Monday, March 13, 2006

DAVID HOROWITZ NAMES HIS PRICE. To my shock (maybe the Kathryn Lopez rim-job threw him off his game), David Horowitz almost addresses my long-unanswered question: Instead of trying to legislate conservative quotas at colleges, why don't rightwing critics of socialist Harvard, Yale, Columbia etc. just build their new Jerusalem at existing Bible schools like Bob Jones and Liberty University?
As my book shows, the idea that there are tolerant schools — by which I take it you mean intellectually diverse — is a delusion. Among the top 100 there are no such schools. The best a parent could do would be to send their child to Kenyon, where the faculty is still ninety percent Left (the norm) but the curriculum is traditional and probably quite decent. There is no market. This is because the academic professions are organized nationally, and therefore no school that wants to be competitive educationally is safe. The analogy would be, say, newspapers. Even such conservatively owned papers as the Wall Street Journal and the San Diego Union are liberal in their news and features sections because the journalistic profession — trained in journalism schools at Columbia and elsewhere run by Marxists — is left.
Did you get that? First, "there is no market" -- if, instead of talking about education, you're talking about prestige education -- "the top 100." Let us be clear about what Horowitz wants: not academic freedom, but more impressive names on the CVs of his right-wing colleagues. It's not about learning, it's about power.

I wonder if the conservative cowtown colleges know with what contempt Horowitz regards them?

Loved also the union-busting angle -- "the academic professions are organized nationally" -- and the slur on that sector of the Wall Street Journal devoted to excellent reporting rather than to the promulgation of crackpot fantasies.

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