4.04.2006

Rooting out progressives in US academia

The Guardian tracks the rise of progressive-hunting in American academia, from Fox's Sean Hannity, who urged students to record "leftwing propaganda" by professors to air on his show and righwinger David Horowitz's book/blacklist The Professors: the 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America to efforts in Pennsylvania and elsewhere to remove the International Baccalaureate (IB) program from high schools because, among other reasons, it's deemed "un-American," marxist, anti-Christian, part of an international communist conspiracy, and suspicious simply because it was "developed in a foreign country" (Switzerland).

"There is a cunning behind the battyness," says Todd Gitlin of Columbia, one of Horowitz's most dangerous academics. "It's not just the self-aggrandisement. It's an assault on one of the few social enclaves that the right doesn't control. There is a scattershot bellicosity whether the fortunes of the political right are up or down. They find it useful for fundraising if nothing else."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

If you consider these men "progressive", you are hopelessly bound by your own ignorance of history.

Anonymous said...

Uh, which men? All the professors named in the piece? Gimme a bit more to go on here.

paul