"Scenes From the Cultural Revolution"
Last spring I organized college students to investigate the voter-registration records of university professors at more than a dozen institutions of higher learning. I had them target the social sciences. The students used primary registration to determine party affiliation, although admittedly, it's not always an exact match.
David Horowitz
Closed doors, closed minds
June 20, 2002
The "working groups" organized sessions to expose and to criticize teachers and divided all teachers into four categories: good, fair, those with serious errors, and anti-Party, anti-socialist rightists.
Youqin Wang
Student Attacks Against Teachers:
The Revolution of 1966
July 1996
* * *
In Colorado and Indiana, a national conservative group publicized student allegations of left-wing bias by professors. Faculty . . . were pictured in mock "wanted" posters; at least one college said a teacher received a death threat.
Associated Press
Conservative Students Target Liberal Profs
December 25, 2004
During the Cultural Revolution, Red Guards turned to a more spontaneous medium to denounce alleged counterrevolutionaries. They wrote "big character posters" and posted them outside people's houses or schools to publicly expose their alleged crimes.
Irene Leung
Writing and Technology in China
I think the idea of intellectual diversity on campuses is great. I just think David Horowitz is a idiotic blowhard who completely misses the point. Within a Government department, as far as international relations is concerned, a school should try, when hiring, to cover the entire range of legitimate and credible philosophies - from realism, to liberalism, to constructivism. For Economics, there should be professors who are very pro-free-market, and professors more influenced by Galbraith and the like, or revisions of Keynesianism. Within every department, there are differing schools of thought that are integral to a full understanding of the material at hand, and these ideas rarely break down on lines so simple as conservative vs. liberal.
ReplyDeleteAs for Marxism being irrelevant, well, first of all, my guess is that Horowitz is among the group of conservative reactionaries who believe that, once far enough to the left, an idea is socialist/communist/marxist/"evil red commie bastard". Scandinavian countries aren't socialist - they are thriving capitalist economies with universal welfare policies. As a result of culture and reigning ideology, they actively seek out a more even distribution of wealth, and a guaranteed minimum standard of living. Some academics believe stark inequity can cause political/macroeconomic unrest, and these are valid ideas. Horowitz's ideology hasn't undeniably triumphed, and besides, is he really comitted to diversity, or just a conservative dominance of intellectual debate?
I didn't misunderstand you, what I was saying was more of a general issue I have with the "intellectual diversity" thing, i wasn't actually responding to you, just tossing out a related opinion I guess. Its something about Horowitz's whole thing I wanted to get off my chest.
ReplyDeleteYeah, my response made it clear I know more about government than I do about economics, and I was hard pressed to come up with decent examples...I don't really know economics that well, at least in terms of formal schools of thought.
As for the Scandinavia thing, right, its not quite capitalist, and not quite socialist. Japan, from what I've read, actually built a system post-war that was a blatant compromise between Marxism and capitalism. I think it evolved differently in Europe. I'm not entirely wrong with what I said about them being capitalist. But, your point about different ideologies coexisting is still valid either way.
Anyway, yeah
Didn't mean for it to seem that I didn't think you were against intellectual diversity. Just wanted to point out there is a lot more to the term that Horowitz lets on. I go off on tangents without provocation.