Michael Bérubé - American Airspace

Madness

I was minding my own business the other day, whistling a happy tune and making notes on Erving Goffman’s Stigma, when I received an email that informed me that K. Lo. had interviewed U. No. for the N. Ro.:

Lopez: Seriously, do you think that you’re unfair to anyone in the book? Folks who—like, say, a [Stephan] Thernstrom—have clear political biases, write for the Wall Street Journal and National Review, but are still fine teachers? Do you know all the professors you name are dangerous inside the classroom?

Horowitz: The dangerous idea is a marketing strategy which my publisher attached to the book after it was written. The only appearance of the word “dangerous” in the text is in the coupling of the words “dangerous sophistry” to describe some writing by Professor Juan Cole. Nonetheless, I think “dangerous” can fairly be applied to the collectivity, not least in terms of what they have done to the academic enterprise. Readers of the book will see that the profiles are both accurate and fair. There are several professors—Michael Berube, Todd Gitlin, and Victor Navasky to name four—who are there because they have been collusive in the efforts of political activists to purge the university of conservatives and subvert its academic mission in the service of radical agendas.

Well, of course Horowitz avoids the actual question, since he has no knowledge whatsoever of his dangerous professors’ classrooms. Then he proceeds to accuse me, Gitlin, and Navasky of “collusion” in the “purge” of conservatives from American universities. Collusion—an interesting charge. “Acting in secret to achieve a fraudulent, illegal, or deceitful goal,” according to my copy of the Anti-American Heritage Dictionary.

I don’t know, folks. I’ve just been teaching my disability studies class and enjoying my family these past couple of days. Should the four of us—Gitlin, Navasky, and myself—do something about this latest accusation? Some people tell me to ridicule it, on the grounds that Horowitz is desperate and flailing, and Horowitz-ridicule is always good for a cheap laugh. Others tell me to pursue it, on the grounds that it is patently false and possibly defamatory. Others suggest that I dismiss it, on the grounds that nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky, it slips away, and all your money won’t another minute buy. Still others believe that I should sit down with Todd and Victor and deal a round of bridge.

Now, do you suppose that K. Lo. followed up by asking, “wait, what about the classroom?” or, in a more inquisitorial mode, “my goodness, do you have any evidence for this extravagant claim?” If you do, you don’t know K. Lo. Here’s her next question:

Lopez: Have you made any retractions since your book has been out?

Horowitz: Not one. The intellectual left has been conducting a vicious smear campaign against me alleging that my work is rife with inaccuracies ever since I launched my academic freedom movement. This is typical leftist strategy to destroy my credibility as a writer and thereby avoid having to deal with the evidence.

Well, Horowitz has half a point here: as you all know, I have indeed been trying to destroy Horowitz’s credibility. Problem is, every time I make the attempt, I find that Horowitz has done the job himself! It is most vexing, I assure you.

Never mind his dumb-as-a-post “mistake” of attributing to Eric Foner a long passage he never wrote (a “mistake” for which Horowitz, true to form, then attacked Foner). Let’s look at this “credibility” thing over the last couple of years, shall we?

First, there was the D’Souza-esque complaint that African-Americans haven’t been properly grateful to white folk for ending slavery:

If not for the sacrifices of white soldiers and a white American president who gave his life to sign the Emancipation Proclamation, blacks in America would still be slaves. If not for the dedication of Americans of all ethnicities and colors to a society based on the principle that all men are created equal, blacks in America would not enjoy the highest standard of living of blacks anywhere in the world, and indeed one of the highest standards of living of any people in the world. They would not enjoy the greatest freedoms and the most thoroughly protected individual rights anywhere. Where is the gratitude of black America and its leaders for those gifts?

Then there was the insistence that anyone with “negative views of the Bush Administration” and the war in Iraq was in cahoots with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi:

It should be obvious that even the otherwise innocent Barbra Streisand shares negative views of the Bush Administration and its mission of liberating Iraq with anti-American jihadists like the aforementioned Zarqawi, even though we are sure that she deplores some of his methods.

A bit later on, the claim that I myself have been working for terrorists:

radicals like Berube can’t be bothered to actually read or respond rationally to anything that ruffles their progressive feathers, let alone be concerned about the fact that their entire political focus since 9/11 has been in getting our terrorist enemies off the hook.

