVERY question on the final carried the SAME general leftist political slant (unless you think I’m lying), a political slant which all students HAD to write to defend, in all three required essays, whether they believed in it or not. I do not think this is an example of good pedagogy. The University decided in favor of the student who complained.
best,
Art
Posted by on 02/12 at 12:47 PMDear Ben Alpers,
Yes, the student didn’t have to answer the “Make the argument that George Bush is a war criminal question.” She could have answered the other optional question, in favor of gay marriage. Don’t you see the issue? The facts of the four questions of the exam (2 optional, but one of the 2 had to be answered), the text of the exam taken as a whole (as well as the text of question #4 as you present it yourself, which is correct), speaks for itself. The faculty-member involved may not think that GWashington was a war-criminal (NOTE: in THAT statement of the faculty-member, the issue is indeed the person involved, not his “criminal” act, so the argument that students weren’t really been required to say that Bush was a war criminal falls apart right there). But the students were given no option (if they chose to answer that question instead of the pro-gay marriage question) but to argue that Bush was one: the person who commits criminal acts is a criminal. Surely better pegadagy would have been to give the students the option of arguing that the war was or was NOT a criminal act.
Whatever the University later said in its self-defense, the professor destroyed the exam in violation of university rules, and the
complaining student’s grade was raised.best,
Art
Posted by on 02/12 at 12:58 PMARt,
When it comes down to it, we don’t know the context of the class. The professor seems to have written questions based on material that was assigned and discussions in the class; I write my own tests that way, only asking about material we’ve covered in depth in class, even though we don’t discuss everything we read. But more importantly, what use is the distinction “rightist” or “leftist” position? Is the position “Bush’s actions were criminal” inherently leftist? Does it make a Republican leftist to assert it? Or does the fact that a Republican asserts it—and the prof isn’t alone in this—make it a righty poisition? And if a lefty agrees, does that make her a righty?
Well, these are stupid questions. Why should a professor write a test based on what Horowitz might think constitutes a rightist or leftist position? Why should a professor aim for some sort of “balance” based on criteria that have nothing to do with the content or context of the course? And why shouldn’t students who intend to go into criminology not struggle to deal with incredibly complex and contentious subjects where a wider audience may well not see anything “criminal”? I suppose the final could have read, “Discuss the actions of Son of Sam in terms of deviance. Make the argument that his cations were criminal.” But that wouldn’t have been expecting much of his students, would it have?
Sidebar: if the complaint was filed two years before Horowitz latched onto it, then yes, the prof. was well within SOP to have destroyed the papers. Only a handful of my students ever ask for their finals back, even though I give them the option to either a) give me a stamped envelope to return them in or b) come to my office hours the following semester. The policy where I teach is to keep papers for 1 year, which about fills a file drawer. At the end of the year, papers are thrown out to make room for the new finals.
Posted by Dustin on 02/12 at 01:15 PMDustin, recycle! I hold on to exams and papers for one year, then release them so that they may become paper towels, grocery bags, toilet paper, you know, useful stuff.
Does that make me a leftist?
Posted by on 02/12 at 01:28 PMDear Dustin:
No,no--the student filed her grievance immediately at the end of the spring 2003 term. DH reported it at varying times thereafter. His latest post on this (I think) is April 25, 2005, which supersedes the March 15 one. The professor involved admitted that he destroyed both the exam paradigm and the student tests themselves upon completion of the course (his excuse was that he was new: if so, how dumb can he be? When I was new, I knew not to do THAT!). The result is that we have no copy of the student’s original exam. The professor involved admitted,however, that she got a low grade on the exam--because she turned in only two pages on optional question #4, instead of the three required. Remember, #4 was optional ONLY in a limited sense that it was one of 2 optional questions of which the student had to answer one.As far as I can see, all the questions on the final exam have a definite slant, and I have explained why. For instance: required question #1 required the students to choose an explanation for the relationship of family structure to crime based on EITHER Marxist analysis OR Patriarchy-theory. No other choices allowed.
The university position, after the grievance procedure, is that the student has recieved a grade of “B” in the course on the grounds of her other work in the course. Well, if she received a “B” in the course on the basis of her other work in the course, but did poorly on the final exam because of question #4 (I think everyone accepts this), that suggests she had done “A” work in the course before, or something close to it. She has emailed Horowitz her account of all of this, and her email can be found in the April 25, 2005 article.
best,
Art
Posted by on 02/12 at 01:34 PMYou know what we do with paper in Mexico, Carlitos . . .
