Apparently, the David Horowitz-pimped story of the University of Northern Colorado student who was given the job of writing an essay on "Why George Bush is a war criminal" isn't going away just yet.
Recall from back here the story of how, in the tradition of right-wing college wingnut and whiner Ahmad Al-Qloushi, we had David Horowitz re-emerging out from under his rock and pushing yet another sob story of that evil academic, left-wing liberal bias, and how Mano Singham, a professor at Cleveland's Case Western Reserve University, tried in vain to corroborate Horowitz's story.
Well, it's not over yet.
From Singham's own blog, we have a recent update:
I received a call yesterday (March 14) from a person associated with Students for Academic Freedom informing me that my op-ed had triggered the release of more information on their website, where more details are given.
"Students for Academic Freedom"? Ah, that would be the watchdog campus group founded by none other than ... David Horowitz. Wow! Small world. Who would have thought that you'd have, leaping to your defense, the very organization that you ushered into existence? Talk about a lucky break, eh?
But Singham continues, suggesting that there's probably enough corroboration to conclude that something happened, even if it's not clear what:
Although the student referred to had not in fact given this testimony at the Colorado Senate hearings as had been alleged earlier, the level of detail (which had not been released until now) provided on the SAF website is sufficient to remove this story from the category of urban legends since it does give some names and places and dates. But a judgment on whether this constitutes academic bullying will have to await more details on what actually transpired between professor and student. My contact at SAF says that the incident is still under investigation and confidentiality prevents the release of more information.
Fair enough, but what does the SAF website actually say? Well, bless my soul, talk about timing -- there's a brand new article there, by none other than Horowitz, of course (not directly linkable as far as I can tell, but it should be obvious -- it's the one hilariously entitled "Correction: Some Of Our Facts Were Wrong; Our Point Was Right"). I'll leave it up to you to read the entire thing, but let's just hit the embarrassing highlights (or lowlights as the case may be):
You have to admire the left, or at least its ability to conduct political warfare. We have mounted a campaign for academic freedom based on hundreds of testimonies from liberal as well as conservative students in more than 30 states and at colleges from coast to coast, but leftists have pounced on a single student’s testimony about a single exam at the university of Colorado in an attempt to discredit all the evidence we have gathered and the case we have made. Not one leftist or liberal media outlet has attempted to find out for itself what is taking place on college campuses and how extremist ideologues like Ward Churchill are conducting themselves in the classroom. But a reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer and an army of Internet bloggers has taken the time to zero in one of the hundreds of cases we have identified with the obvious intention of bringing the entire campaign for academic freedom and just plain decency in the classroom to a halt.
Translation: "How dare you spend so much time catching me in a lie? Don't you all have better things to do?" (And, apparently, Singham has been demoted from Case Western Reserve faculty member to newspaper reporter; maybe it pays better.) Anyway, onward:
What we have in Northern Colorado is a student who feels intimidated by her own university administration, and a university administration who, as reported by Scott Jaschik, says this about her story: 1) The exam question was not “Explain Why George Bush Is A War Criminal.” 2) She did not receive an “F” – as she claimed to us – for writing that Saddam Hussein was a war criminal. 3) There were two required questions on the test and two optional and the one the student chose was one of the optional questions.
Uh ... yeah, it's those little details that kinda make or break a story, isn't it? So, what really happened? Well, according to Horowitz himself, here's the actual test question:
“The American government campaign to attack Iraq was in part based on the assumptions that the Iraqi government has ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction.’ This was never proven prior to the U.S. police action/war and even President Bush, after the capture of Baghdad, stated: ‘we may never find such weapons.’ Cohen’s research on deviance discussed this process of how the media and various moral entrepreneurs and government enforcers can conspire to create a panic. How does Cohen define this process? Explain it in depth. Where does the social meaning of deviance come from? Argue that the attack on Iraq was deviance based on negotiable statuses. Make the argument that the military action of the U.S. attacking Iraq was criminal.”
Oh, OK, I can see how someone could misread that as "Explain why George Bush is a war criminal." Well, all right, if they were a complete imbecile, perhaps. Or just dishonest. Your choice.
But the best part, naturally, is Horowitz's "Some Of Our Facts Were Wrong; Our Point Was Right". And doesn't that sound familiar? Yes, dear readers, Horowitz has pulled a "Jinx McHue"!
Can I come full circle or what?
POSTSCRIPT: For completeness, Scott Jaschik's piece on this can be found here. And I'm not quite done with this story, so check back later for some afterthoughts.
SUITABLY SNARKY BUT BRIEF AFTERTHOUGHT: From Jaschik's article:
[Horowitz] added, however: "I consider this an important matter and will get to the bottom of it even if it should mean withdrawing the claim."
And the title of Horowitz's SAF piece: "Correction: Some Of Our Facts Were Wrong; Our Point Was Right".
This is an interpretation of the phrase "withdrawing the claim" with which I am thoroughly unfamiliar. And no, I'm still not finished with Horowitz. More to come.
3 comments:
Forgive me if I treat Horowitz's Frontpagemag.com site with the utter and unrestrained contempt it deserves.
If you have a URL to a moderately reliable, maintream site, I'll look at it. But, really, don't waste my time trying to defend David Horowitz by referring to supporting pieces written by David Horowitz or his supporters.
Next.
"I think what Mr. Horowitz is saying is that an appropriate question would say argue whether or not the Iraq war is criminal."
I disagree. All that this question is doing is instructing a student to argue from a certain perspective. That's not bias. The teacher is evaluation whether the student understood Cohen's approach.
By the way, I think that students who constantly flip out over questions like that aren't university material. I knew a university prof quite well for a few years. He was always using devious ways to teach his students concepts and proper academic thinking. The one's who didn't get it? 'C' or 'B' students at best. Oh, they'd complain and complain, but they never got the point. Student are in university to learn, not to spout off any perspective they'd like.
In university, it happened that I got questions along the line of 'From a Marxist perspective, prove....' Drove me nuts as I was a conservative thinker at the time. It still would irritate me. But I learned a lot by doing it.
And whether Horowitz has a supposedly liberal complaint is besides the point. He's essentially trying to quota the teaching of political perspectives, which is wrong.
Horowitz is a wingnut anyway. He actually argues elsewhere that Hitler and the Ayatollah Khomeni were left wing. It's silly: demagogues are demagogues. He makes the argument just to smear.
"I think what Mr. Horowitz is saying is that an appropriate question would say argue whether or not the Iraq war is criminal."
I disagree. All that this question is doing is instructing a student to argue from a certain perspective. That's not bias. The teacher is evaluation whether the student understood Cohen's approach.
By the way, I think that students who constantly flip out over questions like that aren't university material. I knew a university prof quite well for a few years. He was always using devious ways to teach his students concepts and proper academic thinking. The one's who didn't get it? 'C' or 'B' students at best. Oh, they'd complain and complain, but they never got the point. Student are in university to learn, not to spout off any perspective they'd like.
In university, it happened that I got questions along the line of 'From a Marxist perspective, prove....' Drove me nuts as I was a conservative thinker at the time. It still would irritate me. But I learned a lot by doing it.
And whether Horowitz has a supposedly liberal complaint is besides the point. He's essentially trying to quota the teaching of political perspectives, which is wrong.
Horowitz is a wingnut anyway. He actually argues elsewhere that Hitler and the Ayatollah Khomeni were left wing. It's silly: demagogues are demagogues. He makes the argument just to smear.
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