Dean of the Faculty
Speeches & Articles
“Steinberger’s Defense: An Essay” Reed College Quest
November 29, 2005
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Horowitz sometimes takes positions that are worth considering, perhaps even adopting. But based on what I’ve read (and I’ve read far from everything; it pretty quickly became hard for me to see the payoff), even at its very best his work too often represents, in my opinion, the worst kind of polemics – a type of rhetoric in which isolated pieces of evidence in support of a thesis are presented without systematically considering potentially contradictory evidence. This is precisely what I tell my students not to do. Example: in the debate, he said that none of the students whom he had met at Reed had ever read Thomas Sowell (a fairly well known African-American conservative economist), and that this demonstrates the biased, left-wing nature of Reed’s academic program. But if, as I suspect, those same students had also never read the work of, say, Michael Harrington or Cass Sunstein or Michael Walzer, should we conclude from this that the Reed’s academic program in fact has a strong right-wing bias?
But now you may ask: why is all this relevant to the debate? Let me explain.
I am unable to account for the writings and claims that I have described above other than as acts of political warfare. As such, they provide, in my opinion, the necessary and unavoidable context for making sense of the Academic Bill of Rights. It’s precisely here that Mr. Horowitz’s larger point of view – all of the claims about treason and fellow travelers and subversive radicals and the undefined but rhetorically pronounced effort to link Democrats, abortion rights activists (NARAL), environmentalists (League of Conservation Voters) and the cruel, murderous minions of Stalinist regimes – all of this is absolutely essential. I have been criticized for having unfairly and without warning changed the topic of the debate; instead of the Academic Bill of Rights, I spoke about Horowitz’s work in general. But with all due respect, I firmly reject this criticism. Horowitz says on many occasions that the subversive, anti-American, totalitarian left controls college campuses. In the light of this, and in the light of Horowitz’s larger view of things, I believe it is impossible not to conclude that the Academic Bill of Rights – however innocuous it may appear – is in fact intended as a weapon in a deadly serious political struggle. If you don’t understand this fact, if you think the Academic Bill of Rights is simply a benign effort to enrich the academic life of colleges and universities rather than an attack on the totalitarian, treasonous left, then I believe you utterly fail to understand what it’s all about. The Academic Bill of Rights is literally unintelligible apart from the broader context of argument and assertion out of which it plainly emerges. And I’m not just saying this now; this is a view that I emphasized and defended in the debate. In my opinion, to have treated the Academic Bill of Rights in isolation, apart from its discursive setting, would have been intellectually dishonest, hopelessly naïve, and completely futile. One might as well try to analyze a sacrifice bunt without knowing anything about baseball. For all these reasons, moreover, it seems obvious that Mr. Horowitz should have been prepared specifically to defend precisely those arguments and assertions – his own work, recently published – that provide the absolutely essential background. He wrote this stuff; he’s accountable for it.
That’s my view. I could be wrong. But in presenting my view, I don’t recall making any ad hominem remarks. If I did, I shouldn’t have. What I intended to do, and what I believe I did do, was articulate my view, which I firmly believe to be true, and to present as much detailed evidence in support of that view as time would allow. I don’t think I said anything that I didn’t document. Mr. Horowitz was angry because I came to the debate with a written presentation. I did that because I was trying to be responsible, to be prepared, to be conscientious, to be careful. I tried to do my homework. I don’t know why that was a bad thing.
Let me also emphasize that none of this has anything at all to do with right and left. Political warfare is hardly the exclusive province of David Horowitz or of contemporary American conservatives. I regard people like Michael Moore, Al Franken and Noam Chomsky as political warriors of the left, and I don’t much like their work either. If I were asked to debate them – God forbid – I would try my best to subject their work to the same kind of hard-nosed analysis. Political warfare is what it is. For better or worse, it has always had a place in political society, and I’m actually fine with that; but please don’t tell me that it’s the same as serious, rational, intellectual discourse.
In the debate, I didn’t rant or rave. I didn’t shout. I don’t think that I raised my voice. I didn’t interrupt. During Mr. Horowitz’s rebuttal, I respectfully kept my mouth shut. Again, I don’t believe that I was ad hominem. I tried my best to present an honest, dispassionate, systematic, hard-nosed analysis of his work – the Academic Bill of Rights – as I understood and interpreted it. If this was unReed-like, I don’t know why. I have been criticized for having been inhospitable and unfriendly to a guest. I suppose that’s ultimately for other people to decide. My comments were certainly blunt. But in that regard, I would actually refer to Mr. Horowitz himself. At one point, he explicitly defends “the bluntness of [his] attack on the current civil rights leadership” by saying that he “considers candor a sign of respect for people.” I was candid, I called it the way I saw it, I tried to focus not on Horowitz’s person or character but on his published words, I tried to do my homework, I tried to support every claim with evidence – and in doing so, I believed, and continue to believe, that I was showing respect for the audience, for the event, for the organizers and, yes, for Mr. Horowitz himself. If I made mistakes – and believe me, I generally make far more than my share – you are of course free to hold me accountable for them.
(I can provide specific documentation for every quote and assertion that I have here attributed to Mr. Horowitz. If you wish to see the specific references, come by my office and I’ll give them to you. You can then decide for yourself if I have unfairly characterized his work or taken quotations out of context.)
