Posted on 12/06/2002 8:05:44 AM PST by Hobsonphile
Lanny Griffith, Tammy Bruce, Ron Robinson and Dr. Candace De Russy speak at Restoration Weekend on "Political Bias In Our Colleges and What We Can Do About It."
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LANNY GRIFFITH: I've known of David Horowitz and admired his work for many years. In the last couple of years I've had the chance to work with him first-hand, and have participated in the last three or four Restoration Weekends. I'm serving on his Board now, and am just a huge fan of what it is he does in terms of helping us understand the methods and the strategy of the left, and how it impacts on our lives.
Nobody spends more time on college campuses, in understanding what's going on there, than David. He's got a huge following all over the country, and largely it's because of the valuable work he's done on college campuses. So it couldn't be more appropriate to start this panel by giving David about five or ten minutes to kind of set the tone for it. David? [Audience applause.]
DAVID HOROWITZ: The electoral map in 2000 was pretty evenly divided; now we're told it's 53-47 Republicans. But on our college campuses, on the administrations of our universities and on the faculties, a Republican is as hard to find as a unicorn. And this is – it's wherever you go in this country. I've been on 200 college campuses, a lot with the help of Ron Robinson here, who is head of the Young Americans Foundation and whose business it is to send our people out. And it's very important what Ron does, because the left controls all the funds in the university, so there's no money and no invitations coming from the universities themselves.
I've been on 200 college campuses in the last ten years. I have been to Ferrum College, which is in the capital of moonshine country, in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, where the nearest big city, Roanoke, which is a hundred thousand people, is a hundred miles away. And the left controls that campus. It's really a nightmare in this country, what's happened to the universities.
Everywhere I go, I am invited by a small group of college Republicans or smaller groups yet. At Vanderbilt, I spoke at a group that Ron sponsors called Wake Up America. I always ask them how many professors are available to sponsor their club, because that tells me who the Republicans out of the closet, so to speak, are – those who are brave enough to speak. And it's invariably two or three.
At Vanderbilt, actually, it was zero. They found a Professor of Business Administration to sponsor their club. He's actually a businessman who lives and works in San Francisco, and flies, commutes, two times a week to teach this business course. This is the premiere university in the state of Tennessee.
At Ohio State – Ohio is a state where Republicans have controlled both houses of the legislature for ten years, and the governorship. Ohio State University has 60,000 students. When I asked the college Republicans how many professors are available to sponsor their club, the answer was two or three.
How does this happen? Well, universities are feudal hierarchies. They're run like the Communist Party. A central committee of Senior Professors in every department organizes the PhD programs, and elevates students who are like-minded. It's a normal human instinct to want to perpetuate yourself and what you think, so of course, students who spout the party line are the ones who get the greater honors and are encouraged. When it's time to hire, there's a faculty committee which passes on people, called the Tenure Committee.
Shortly after 9/11, I was at an eastern university. I'm sure Ron's organizaton sponsored this speech. The kids'll take me out to a local diner before the speech, and the faculty advisor will often be there. And here he was, and he was a white-haired – all of the conservative professors are white-haired – a white-haired professor in the History Department, Senior Professor of History. And I said to him, "How does it work?" And he said, "Well, they haven't allowed me on a Search Committee since 1985." He said, "In that year I chaired the Search Committee and of course we hired a Marxist. And I said, "Of course." Because conservatives believe in process and educational values; you should be exposed to diverse viewpoints.
The left, as John Diggins once said – John Diggins is a kind of Johnson liberal, or Hubert Humphrey liberal, who were liberals when liberals were actually liberal. I was at a American Studies Association meeting with him, in a room full of academic leftists, and he said, "You know, we liberals let you in, and you came in, and you closed the door behind you."
So this Senior Professor said, "They hired a Marxist." Then, he said, "This year we had an opening for a Professor of Asian History, and I saw that the most qualified candidate was from Stanford. And he didn't get the job. So I asked the Chair of the Search Committee what happened? And he said, 'Well, you're absolutely right, he was the best qualified for the job, and we had a terrific interview. But then we all went out to lunch, and he let on that he was for school vouchers.'" Did you get that? If you have the wrong position on school vouchers, you must be politically incorrect about the Ming Dynasty.
I wish that that was all it was, but what it really is, is power. The idea of academic leftists is, "We cannot afford to let somebody in who is not with the program, because they might let another one in, and another, and we would lose control.
There were 150 campus demonstrations against America defending herself within 2 or 3 weeks after 9/11. This is reflection of the dominance of the left on America's campuses.
