short answer is, yes, but it will probably differ from place to place. >> okay. and rick? >> i think the superintendents approach this the way john has in terms of taking ownership that these are public dollars that need to be well spent, i think they're going to have a hell of a lot more success in legislatures. >> this okay, great. that's a great way to end. please join me in thanking our fantastic panel today. [applause] a couple other thicks to note concern -- things to note -- >> this event was hosted by the thomas b. fordham institute here in washington. for more information visit edexcellence.net. david horowitz argues that america's colleges and universities are more interested in promoting leftist ideologies than teaching students and allowing a forum for dissenting voices. mr. horowitz presents his academic bill of rights and his arguments against the current state of higher education at the

union league in philadelphia. this program is an hour 5 minutes. 15 minutes. [applause] >> thank you, craig. craig's done a terrific job in organizing and building our philadelphia freedom center, and i want to thank britney patrice as well who's a courageous student at temple at ed wilders there. ed wilders is the defendant in the most important free speech trial of our time in the netherlands. he's on trial defending the right to criticize islamic terrorism, islamic jew hatred, islamic hatred of gays and oppression of women. twenty years ago i appeared on a local los angeles television

program on a panel with a hollywood leftist named richard naser. richard was the head of the screen actors' guild, and he was on the program because he was supporting a california ballot initiative that would have created a universal government health care system in the state of california. and when it was my turn, i said, richard, socialism has failed all over the world, why do you think it will succeed in california? to which he did not have an answer. we are at an historical moment when one of our two political parties and our president have rammed through a massive universal health care compulsory health care bill over the objections and opposition of a

majority of the american people. we have a government and are driving, actually, for a single-payer system which is the socialist, communist, whatever you want to call it but that's what it is, a totalitarian system where the government will control your health. our government will only prosecute election fraud which is a crime aimed at the heart of america's democracy. if the perpetrators are white. our government is suing the state of arizona because it will only -- does not want to prosecute violaters of our immigration lawstheir skin color is brown. in other words, our government

has adopted the racist attitudes of the radical left, of the fringe crowd that richard mazor was speaking for 20 years ago. we have a president who considers america to be guilty before the fact and has toured the world bowing and apologizing to leaders of the most tyrannical, oppressive regimes and racist regimes on the planet. we have a president who thinks that bankrupting our nation is a matter of equity because it will bring fairness and more equality to international order. how did we get to this bizarre moment in our national history?

well, at the heart of this development the state of our nation's schools beginning with our universities but going right down through the k-12 system. because the curriculum in our liberal arts colleges is that america is a racist, sexist, classist, homophobic, imperialist power that probably deserves to be attacked. the heros of this curriculum are the people who supported the communist empire in its heydey, and i'll just single out one. the most widely-used textbook on american history both at the university, but especially at the k-12 levels, is written by howard zinn, a lifelong communist, a supporter of joseph

stalin, a supporter of mao tse-tung, a supporter of islamic terrorists fighting the united states. that is the assignment for students in our country. how did our schools get to this path? and, of course, i'm speaking now -- i'm not speaking of physics professors and engineering professors. i'm talking about the liberal arts schools, liberal arts colleges where our students take their required courses on their way to citizenship. and not every teacher is teaching howard zinn, but it's a dominant text, and that tells you this is a trend that's been going on for 30 years and will continue unless something is done about it. our colleges were all created

back in the largely harvard in the 17th century, but in the 17th and 18th centuries and 19th centuries as training institutions for ministers and priests. they were religious, they were religious institutions, and they instilled the doctrine of the particular denomination. if you went to a catholic school, you learned the catholic view of the world. and they didn't make a pretense to being libbal arts -- liberal arts in the classical sense of diverse, intellectually-diverse institutions. towards the end of the 19th century there was an industrial revolution in america and a scientific revolution, and that saw the state universities were created, land grant institutions. and that saw the creation of what is called the modern research university.

and the modern research university and where we get our precepts of academic freedom comes from this development. the modern research university conceived itself and promoted itself as representing the scientific method so that when there was matters of opinion at stake, when you had controversial issues, the procedure would be by scientific method. you would be -- the attitude was skeptical towards received doctrines and received truth including -- [inaudible] truths. yale, which was a school for ministers became skeptical towards religion and everything else and actually william f. buckley wrote a famous book called "god and man" at yale protesting that yale had made this transition without a formal divorce from its founding and

from clearing that with the alumni or the people that had contributed to and built it. the academic freedom provisions which were created by the american association of university professors stipulate that where there are matters of controversy -- and everything many this the liberal arts, practically, everything that's important is a matter of controversy, it's a subjective field; you can't do a scientific experiment in literature or philosophy and get a result, these are unresolvable conflicts of opinion -- the academic freedom provisions and really the academic standards of the modern research university say that in these matters the professor is is obligated not to indoctrinate his students, not to instill a doctrine. he can have a point of view, but

it can't be imposed on the students and, therefore, he is obligated to present divergent opinions in a fair-minded and judicious manner and to provide students with materials like books, reading assignments that reflect more than one side of a controversial issue. sometime in the 19 p 0s -- 1970s a radical cohort began to gain tenure and positions of power in the university and saw their mission as a radical mission of transforming society, revolutionizing our society in a radical direction, and the university as an instrument of that political agenda. and they began to reverse this hundred-year development of the modern research university and

revert to the 19th century model where professors come into a classroom to instill a doctrine. so students today do not get, they don't get readings on two side of controversial issues. i've audited courses, for example, of the supreme court where the only book assigned is jeffrey toobin's left-wing version of supreme court, recent supreme court history. this is a violation of academic standards and academic freedom, but there's no -- the university as an institution is pretty well nigh unaccountable both on the financial side, but especially on the curriculum. the curriculum side. i wrote a book called "one party classroom" which is just a review of over 150 syllabuses at

