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This page is about the social activist and writer. For others, see David Horowitz (disambiguation)
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. He is currently a writer the conservative magazine NewsMax Magazine.
Life and career
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 degree 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.
Horowitz is a prominent opponent of affirmative action programs in the United States and distributed an essay entitled, "Slavery Reparations are a bad idea, and racist too" to more than 50 college universities which sparked protests.
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; Left Illusions: An Intellectual Odyssey (2003 ISBN 1890626511); and "Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left" (2004 ISBN 089526076X). 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
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