And that 49,999 of my colleagues are doing likewise:

There are 50,000 professors with the views of [fellow Scarborough Country guest and Citizens for Legitimate Government founder Michael] Rectenwald and [Colorado high school teacher] Jay Bennish, who are anti-American, they’re radicals, they identify with the terrorists, they think of them as freedom fighters. It’s a huge danger for the country.

And, last but certainly not least, on the subject of sympathy for mass murderers, David Horowitz’s very own expression of tenderness and love for one of the twentieth century’s great torturer-dictators:

Looking back now, we can see that Pinochet was good for Chile.

Now, what “credibility” were we talking about again?

Honestly, folks, I could try to destroy Horowitz’s credibility, but it’s a little like challenging the ethical standards of a Tom DeLay or a Ralph Reed. The fruit just doesn’t hang any lower.

Besides, every time I get smeared like this, I get another couple emails from former students congratulating me on having drawn the fire of one of the worst people in the country, and thanking me for the courses I’ve taught in the past. It’s kept me in touch with a lot of terrific people, and for that I’m truly grateful.

But you know, the funny thing about this, quite apart from the fact that there has been no “purge” of conservatives from academe, is that I’ve been more than civil to the handful of conservative scholars in my field. Take Mark Bauerlein, for instance. He’s been a vocal and articulate advocate for conservatives in academe, and he’s sharply criticized some of my work over the years. To be sure, I’ve taken issue with his work in return, particularly when it relies on serious misreadings of Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time or just-plain flimsy anecdotal claims. But I consider that to be an altogether unexceptional form of responding to a fellow scholar with whom I tend to disagree. Why, even when Bauerlein testified to the Georgia state legislature on behalf of Horowitz’s Academic Bill of Rights in early 2004, arguing that universities have broken the social contract on which academic freedom depends because they have not hired enough conservatives, did I complain? Not a bit! Different strokes for different folks, I say.

Bauerlein’s argument can be found on this attractive website. His central claims are as follows:

In a democratic society, universities occupy a special place, namely, the place in which inquiry is to be unfettered by politics, money, and power. But in return comes an obligation for professors to safeguard the principles of free exchange. It’s a social contract: society grants faculty space protected from power politics and business models, and faculty members pledge to uphold the ideals that differentiate the campus from the rest of society.

Academic freedom doesn’t precede the contract, nor does it belong exclusively to the faculty. Every member in the campus community must honor academic freedom and be honored by it. It is just as easy for a professor to violate a student’s academic freedom as it is for an administrator to violate a professor’s academic freedom. For a professor to argue with a student over conservative opinion is altogether fitting and proper, so long as it is conducted with respect and decided on evidence. But for faculty to hire only Left-leaning faculty, teach only Left-leaning thinkers, and explore only Left-leaning opinions is to substitute advocacy for inquiry. For administrators to discourage conservative speakers, while paying radical Leftists five-figure fees, is to throw a mainstream aura around but one narrow range of belief.

The educational costs of such bigotry are obvious, and the ethical example it sets is deplorable. Such behaviors belong outside the campus, not inside, and there is no reason why outsiders should countenance universities that break the terms of the social contract. To be sure, academic Leftists will perceive outside pressure as an infringement of academic freedom. They think that the university is an independent enclave accountable only to itself, and that any incursions from beyond by definition threaten the integrity of higher education. But, in truth, outside pressure arises precisely in order to do the opposite. It is the faculty who have abandoned the ideal, who stifle dissent no matter how learned, who under the guise of a rearguard, adversarial, protest posture rule the campus intellectual world and apportion its many comforts and securities to a slim ideological spectrum.

This is what we must demonstrate to trustees, alumnae, politicians, and parents. Academic freedom isn’t the property of the faculty. It is the responsibility of campus dwellers, yes, but the property of all citizens.

Personally, I think this could not be more wrongheaded; it is wrong about academic freedom, and it is wrong about how administrators and faculty “discourage conservative speakers” and enforce leftist orthodoxies in hiring and teaching. But for the record, I strongly defend Mark Bauerlein’s right to be as wrongheaded as he wants to be. Of course, whenever a colleague decides to sign on with David Horowitz’s campaign, it’s not my job to supply him (or her!) with the necessary flea powder. Conversely, should any of my colleagues decide that Horowitz’s recent antics are in fact a threat to, rather than a defense of, academic freedom and ethical standards of intellectual exchange, so much the better. But I will continue to defend professors’ academic freedom from legislative oversight and intrusion, not least because I believe that my conservative colleagues deserve every bit as much scholarly autonomy from state interference—and protection from political purges—as I do.