1 major universities -- 12 major universities. at the university of santa cruz there's a course which is described in the university catalog in these exact words, the goal is to learn how to organize a revolution, and then it explains that the revolution is anti-capitalist. a proper academic course would examine the proposition, first of all, that a democratic society where you can vote people in and out of power needs a revolution or that a revolution might be a good idea considering the bloody failures of revolutions throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. and it would present text on, presumably on both sides of controversial issues as to whether capitalism is a bad or a

good system given all the other systems that are possible. but this course just was how to organize a revolution. completely improper in a, in any university calling itself a modern research university that respects academic freedom. but especially in a state institution. seven years ago i began a campaign to try to address this system. one of the serious problems is is that 95% -- this is a harvard study, but it's confirmed by just a dozen studies -- 95% of professors in liberal arts colleges today are on the political left. they vote left, they think left, they finance candidates on the left. that in itself is a huge problem. and you can't go about firing

professors for their political views because that, that's kind of what we're trying to prevent, the establishment of a politicized educational system. so seven years ago i devised a, an academic bill of rights to address this system. and i did it for the chairman of the regents of the state university of new york, a system with 400 colleges and -- 400,000 students and 69 colleges. i was introduced to them by a son of philadelphia, wally nunn, and he was thrilled at the academic bill of rights i had drawn up because i, what i did was i codified the academic freedom provisions that the

american association of the university professors had devised in 1915 and had been part of the template of all universities for nearly 100 years. i just made it, you know, points one, two, three, and i presented them as rights and much more radically as rights for students. that is, if a professor was obligated according to the aaup to present views that diverged from his in a fair-minded and judicious manner and provide students with materials that would allow them to think for themselves, if that was a professor's obligation, my bill said that students had a right to expect that from their professors. it was as simple as that. and for devising this

academic -- well, what happened at the sunni system was that we had the opposition from the teacher unions which this aft, the aaup and the nea are the three big teaching unions, all of them run by leftists, all of them unalterably opposed to having two sides presented. and i say that because they were the chief opponents of this campaign for an academic bill of rights. and when faced with the opposition of these teacher unions and the left on his faculties and because he was an appointee of governor pataki as were all the regents and because governor pataki had presidential ambitions, he became completely paralyzed. he had told me exactly how he was going to put it in place,

and then nothing happened. so i went to, i devised a different strategy. i thought the only way for college presidents to have the spine to defend academic standards which they all claimed to support was to get another actor involved, and that would be legislatures. i went to the colorado legislature and asked them to devise a resolution, not a law because it would be a very bad idea for legislatures to try to run universities. that's a very bad idea, nothing that i've ever supported. but to pass a resolution urging the university to adopt an academic bill of rights. and i went to the president of the university of colorado and asked her to do the same before i went to the legislature.

and she had said to me, we have all these protections, david. just go up to our web site, and we don't have a problem. when i went to the legislature, the first thing that happened was even before we published the academic bill of rights, the denver rocky mountain news ran a story that i wanted to fire all the leftist professors and hire conservatives. the first principle of the academic bill of rights is you cannot hire or fire a professor based on their political views. i put that in -- i knew there was already guaranteed and already respected, but i put it in to prevent people from attacking me for wanting to fire leftist professors. i have never called for the firing of a leftist professor because of their leftism. i even defended the notorious fraud ward churchill who said that the inhabitants of the

world trade center deserved to die because they were nazis. i defended him because the first amendment of our constitution gives everybody the right to embarrass themselves in public and to come out with reprehensible views such as churchill undoubtedly has and not be fired for expressing those views. it's another thing what he does in the classroom, but that was an internet article. despite this and the rocky mountain news immediately retracted the story because i happened to know one of the editors and i was a libbertarian and printed -- libertarian and printed an accurate story on the am academic bill of rights. two days later the denver post ran an editorial saying that david horowitz and republicans want to fire leftist liberal professors in the state of colorado.

and just ignoring, ignoring the truth. and that's because of the pressure of these teacher unions. a former lieutenant, democratic lieutenant governor in the state compared me to joseph stalin and joseph mccarthy in a column in the, in the din very -- in the denver post. but we got this bill, the academic bill of rights, just a resolution through the education committee, and when that happened, the a political miracle, if you will. the first thing that happened when we got it through by one vote on party lines, the democratic party is in the pocket of the unions. everybody who doesn't know that should know that. they don't even think for themselves on these issues. that was no chance that they would read the academic bill of rights and make, come to a reasonable conclusion. but lo and behold when the 6-5

vote was done on the education committee for this bill, the president of the university of colorado appeared and went right to our legislators and said, would you -- will you withdraw this bill if we put the principles in place? and by the way, i went up on her web site, on the universityover colorado web site, there were no guarantees of academic freedom rights for students at the university of colorado. so, of course, we said, yes, we will withdraw the legislation if you do the right thing, and then there was a joint resolution from both houses in colorado, and, you know, the resolution was adopted, and, of course, nothing happened. and nothing happened because as you may know a couple of billionaires in colorado set out to make the colorado a blue