Posted by Don Giovanni on 02/12 at 01:36 PMIs the position “Bush’s actions were criminal” inherently leftist?
Oooh, good question.
Defining tolerance of behavior that might be defined as war crimes as necessarily conservative seems to me a necessarily left position.
Assuming that criticism of Bush’s behavior in Iraq, based on a recitation of historical fact, is necessarily leftwing… that seems an assumption that’s just as favorable to the left.
But Art, those assumptions foist Patrick Buchanan onto the left and, well, you’re not going to palm him off on us without a fight.
Posted by Chris Clarke on 02/12 at 01:37 PMCC, I’m glad to see you accept Buchanan of the right wing fever swamps as your new political ally. Buchanan also supports the Cartoon Jihad--as he supported the Fatwa against Salman Rushdie, in a TV debate on that with Christopher Hitchins.
People might be interested in seeing what the student actually said about this, at least as reported by DH on April 25, 2005:
The student reported to Frontpage that she had originally received an “F” on the exam for writing about Saddam Hussein. Dunkley claimed he gave her a bad grade (he will not say what the grade was) because she handed in a two-page answer when three were required. Since he had destroyed her exam, this claim seemed suspicious on its face, though no independent press source mentioned this fact.
Although Dunkley and the university referred to her final “B” grade as a refutation of the student’s claim to have received an “F,” neither of them would say (and neither were asked by the press) whether they were claiming she also got a “B” on the original exam and not an “F.” If she did, why would she have gone through an appeal? In fact, the student told us that the “B” grade was her final grade in the course, while the exam grade was indeed an “F”. She had been able to raise her grade through the appeals process when the university had allowed her to receive credit for her class work even though she had been failed on the exam itself. That’s how she ended up with the “B.”
A short time later, I received this confirming email from the student: “I did fail the final exam, at least that is what I was told, however based on Dunkley’s and the school’s comments you never really know what is truthful. It has always been my understanding and my story that I got an “F” on the exam but a B in the class. I don’t think Dunkley disputed that but he is such a manipulative person you never really know.”
Posted by on 02/12 at 01:43 PMI’m glad to see you accept Buchanan of the right wing fever swamps as your new political ally.
How clever of you to discern my true intent when I saiid I wouldn’t accept him as an ally. You’re really good at this stuff, art!
Posted by Chris Clarke on 02/12 at 01:48 PMArt:
As the faculty-member later (a year later) reconstructed the final question from memory, it read: “Make the argument that the military action of the US attacking Iraq was criminal?” (That is the exact quote, including grammatical errors, as handed out by the University of No. Colorado in the course of the controversy.)
Well, no, Art, that is a selectively quoted extract of an essay topic. Why would you do that? This is the internet. You won’t run out of room by quoting things exactly here. Once again:
Here is the question, as provided by Gloria Reynolds, a university spokeswoman:
The American government campaign to attack Iraq was in part based on the assumptions that the Iraqi government has “Weapons of Mass Destruction.” This was never proven prior to the U.S. police action/war and even President Bush, after the capture of Baghdad, stated, “we may never find such weapons.” Cohen’s research on deviance discussed this process of how the media and various moral entrepreneurs and government enforcers can conspire to create a panic. How does Cohen define this process? Explain it in-depth. Where does the social meaning of deviance come from? Argue that the attack on Iraq was deviance based on negotiable statuses. Make the argument that the military action of the U.S. attacking Iraq was criminal?
You don’t see much difference between that and what you claim was the exact question, do you, Art?
And you don’t see the difference between that and ”a student at a Colorado university was given an assignment to write a paper on “Why George Bush Is A War Criminal,” do you Art?
And you don’t see much difference between Horowitz’s claimed “F” and ”her initial low grade,” as you put it, do you?
Reasonable people can differ, so let’s be reasonable.
Let’s assume, reasonably, the Cohen referred to above is Stanley Cohen, author of an influential book called Folk Devils and Moral Panics; the Creation of the Mods and Rockers. Let’s pause and read as much of the extract as we can reasonably stand. Ooh, ooh, ooh, it seems full of what we might call Theory, bringing us back around to This argument, but nevermind.
Let’s agree, reasonably, that the professor expected a discussion of Cohen’s work on deviance, and how it might be used to support an argument that the US attack on Iraq was criminal. Let’s agree that this is a leftist position, leaving aside how reasonable it might be for the moment.
Let’s also assume, reasonably, that even then an adroit mind sufficiently familiar with Cohen’s work and a good command of the classroom discussion of it might find that it fails to support such an argument and still get a good grade. But you have to show your work in an exam, don’t you? Make the argument, and then demonstrate its shortcomings. This is the stuff of intellectual discourse, isn’t it, Art? You, know, college–level work.
