On Academic Radicals: David Horowitz's The Professors

I'm not quite trying to start an Oprah-style book club, but in light of the leftwing faculty attack on Harvard president Lawrence Summers that spurred his resignation, I'd like to suggest a book to all who are interested: The Professors by David Horowitz. Subtitled "The 101 Most Dangerous Academics In America", the publication discusses the most prominent of the radical university professors who support and teach the worst of leftist causes including Soviet Communism, terrorism, anti-Semitism, and anti-Americanism.

I haven't actually read the book, so I can't directly comment on its quality, but the author's stature as the editor of the excellent online publication Front Page Magazine should testify to the accuracy of his research and reporting. Furthermore, given the Summers episode and the multitude of infamous rants from leftist profs like Ward Churchill and Bill Ayers, the book's chosen topic is clearly important. These radicals have politically indoctrinated countless college students, and their outrageous falsehoods must be exposed. The professors' personal beliefs would matter far less if they left the politics out of the classroom, but all too often, this is far from the case.

Fortunately, I believe, most students can see through the leftist deceptions. The majority of the time, the professors' rhetoric so contradicts reality that even the most naive classroom attendees will dismiss it as nonsense. Back in my college days, for example, I had an American History professor who, bar none, blamed all of America's problems on Ronald Reagan. No matter the ailment -- poverty, inner city crime, high unemployment, drug abuse -- it was all the fault of the Gipper and his Republicanism. Hardly anyone in the course, though, took this ranting seriously; even those who detested Reagan knew that most social and economic problems have various causes unrelated to the legacy of a single president.

Problem is, a handful of students each year do fall prey to the indoctrination. I doubt my professor made Horowitz's book (his beliefs were quite mild compared to nuts like Duke's Miriam Cooke who supported the Taliban and excuses Palestinian terrorism), but I did know several people who became hardcore anti-American leftists by graduation, most likely as a result of similar teaching. Perhaps these classmates have since shed the identity, but the leftist academics clearly made their mark.

This, I feel, is why The Professors is so important. Until tenured academics shed the warped political slants from their teaching, we need writers like David Horowitz to alert us to the dangers. See Horowitz's website for the book, as well as Daniel Pipes's Campus Watch for more information. The book is available from, among other places, Front Page Magazine and Amazon.com.