________

UPDATE, MARCH 17: You can now check out Mark Bauerlein’s recent contribution to the National Review Online‘s new blog, “Phi Beta Cons,” in which he complains about civil liberties groups ganging up on poor Horowitz: “what gets these groups exercised is one aging man in Los Angeles whose books and web site have rightly tapped into public dissatisfaction with the state of higher education.” By contrast, Ralph Luker writes, “The old fraud continues to feature his attack on KC Johnson, David Beito, and me at Front Page Rag. It led to my harsh exchanges with him on Conservativenet. I think it is especially important that his feet be held to the fire in conservative circles.”

Holding Horowitz’s feet to the fire? That seems so . . . harsh. He’s just one aging man in Los Angeles, after all.

Posted by on 03/16 at 08:03 AM

1+1+1=4???

Posted by bellatrys on 03/16 at 09:55 AM
Plus, shouldn’t it be 57,000 members of the Communi- er, Islamist Party?

Posted by bellatrys on 03/16 at 09:56 AM
Do you hear that, Professor Bérubé? That is the sound of inevitability. Once your sworn enemy manages to procure an interview with the National Review, it’s only a matter of time before you find yourself taking the Introductory Sandwich Artistry training course at your local Académie d’Subway, assuming that they don’t require some sort of loyalty oath.

Posted by norbizness on 03/16 at 10:13 AM
I suppose I could misread Bauerlein as arguing that a more pluralist range of beliefs be made available in academia. He does, after all, describe the left as representing only a “narrow range of belief” (or is that a ‘slim...spectrum’?), which suggests that he wants a wide range of possible beliefs to be included in academia to honor our social contract to the people who are paying our bills (note that his list of trustees, alumnae*, etc. does not include students or, for that matter, university support staff). But as a result either of disingenuousness or paucity of imagination, he offers only ‘conservatives’ to balance out this supposed narrow range. I don’t get it: Is he really saying that us leftists should reflect the majority opinion? If that’s the case, he’s both promoting a sadly constrained mission for academia and misconstruing the middle-of-the-road beliefs held by most Americans.

Or does he just want to ‘balance’ out one ‘narrow’ belief with another. Yeah. So, my main q for Bauerlein is who gets to determine the ‘conservative’ beliefs. These days, conservatives have been combining their usual calls for tax cuts and deregulation with arguments for an increase in state rights, surveillance, and a total breakdown of fiscal responsibility. They’ve abandoned their isolationism and portions of their statism for loyalty to an interventionist foreign policy and loyalty to multinational corporations. They’ve even abandoned their defense of so-called traditional marriages by praising polygamy (although I suppose we can subsume this argument under the rubric of Patriarchy). All I can see coming out of his proposal is ideological chaos, which is, after all, what the far from monolithic left currently, and thankfully, offers. But at least we’re not just trying to give structure to the terrible Real of the desire of the powers-that-be.

Should we, by the way, start collecting names of ‘conservative’ academics? I think once we get to 50,000 we’ll be safe. There’s the neoconfederate Clyde Wilson at the University of South Carolina and the anti-masturbation Catholic crusader w/ the ear of the President Robby George, who’s at Princeton.

* Maybe my Latin’s failing me, but given that this group likely includes both men and women, shouldn’t that be ‘alumni’?

Posted by on 03/16 at 10:15 AM
Here is, of course, the central irony at the heart of the bill for Students’ Rights: the claim is that the university should act independently of politics and political influence, yet we need a body of politicians to regulate and enforce it.

Ironies don’t matter to the increasingly postmodern right, which creates its own reality and acts on it. In fact, plenty of critics have examined Horowitz’s evidence and argument and poked holes in it. His book is the perfect example of Barthes’ idea of the text as tissue; in Horowitz’s case, I don’t know what’s holding it together.

Posted by Crazy Little Thing on 03/16 at 10:47 AM
Everybody forgets the drummer.