state and succeeded, and the minute the republicans lost the majority in the house, it's just out there. and that's the biggest problem in changing our universities and getting any kind of enforcement. university administrators are scared of their radically, you know, i was going to say radical faculties. the faculties are not necessarily radical, but they are dominated politically by radicals. larry summers, who just resigned as the chairman of economic advisers for president obama, was the most powerful president in the history of the modern research university. but he ran afoul of the political left at harvard pause he opposed -- because he opposed the jew-hating campaign to divest from israel. that was his first sin. and then he asked an airhead

professor who happened to be black named cornell west to produce a scholarly work, something he hadn't done in 20 years even though he was getting a six-figure income and was a very privileged, his title was university professor. and cornell west just said that -- all he had to do was say publicly that larry summers had a problem with black people, and the harvard faculty left rallied to his support, and larry summers became the first university president in the history of the modern research university, a hundred years, to be censured by his own faculty and then fired. then he had to resign, he was forced to resign because he was crippled. so university administrators are intimidated by their pack allty unions -- faculty unions which are all, usually, i should say, dominated and can controlled by the left. there's a good reason for that. these leftists, their agenda is

political. a true scholar doesn't want to be bothered with departmental politics. so i, i was, i have been and this campaign has been tarred and feathered. i mean, they've not only accused me of being mccarthyite, thought controller even though i've defended ward churchill, even though i've defended edward who was a flaming leftist, appointed dean of the law school at uc irvine because they then withdrew the appointment when some conservative donors finally woke up to the fact that he was a leftist, i defended irwin, and i did so, i mean, i debated him, i have no respect for his political views, for sure. but you can't fire somebody for their political opinions. doesn't matter i am portrayed as the torque mat toe of the

university. worse than that, there was a systematic campaign to say that i was lying and making up the facts when i reported what students told me about what goes on in their class room. and what goes on in the classrooms would shock most people if you haven't already heard the stories. i mean, i was just up at the university of massachusetts am am -- am amherst, and a political science major told me his exam was a speech by ronald reagan, and there was one question which was explain why reagan is i don't think. reagan is wrong. this is indoctrination. this does not allow the student to have another opinion from the professors. and we had a similar case in colorado where a student was given an exam, and i've -- in

this book i told this whole story of my seven-year campaign at the universities in this book, "reforming our universities." the student was given an exam with a question, so-called, explain why george bush is a war criminal. and she was a fairly traditional person, and so she could not bring herself to answer that question. question, that to explain why george bush is a war criminal. so she explained why saddam hussein was a war criminal, and she was failed on the exam. and that was then adjusted by an appeals process. but what happened, i was attacked by the, by an agent of the american association of university professors in the cleveland plane dealer. by the way, the media in general, the mainstream big city papers, small city papers all

are on the political left when it comes to these issues. this column said that i had invented the student, claimed i tried to find the student and the professor and the course and couldn't, so the first set of stories that came out was that i was lying, there was no such student, i had made the whole thing up. then, you know, we went to work, and they had to admit, of course, there was a student, there was an exam, but that i had misrepresented the question on the exam. and what had happened was that the professor had destroyed the exam papers, and then he reconstructed it. but he reconstructed it so it was really the same question which was explain why the united states was -- that the invasion of iraq was criminal, the united states was -- it was a criminology course which is why this kept coming up.

which was the same question. but the education media inside higher ed.com, you know, they linked to my response to all this. but the fact was it was kind of blitz rated. obliterated. why did they call me a liar? because it would have been inpolitic for them to call the students liars which is basically what they were doing. we have hundreds and hundreds of testimonies by students about what goes on in the classroom, and it's not very subtle. professors will go on incredible rants about george bush, about america being racist and sexist, imperialist and so forth. and some -- every now and then a ward churchill, you know, is exposed. but if you, if you don't have some respect for what students are telling you, nobody else is

in the classroom who will tell you. a professor's not going to tell you what he's teaching. we had our greatest success -- well, by pursuing this legislative resolution path i actually got john boehner was courageous enough to put it in an education authorization bill act, the principles of the act 'em doic -- academic bill of rights. and that got the university presidents very frightened even though it was just a resolution. i should say i was in a meeting with boehner and his legislative aides, and the legislative aides said that the democrats, there are four parts of the education authorization act that are nonnegotiable, they will absolutely not support the act. and they may have had a majority

in the senate at the time. if those are in. and one of them was the academic bill of rights. and i said to congressman boehner, you know, it's a multibillion dollar bill, i probably think the money is mainly wasted, but still i thought what if there's one student -- i said, you know, the academic bill of rights could wait, maybe, on this bill, and he looked at me and he said, this is a fight i want. and the result of that was a compromise where the american council on education which represents 1800 universities and colleges, the president said we have an indefensible position. we looked at david horowitz's academic bill of rights, and we don't see what the objection is although the aaup was comparing me with saying it was orwellian and comparing me -- actually, members of it compared me to hitler germany, the laws in hitler germany, fascist japan

and italy, i was the -- i think that the campaign as i describe it in this book is very instructive or should be to every american, but to conservatives in particular about how unscrupulous and ill liberal so-called liberals are. it's why i hate it when anybody refers to it. ..

