He's Got a Little List

By Richard Lingeman

This article appeared in the March 13, 2006 edition of The Nation.

February 23, 2006

David Horowitz, the right-wing Savonarola, takes an unholy interest in higher education. One of his pet projects is a so-called Academic Bill of Rights, which he is agitating for states to enact into law (no takers yet). His avowed aim is to muzzle lefty professors, who, Horowitz claims, are running amok--dominating faculties, bullying conservative students and promoting their radical agendas in the classroom. Colleges that fail to sign on to the bill of rights would be monitored by state officials and politicians.

In February Horowitz tossed another log on the auto-da-fé, publishing a book called The Professors (Regnery), which, the subtitle boasts, reveals "The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America." Normally, we can leave Horowitz's effusions to his claque, but a couple of our contributors reported (rather boastfully, we thought) that they'd made the list. That caused us to wonder who else among our regulars made the cut. So we put intern Dean Powers on the case, and after combing the data bank he came up with twenty-seven Nation names in the Horowitz book. Among them, they have contributed a total of 255 dangerous articles, editorials and/or reviews to our pages.

We were initially pleased that so many of our writers made the grade. This is the kind of list a muckraking, status quo-shaking magazine like The Nation should be on. We thought about suggesting to our advertising people that they take out a series of ads bragging, "The Nation--America's Most Dangerous Magazine, says David Horowitz."

Subscriber Login

4 ISSUES FREE

Subscribe Now!

The only way to read this article and the full contents of each week's issue of The Nation online is by subscribing to the magazine. Subscribe now and read this article -- and every article published since for the past five years -- right now.

There's no obligation -- try The Nation for four weeks free.

.

About Richard Lingeman

Richard Lingeman is a senior editor of The Nation. His books include Small Town America: A Narrative Hisory, 1620-Present; Don't You Know There's a War On? The American Home Front, 1941-1945; An American Journey: Theodore Dreiser (a two-volume biography, now available in one abridged paperback edition from John Wiley & Sons); Sinclair Lewis: Rebel From Main Street (Random House) and, most recently, Double Lives: American Writers’ Friendships (Random House). more...
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement

Blogs

» The Beat

House Passes Health Reform, But Without Reproductive Rights | Pelosi secures necessary votes, but only after allowing anti-choice Dems to bar access to abortion in new programs.
John Nichols
189 Comments

» Editor's Cut

Around The Nation | Obama, one year on. Plus: Jeremy Scahill takes your questions, and a new video series from The Nation.
Katrina vanden Heuvel
38 Comments

» The Notion

Injustice in Illinois | Prosecutors in Illinois should be more concerned with an innocent man behind bars than journalism students' grades.
Ari Berman
31 Comments

» The Dreyfuss Report

Obama Fails in Middle East | Clinton delivers the ultimate diss to Abbas.
Robert Dreyfuss
170 Comments

» Act Now!

Equality Across America | This week, young LBGT activists are staging a National Week of Initiative.
Peter Rothberg
16 Comments

» Altercation

Slacker Thursday | Dying laptops, recapping the election, the Dow, and the Yankees with the World Series.
Eric Alterman