Posted by rootlesscosmo on 03/16 at 10:51 AM
"His book is the perfect example of Barthes’ idea of the text as tissue; in Horowitz’s case, I don’t know what’s holding it together.”

A brown substance evacuated from a mammal that moos? Just a guess.

Posted by on 03/16 at 10:56 AM
their entire political focus since 9/11 has been in getting our terrorist enemies off the hook.

Kinda fell down on the job with regard to Jose Padilla, didn’t you all? And you call yourselves “dangerous.” Ha.

A brown substance evacuated from a mammal that moos? Just a guess.

I’ll never look at chocolate milk in quite the same way again.

Posted by Chris Clarke on 03/16 at 11:04 AM
Here is, of course, the central irony at the heart of the bill for Students’ Rights: the claim is that the university should act independently of politics and political influence, yet we need a body of politicians to regulate and enforce it.

That’s not how I hear Bauerlein. I hear it as “Nice University you got there. Be a shame if anything should happen to it...”

Posted by on 03/16 at 11:29 AM
Long comment alert. (Apologies for bandwidth issues.)

A really sticky problem--more rhetorical than epistemological, though--is addressing the argument that the university should be a place where “inquiry is to be unfettered by politics, money, and power.” Such a statement assumes that such a thing as apolitical inquiry is possible, which serves merely to reify (and thereby reinforce the unmarked, invisible status of) existing social relations in which some groups are generally, and for no good reason, better off than others. That is, the “conservative” view gets to masquerade as the neutral view, because it relies on an firmly-established (if theoretically problematic) vision of what research in the academy can and should do. That’s not the tricky part, however; in fact, it’s old hat to anyone who’s read Cixous, Foucault, Lyotard, or pretty much any Poststructuralist. What’s tricky is making the point that all inquiry is political without opening oneself to the critique that one is simply laying the groundwork for indoctrinating students. It’s a short leap for most people, after all, from making the observation that all inquiry is political to overtly advocating a specific political perspective in the classroom.

The heart of the problem, I think, is an equivocation on the term “political.” In one sense, and the sense I suspect most “dangerous” professors like you, Michael, prefer, “political” means, “implicated in and reflective of processes of constructing and reproducing power relations.” In another sense, “political” means “adopting either a liberal or conservative viewpoint in the specific context of contemporary U.S. culture.”

So, I “politicize” my classrooms, but I have never tried to convince my students to vote for Nader. Does that make me dangerous? Would any reasonable person deny me the freedom to present academic inquiry to my students as a process that both is shaped by and shapes our understanding of and actions in the world(s) we inhabit? How can we make this equivocation clearer to people who can’t or won’t see through Horowit’s casuistry?

Posted by on 03/16 at 11:34 AM
“His book is the perfect example of Barthes’ idea of the text as tissue; in Horowitz’s case, I don’t know what’s holding it together.”

It’s something that’s often found in tissues.

Posted by Gavin M. on 03/16 at 11:36 AM
You tissue-jokers have your minds in the gutter. I’m glad I’m not alone down here (even if I did mean tissue as in “completely full of holes; Coulterian").

Posted by Crazy Little Thing on 03/16 at 11:52 AM
D Ho’s unhealthy obsession with you, Michael, is somewhat akin to what’s goina on at the moment between Bill O’Reilly and Keith Olberman. Or maybe it’s Wyle E. Coyote determined to get that roadrunner that I’m thinking of?

While it must be unpleasant for you, is it any consolation that it IS an entertaining spectacle for the onlookers?

Posted by on 03/16 at 11:52 AM
It’s been difficult for me to take the National Review seriously ever since Mark Goldblatt wrote an article in 2003 referring to me as “Ms. Horn-Rims” and calling the MLA Convention “graduation day from Clown College.” Although, to my delight, Goldblatt did say that I was “pretty” (and I so, like, totally am).

If you’re interested in that gem, the URL is:

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-goldblatt013003.asp

I honestly don’t know what constitutes an appropriate response to personal attack. I ignored this one, mostly because when it was published I was a new graduate student and felt vulnerable.

I’d like to think that the sloppy thinking and general mean-spiritedness that drives publications such as the NR will ultimately render them impotent, but in this political climate thoughtlessness and cruelty seem the order du jour. So maybe it’s time to fight back.