The professor insisted on a minimum of three pages for a response, and the student submitted two. Do you reasonably guess she showed a command of the material, Art? A “B’s” worth of command? Where is your evidence of that?
Have you never seen a university make a problem go away, or is that reflex unknown at your institution?
Horowitz claimed that a Colorado legislative hearing in December 2003 included ”… testimony from a student at the University of Northern Colorado who told legislators that a required essay topic on her criminology mid-term exam was: “Explain why George Bush is a war criminal.” When she submitted an essay explaining why Saddam Hussein was a war criminal instead, she was given an ‘F.’”
But this didn’t happen, did it, Art?
The essay topic was not required, the student did not get an “F,” the topic was not what Horowitz explicitly said it was, and the transcript (made by the Students For Academic Freedom) of the legislative hearing he links to in his blog post doesn’t include any testimony from the student telling the legislature any such thing, either.
And yet you say he was basically correct. I don’t see it.
Horowitz may be trying to make a larger point with which you agree. But he’s lying to do it.
Posted by on 02/12 at 01:51 PMDear Art, I think Peter Ramus has a good reading of the exchange. MB and his cult followers focus on DH’s statements, while you focus on the behavior of the professor. Now, can’t we all get along? DH’s statements are incorrect, as he himself has admitted, while the professor does seem to have taught a course that centered on various leftist theories, so that, when it came time to test the students on the course, he asked questions about .... various leftist theories. Now you might not like it that he taught such a course, but it doesn’t seem odd to me to ask leftist questions about a leftist course, any more than it would be strange to ask a question about Locke in a course on classical liberalism. Or am I missing something?
Posted by on 02/12 at 02:10 PMI think it is obvious what was going on here, and it seems to me that far from “lying”, DH got the story basically correctly.
Art, apparently you think it is obvious that . . . um, I’m not sure. That the professor was forcing students to make arguments that you associate with the political left? And that this justifies Horowitz’s account of the matter?
I honestly don’t see any problem with the exam as given, and wouldn’t see one if the questions had asked students to make arguments you associate with the political right. And I honestly don’t see how someone can come to the conclusion that Horowitz got this one “basically correctly,” or that this student’s refusal to answer the question—because that, in the end, is what is at issue—justifies Horowtiz’s larger jihad against academe.
That’s all from me today. I’m taking Jamie on various errands. Play nice, everyone.
Posted by Michael on 02/12 at 02:10 PM…what the student actually said about this, at least as reported by DH…
Ahem…
Posted by on 02/12 at 02:13 PMHeh—that’s what I did at my first teaching gig. Nobody there ever suggested I should keep papers, and I was moving…
I never threw out a test, though—they’re on my hard drive so it’s not like they’re taking up any space, and I may want to reuse the questions later.
Still, students don’t get to write about only the things they like. Horowitz’s contention is that the professor’s bias led him to construct questions that are inherently leftist. That’s false—it’s false in the particular case, and it’s false on general principles. As I said before, the test asked students to apply concepts learned in the course to a case discussed in the course; it only becomes a “lefty” question in a context that has nothing to do with the course (or reality, for that matter). It was stupid of the prof to throw away the papers; it was stupid of the student to in essence write her own question and expect a decent grade.
Funny, though, how the student starts Horowitzing there in that quote: “It has always been my understanding and my story that I got an “F” on the exam but a B in the class.” “May facts may be wrong, but...” I find it hard to believe that an “A” student could mess up only 33% of a test and get a failing grade. Even a low “A” (90%) on the other two tests would earn a “D”—assuming the prof gave no credit whatsoever for the Bush question. Which is possible, since she didn’t follow the instructions either on what to write about and how to write about it. I don’t do that—I rarely give no credit for written work—but maybe the prof is a hard-ass. Fortunately for her, the only time she will ever have to encounter a hard-ass in her entire life, there’s a mechanism in place through which she can obtain redress—and it works!
What was Horowitz’s point again...?
Posted by Dustin on 02/12 at 02:17 PMThese cases of purported academic persecution seem to presume the existence of a sensibility that is both deeply held conviction and incapable of withstanding any kind of challenge, as few as three sinister essay questions threaten its existence. An intellectual hothouse flower.
The current administration’s obsessive preoccupation with scrubbing the tiniest hints of dissent from public appearances (Cindy Sheehan’s T-shirt at the State of the Union, the vapors over Rev Lowry’s remarks at the King funeral, etc) argue both the existence and fragility of this strain. DHo’s crusade seems geared more toward silencing critics than creating or promoting knowledge.