At Brown, when I did my Reparations campaign, the leader, the faculty leader of the left, is somone who publishes in the Communist Party's "theoretical journal." He's a specialist in "black philosophy." The Brown Daily Herald printed my ad; my ad was about why reparations was a bad idea. The left attacked the Brown Daily Herald as a racist paper. You have to understand these kids, the editors, had debated the big debate six months before – this was the spring of 2001 – was whether to endorse Ralph Nader or Al Gore; that's who these kids are. They were attacked as racist. The entire issue of the Brown Daily Herald was stolen and destroyed by the left. The President of the university made a very mild statement saying that we shouldn't be destroying newspapers at Brown. Sixty – sixty – members of the Brown faculty signed a statement attacking the President and defending the theft of the papers. That's the situation at Brown.
I think there were four professors who actually came out and defended me, which was four times as many as came out at any other university. Two in the medical school and one botanist, who had written a book on Darwin and design theory. And one music professor whose career and life had been ruined for many years by a false accusation from the feminists – he looked at somebody the wrong way or something. Those were the four who defended me.
This translates into the fact that what students are regularly taught in universities, to put it bluntly, is to be ashamed of their country; to look on America as a racist, sexist, imperialist monster. In other words, the Great Satan, which is why you have so much sympathy on college campuses for our enemies.
I actually think something can be done about this situation, and I think that the root causeS of our problem at this point are the Republican party and conservative complacency. There attitude is "Oh, the universities are run by communists – well, you know, they're intellectuals, they're tweedy and, you know, they never met a bottom line, so what can you expect? That's just the way things are." In a state like Colorado or Ohio, all the trustees of these state university systems are appointed by Republican governors. Hank Brown, who used to be a Republican senator, is the President of the University of North Colorado. All of these schools need money; they need variances; they need a ton of things, and they come to the governors and the legislatures all the time. They have to; they're dependent on them.
How do Democrats look on universities? In my state of California, when they were preparing to build a ninth campus of the University of California, Jesse Unruh, who was the most powerful politician in the state and a Democrat, said, "I'm going to build this campus in Irvine, and make Orange County a Democrat County." That's the way they look at it. Right now the entire admissions system of the University of California – and this is affecting admissions all over the country – is being revamped according to the dictates of the political left. UC altered the SAT requirements because the Hispanic caucus in the state legislature told Atkinson -- the President of the entire University system -- "You are going to increase the number of Hispanics that get into the school regardless of how you do it, or we're going to have your job."
I always have a bad conscience because I kind of feel I've been sent as an ex-radical to conservatives, to teach them bad manners and bad politics. I don't advocate quite the heavy-handedness that the Hispanic caucus is using in California. But it seems to be me reasonable that a Republican governor in a Republican state – where, just as everywhere else, you have two or three Republicans on a faculty of a thousand -- could say, the next time the university comes to him for help, "Look, this is an intolerable situation; my constituents don't understand; this is a patronage system that the Democratic party is running in our state institution. It's illegal. Moreover, it's unconstitutional to hire or fire people on the basis of their political opinions. Obviously, you have a bias in the hiring process. Unless you're going to tell me that Republicans like myself are stupid and can't be professors. [Which they will, if you let them.] This is intolerable; I want you to do something about it; I'm not going to tell you how, but I want to see a change here, if you want my help."
And university presidents are – what are they? They're fundraisers; that's basically what they are. And as my writing partner, Peter Collier, once said, the profile for a university administrator is a cross between Saul Alinsky and Neville Chamberlain. They don't want trouble. And the way the left gets its way is by causing trouble. I don't advocate that our students occupy buildings, but we need to make a lot more trouble for these administrators so that they change.
Our biggest mission, then, is affecting the mentality of the Republican Party. It's got to focus on this as an issue. I'm going to make this my mission, if it takes me ten years, until I get results. You all got a pamphlet called "You can't get a good education if they're only telling you half the story." And I can tell you from my experience, particularly at the University in Michigan, the non-conservative students are very affected by this argument. They want to hear both sides of the story.
(Excerpt) Read more at frontpagemagazine.com ...
I think there are some institutions out there with a conservative, or, at the very least, an apathetic thrust, but if your kid has his heart set on Harvard, Yale, etc., the only two things I can suggest are: 1) instill a lot of self confidence in your kid and teach him how to argue well, and 2) encourage your kid to seek out the College Republicans, YAF, the Federalist Society, etc. These groups do exist on most campuses.
Good luck!
Another example of blatant racism by Mexicans/Latinos/Hispanics/Chicanos here in the U.S.
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