well reflected our concerns. it said the core principles of american higher education are intellectual pluralism. intellectual diversity and academic freedom. and students should not be indoctrinated. so every university in this country of note has signed on to that document but only the universities in an ohio have actually attempted to make a step towards implementing them. why is that? we went through the legislature in ohio and got a resolution for an academic bill of rights and the seventeenth major state universities came to us and said will you withdraw the legislation if we implement the

american councils so we said yes. and i will tell you there were two of the university's i will talk about in the state of pennsylvania where we made even more progress. the only reason those ohio universities did that is because we went to the legislature. and i will say that we could have 2,000 or 3,000 universities on to this if the republican party would wake up and put this reform on their agenda. every republican party, every state party should have an academic bill of rights in its platform and put the pressure on. if that happens, there are good people in the university's, they will do the right thing. our greatest success was in the state of pennsylvania where a

courageous young legislator who was an army ranger, give armstrong, in the legislature behind an economic bill of rights. and we had thanks to a friend in this state goat support of the speaker of the house and pennsylvania but the republicans did not have the stomach to pass a resolution and that is because of a power of the teacher unions with their allies in the local and statewide media. that is just a political fact. so what they came up with turned out to be much better idea which was to create a committee to

look at the academic freedom principles of the state. our students guaranteed the right to hear two sides in a classroom? when al gore's in convenient lie i guess is what you would call it, his alarmist propaganda film about global warming has been shown in classrooms across the country, never was critical material, and effort with -- handful of other films with scientists challenging this global warming doctrine and ideology. in no classes that i know are those materials that i'm familiar with produced. it was practically a party-line vote. some democrats switched over and some republicans.

a committee was authorized to be held in nine months in the state of pennsylvania. democratic members of that committee from day one attacked it saying it was a hunt for bigfoot, this was a complete -- mccarthy committee, a witch hunt. the committee we organized was about looking to see if academic freedom policies to see if students are guaranteed the right to hear two sides if there is a grievance procedure. if professors abuse the power classroom as many do. that is all a was. we have administrator after administrator come up and swear that students were already protected.

there was not a single state university in pennsylvania which there are more than 17, penn state has many campuses. there's also a pennsylvania state system which has 15. not a single one of them. not one guarantees students ferrite of academic freedom, to hear two sides to question. there are wonderful academic freedom is particularly at penn state's. which said in so many words but teacher is obligated not to indoctrinate their students but to give them the materials that would allow them to fend for themselves but it was in the employee handbook students are not employees.

their professors. the pennsylvania whatever it is higher education system in 17 schools had as part of the union contract students are not members of the teachers' unions so students didn't have it. a administrators came and with a straight face said we have all these protections in place and there are no complaints. at penn state said we only had 13 complete. immediately the democratic legislators jumped on gibson armstrong and republicans and said 80,000 students and only 13 complaints. after the hearings were over -- i wish i had thought of this when they were in place, we sent an inquiry to the program that can state, how many gender discrimination cases to you have in a year and how many on the

basis of race? one. one gender, one race. and yet there are tens of millions of dollars spent every year at penn state and the other universities on diversity and the tremendous amount of literature. what would be so hard about doing this for intellectual diversity which is the core of one academic education should be about. we were attacked by the democrats on the committee. dubee armstrong and 50 student testimonies from pennsylvania students. none of them signed. he knew the names. students were afraid to sign the statement and democrats on the committee were completely -- and the press -- completely uninterested in student testimonies and descriptions in

the classroom of one professor protect the monterey language at school where army personnel get trained in foreign languages same abyss that up because america wants to kill colored people. it is tragic what is going on in our universities. students in a democracy in america intimidated from lodging a complaint wind a professor of english goes on a rant about the war in iraq. complete the unprofessional and outside their expertise. there is one -- there are some good voices that have appeared as a result of our campaign. last year's president of the modern language association, professor gerald graff at the

university of illinois is a leftist, he is a leftist. he writes for magazines like radical teaching. but he -- he has a theory that teachers should teach the conflict. they should be advocates on either side of the conflict. they should teach the conflict. they should impose on students -- seems like very basic elementary stuff. and he has been challenged. he is a lone voice. his challenge now by professors particularly in the education field. the argument they hold is you can have one of two views.

radical view that -- of social justice, social justice is part of the curriculum to personal social justice meaning redistribution of income just as socialist doctrine -- in fact they tried to make a requirement for graduation from one of these schools until there with a protest and they withdrew it. but now they devised a psychometrics model for determining whether a prospective teacher or undergraduate or graduate student in an education school has social justice values and if they don't they are not qualified to be a teacher. in other words there's going to be a radical witness for k-12 teachers in the imminent future if people don't wake up and

start opposing these ideas and yet they say in so many words you can read this in the publication of the month, the modern language association is the largest professional association of academics at 40,000 members and in the last issue there is a letter which states in so many turns that you could holy two views. you either have the radical leaf or the hegemonic view. what the left is great at is changing its name. my parents called themselves progressives. then we were new leftists. i didn't go along with this change but others said there were liberals. now there progressives again. very hard to pin down. hegemonic means speaking for the

ruling class. there are only two possible positions. one is you accept the radical perspective k-12 teachers, you except the radical critique. and the other is you represent the ruling class. the author of this letter says if such a teacher wants to accept the hegemonic view, not qualified to teach the conflict. so for the left which is now offended in our liberal arts colleges, what is legitimate, for conflicts are within the left. you can be a feminist marxists or socialist or feminist socialist or whenever. there is a specter within the left. that is all that is legitimate. we are transforming our liberal

arts colleges into indoctrination and training center is for the political left and the democratic party. this country's democracy cannot survive this trend if it isn't stopped and refers to. to stop it for anybody who is an actual liberal is only to and bring it back into conformity with the scientific method and the modern research institution where divergent ideas are respected. at the university level there should be a respect for different opinion and a discussion should take place on an intellectual level. and i'm going to close with this. the really bad trend in our universities is evidenced by the fact that i am not alone.

