Shots In The Dark

The ubiquitous David Horowitz promotes his "Academic Bill of Rights" here. Horowitz worries that lefty professors have taken over the academy, and so his bill aims to promote "intellectual diversity."

Key quote: <Why do we need legislation? There are too many people like Ward Churchill—the University of Colorado professor who compared 9/11 victims with Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann—on faculties across the nation. They confuse their classroosm with a political soap box.>

Horowitz then gives a whopping two examples, both at small schools in Colorado. (What is with Colorado professors, anyway? It's not exactly a blue state.) At least one of those examples—a professor who asked students taking a criminology exam to argue that the invasion of Iraq was a criminal act—sounds defensible to me.

(Although better if the professor had said: "The invasion of Iraq was illegal. Agree or disagree." But who knows? Maybe he did.)

Legislators need to get involved, Horowitz concludes, to ensure that schools are "educating our kids, not brainwashing them."

Mmmm. Because there's so much intellectual diversity in our legislatures these days, right?

(Sorry. That was a cheap shot.)

The point is, the kind of political sermonizing Horowitz is up in arms about just isn't widespread. And when it does occur, universities can address it on their own, without any help from politicians.

What Horowitz really wants is affirmative action for conservative professors...