Posted by on 03/16 at 11:56 AM
Sue. Sue sue sue sue sue.

By the way, 2+2=5 much?

“There are several professors—Michael Berube, Todd Gitlin, and Victor Navasky to name four...”

Posted by on 03/16 at 12:11 PM
1. Frankly, a lawsuit might not be a bad idea. But you know it will be used on Frontpagemag as the most successful fundraising event in all recorded history.

2. Failing that, continued and caustic criticism is the best answer. It’s more fun to read than a judicial opinion in most cases. Am I the only one growing frustrated with collegiality toward Horoshow? Might it be time to drop the gloves, pull his oxford shirt over his head, and throw some haymakers?

3. Truth be told, this is one problem that just might go away with inattention. They’re fixin’ to have a wallopin’ good time at their upcoming “Academic Freedom Conference” and Horoshow is packing his bags for a culturally enriching trip to Rome (for chrissakes...). Can a discourse like his really sustain itself through that? (David in rapt admiration of David, pointing up at the marble buttock, jaw working frantically..."culture").

4. Will you attend the conference on academic freedom?

Posted by Ur Err on 03/16 at 12:14 PM
You & Gitlin & Navasky should start a barbershop quartet. With no bass, to emphasize the baselessness of Horowitz actionable flummery.

Posted by John on 03/16 at 12:26 PM
Horo...who?

Posted by DocMara on 03/16 at 12:47 PM
And as you read Goffman, remember: any stigma will do to beat a dogma.

Posted by rootlesscosmo on 03/16 at 12:49 PM
Great stuff, Michael. By the way, Mr. Horowitz was in Kansas yesterday testifying to a House Committee on a resolution to establish an Academic Bill of Rights here. I am a public radio reporter working on a feature story about this issue and would be grateful for some talking points, etc., as I am slated to interview Horowitz early next week. For more information about what’s going on in Kansas, here’s a link to a story in today’s Lawrence Journal-World: http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2006/mar/16/activist_blasts_ku_womens_studies_program/?ku_news

Thanks for the help.

Posted by on 03/16 at 01:25 PM
Thanks to K-Lo’s interview, I now know that Horowitz’s latest is a book <i>and</a> a text! A twofer!

Posted by Tyrone Slothrop on 03/16 at 01:33 PM
When you get that bridge game going, I think we all know who you invite to be the “dummy”.

Posted by on 03/16 at 01:43 PM
Oh the humanity! The flimsy comedic value of that last post undercut by faulty tags! And here I sit with no way to edit them.

Posted by Tyrone Slothrop on 03/16 at 01:43 PM
I have a perfectly rational explanation for Horowitz’s math problem. Maybe he assumes there’s a secret member in the cell who reports to ... well, but that’ll be telling.

Posted by Sherman Dorn on 03/16 at 01:53 PM
Karl, I attended Mark’s panel on the politics of literary studies at the MLA, and the only “conservative” position he personally advocated was libertarianism; for the rest, he focused on creating ideological diversity among humanities faculty. I don’t think he wants to replace one form of advocacy criticism with another, then, but create an environment in which the Left isn’t competing against the Left. You know, the “lefter than thou” debates which prove that when the stakes are this low, people become unspeakably vicious.

Posted by Scott Eric Kaufman on 03/16 at 02:14 PM
Sue. Every “Inherit the Wind” needs its William Jennings Bryan, and David is ready for his closeup, Mr. DeMille.

Seriously. Unless the absurd arithmetical mistake undercuts the whole statement, Hororwitz is making something of a slanderous charge, which implies that you guys are colluding in the firing and hiring of individuals on political grounds, non-university political grounds. Is this actionable? God, I’m no lawyer. Would Columbia and Penn State think so? See disclaimer regarding my legal knowledge, above. But the implication would be, at some more politically or academically more conservative school, you might not get an assignment because you’d spend your smoke breaks trying to get the economics faculty replaced wholesale. An accusation that costs you cash is actionable, right?