In the end isn’t this an argument for a fugitive and cloistered virtue? (If Godwin’s Law has been updated to include Milton, I lose.)
Posted by black dog barking on 02/12 at 02:23 PMYes,I do think that DH got the story basically correctly. The student was asked to “make the argument that the US action in attacking Iraq was criminal,” and GWB is prominent in the question. So the student is forced to explain why GWBush’s actions in attacking Iraq were criminal, i.e., why he was a war criminal. That’s what the student said, that’s what DH said, and that’s what the university text of the question (as reconstructed by the faculty-member) said.
Of course, Ramus, it’s possible that DH is lying about the student’s email, or has even made the whole incident up (he’s actually been accused of that on far-left websites).But I think the odds are rather strongly against it.
I am surprised that Michael finds acceptable a final exam consisting of the required writing of four leftist essays. It’s a real difference in pedgagy between us. If I give an essay with a pronounced slant (which I often do), I offer the student the opportunity to challenge that slant OR agree with it, as long as he/she provides evidence, and logic of argument. This allows a student real freedom of thought, instead of ramming them into a mimesis of what the professor has said, in order to get a good grade.
I agree with John Protevi that any reasonable reading of the course as well as its final exam suggests a strong pro-left slant to the entire project, with little counter-argument offered. Well, yes--and although JP doesn’t find that so bad, that is exactly DH’s point, and he got it right.
I doubt that people would accept a course on Israeli history which presented ONLY the various Israeli slants on things as intellectually legitimate from start to finish, and where on the final, one of two optional questions was “Explain why ‘the Palestinian people’ is an ideological construct with no basis in history”, while the second optional question was “Explain why the history of Israel is that of a peaceful state constantly and viciously attacked by its criminal neighbors; I’m not straightjacketing you: various reasons for the criminal neighbors’ aggressive behavior are allowed in your essay.”
That’s the sort of thing I think was going on here, and I’ve presented plenty of evidence for why I think this. While people may differ on the meaning of the evidence, I think it at least shows that DH hasn’t “lied” about this incident. Yes, he’s occasionally gotten details wrong, e.g., “The student got an ‘F’”, when all we really know, since the professor destroyed her exam, is that the student believed she got an “F” and the professor admitted she got a “low grade”. But in my view, the main thrust of what DH said is what the evidence shows. And I think lots and lots of people would read it that way.
best,
Art
Posted by on 02/12 at 02:44 PMwow… Michael, you are failing to exert the proper and diligent due discipline on these people. According to David Brooks you have to be much more assertive and aggressive in your eXploitation of the DaHo’vian cheerleaders.
From this morning on the Chris Matthews show:
DAVID BROOKS: Whoever the Democratic candidate, that is the weakness of the Democratic party, they’ve got the blogs and the netroots who are semi-nuts and they insist on a Stalinist line of discipline.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: I love your objectivity.
DAVID BROOKS: It’s objectively true. I did a psychoanalytic test.
but then my captcha word is “feeling” which of course is all i have to go on. Personally i can’t wait until theory tuesday so that the “trollish” among us are once again left to their own devices.
Posted by on 02/12 at 03:14 PMHorowitz’s contention is that the professor’s bias led him to construct questions that are inherently leftist. That’s false—it’s false in the particular case, and it’s false on general principles.
Right. The proposition that the President’s actions might have been criminal is transformed into a ‘leftist’ argument, when in fact it’s a point of law. And Horowitz is angry at the shadowy forces he sees fluttering and whispering behind the scenes—a conspiracy of mind-control whose weapons are the phrasing of exam questions.
Which is to say, he’s not even fully a post-Soviet wingnut, but still operating tactically out of the paranoid-retro, Richard Hofstadter dealo.
A trick that he keeps pulling out of his magic bag is that any criticism of the current administration or its stated policies can legitimately be attacked a priori, as ‘leftist’ or ‘liberal.’ If anyone hasn’t seen Glenn Greenwald’s essay, today, on contemporary conservatism and the Bush cult of personality, it’s worth a look.
Posted by Gavin M. on 02/12 at 03:16 PMGavin, re question #4: “Look at the whole board”, to quote President Bartlett. Look at the entire test, and tell me what you see. Put the Bush question into the context of the other three questions on the test and then tell me it’s intended as right wing.