robert spencer, and coulter and other conservatives canada as a college campus these days without bodyguards and without the university assigning five, 10, 15 security guards just to protect our physical safety. that is not the majority of the student body. it is a small fraction of the student body but university administrators will not discipline the students, will not discipline student organizations. students for justice in palestine, which is an arm of the muslim brotherhood. the international socialist organization. all these organizations get money from student funds and behave like campus fascists. and university administrators

will not touch them because they are afraid of their radical faculties. that is the situation. that is not an insoluble problem. there are plenty of people of good will in the universities and who would do something. if someone would get at their back and put pressure on to do it, what we have shown in pennsylvania and i should close with this, the upshot of the pennsylvania academic freedom hearings which were described as a total failure and waste of time by the press and teach reunions and ignored by the republican party and conservative establishment. the fine academic field provisions were taken out or were extended from the employee handbook to apply to students. they passed a resolution and

applied them all to students for the first time in the history of this country or the history of penn state have academic freedom rights. and the trustees at temple university did the same thing. at penn state when the hearings were going on temple university said they were concluded and i will do you those are the only two universities in america were students have the right to hear two sides of a controversial issue. which is a sad commentary on the state very universities but is a sign of hope for the future because if republican party would wake up there will be democrats who will wake up. if this becomes an issue for conservatives just to get the curriculum into conformity with the scientific method, with traditional academic standards and by traditional i mean modern

liberal university, to one good bill buckley complained about. if they would just live up to their own standards we could solve this problem. thank you. [applause] >> we have time for a few questions. david does need to be out of here to talk of the our promptly. we also will have some books if anyone else will purchase for signature of reforming the university. if there's any questions. we will get some microphones to you guys. please speak into the mike because this will be televised. thank you. >> i want to recognize members of the steering committee that came today. thank you so much. dick fox is a member of the steering committee. whether he knows it or not we love him. i would also like to thank gary to couldn't be here today and ed

snider as well for helping us to host these events. thank you. [inaudible] >> has anything changed yet in terms -- >> very good question. students are scared. because there are no conservatives left two or three on the faculty does not do it. students are afraid to bring a complaint. what they will do is parrot back when they think the teacher winds them to say which is a terrible commentary. i was able to encourage a student at penn state and i describe all whole chapter of this book, i described what we

went through to file a grievance and if i hadn't been there absolutely nothing would have happened. defect i was a presence and the provost -- every president knows who i am and given armstrong's father was chairman of the appropriations committee. i got their attention. otherwise this kid would have just been brushed off. courageous student did this. the issue was this. he was in speech communications class and he gave a speech on mohammad as though a free-speech issue and showed the n e a refunding work of art in which a crucifix was inserted in a

bottle of urine and he said however offensive you may regard the law, the cartoons, they are protected under the first amendment and we have to live with offensive speech. that is what free-speech is about. he then in the course of his speech held up one of the mohammad cartoons. muslim student called him a racist on that basis and two leftist students said they were offended by his speech. work on his professor came over and said if you give another speech like that the the offense students i'm going to be forced to lower your grade which is a direct infringement on his free speech. that is where we are.

so he filed this complaint. they make you file it during the class. when he said to me i can't do it, a said do it after the class and we will fight that issue if it comes up which it did. then you have to complain to the professor who is accusing you. then you have to complain to the chairman so he went directly to the chairman and chairman of the department said good public speaking doesn't offend people. what came to lima and martin luther king didn't offend segregationists. so took us going for the process. the provost office, hands of. i met with three provosts and their attitude was faculty has to make the decisions.

address added is your regulation. administrative ruling. so i finally encourage the student to go to the dean of liberal arts college with whom i have had conflict before. she is a pretty radical feminist. but maybe she is fair minded. maybe she will be fair minded. it took 11 months to get these rulings. we had three courses and did not succeed in the other two. one of the was a course in which they showed al gore's and inconvenient for swiss no critical material. and she came down with an excellent ruling. in that ruling she said abraham lincoln's second inaugural address in which the civil war was meant as a curse by god for the sin of slavery probably offended slave owners but is considered the finest speech in

the english-language. and she said that the communications department, they have to hand out the economic freedom provisions that have to have a course, a lecture for the communications professors on the first amendment so they would understand the principle. i am completely satisfied with that but it won't happen again. i actually do know if one conservative on the faculty at the university, 115,000 students worse something, is professor is an assistant professor and doesn't have tenure. totally scared. so without support, they have to be fairly reckless or extremely

bold in water to challenge professors. in the department they are majoring in this is a terrible situation. professor michael is a professor there and he endorsed -- i submitted the academic bill of rights to him when i first draft it. anything he found objectionable i took out just to get his support and he said it is fine with him. and the minute i came out with it, one of the most unscrupulous and vicious attackers on me personally. ridiculing me and attacking me. but you have to develop a thick skin so i appealed to him. i said the students have no support. will you organize some liberal professors to help enforce your