Posted by on 03/16 at 02:52 PM
The intellectual left has been conducting a vicious smear campaign against me alleging that my work is rife with inaccuracies

I need to conduct more vicious smear campaigns. My vicious smear footnotes don’t seem to have enough effect. Think I’ll do a bit of drafting in Michael’s slipstream, here:

1. Conrad Balliett clears up numerous inaccuracies and disagreements regarding this and other episodes in his 1979 article “The Lives--and Lies--of Maud Gonne,” published in Eire--Ireland. Unfortunately, at least two books that post-date his article repeat errors that Balliett had corrected: Margery Brady’s sentimental 1990 work The Love Story of Yeats and Maud Gonne reproduces the incorrect story of George Gonne’s brief life that appears in Samuel Levenson’s 1976 biography of Maud Gonne; and Francis Stuart’s biographer, Geoffrey Elborn, reports that the child “died, it is believed, in 1893” (Elborn 23).

Thanks for teaching me the vicious smear technique, intellectual left!

[From the highly dangerous ”‘A Strangely Useless Thing’: Iseult Gonne and Yeats.” Yeats Eliot Review: A Journal of Criticism and Scholarship 19.2 (2002): 13-24.]

Posted by on 03/16 at 03:02 PM
Consult a lawyer if you wish, but in my uneducated non-lawyer opinion, you don’t stand a chance—you’re arguably a public figure, and even if not, people are routinely allowed to speak about political foes in ways that make it sound like they might be accusing people of crimes if it weren’t for rhetorical context.

The way to fight back is to strike back with a countercampaign. Expose Horowitz’s funding and attack it, make it clear to university admins and state politicos that they are going to kill the golden goose of industry support with the protests and overt politicization of the university that’s going to happen, start polling business schools and demanding more liberal and leftist faculty. But you can’t do that, because if you did, then you would really be doing a version of what Horowitz claims that you’re doing. Someone outside of academia is going to have to do it.

So you have no good options. For something symbolic, a joint open letter from the (three? four?) of you to anyone considering Horowitz’ law might help.

Posted by on 03/16 at 03:09 PM
I have a perfectly rational explanation for Horowitz’s math problem. Maybe he assumes there’s a secret member in the cell who reports to ... well, but that’ll be telling.

I’m in the Cincinnati airport between flights, “Sherman.” I believe I advised you never to contact me here. But the next meeting is in the old warehouse, Briggs entrance, Friday, the usual time.

Bring the goods on the economics faculty.

Posted by Michael on 03/16 at 03:09 PM
As i, and so many others above, have observed the interaction between Michael and the person whose name i can no longer ever signify, i am noticing that it is getting much more difficult to get past the satire and parody. So much so, that when i looked through the first few column inches of the interview, i was unable to read it as anything other than humor in the grand Mad Magazine tradition. That person has so abused the realm of discourse regarding academic freedom issues that everything of his reads as a parody of himself. I suppose this is similar to the side effects of various drugs; in this case it seems to be one that is beneficial.

Posted by on 03/16 at 03:13 PM
Would Bauerlein impose his diversity campaign on Oral Roberts University or Liberty University? Obviously, there are campuses which adhere to strict ideological biases, but they aren’t on the left.

Posted by on 03/16 at 03:17 PM
Scott, thanks for that clarification. Still: he focused on creating ideological diversity among humanities faculty.
My fear, should this dream ever be realized, is that the folks calling for ideological diversity wouldn’t recognize the ideological divisions on the left as significant because of their hostility to the left as a whole. They certainly wouldn’t pick up on the differences between liberals and leftists. I also don’t see what advantage an English department might gain from including, say, a homophobic religious fundamentalist or men’s rights activist, let alone a libertarian, among its soft liberal to anarcho-syndicalist faculty, except, I suppose, in securing an endowed chair from the Scaife Foundation. It’s not as though these people aren’t well represented in the mass media and government.

Posted by on 03/16 at 03:34 PM
"And that 49,999 of my colleagues are doing likewise”

Well, to be fair, you should scale the previous math error, so it’s really only 37, 499 of your colleagues. Otherwise, it just looks like Horowitz is being ridiculous and making things up.

Posted by on 03/16 at 05:02 PM
I’d like to volunteer as the fourth at the bridge table, but DH sees me merely as “vapid and intellectually dishonest”--probably not bad enough.

But I am proud.

Posted by Aaron Barlow on 03/16 at 06:39 PM
There are several professors—Michael Berube, Todd Gitlin, and Victor Navasky to name four-

Heh. D. Ho’s math problem arises from the fact that Berube’s twice the man he is, so, naturally, D. Ho counts him twice.

