Horowitz Speech Disrupted (And Reaction from Socialist Prof)

A speech about academic freedom turned into a "violation of First Amendment rights," according to Dana Cloud, a member of the International Socialist Organization.

Six people, including one juvenile, were arrested Wednesday night after protesting David Horowitz's speech at Townes Hall at the UT School of Law. The Texas Federalist Society hosted the meeting and invited Horowitz, a right-wing advocate and author of the Academic Bill of Rights, to speak.

Opposition groups were holding signs and speaking out during Horowitz's speech on Wednesday, but when they were told to stop speaking, some took out noisemakers to mark their disapproval of the speaker. Three females and three males were arrested and then jailed under charges of disrupting a meeting or procession - a Class B misdemeanor. The subjects were not UT students.

Cloud, an associate professor in communication studies, attended the speech and witnessed the arrests. She said the situation was ironic.

"Horowitz claims to be for free speech, but he is actually on a campaign to discredit and ruin progressive intellectuals," Cloud said. "In the name of free speech, they are basically calling the police on protesters."

Victoria Corinne Cloud, no relation to Dana Cloud, and Dylan Wayne Vicknair were both arrested for physical action - the use of an air horn. Michael Stephen Hardin, Catharina Elizabeth Perry and Scott Crow were arrested for verbal utterances - yelling and arguing with a speaker. All six activists were released late Thursday afternoon.

Anastasia Breloff, the president of the Texas Federalist Society, and other officers from the society said they warned activists at least three times, each time reiterating the possibility of arrest.

"Protesters chose to disrupt Mr. Horowitz's lecture by moving threateningly toward the stage, shouting at the speaker and blowing foghorns and other noise-making devices," Breloff said in a statement.

Melissa Hotze, assistant vice president of events, was sitting in the last row of the auditorium and said she was frustrated that the protesters would not sit down until the question and answer period to voice their opinions.

"When he was at other campuses, people were throwing pies at his face. We just alerted the UTPD that he was coming, and there might be potential of things happening," Hotze said.

According to Hotze, Horowitz's point was that "universities have a very liberal faculty, and if you are a conservative, you are going to be penalized from your academic freedom."

Horowitz encourages students to report their professors who openly silence the opinion of conservatives in universities.

"The irony of squelching such a protest with police on a meeting on free speech is the fact that Horowitz is part of a growing trend, the new McCarthyisms - disciplining progressive faculty," Cloud said.

I was one of two dozen people who protested the appearance of right-wing ideologue David Horowitz at the Law School Wednesday night. (University of Texas at Austin)

Although the subject of the meeting was freedom of expression, and Horowitz routinely accuses campus progressives of silencing different points of view, he set police on protesters who expressed their disagreement in the style and tradition of unruly civil disobedience. The ironic message: Shut up so I can talk about free speech. Indignant, Horowitz refused to begin speaking about the importance of free expression so long as protesters held signs criticizing him. Six young protesters were arrested and jailed.

Horowitz and his ilk pursue the agenda of silencing the left, all in the name of free speech. He attempts to whip up fear of tyrannical radical professors who, he says, indoctrinate what he sees as hapless, immature undergraduates. (Apparently, he hasn't met my students, whom I respect as adults capable of speaking for themselves and making their own judgments.)

In fact, his crusade for free expression is a cynical sham: Horowitz maintains a blacklist of left intellectuals and activists, arguing that critics of war and oppression should not have the right to teach or protest. His is a freedom of expression reserved for conservatives who - in spite of their side's holding inordinate economic, political, and coercive power - feel marginalized in the face of critical pedagogy.

However absurd and hypocritical, his efforts should be taken seriously as aligned with a series of assaults recently on academic freedom at Columbia University, University of Colorado, and City College of New York. Unfortunately, the threats to our jobs and civil rights are all too real.

As someone (among hundreds of others) whose name appears on Horowitz's Internet hit list, I wonder who the real censors are: critics of the war and feminist professors, or those who have and will use the real might of the police and the state to silence criticism and dissent? Defenders of real freedom of speech and learning must stand together against the new McCarthyism.

Dana Cloud Associate professor, Communication studies Member, International Socialist Organization

Dana L. Cloud (PhD, University of Iowa, 1992) specializes in the analysis of contemporary and popular and political culture from feminist, Marxist, and critical anti-racist perspectives. She teaches undergraduate classes in persuasion, social movements, speechwriting, and rhetorical criticism, as well as graduate courses in rhetoric and the public sphere, rhetoric and ideology, rhetoric and feminist theory, and rhetoric and popular culture. Dr. Cloud's areas of current research include the critique of therapeutic discourse, feminist and Marxist theories and politics, rhetoric of "family values," and the rhetoric of the U.S. labor movement.

