[Promoted from the diaries by susanbhu.]
In an article for his Front Page Magazine, titled “Why Michael Can’t Read,” David Horowitz tells me, a leftist since earliest I can remember, why I believe as I do. The title of DH’s article refers to Pennsylvania State University professor Michael Berube, a teacher, scholar, and writer who, with Cary Nelson, edited Higher Education Under Fire: Politics, Economics, and the Crisis of the Humanities. Berube doesn’t think much of DH’s “DiscoverTheNetwork, which is a comprehensive guide to the political left,” and has said so, explaining why quite lucidly on his own blog (highly recommended). But DH isn’t just talking about Berube: in his simplistic thinking, he believes he knows the minds of the rest of us, too.
Take this comment, for example:
Now, I lived in Thailand in 1964 and 1965. I was a kid. My school doubled in size over the Christmas holidays because of the evacuation of civilian Americans from Vietnam. While the US government was claiming no bombing missions originated in Thailand, the Air Force pilots living in my apartment building were disappearing for a few days each week to the north of the country. I was proud of my father when we returned to the US: he was one of the first protesters against the war, participating in silent vigils against the unneeded killings our government was perpetrating. Soon, I was joining him in the protests (though not so silently).
Because of our proximity during the first major escalation, we learned a great deal about what was going on in Vietnam, much of it from people who had lived there. We knew right away how much our government was lying and how little the people of Vietnam supported us. We knew this was no war for “freedom” for anyone and we hated being associated with it due to our nationality.
One of the most important things we learned was that the US/Russia stand-off was not central to much of what was going on in the world. The conflict in Vietnam concerned a great deal more than simply keeping communism from spreading. Only myopic Americans who refused to see the world as anything but “good” (the US) versus “bad” (the Soviet Union) thought otherwise. We got ourselves into a conflict that was, frankly, none of our concern through our arrogance, our belief that everything came down to that one dichotomy. It wasn’t “support for (or appeasement of) our Communist enemies” that we were involved in, but support for human rights and self-determination. It’s simplistic to think otherwise–for the world is far more complex than the Cold Warriors ever imagined. I remain quite proud of my opposition to that war and to the Cold War mentality of the time. We did much to stave off the belligerent nature of much US foreign policy, allowing the Soviet Union space to collapse on its own.
Horowitz, on the other hand, still seems to want to make the American left responsible for all the ills of the world:
Here again is that reductive, limited thinking. Pol Pot and his minions are responsible for the slaughter in Cambodia. To place responsibility elsewhere is akin to blaming 9/11 on Israel. DH’s argument, also, tries to link the slaughter to a cut in aid, forgetting that the fact of the aid itself set the stage for what later happened. Cutting it, at that point, is not what brough the Khmer Rouge to power.
Here again is that arrogance, that it is “our” (US) actions that have impact upon the world. Nothing else matters. A nuclear freeze would have allowed the Soviet Union to continue? Come on! The reasons for the collapse of the USSR were myriad; the tottering regime was going down no matter what “we” did.
Here again is that assumption of US importance. Though Saddam Hussein is no longer in power, life in Iraq has not improved–and many more Iraqis have died. To call this the spark for a Middle East democracy movement is ludicrous on the face of it. To be inspired to fight for democracy, something inspiring has to be taking place. Nothing the US has done in Iraq is inspiring. What shining example has been established? Whose lives have gotten so much better?
Here again is hubris, thinking that slapping down someone weaker than “we” are, someone who posed no threat to “us,” makes the world a safer place. No. The people who actually did attack the US are as strong as ever, and have new recruiting and proving grounds. The international community has been weakened, making it less likely that a cooperative movement against any real arising threat could be established.
At the start of his article, DH writes:
The implication here is that somehow, tenure just drops on people–a gift from the gods. Clearly, DH has no idea what it means to achieve that status. I can’t speak for Berube, but I suspect he is as active as I am. Now, I don’t have tenure; I teach on a year-to-year contract. Of course, I would love to have tenure and hope to earn it–but having it would not slow me down (I want it because I crave the stability it represents, not so I won’t have to work). In my quest for tenure, I wrote a book last year that is now in print, and did it without the help of a staff like the one DH has at his disposal. In other words, I did all the work myself. Right now, I am working on two other books (not to mention the articles I have completed or am writing). Oh, and in addition to research, writing, and teaching full-time, I run my gift-store/gallery and am renovating a house (by myself). I certainly don’t have time or inclination to sit around the house and do nothing–and neither does Berube, I am sure.