Karl the Grouchy Medievalist, ‘alumnae’ is the feminine plural, ‘alumni’ the masculine plural. To include both genders, it could be written ‘alumnae/i’.

Posted by ae on 03/16 at 06:39 PM
Maybe the nameless one started the count with Juan Cole so that when you add in Gitlin, Navasky, and Prof. Dangerous we get four.

Do I really believe that? No. But there’s always a possibility. Like maybe the moon is made of green cheese and maybe pigs have wings and maybe the underworld is freezing over even as the globe slowly warms and warms.

You never know.

Posted by on 03/16 at 07:45 PM
The sinister allusion to ‘the fourth man’ takes us right back to Vienna and Harry Lime. Cue the zither music.

Posted by on 03/16 at 08:22 PM
7/8 - Cowdung is a perfectly good building mortar, used in many cultures. Don’t be so Eurocentric.

14 - “a twenty-something doctoral student whose horn-rimmed glasses, dowdy outfit, and short asymmetrical haircut seemed less a fashion faux pas than a desperate attempt to camouflage the fact that she was pretty.” - is it just me, or does that carry a powerful erotic charge?

37 - Canonically, the third man was Philby, and the fourth man was Anthony Blunt, a worthy addition to any academic bridge table.

And on the to-sue-or-not-to-sue question, remember the maxim from Pogo; “Never fight anyone punier than you. If you win you’re a bully, and if you lose you’re a bum.”

Posted by Chris B on 03/16 at 09:48 PM
Cue the zither music.

Thanks, DD! I now have an indelible image of David Horowitz delivering the cuckoo clock speech in the shadows of the Wiener Prater.

Posted by on 03/16 at 10:04 PM
Just for the record, folks, the question of how seriously I’m considering a defamation suit is answered by today’s new blog name. All we do/ Crumbles to the ground, though we refuse to see. . . .

Posted by Michael on 03/16 at 10:57 PM
PHIL DICK ANDROID STILL MISSING

Yeah but which one of you lecteurs dangereuses is responsible for the missing Phil Dick android?

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/author-android-goes-missing/2006/02/13/1139679514495.html

Posted by on 03/17 at 12:02 AM
As I understand it, a defamation suit would face several hurdles, including but not limited to the following:

1. Were you damaged in any way? (Yes, a British jury awarded James McNeill Whistler damages of a farthing against John Ruskin, but you have to be able to allege (and ultimately convince a trier of fact) that the defamatory language caused you harm.

2. Are you a public figure within the meaning of Sullivan v. New York Times and the line of later cases that have modified it?

Legal issues aside, my instinct is that while it sounds like fun--putting him under oath, watching him dismantled by your lawyers’ brilliant cross-examination--it would be just the reverse, a long, expensive, draining undertaking which Horowitz will turn to his own advantage by spinning the suit as an effort to enlist the law in the cause of silencing him.

Posted by rootlesscosmo on 03/17 at 12:17 AM
But don’t you see? Don’t you get it? The fact that you’ve been teaching a _disability studies_ class means you have been hard at work at the Anti-American Dismantling of the Heartland Plan. And Christ, if I’m not here in the middle to see it all.

Posted by on 03/17 at 04:12 AM
Also, I love the fact that she refers to D-Ho as a “truth-teller.” Is she not moonlighting as a writer for Stephen Colbert? Or at least one of you wacko America-hating media-controller types?

Posted by on 03/17 at 04:14 AM
Karl the GM,
Bauerlein asserts in a recent minnesota review interview that he’s not calling for diversity-in-hiring requirements but for diversity in what we bring to the syllabus/curriculum. Gotta say I find the specifics of his arguments, as I understand them, eccentric: in the Chronicle of Higher Ed he used as an example of an out-of-touch-with-"society" view a strong opposition to DH; at MLA he suggested something along the lines of “Literature of the Left like Invisible Man needs to be balanced with literature of the Right like Witness,” an argument that only works for certain values of “Left,” “balance,” “needs,” and “literature.” Picking the 1950s as an era for which bias in favor of Leftist fiction needs to be corrected is . . . weird.

Posted by on 03/17 at 06:08 AM
Josh:
Thanks. I suppose I should read Bauerlein myself before forming an opinion, but first there’s this finishing-the-degree thing. Weird seems right: it matters a little what literature we teach, but doesn’t interpretation matter at least as much? Oops: there’s my leftist hermeneutic bias.

