Wednesday, Feb. 21 speaker David Horowitz presented “Academic Freedom and the War on Terror” in Youngchild Hall.
Horowitz’s appearance at Lawrence was sponsored by the Young American Foundation and drew a sizable crowd from the student body as well as from the Appleton community.
Horowitz is the founder of the organization Students for Academic Freedom, which advocates student safety in the academic world. This organization created an Academic Bill of Rights to protect students at universities from professors and educators who abuse their positions of authority.
Horowitz is campaigning at universities across the country to create individual chapters of Students for Academic Freedom at schools like Lawrence.
“I have a low opinion of liberal arts colleges,” remarked Horowitz. In visiting universities across the country, he saw many examples of academic corruption in the administrations of these professional institutions. One of the main issues that he identified in several universities was in the women’s studies curriculum.
Many professors and institutions are teaching women’s studies and theories of feminism as political issues and as being built on “social constructions of gender.” This radical view of gender studies is taught as a doctrine to students, and Horowitz strongly objects to these views of radical feminism being pushed onto students in the classroom.
One of the main platforms for the Students for Academic Freedom organization is that students cannot get a good education with only one side of the story.
After looking at our catalog and conversing with some of our students, Horowitz suggested that there are a few problems with the academic atmosphere at Lawrence.
One problem he saw was that there are not enough conservative professors on campus. With the absence of conservative professors, Horowitz explained, the liberal students are never challenged; they do not have to defend themselves. Both points of view need to be represented to be fair to students who are paying $37,000 a year to attend school here.
Another issue in Horowitz’s view is the lineup of convocation speakers invited by the administration. He noted that a majority of these are leftist speakers, and stressed the need to bring in more right-side speakers.
Once again he stressed the need for equal respect for conservative students as well as liberal students at a professional institution of learning.
Horowitz also spoke about the War on Terror. He criticized irresponsible leadership in the Democratic Party, saying that Democrats have sabotaged the war effort by providing few ideas for improvement of the situation.
Since the members of the Democratic Party had access to the same intelligence information as President Bush himself regarding Sept. 11, there was no excuse for their betrayal on their stance in the war against terror, Horowitz explained.
He remarked finally that students today are being taught to be ashamed of their country, as if America deserves the hatred from the Middle East, when in fact there are many reasons we should be proud of our country.
“If you can’t be proud of your country, you can’t be proud of yourself and you can’t defend yourself,” Horowitz concluded.
Horowitz calls for diversity of views
