Horowitz Promotes Right-Wing Ideals At Local Conference For Conservatives

Campus Republicans had the chance on Saturday afternoon, to chat with David L. Horowitz, the man in the middle of campus controversies nationwide, after the publication of his book and advertisement, both entitled, "10 Reasons Why Reparations for Slavery is a Bad Idea, and Racist Too."

"I am elevating the reparations issue to center stage. It [reparations] is a dumb idea. I am giving a piece of friendly advice to the Left," Horowitz said to a medium-sized audience in the Science Center, few of whom were Harvard students.

Horowitz was one of seven speakers in a two-day-long conference sponsored by the non-Harvard affiliated group Accuracy in Academia, an organization formed to, according to its brochure "arm students with the truth that schools fail to provide."

Representatives from Massachusetts-wide campus Republican Clubs joined a handful of Harvard students and various other conservative supporters to contemplate "Prospects for Conservative Ideas in Higher Learning," the title of the Accuracy in Academia conference.

The thrust of the conference was to talk openly about conservative ideas that conference participants worry are not vocalized on college campuses nationwide.

Horowitz said that ideas about race that may conflict with mainstream beliefs are often not expressed on primarily liberal campuses.

"In terms of people's ability to express ideas, this is racial McCarthyism. Everyone is afraid of being labeled a racist," Horowitz said.

As part of what he called his "freedom tour of college campuses," Horowitz said that colleges in the Unites States are "run like medieval institutions."

"Conservative professors have been systematically purged. It's a disgrace. You [students] are being deprived of an education," he said.

He blamed Harvard's administration for keeping "incompetent" professors in entrenched positions through it tenure system and for coddling leftist ideas.

He also criticized the administration's failure to take more drastic action against the Progressive Student Labor Movement (PSLM) and its members that have occupied Massachusetts Hall for close to two weeks.

"I have gotten emails from conservative Harvard students asking what to do about the loonies out there on the lawn," he quipped. "If I were in the University administration I would arrest their asses and expel them."

Considering Horowitz's recent basking in the media spotlight, campus publicity for the event was relatively scarce.

"I would have liked to have seen him [Horowitz] at the counter protest [against PSLM]," Joseph M. Goodstein '04, an audience member, said.

"I think the lack of publicity was absolutely deliberate. Harvard's conservatives on are so worried about getting David Horowitz protested," Goodstein said.

In his trademark, no holds-barred style, Horowitz elicited giggles from the audience as he denounced Democrats.

"There are no liberals today. We are the liberals. There is nothing they [the Left] are liberal about, except hard drugs and sex."

"Most of the conservatives on campus are scared to say what he's saying," Goodstein noted.

But Horowitz's unrestrained style and politically-charged vocabulary was not embraced by all audience members.

"He bandied about terms like Socialist and Marxist a little too freely." Paul G. Eisenstein '04 said.

The deluge of anti-Horowitz editorials published in University newspapers across the country over the past few months are not keeping him down.

"I have been tarred and feathered from one end of the country to the other," he said with a smile.