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David Horowitz (born January 10 1939) was born to a Jewish family in Forest Hills, New York and is a writer and political commentator. He was prominent in the American New Left movement but today holds staunchly conservative views – now referred to as a "lapsed leftist". He is currently a writer for the conservative magazine NewsMax and his own FrontPageMag.com.

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. Horowitz became a prominent member of 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; he once distributed an essay titled "Slavery Reparations are a bad idea, and racist too" to more than 50 college and university student newspapers. Though the essay was offered as a paid advertisement, it nonetheless sparked protests and few papers accepted it. His "crusade against intolerance and racial McCarthyism on college campuses" inspired the book Uncivil Wars.

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 alleged 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. In spite of Horowitz's insistence that this is different from an affirmative action program for conservatives, many liberals believe it is essentially just that.

Horowitz was attacked with a pie in the face by left-wing activists during a lecture given at Butler University just days after similar incidents at Western Michigan University, during a speech by Pat Buchanan, and Earlham College, during a speech given by Bill Kristol.

Projects

In 2004 Horowitz launched Discover the Networks (DSN), a conservative watchdog project that monitors the relationships between groups and individuals on the political left in the United States. DSN researches the political activities and financial supporters of its subjects and publicizes connections between prominent liberal figures and communist, socialist, Arab terrorist and other organizations described as extremist by the group.

Criticism

In 2003, leftist activist Chip Berlet wrote an article for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) entitled "Into the Mainstream", which named Horowitz's Center for the Study of Popular Culture (CSPC) as one of an "array of right-wing foundations and think tanks support efforts to make bigoted and discredited ideas respectable," for passages pertaining to Horowitz's writings against slavery reparations and affirmative action. In an open letter to SPLC president Morris Dees, Horowitz urged Dees to remove the article from the SPLC website, alleging that it was "so tendentious, so filled with transparent misrepresentations and smears that if you continue to post the report you will create for your Southern Poverty Law Center a well-earned reputation as a hate group itself." Dees declined to remove the article. Since then, Horowitz's Front Page Magazine has carried a response from Berlet accusing Horowitz and the CSPC of using "inflammatory, mean-spirited, and divisive language that dismisses the idea that there are serious unresolved issues concerning racism and white supremacy in the United States," , a further rejoinder from Horowitz addressed to Dees, and an article by Chris Arabia harshly critical of Berlet in which he claims that Berlet's work creates the "false illusion that conservatism and racism walk hand-in-hand."

Books

Horowitz has written many books and pamphlets, including:

• Student: The Political Activities of the Berkeley Students, (1962, this was his leftist period)
• The Free World Colossus: A Critique of American Foreign Policy in the Cold War (1971)
• "A Radical's Disenchantment," The Nation, December 8, 1979
• Radical Son: A Generational Odyssey (1998 ISBN 0684840057), his autobiography
• Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts About the '60s by Peter Collier, David Horowitz ISBN 0684826410
• Uncivil Wars : The Controversy Over Reparations For Slavery (2002 ISBN 1893554449)
• Hating Whitey; The Politics of Bad Faith ISBN 189062621X
• Left Illusions: An Intellectual Odyssey (2003 ISBN 1890626511)
• Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left (2004 ISBN 089526076X)
• The Anti-Chomsky Reader with Peter Collier (2004 ISBN 189355497X).

Together with Peter Collier he wrote several best-selling biographies of prominent American families:

• The Rockefellers: An American Dynasty (1976)
• The Kennedys: An American Drama (1985)
• The Fords: An American Epic (1987)
• The Roosevelts: An American Saga (1994)

Quotes

• "If blacks are oppressed in America, why isn't there a black exodus?" - from the 1999 Salon article "Guns don't kill black people, other blacks do"

• "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 fucking Sandinistas!" - In the dining room of the Intercontinental Hotel in Nicaragua, during the fall of 1987

• "Leftists think that nothing is bad but the Holocaust." - from a speech at Michigan State University

• "Leftists want to regulate everything but hard drugs and sex." - from a speech at Michigan State University

External links

• FrontPageMag.com - online neoconservative magazine edited by Horowitz
• David Horowitz's Long March by Scott Sherman in The Nation
• FrontPage magazine.com About Horowitz
• Know Your Right-Wing Speakers: David Horowitz
• What's Not To Like About The Academic Bill of Rights by Graham Larkin
• Media Matters entries on Horowitz
• Jesse Walker of Reason Magazine on the dangers of the Academic Bill of Rights
• Students for Academic Freedom - website promoting the "Academic Bill of Rights"
• Disinfopedia - David Horowitz
• The Delusions of David Horowitz (Counterpunch)
• Horowitz: "I'm not a racial provocateur" (Salon)
• Legislating Academic Freedom: The Larkin-Horowitz Debate
• Paul de Rooij, "Undermining Civil Society: David Horowitz's Corrosive Projects", CounterPunch, April 11, 2005.
• MediaTransparency, "David Horowitz", an overview of Horowitz, and some articles referring to him.
• Graham Larkin, "David Horowitz's War on Rational Discourse", Inside Higher Ed, April 25, 2005

• 1939 births
• Black Panther Party members