Search

The Online Encyclopedia and Dictionary

 
     
 

Encyclopedia

Dictionary

Quotes

   
 

David Horowitz

This page is about the social activist and writer. For others, see David Horowitz (disambiguation)

David Horowitz
David Horowitz

David Horowitz (born January 10,1939) was born in Forest Hills, New York and is a Jewish-American social activist and writer. He was prominent in the American New Left movement but today holds staunchly right-wing views.

His parents Phil and Blanche Horowitz were schoolteachers in Sunnyside Gardens, Queens, New York City and raised their son in a strict Stalinist environment. Horowitz went to Columbia University as an undergraduate, later taking a Master's in English literature at the University of California, Berkeley. After Nikita Khrushchev's secret report to the 20th Party Congress on Joseph Stalin's crimes became publicly known, Horowitz helped form the New Left movement in the United States—a break with the earlier Communist Party USA. After moving to California, Horowitz became a well-known Marxist supporter of the various leftist causes of the 1960s and 1970s. He worked for the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation and authored several books on Marxian interpretations of history, as well as serving as an editor of the radical magazine Ramparts. He also provided help to the Black Panthers and became a confidant of its leader Huey Newton.

As the years went on however, Horowitz became very disillusioned with some of the tactics of the American Left, especially after one of his close friends, Betty Van Patter, was murdered in 1974. Horowitz attributes her murder to the Panthers; no one was charged or arrested, and the case remains unsolved. Horowitz's thinking gradually became more conservative, and today he is regarded as a leading conservative advocate. Among the key events he credits with his intellectual transformation were the aftermath of the Vietnam War and the AIDS crisis. He has written about his transformation in an autobiography, Radical Son, and Left Illusions.

Horowitz's transition from a left-wing to a right-wing position is said to be shared in common by many other neoconservatives. Horowitz, for his part, strongly rejects the "neoconservative" label.

Contents

Academic Bill of Rights

Horowitz, along with some Republican leaders, has been promoting his "Academic Bill of Rights", an eight-point manifesto that seeks to eliminate what they consider to be political bias in university hiring and grading. Horowitz claims that liberal bias in universities amounts to indoctrination and charges that conservatives and particularly Republicans are systematically excluded from faculties.

Although the ABoR is commonly defended http://chronicle.com/free/v50/i23/23b01201.htm by appeal to the AAUP's 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure http://www.aaup.org/statements/Redbook/1940stat.htm , its construal of that document has been denounced by the AAUP as "a grave threat to fundamental principles of academic freedom" http://www.aaup.org/statements/SpchState/billofrights.htm . Others have criticized the "simplistic worldview, flawed statistics, and political irresponsibility" http://www.aaup-ca.org/Larkin_abor.html behind the Bill.

Books

He has written many books and pamphlets, including "A Radical's Disenchantment", The Nation, December 8, 1979, The Free World Colossus: A Critique of American Foreign Policy in the Cold War (1971), (1998 ISBN 0684840057), his autobiography; (2002 ISBN 1893554449); Hating Whitey; The Politics of Bad Faith and Left Illusions: An Intellectual Odyssey (2003 ISBN 1890626511). Together with Peter Collier he wrote several best-selling biographies of prominent American families:

  • (1976)
  • (1985)
  • (1987)
  • (1994)

Quotes

  • "Real human flesh and blood had been sacrificed on the altar of utopian ideals. A collusive silence had followed." - Concerning Betty Van Patter's murder from Jamie Glazov's introduction to "Left Illusions"
  • "For the sake of the poorest peasants in this Godforsaken country, I can't wait for the contras to march into this town and liberate it from these Sandinistas!" - In the dining room of the Intercontinental Hotel in Nicaragua, during the fall of 1987

External links

  • FrontPageMag.com - online neoconservative magazine edited by Horowitz [1] http://www.frontpagemag.com
  • David Horowitz's Long March http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20000703&c=1&s=sherman by Scott Sherman in The Nation
  • FrontPage magazine.com About Horowitz http://www.frontpagemag.com/AboutHorowitz/index.asp
  • What's Not To Like About The Academic Bill of Rights http://www.aaup-ca.org/Larkin_abor.html by Graham Larkin
  • Jesse Walker of Reason Magazine on the dangers of the Academic Bill of Rights http://reason.com/links/links091703.shtml
  • Students for Academic Freedom http://www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org/ - website promoting the "Academic Bill of Rights"
  • Disinfopedia - David Horowitz http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=David_Horowitz_(ex-Marxist)
  • The Delusions of David Horowitz http://www.counterpunch.org/nimmo1031.html (Counterpunch)
  • Horowitz: "I'm not a racial provocateur" http://archive.salon.com/news/feature/2001/03/13/horowitz/print.html (Salon)



Last updated: 02-07-2005 02:46:02
Last updated: 04-25-2005 03:06:01