Higher Un-Learning and the Attack on Black Scholarship: The Political and Racialist Demagoguery of David Horowitz

Abstract

To say that popular writer David Horowitz is a staunch conservative is not very useful or important to the following discussion about this strange and confused Jewish man. Indeed, whatever happened to Horowitz’s integrity and commitment (as a young man) to the cause of liberal ideas and principles, such as racial equality, equal rights for all; and specifically, justice for the poor and the downtrodden? Did Horowitz sell his soul to the devil for selfish reasons (and recognition), and/or for money? Horowitz, no doubt, enjoys his role immensely as an academic provocateur or troublemaker, and champion of the new conservative right. We are dumbfounded by Horowitz’s neo-ignorance. But he is certainly making more money as a rabid conservative than when he was an avowed left-wing radical of the sixties. So Horowitz has essentially sold-out the traditional liberal cause with his hackneyed criticism of black, public intellectuals and black liberal scholarship. But he should know that all Americans do not share his conservative points of view and mistaken philosophy on many political issues.