Tenured radicals, or something

I read this book yesterday. It was a silly book. My children will write books of this caliber at the age of 6.

After the introduction, Horowitz dives right in, profiling 101 of the most "dangerous" academics in America. Here's what the dust jacket says:

"We all know that left-wing radicals from the 1960s have hung around academia and hired people like themselves. But if you thought they were all harmless, antiquated hippies, you’d be wrong. Today’s radical academics aren’t the exception—they’re legion. And far from being harmless, they spew violent anti-Americanism, preach anti-Semitism, and cheer on the killing of American soldiers and civilians—all the while collecting tax dollars and tuition fees to indoctrinate our children."

Here's the thing. There's a real debate to be had here, about freedom of speech and expression, tenure, and Ward Churchill. But this book is merely a caricature of one side of the debate: that these professors, who probably average teaching about a class a year, really are radically disconnected from American society and that their colleges graduate legions of clones each year. Horowitz's main problem with each professor seems to be that they opposed the Iraq war. Sorry--that's not radical. The people in America who take geopolitics and policy and history and blogging seriously are pretty much split about the war, and the rest of the American public changes their minds about it on a regular basis-- the same people that voted for Bill Clinton in 1996 and George W. Bush in 2000. It's 2006. Teaching women's studies, opposing the Iraq war and having Marx on your syllabus is just not that radical, and it's certainly not dangerous. (A few of the professors do seem to have pretty insane views.)

AND, there's no list or index of the professors: you can't see that Howard Zinn is on page 141, or Alison Jaggar is on page 67. I bet someone has made one, but the book doesn't have one. Horowitz could at least stand by his own list.