Also, as a medievalist, I wouldn’t begin to know how I’d balance out the left and the right in my actual primary text selection unless I assume that these ideological positions have always been at it in some kind of Manichean struggle. I suppose I’d start with the B-Text of Piers Plowman (left?) and finish with the C-Text (right?). Or I’d start w/ The Miller’s Tale and finish with The Knight’s Tale, Monk’s or Prioress’s Tale, or Melibee. Who knows?

How would other disciplines do it? Do you balance Pope against Lord Rochester? Mary Shelley against her parents? Mark Twain against
Sut Lovingood? This game is...sort of...fun.

--
Private to ae: I seem to remember learning that when describing sexually heterogeneous crowds one uses the masculine plural pronoun...wait a minute. Is this a French rule? No wonder I couldn’t find it in Bennett’s New Latin Grammar.

Posted by on 03/17 at 09:18 AM
Karl GM:

Stop panicking - your grammar is correct, and applies, AFAIK, to Latin and all romance languages.

Posted by on 03/17 at 09:51 AM
Karl GM, listen to Chris! Your grammar is correct—I went to a women’s college and I’m a member of the Alumnae Association. Co-ed schools have alumni associations.

Poor you-know-who, his pesky researchers must mistyped his talking points. I mean, seriously, Berube + Gitlin + Navasky = SIX because if you factor in the “danger quotient” their values double. (Also see 35-38.)

Posted by on 03/17 at 10:34 AM
Karl,

What, no A-text of _PP_? When your students start having liberal dream-visions, they’ll know which office to visit.

Posted by on 03/17 at 02:09 PM
No (much disputed) Z text either, Greg. Since neither A nor Z align as neatly into ideological slots, they go on the trashheap of history. But if C doesn’t work out so hot, I can always do the complexity of Wynnere and Wastoure (since it resists resolution, it must be on the left!) versus the brute force patriarchy of ‘Why I Can’t be a Nun.’

I’m sure I’m being unfair to Bauerlein now, but I guess I’m having too much fun to quit it.

Thanks for getting my back grammar-wise, folks. I was convinced that part of my brain had gone dead. I must have suspected the wrong part.

Posted by on 03/17 at 10:28 PM
re: Horowitz’s four professors....

I just stumbled upon the following statement from a memorial service to Leo Strauss at St. John’s in Annapolis in 1973…

Once, when our conversation ended with Mr Strauss counseling me to make good use of my youth by studying, I asked for . . . the subjects worthy of the most study.... Mr. Strauss suggested a curriculum built around the study of four books. True to form, he named only three of them-Aristotle’s Ethics, Aquinas’s Treatise on Law, and Kant’s Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals.... (emphasis added)

Maybe you just need to read between the lines of Horowitz’s interview, Michael…

Posted by on 03/18 at 12:01 AM
Michael,
I find your blog so very interesting to read, and I just want you to know that I have been following this Horowitz conversation pretty closely and even set out to write him myself--a conversation, I must add, that didn’t actually accomplish much, partly because, as you note, Horowitz fails to address any particular question and reverts, instead, to attacking leftist ideology (whatever that truly is), and partly because I was unwilling to conform to his ideas. I am so glad that we, as academics, are finding forums to discuss this issue, and I really value the work you are doing. I am only a grad. student in English, but I find Horowitz’s work (and particularly his extensive media coverage) to be quite a misfortune, and I am appalled by his conversational skills (or lack thereof) and rhetorical strategies. If we are to talk about sophistry (in the purely negative sense--as “false rhetoric"), I would argue that he is the master and those whom he accuses. Thanks for making me think.

Posted by on 03/18 at 02:47 PM
If you find the possibility of a libel lawsuit amusing, and are looking for a Pennsylvania attorney who works on contingency and is also a long-time blog reader, drop me a line . . .

Posted by arthur s on 03/19 at 12:46 PM
Push back, push back, whether you sue or not. They shouldn’t be allowed to get away with mau mauing. And by the way they are attacking the center as well as the left. As someone pointed out, their own position—advocating polygamy, etc.,—is both incoherent and trivial.

Posted by on 03/22 at 05:51 PM

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