Dana L. Cloud

Among her other "contributions", we find this in the deep archives:

University of Texas Professor Creates New Pledge For The 'Godless Radicals'

An excerpt:

I pledge allegiance to all the ordinary people around the world, to the laid off Enron workers and the WorldCom workers the maquiladora workers and the sweatshop workers from New York to Indonesia, who labor not under God but under the heel of multinational corporations; I pledge allegiance to the people of Iraq, Palestine and Afghanistan, and to their struggles to survive and resist slavery to corporate greed, brutal wars against their families, and the economic and environmental ruin wrought by global capitalism; I pledge allegiance to building a better world where human needs are met and with real liberty, equality and justice for all.

From discoverthenetwork.org

Professor at the University of Texas
Member of the International Socialist Organization
Calls America "a corrupt nation"
The day after 9/11, she stated, "the United States military has, in recent years, been the most effective and constant killer of civilians around the world."

Dana Cloud is an associate professor of communication studies at the University of Texas (Austin) and a member of the International Socialist Organization (ISO), a Leninist vanguard that considers itself part of the Fourth Communist International. Formed in 1977, the ISO is the largest revolutionary socialist group in the United States. Professor Cloud was quick to blame American policies for having provoked the 9/11 attacks, singling out the U.S. as the world's most egregious mass murdering nation. On September 12, 2001 - just one day after the terrorist hijackings and 3,000 deaths had occurred - she wrote that, in addition to her shock and outrage over the previous day's events, she also felt "outrage at the hypocrisy of President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and all of the politicians and pundits who last night rushed to declare war on the still-unidentified perpetrators of this tragedy." "Targeting civilians," she continued, "is despicable. But it is worth pointing out that the United States military has, in recent years, been the most effective and constant killer of civilians around the world. The 1991 Persian Gulf War left more than two hundred thousand civilians dead as a direct consequence of the war. Ongoing economic sanctions in Iraq have killed more than 1.5 million more, including hundreds of thousands of children."

"Many Americans don't stop to think," Cloud added, "about why Palestinians and others in the Middle East have cause to be extremely angry with the United States for its support of Israel in its decades-long campaign of terror against Palestinian civilians. Few people I have spoken with have thought about the role that the U.S.'s refusal to participate in the U.N. World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa (where questions of Iraeli racism against Palestinians arose) may have played in intensifying Arab anger at the United States."

Professor Cloud also warned against "the scapegoating of Arabs and the hasty and predictable attempt to blame the attacks on Osama bin Laden and his supporters." "The scapegoating of Arabs," she said, "can only result in an upsurge in irrational anti-Arab sentiment and violence."

Cloud further spoke about her fear of "the curtailing of our civil liberties in the wake of this crisis." "Already we are hearing about tightening airport security," she lamented.

"We need to look beyond the emotional calls to war," said the professor, "and ask ourselves, is quick and violent retaliation the proper response? Why would someone target the U.S.? Why would people feel so desperate that they would want to kill themselves and innocent civilians in these kinds of attacks? We need to address these questions if we are to prevent the kind of devastation that happened yesterday from happening ever again."

Professor Cloud detests the United States. She explains that she has always disliked the traditional Pledge of Allegiance "because it seems very strange to pledge loyalty to a scrap of cloth representing a corrupt nation." In July 2002, she decided to write a new Pledge - not to America, but to those people worldwide whom she deems the victims of American greed, exploitation, and aggression. Her composition reads as follows: "I pledge allegiance to all the ordinary people around the world, to the laid off Enron workers and the WorldCom workers, the maquiladora workers and the sweatshop workers from New York to Indonesia, who labor not under God but under the heel of multinational corporations; I pledge allegiance to the people of Iraq, Palestine and Afghanistan, and to their struggles to survive and resist slavery to corporate greed, brutal wars against their families, and the economic and environmental ruin wrought by global capitalism; I pledge allegiance to building a better world where human needs are met and with real liberty, equality and justice for all."

But while Cloud condemns corporate greed, she displays hypocrisy by taking a salary from the University of Texas, which proudly states that corporations are a significant funding source for its operations.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.