And Peter, I’ve served on grade-appeals boards at my university and the only time there is pressure “to make the whole thing go away”, as you put it, is: when the student has a case. Here, she obviously did.
best,
Art
Posted by on 02/12 at 03:31 PMDear Art, there are of course other things to consider: (1) did the professor advertise the course accurately as being taught from the left? (2) was it a required or an optional course? (3) when was the next time this course was going to be offered? are there other profs at UNC criminology who teach this course? when they do, do they teach it from the right? when they do so, do they advertise honestly? (4) even if we accept your analogy with a right-wing Israeli course (because, you know, there are “various Israeli slants” that wouldn’t fit your analogy), we’d want to know if the course was required or optional and how it was advertised and if or when a left-wing Israeli course was going to be offered. If it was advertised as a right-wing Israeli course, I take it that any leftist that took the course would expect those kind of questions on the final, and they would answer them, as a sort of going undercover in the belly of the beast experience.
I guess the problem is this. I don’t see anything wrong with teaching a course from the left, as long as it’s advertised as such. You seem not to want to allow teachers to teach from the left. Like the others, I don’t see how it’s such a scarring experience to write an essay from the “other” perspective.
Actually, to tell you the truth, I find the terms “leftist” and “rightist” not to be very helpful in discussing my work and how I teach. For instance, I’m teaching a Foucault course this term. He famously described Marxism as a fish that swims in 19th century waters, and in the late seventies he taught a course at the College de France (Naissance de la biopolitique) which sympathetically read Gary Becker and the Chicago School. So despite the easy classification some would make, is he really a “leftist”? And even if he is, how am I supposed to “balance” a course on Foucault? Have the students read Roger Kimball on Foucault?
Actually, to really tell you the truth, I’m an irrationalist about human behavior. I think people’s emotional structures are embedded in their bodies (some sort of Bourdieu-ian habitus) and condition their political beliefs. In other words, people are turned on or off by various things they encounter in the world (Israeli expansionism, gay sex, the Iraq War, George W. Bush) and then look around for a political viewpoint that validates their feelings. So all of our precious rational discourse in our courses mostly goes to reinforce what people feel, though it may make them a little more clever at their next party. People can change their political positions, but not because someone talked them into or out of a particular position, but because their entire existence, starting with their corporeal emotional patterns, thresholds and triggers, shifts. Sometimes that shift is experienced as a blinding revelation, but I think the body has been unconsciously re-arranging its emotional structure for some time prior to that, and the consciousness is the last thing to catch up to this shift. Basically a Spinoza-Nietzsche-Deleuze meets affective neuroscience line, if you see what I’m saying.
Posted by on 02/12 at 03:31 PMArt, people keep demonstrating that what Horowitz said about this case wasn’t factually true, but you keep going back and repeating the same untrue things as counterarguments. Moreover, you’re assuming that other things Horowitz claimed about the case are true, without checking them out.
This was a criminal-justice course in which students were given an optional exam question in which they were not asked this:
make the argument that the US action in attacking Iraq was criminal
But were asked this:
The American government campaign to attack Iraq was in part based on the assumptions that the Iraqi government has “Weapons of Mass Destruction.” This was never proven prior to the U.S. police action/war and even President Bush, after the capture of Baghdad, stated, “we may never find such weapons.” Cohen’s research on deviance discussed this process of how the media and various moral entrepreneurs and government enforcers can conspire to create a panic. How does Cohen define this process? Explain it in-depth. Where does the social meaning of deviance come from? Argue that the attack on Iraq was deviance based on negotiable statuses. Make the argument that the military action of the U.S. attacking Iraq was criminal?
And you’re like, Oh, whatever, details-details, I’ll just simplify it back to what Howowitz claimed because the question basically went like this:
make the argument that the US action in attacking Iraq was criminal
Now, skipping over many other points of fact that’ve been raised, how do we know that the other optional question on the exam was to construct an argument in favor of gay marriage? We’re still relying solely on Horowitz’s testimony there, aren’t we?
Posted by Gavin M. on 02/12 at 03:40 PMPut the Bush question into the context of the other three questions…
Art, please. We’re playing at being reasonable, remember? There was no “Bush question,” as has been demonstrated at least three times already, by Ben Alpers, By peter ramus, and by Gavin M, each of whom quoted the reconstruted essay question in full.
Please stop that, OK?
And Michael said to play nice and gosh darn it, that’s the Stalinist line of discipline for today and I’m sticking with it and you should too.
Posted by on 02/12 at 04:15 PM"Prounce” ha ha. Horowitz wins!
Posted by on 02/12 at 04:22 PMwhich suggests that God is, as I have long suspect