academic freedom positions for students? nothing. >> another question. going back a little bit. a complex question here. compound question. it is 2010. there are a lot of technologies available that may render the whole going to lecture with 300 other people a bit obsolete or unnecessary. my question is what is even the role of the university today and beyond that, should all the students that are going to school be going to universities or should there be something different and regarding the problem you describe, the indoctrination at what point is there a market solution with the economy going poorly? when did people start saying it is worthless to major in sociology at a school? >> too many questions. we are wasting money and injuring students by saying

everybody should have a university education. some students would do much better in their lives if they had some kind of a technical professional training to answer that question. some of this problem is being solved by internet universities. university of phoenix and so forth. harvard was created in 1636 and has an incredible history. i guarantee you that people will be wanting to send their youngsters to harvard. in these institutions they are venerable and world-class institutions when it comes to the sciences but what is very sinister about this is a radical element has insinuated itself into their structure in the liberal arts division. and has taken fields like women's studies and converted

them into political parties. where you have to subscribe to a radical political agenda in order to succeed. that is a problem that won't be solved. it has got to be solved by people -- a question of restoring standards. trying to get people when they vote to have the credentials that allowed them to revolt and not being dead. there's a similar problem to that. we have to reinstitute standards. if you where a radical way you hear the word standards you reach for your weapon. it is just another way of enforcing racist hierarchy,

sexist, racist and homophobic hierarchy. standard is what it is about. >> i think there is nobody better than helping create change than students kiss themselves. in listening, you spend a lot of time with university people and even if they sign these bill of rights i don't know if there's a way to enforce the professor level. however, if students themselves are the ones asking for that kind of change and asking for that bill of rights do you think it might be more effective? >> that is the way i began this campaign. i organize students for academic freedom. first of all there's a lot of distractions. they have a lot of agendas. you are asking an awful lot of

students to go up against their professors. i have one standard and the process of launching this year--a little difficult because of the election cycle -- a campaign to adopt a descending book where we have students, 45 campuses who will go to their professors, a 1-sided text in their course, ask the professor to adopt a different book. if he says no, go to the chairman or the dean or the chancellor or take it public, hy am hoping to embarrassed the more decent element in the university into thinking about their responsibility of educators to teach students how to think and not just tell them what to think. i would like to recognize this gentleman because he ran from

harvard corporation. you have a question. >> the general theme is the university professors are often not teaching of the way they should. my question is this. in light of the fact that the number of administrators and colleges has. substantially and a lot of those administrators's jobs are to do things as i see it that are not related to what happens in the classroom or are related in a bad way, would a possible line of attack be to say in today's financial world colleges should reduce the number of administrators they have very substantially. my question is if they did that would that have a positive effect on what you would like to see happen? >> i have personal experience at this. the left is entrenched in the

diversity administration for example. i would guess and state and universities like a spending millions of dollars annually for these -- there's probably of -- for one case--one case a year, you could get a lot of saving their. andrew hacker who are have not agreed with in 40 years--the universities are out of control in terms of accountability. the waste of money is unbelievable and many ways to economize and reducing the number of administrators, this is up problem, lack of accountability of professors in the classroom. the lack of respect for students and lack of respect for elementary democratic,

principles. [talking over each other] >> why don't the trustees do something? and all the administrators. >> the problem is why don't the trustees do something? the university of pennsylvania has 90 trusties. i have had lunch with one of the trustees, any board with 90 people on it is a rubber stamp. anyone who knows anything about running a corporation knows that. secondly, help me personally that there are five trustees at the university and they are all loyalists and grouped around the president of the university who is a far left and happens to be

-- trustees are usually -- i had a friend who when i first met him i immediately started in on all my university experiences and he said to me i have been the chairman of the trustees at a major public university for 15 years and i had no idea what was going on in the classroom. that is because trustees are doing important work which is building schools, raising money, and so forth. that is how they see their roles. in the second place if a trustee uttered a word about what went on in the classroom the american association of university professors which is a marxist organization now would be screaming bloody murder that it is political interference in the

corporate business world, interfering in our sacred temple of reason. that is another one. at duke university their return terrible incident a couple years ago worship three white students were lynched by the university president and his administration. they were accused by a criminal who happened to be black and a pathological liar and drug addict of raping them. something that never happened. a particularly unscrupulous prosecutor or district attorney, lowell is a prosecutor in north carolina -- the university president with no evidence

suspended them, suspended them across the season. i will tell you there are conservative trustees at duke of that were defending the school in this unconscionable behavior. why? because they are due loyalists. because duke is a great university. it has a terrible -- its literature department has a marxist studies course where people who are complete amateurs when it comes to many subjects marks was seriously concerned in our training students to the marxist. that is the bad side of do. as complete the documented in a book by stuart taylor and casey johnson, racist and black studies department and other black studies department couldn't wait for these white kids to be ruined because they

were white and middle-class. nonetheless, duke has world class divisions in engineering and physics. so the trustees are defending that. it is no different from the cover-up in the catholic church over the child molestation. the institution is just so big and does such a good work that you cover up the bad. the bad in this case is to return to the outset of my talk, transforming our universities and training centers for radicals and has totally transform the democratic party which is now left-wing socialist party which it wasn't 30 or 40 years ago. >> talk radio is the major voice of conservatism today.

