Horowitz to speak at MLA meeting

From this morning’s Inside Higher Ed:

The program for the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association is out and there is a surprise speaker: David Horowitz. The long-time critic of the academic left and humanities professors will appear in San Francisco Dec. 29 on a panel on academic freedom, along with Mark Bauerlein of Emory University (himself sometimes a critic of the academic left, but one whose tone would not be confused with that of Horowitz), Norma E. Cantú of the University of Texas at San Antonio, and Cary Nelson of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (who, as president of the American Association of University Professors has frequently criticized Horowitz).

Horowitz has repeatedly questioned why academic groups have not invited him to speak at their meetings. … In the past, Horowitz has been critical of the MLA, with a few swipes in his book on “dangerous professors,” and with articles his Web site publishes. Via e-mail, Horowitz praised the MLA for the invitation. “It’s about time academics behaved like academics and opened a discussion with its critics,” he said. He called Gerald Graff, president of the MLA and a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, “one of the few academics with enough courage to write about the problem of classroom indoctrination.”….

Research has tended to dubunk Horowitz thesis concerning classroom indoctrination.

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