The Washington Times
March 10, 2006 Friday
Q&A: Terrorism and tenure;
Author warns of communists, jihadists and other ‘dangerous’
professors
By Robert Stacy McCain, THE WASHINGTON TIMES
They are Marxists, anti-Semites, terrorists, purveyors of crackpot
conspiracy theories – and they hold positions of lifetime tenure at
some of the nation’s most prestigious universities. These are some of
the campus figures profiled in David Horowitz’s new book, “The
Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America.”
Himself a former radical in the 1960s’ “New Left,” Mr. Horowitz is
the president of the California-based Center for the Study of Popular
Culture and the founder of the Web site The
following are excerpts of an e-mail interview with Mr. Horowitz:
Question: What inspired you to write this book?
Answer: Twenty years in the trenches, speaking at universities and
seeing what the left had done to them. As my book shows, radicals
have colonized whole departments and fields at universities that are
both public and private, large and small, secular and religious and
turned into indoctrination and recruitment centers for the
anti-American left. My book features full professors who are
followers of the Ayatollah Khomeini, members of the Central Committee
of the [U.S.] Communist Party, active and unrepentant terrorists,
anti-white racists and anti-Semites.
Q: Do most parents of college students – or most taxpayers, in the
case of state universities – know what they’re paying for at these
schools?
A: A friend of mine was the chairman of the board of trustees of a
major state university for 15 years. He said to me, “In all those
years I never knew what was going on in the classrooms at my
university.” I think he is typical. Even I didn’t realize quite how
bad it was until I wrote this book. I hope it will open people’s
eyes.
Q: I was surprised to find that Stanford University professor Paul
Ehrlich, author of “The Population Bomb,” was still teaching. Hasn’t
he been thoroughly discredited?
A: In the university in the social sciences and humanities, there is
no bottom line for bad ideas. In the real world, a Marxist would be
regarded as a flat-Earthist, yet in the university they occupy
positions as professors of history, political science and even (at
the University of Massachusetts) economists.
Q: Another mind-boggling example: Bernardine Dohrn, a former leader
of the violent Weather Underground. How can she be a law professor at
Northwestern University?
A: How can her husband and fellow-terrorist [Bill Ayers] be a
“Distinguished Professor of Early Childhood Education” at the
University of Illinois? The answer to both questions: Sympathizers
with their terrorist political agendas control the search and hiring
and tenure committees. There is really no other explanation.
Q: What are some of the other examples from the book that you found
particularly surprising?
A: Nothing surprises me after the research I did on this book. Hamid
Algar is a professor of Islamic studies at the University of
California at Berkeley. He is an ardent follower of the Ayatollah
Khomeini. Before 9/11 he gave a speech in Tehran at a memorial for
Khomeini in which he called for armed jihad against the West and for
the disappearing of Israel from the face of the Earth. He also told
Armenian students they deserved to be massacred. No administrative
action was taken against him.
Many professors profiled in my book express genocidal views towards
Israel, and one professor of ethnic studies at the University of
Texas has expressed the “scholarly” view that “we have got to
eliminate the gringo … we have got to kill him.”
Q: This is bound to be a very controversial book. What are some of
the criticisms you’ve had so far?
A: The academic leftists are really in an indefensible position, as
these quotations should make clear. So they have an incoherent
defense. Their first tack is to accuse the book of being a McCarthy
list, but in the next breath they are proclaiming how proud they are
to be on it. I happen to be the son of communist parents who were
blacklisted in the 1950s. I can tell you that they did not want to be
on any list.
These tenured radicals are in a very secure position and they know
it. Ward Churchill is still a $120,000-a-year professor at the
University of Colorado, while his president was forced to resign over
the scandal he created. What these people fear is not being fired;
it’s being embarrassed. And I hope their fears prove justified.
Q: Does the fact that people like Angela Davis and Ward Churchill can
become tenured professors argue in favor of the academic freedom
legislation you’ve supported in Colorado, Pennsylvania and other
states?
A: My academic freedom legislation is the beginning of a solution to
this problem. We need to take politics out of our classrooms at both
the university and the K-12 level. Before I go, I’d like to let your
readers know that I’ve created a Web site at
where they can follow the fun.