why don't you have a presence? >> me personally? first of all, on the west coast, i can't come to the studio. it hit the five times which is unprecedented. thank you all for coming. >> thank you, david horowitz. >> david horowitz is president of freedom center. and author of numerous books including one party classroom and indoctrination you. visit horowitzfreedomcenter.org. >> a new book out, "blur," how to know what is true in the age of information overload. in your book, one of the

chapters is we have been here before. what does that mean? >> we have gone through this dislocation created by expansion of inspiration time and again throughout history. newspapers scoreboard at the time the printing press, and information about the institutions. and it took decades the industry of information sharing to develop newspapers, and -- and this is time after time with each new change in technology we have gone through a period like

this. >> why the name "blur"? >> because information moves so fast now and there's so much of it, with information was in greater supply, knowledge to create. there is a feeling that things are more confusing even if we are having more information at our fingertips. >> how do we cut through that? >> we hope the way consumers do it, and consumers are more in charge than they have ever been. we are and confirm of our own media in where we have never been. we hope, developed the skills to know what is reliable. that is what the book is about. the one resided in the newsroom,

shared with a consumer. it is also true that when things are not certain and confusing a lot of people just gravitate toward news they agree with. where we are looking at is something of a war between people who want to be empirical and provide evidence and show how information is gathered and people who want to assert what they believe and amass an audience that way. >> author co-authors of the elements of journalism. >> i began in a little town to where the civil-rights movement and poverty that work for the new york times.

and the chief of the washington bureau and i was editor of the atlantic journal constitution. and the curator of the foundation of journalism, and working with tom and of running an organization we created. trying to preserve the values of journalism. >> your background? >> i spent 12 years at the l.a. times. 10 of them as a press critic for the paper. i work for newsweek, for the few charitable trusts about creating a think tank, i created in 1996 in journalism.

and a few research center in washington, in the corporation of the united states studying what the media actually produced. and you shouldn't do that, really isn't an affect any more. you decide what it is going to do. >> any types of news they want when they want rather than wait for the morning paper? >> absolutely. it is wonderful system we have now. the only problem is people are now as tom said, there own editors of what they are going to bring into their report and their own reporters producing this that i am bringing in.

people have to become much more aware of the information they're bringing in. it was produced to inform or propagandize to help them understand or to recruit them into a cause. this is what this book was designed to do, to help them use the process, the methodology of verification the best truth seekers use to create their own package. >> "blur," how to know what is true in the age of information overload. >> we are pleased to be joined by the founder of the national book festival and former first lady laura bush. it was september 8th, 2001, the first national book festival was held on capitol brown founded by laura bush. it has grown so large they hold it in national mall with all

sorts of tends. >> it is such a thrill and i'm thrilled to see so many people who have come out for the first reading. we can hear gordon wood reading behind us. happy to see how many people are here. >> host: we continue to hear about the demise of the publishing industry and demise of books in general but then you hold a book festival like this -- >> guest: 100,000 people show up. >> host: the texas book festival as well which you found as well. what does that say to you? >> guest: people do love to read. part of the demise of the publishing industry which i don't think is in the eyes. i think they will figure out a way to be around it. you can get all those books on your ipad or electronically. rather than buying from hard copy of a lot of book lot of people are downloading them because the good news is you can do that in 35 seconds.

as a one someone recommend a book you can down load it on your ipad. because of that people will continue to read. they will continue to buy hardbacks or hard copies of books because they want to have them for their collection. there are certain books like our beautiful children books, so many beautiful children books that we are so fortunate to have in america. people will want to look at because the illustrations are so lovely and so much fun to look at. >> host: in september 8th, 2000, when you opened the first national book festival and now you are returning as an author published in may, spoken from the heart. i want to get your reaction. when you speak you will talk about 9/11. you write that on friday night, september 7th, 2001, we held a gala before the official day of events.

dr. billington introduced me as the back of the stage of the. i walked out, the crowd gasped and i felt this was my official debut as first lady not quite >> host: -- nine months after dorr took office and doing what i love the. mind in my place in the world of washington and beyond. >> guest: when i looked at it i saw that leading up to september 11th, this was the book festival, and the morning of september 11th which i will read about in a minute i was on my way to capitol hill to greet the senate committee on early childhood education. i think i was just finding my way as first lady. right before the weekend before we had hosted the mexican president, president fox, martha fox on september 6th for our first state dinner. when i left for the capital that morning on september 11th, white house grounds were covered with

picnic tables. we were hosting the whole congress and their families for the congressional picnic that night. in many ways i was just finding my way and figuring out what i wanted to do and i knew what i wanted to work on was education and reading because that has been my whole life and that is what happened that weekend before september 11th. >> host: you write extensively about 9/11 and also about the iraq war and katrina. how personally did you feel as first lady the politics and what was going on? >> guest: i felt personally the politics and criticism about george. everyone does that lives there. i also knew it was a fact of life. i knew when he ran for president that that is what happens to the american president. we had been the child of a president ourselves, the children of a president and we had been so distraught when his

dad was criticized so much in 1992 when he lost that election and we knew what we were getting into. you really know to expect that and it is nothing new. we feel like it is new. as we look around now and see the criticism of our current president but if you visit the lincoln library in illinois you see the terrible things that were written about lincoln. it was not 24-hour news but pamphlets were published so critical and terrible about him. it is just a fact of life and also a function of our democracy. that we can criticize our president. that we do have the freedom to say what we want to say. as much as i hated it, terrible things about george i also knew that was part of life in the united states and it is a part we should be grateful for. >> host: at what point did you grow skin thick enough to