Horowitz believes he is reaching into the minds of the left, but they are minds (and lives) whose workings he cannot comprehend. Lives involved in a complex “real” world of work and thought far beyond the simplicities DH’s blinders allow.
This is a fabulous diary. There is such a misunderstanding among the general public about what academics do. The tenure process is long, arduous, and requires incredibly long hours. Yes. There are lazy academics. We all know them. But I also know people who work 70-80 hours a week, preparing for lectures, counseling students, working on their own scholarship, grading papers, in committee meetings, trying to improve the intellectual climate on their campuses. Horowitz has made a career out of bashing that which he does not understand.
Ah, Horowitz is a right wingnut hack. That’s obvious, but sometimes the obvious needs restating.
Tenure is not a “job for life”. Once a member of the faculty has tenure they can be “dismissed for cause”, but the burden of proof is on the institution. That is, the faculty member does not have to show reason why they shouldn’t be dismissed. It’s up to the institution, using due process, to show why.
If Horowitz were really interested in the process instead of catering to the right wingnut world view (and there was some epidemic of academic sloth and incompetence across American higher education – it’s funny, no one has come up with statistics), he’d be going after academic middle management for it’s failure to pursue remedies already in place. Instead, he just generates hot air.
Tenure is academic freedom. It gives faculty the ability to address matters of controversy in their field and in the life of a scholarly community without having to fear for their livelihood. That is indeed something for the right wingnuts to fear.
It’s amazing that these cretins can say “the American Left, in their inaction, helps bad leaders stay in power” while COMPLETELY IGNORING the fact that the modern-day American Right is actively helping and supporting some of the worst human-rights-violating regimes like those of Jintao, Musharef and the Family Saud. Their willful ignorance is astounding. Here’s a good example of a GWB motto:
Democracy for everyone worldwide! (offer not valid in Taiwan)
Roughly 99% of the time you can simply assert the opposite of anything David Horowitz says and you will be factually correct–though in the real world, things are almost invariably at least a little bit fuzzier than Horowitz imagines.
For instance, the notion that the Nuclear Freeze prolonged the Cold War–wrong! It was the Reagan arms buildup–which the Freeze was responding to (along with his itchy trigger finger, and hankering after Armageddon, which he charmingly thought was an Old Testament prophecy)–that actually prolonged the Cold War, according to the most reasonable, informed reading of the facts.
See, for example, Team B: The trillion-dollar experiment by By Anne Hessing Cahn in the April 1993 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. This is the story of how a precursor to the Neocon cabal within the Bush Administration cooked the books on Soviet intelligence to promote a non-existent threat of pending nuclear dominance by the Soviet Union. The article concludes thus:
For more than a third of a century, assertions of Soviet superiority created calls for the United States to “rearm.” In the 1980s, the call was heeded so thoroughly that the United States embarked on a trillion-dollar defense buildup. As a result, the country neglected its schools, cities, roads and bridges, and health care system. From the world’s greatest creditor nation, the United States became the world’s greatest debtor–in order to pay for arms to counter the threat of a nation that was collapsing.
In fact, the Soviet Union was in big trouble when Team B broadcast its dire warnings. Our belligerent response gave the Soviet hardliners a new lease on life, which almost certainly prolonged the Cold War, and absolutely certainly devastated America as described just above. Furthermore, there was a complex synergy between the American Nuclear Freeze Movement, the Western European Peace Movement, the Eastern European Civil Society Movement, and Gorbachov’s Glasnost and Perestroika policies.
Final note: Long after thousands of American peace activists had traveled to the Soviet Union, conservative international security “experts” were warning us that Glasnost was a trick, and the Soviet Union would leap out and take us all over in the twinkling of an eye. They were wrong every step of the way, and they are still wrong today.
Oh well, at least they’ve been consistent.
Remember the “bomber” and “missile” gaps?
http://www.worldpolicy.org/journal/hartung01.html
Ah yes, “Scoop” Jackson – the father of the neocons.
There’s a whole series of these incidents. I’d also add the drafting of NSC-68, which represented a significant–and totally secret–shift from the very public Long Telegram. Paul Nitze was the common thread through all these secret conclaves, BTW.