Cavuto to Horowitz: "[H]ow will you know that the professor you have is insane?"

Written by Simon Maloy

Published

Fox News' Neil Cavuto interviewed right-wing activist David Horowitz about “radicals” at American universities. Cavuto asked Horowitz whether “we have to be on guard against nuts in the classroom,” and “how will you know that the professor you have is insane?” Horowitz advised staying away from “women's studies, black studies, cultural studies, whiteness studies, post-colonial studies, all those studies,” and appeared to add anthropology.

On the April 27 edition of Fox News' Your World, host Neil Cavuto interviewed right-wing activist David Horowitz about “radicals” at American universities. Cavuto asked Horowitz whether “we have to be on guard against nuts in the classroom” and “how will you know that the professor you have is insane?” Horowitz advised staying away from “women's studies, black studies, cultural studies, whiteness studies, post-colonial studies, all those studies,” and appeared to add anthropology -- the study of the origins, development, and behavior of human beings -- to the list, though Cavuto cut him off.

Horowitz's latest book, The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America (Regnery, January 2006), attacks professors as “dangerous” largely for their activities outside the classroom, as Media Matters for America documented. Since the release of The Professors, Horowitz has appeared on Fox News at least nine times -- primarily on Hannity & Colmes.

From the April 27 edition of Fox News' Your World:

CAVUTO: Well, remember Jay Bennish? The geography teacher who compared President Bush to Hitler? Or Ward Churchill, the University of Colorado professor, when he claimed America deserved to be attacked on 9-11? And the Taliban spokesman who made it into Yale while American students were being rejected? So with kids getting ready to pick the college of their choice, should parents be worried that they're shelling out tens of thousands of dollars for their kids to be brainwashed by radicals? Our next guest says yes. David Horowitz is the author of The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America. And, professor, good to see you.

HOROWITZ: Good to see you, Neil.

CAVUTO: So we have to be on guard against nuts in the classroom?

HOROWITZ: Oh absolutely. I just spoke in -- at Arizona State, and a student who's out of state, so her parents are paying $28,000 a year, was in an English class where the English professor assigned a paper. The topic was: “Who is more insane? [Nazi war criminal] Adolf Eichmann or George Bush?” You can imagine what that kind of class is like. I think that parents can protect their youngsters by telling them to choose their courses carefully.

CAVUTO: But how will you know that the professor you have is insane?

HOROWITZ: By contacting other students--

CAVUTO: But what if there's only a couple of professors who teach the required course that you need, and one of them is a nut?

HOROWITZ: That is a problem. The left has worked to get its courses required. But you could probably go through college without encountering a real whacko, if you choose --

CAVUTO: I never did. I don't know about what college you went to.

HOROWITZ: Stay away from women's studies, black studies, cultural studies, whiteness studies, post-colonial studies, all those studies.

CAVUTO: But they creep into PoliSci 101 --

HOROWITZ: Stay out of anthropo --

CAVUTO: -- they creep into just general dissertations on economics.

HOROWITZ: I think this is true.