We live in extreme times. When diversity of thought and the free expression thereof is not tolerated by a free and democratic society we risk plunging into a new "dark ages" where thinking is regulated by those for whom certainty is absolute. The problem with certainty is that it is not open to rationality. Certainty demands blind obedience to what is known to be true rather than be burdened by having to examine one's beliefs. What is problematic is that mainstream booksellers like Barnes & Noble place books like David Horowitz's The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America on the shelves as if it presents a well-researched stab at some kind of "truth."
"We think of blacklists as something out of the 1950's McCarthy red-baiting era. But a new report by Free Exchange on Campus highlights how recent attacks on university professors for exercising their freedom of speech in the classroom are eerily similar to that decade of ruined reputations (and lives).
"In Facts Count, Free Exchange analyzes David Horowitz's The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America, a diatribe published earlier this year by the extremist Regnery Publishing. Regnery is the same group that packages its most recent bit of bombast, The Politically Incorrect Guide [P.I.G.] to Women, Sex and Feminism, as feminist lies finally revealed, and was behind the pre-2004 election screed, Unfit for Command, which attacked John Kerry and his three Purple Heart awards."
AFL-CIO Weblog | Academic Blacklist Gets an ?F? for Factual Errors:
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