Larry Summers resigned. Alan Dershowitz called it an "academic coup d’etat" engineered by the "radical, hard-left element" at Harvard. He worried the PC-cops would end academic freedom and raised the specter of ’60s, European-style student uprisings. But Sam pointed out that if the Crimson take to the barricades, it would be in defense of the administration, and I didn’t even know Harvard had a radical, hard-left element!
Confused and seeking guidance, I bought David Horowitz’s The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America. It’s $27.95 that will go to frontpagemag.com, but I couldn’t resist. After I got over my disappointment at not making the cut — alright, so I’m not exactly a professor yet, but I’m the kind of guy who picks up People‘s "Fifty Most Beautiful" issue and wonders how come the editors lost my headshot again — I thumbed through the volume and here’s the good news. The Nation is well represented. We got Stanley Aronowitz (CUNY), David Cole (Georgetown), Juan Cole (Michigan), Michael Eric Dyson (UPenn), Richard Falk (Princeton), Eric Foner (Columbia), Tom Hayden (Occidental), Robert McChesney (Illinois), and last but not least, the deadly Victor Navasky (Columbia). Vic’s main assault seems to be disseminating "The Nation‘s far-left agendas throughout the American education system." There’s also something in there about Vic and "other apologists for Communism" being complicit in the deaths of 100 million innocent people, but Horowitz glosses right over it to get to the pernicious RadioNation offense now airing on "forty college radio stations"! Yikes!
(I wish I could report that Victor had in fact colonized the minds of undergrads everywhere, but alas, when I tell students I used to work at The Nation the response I usually get is: "Oh really, which one?")
I can’t figure out why mad law professor Patricia Williams didn’t make the grade, but don’t worry women are well represented on the Horowitz honor roll: Lisa Anderson (Columbia), bell hooks (CUNY), Mari Matsuda (Georgetown), Eve Sedgwick (CUNY), Bernardine Dohrn (Northwestern), Angela Davis (UC Santa Cruz) and Kathleen Cleaver (Emory) among others.
Anyway, Harvard doesn’t have a single academic on Horowitz’s list. Nonetheless, using the Summer’s presidency as a case study and methodological "yardstick," Horowitz concludes that there are 25,000-30,000 radical professors at American universities who teach over 3 million students a year. Getting rid of these folks is Horowitz’s version of "academic freedom," and he’s launched a raft of bills and conferences through Students for Academic Freedom.
Between Horowitz’s campaign and Dershowitz’s vision of purges driven by the "radical, hard-left," the bodycount in the academy could get pretty high. Maybe, just maybe, if I keep my head down, don’t say anything controversial, political or interesting, I’ll land a tenure-track job. Then I can finally kick back and enjoy my "academic freedom."