withstand the criticism? >> maybe we have been growing that skin from when george's dad was vice-president but also, i knew more than the critics. i lived with georgia. i didn't know every one of them, he didn't tell me everyone because he didn't want to add to my worthy. i felt like i knew more a lot about the issues than the people criticizing him. >> host: in "spoken from the heart" and you write about those. you are known have a private person, only child. a couple things you write are about the private trips you took and one of those private trips that wasn't on your schedule is a visit with mary and perle in paris. >> guest: i knew about danny perot's kidnapping. he was a wall street journal reporter and he had been kidnapped. we all probably assumed he was dead but we didn't know that foreshore and when i was in

paris i knew maryann pearl lived there. i made a call on her and had a chance to visit privately. my daughter was with me. we have a chance to talk to her to bring some encouragement and comfort to her. shortly after that we found out daniel pearl had been be headed. and the tragic way he was killed. i went to paris last year a year ago after george was president for international literacy day. i invited mary and pearl out to lunch with the current embassadors, the bilateral ambassador to france from the united states and the wife of our ambassador so they could meet her. but in fact she told me then and a few weeks later she was, she became an american citizen. a citizen of the united states.

>> host: with the privacy thing you discuss as you talk about your years 70 trips and hiking trips with your friends and how you were able to get away on those. it is possible we have seen the articles about the car lebron the book, first lady of france and what michele obama reportedly said. is it possible to have a private conversation in your capacity? >> it is absolutely. she probably didn't say that at all. that was probably made up. it is possible to have friendships and a very normal life. i know people don't believe that because you live in such a magnificent mansion with every help including a pastry chef that you can imagine. i knew the white house could be home because george and i stayed there with his mother and dad and barbara bush made it a home for all of her children and grandchildren and i knew i could do that with barbara and jenna

and george. the other thing george and ira lucky about is we have lots of longtime friends who came up and visited. >> host: there was another bush family book coming out in two months. have you read decision point? >> guest: i read it and it is very good. people will really like it. it publish is in november. decision points. people will really like it. it is very george bush. [talking over each other] >> guest: not really. we were both right in our books at the same time and shared researchers. each had our own researcher who would go to the archives where everything is documented. for instance when i wrote about september 11th to look at the secret service log and timeline to the cat howard fast time line and look at everything else on our schedule around that day so i could write about it, very

straightforward and honest. we did share researchers. we talked to each other about what we were writing. george did ask me to take a couple stories out of my book that he thought were his stories and they were. [talking over each other] >> guest: they restore is about something that happened to him that i was reporting on secondhand in my book but he wanted to include in his. >> host: in your acknowledgements you acknowledge and thank andy card and josh bowlen. what was your relationship with the chiefs of staff? >> guest: he had great chiefs of staff, fine men. i was close to both of them. both of them made an effort to have lunch with me once or twice a month just so we could have a chance to visit and talk about what bothered me or what i was interested in and they could tell me what thing they saw

coming up on the schedule that they thought would involve me. it was great to have that relationship with them. andy card's wife was a methodist minister and on the day after september 11th when i went to visit with my staff who were young women, many of them straight out of college who never expected to be told to run from the white house, they thought it was a glamorous white house job but had to kick off their high heels and run on september 11th, i asked in the card's wife kathleen to come with me because she is a methodist minister and was able to counsel law young staff members who were getting used to having a job that was more dangerous than they expected. >> host: who is lerwick when it? >> guest: she lives in

washington. she was helpful because she knew what it was like to live in washington during the years i was writing about. her husband is a historian. he has written two magnificent books. april 18, '65 about the last month of the civil war. george ran early on in his presidency and we both were very fond of it and the other one i am not sure it's a well-known is called a great upheaval. it is a history of what was going on during the time of the founding of the united states and i found it so interesting because we think of our founding in a vacuum. we don't really know. for did you know that catherine was those are of russia when the united states was founded? it is a great way to put our revolution into perspective. >> host: for viewers who are interested we have covered him on booktv. go to booktv.org.

we have the search function in the upper left-hand corner. you can type in the name and watch it on line free of charge. is "spoken from the heart" -- you write in 2000 for the social question that animated the campaign was gay marriage. before the election season had unfolded i talked gay marriage insignificant issue. we have a number of close friends who are gay or his children are gay. have you talked to him since that came out? >> guest: i have not but he was in dallas. we had a fly in with a lot of administration people to talk about the bush institute we are building as part of the bush library and can was my dinner partner that night. i know him very well and i respect very much his decision to go public because i know it is difficult. it is very very difficult for many people to be able to admit

their feelings especially in the republican party. but i am proud. many republicans and many other people have accepted and always accepted him as a great friend and accepted his choices. >> host: what are you reading and what is the president currently reading? >> guest: i'm reading one of the great books -- the great thing is leading booksellers all-around united states when you are there for a book signings. they would give me a book that they recommend and one of them is my name is mary tudor. .. historical fiction about the civil war. out in his very excellent beer, then another is cutting for stone, a texas book festival, i'm not sure if he has been a national book festival writer or not it is historical fiction also about to ethiopia during the