How come there’s not more anthropologists listed in David Horowitz’s list of academic traitors? We’ve worked hard to earn such an honor, and as I’ve noted before, others from McCarthy himself to the ACTA have seen fit to recognize our contributions to the intellectual well-being of the United States. I could only place three: Lila Abu-Lighod (note the post-modern shudder quotes around “gender, class, and modernity” in her profile, as if those things really don’t exist, ha ha), Nicholas de Genova, and Gayle Rubin. Granted, I haven’t gone person by person through the list, so there may well be one or two whose names I don’t recognize, but still — out of about 200 names, anthropologists should make up at least 15 or 20. If we can’t earn Horowitz’s scorn, then what the heck are we doing out here anyway?!
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Thanks for the link … certainly Donald Brenneis is a self-proclaimed anthropologist and is described that way in his bio. (He is, of course, a recent past president of the AAA). I also note the names of many authors that appeared on our graduate school curriculum who may not be identified here as anthropologists but are part of the intellectual community that informs anthropology.
See, I missed Brenneis. Many of the other folks, like Said (picking on the dead, very nice Horowitz!), are of course important figures in the intellectual landscape that informs anthropology, but I just don’t get the same thrill from that. If David Horowitz doesn’t think you pose a serious threat to the American Way of Life ™, what good are you doing?
There’s also Liz Brumfiel.
The thing that makes this sort of list so sad — like the “Worst Books of the 20th Century” list — is not that Horowitz disagrees with their writings, but that there doesn’t seem to be much comprehension at all of what any of these people have said. People with fundamentally different viewpoints that you is one thing. People disagreeing with you while having no clear idea what you say is something else. I mean why is Carol Gilligan on the list and not, say, Catharine MacKinnon? It’s incoherent.
On the other hand, the up side to the ‘academic traitors’ list is the same as the “worst books of the 20th century” list — it’s a great reading list for designing syllabi or doing some summer reading!
I remember people were writing to DH and demanding to be added to the list, I guess he never took the time to add their names.
Here are two good pieces on DH from Inside Higher Ed:
David Horowitz’s War on Rational Discourse
Detente With David Horowitz
Michael Berube fairly savages Horowitz’s entry on him at http://www.michaelberube.com/index.php/weblog/network_news/ . I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating — Horowitz is a schmuck. If you ran into him at a Bar Mitzvah, you’d ditch him for the drunk uncle who touched you when you were little.
“On the other hand, the up side to the ‘academic traitors’ list is the same as the “worst books of the 20th century” list—it’s a great reading list for designing syllabi or doing some summer reading!”
Really? Because, uh, well, most of the people on that list are pretty stupid. Radical leftists, anti-Semites and extremist environmentalists.
I’m anti-war, by the way, so I have no special love for Horowitz. But you’ve got to admit most of these people are loonies.
They’ve also targeted an anthro grad student at Chicago, Lori Allen. They seem to have pulled her name off of a web search.
It’s worth noting that while the website is, as has been pointed out ad nauseum, puerile and frequently barely proofread (Michael Hardt is listed as a ‘professor of romance’), I don’t agree that it’s incoherent. For one thing, there’s the laundry list of New-Left figures that Horowitz et. al. are settling scores with. There’s also the calculated mix of a few obscure embarassments (the self-proclaimed Stalinist, etc.) with lots of academic celebrities. And the careful targeting of members from major 1960’s social movements is very comprehensive (just the right number of chicano activists, just the right number of Native American activists, etc.).
Everybody already knows Horowitz is a thug, including many of his supporters and underwriters. He is supposed to be a thug. But he is quite dangerous. Horowitz’s tactics are, to an uncanny extent, the realization of the worst elements of the 1960’s New Left _as it was portrayed by its opponents_. The anti-intellectualism, the targeting, the hyperbole…
People have been dealing with this crap in Europe for ages (Andre Glucksmann, anyone? Bernard Henri-Levy?). A suggestion: the trouble is that few people say anything about Horowitz’s past, and if there was more interest in defending what he was a part of, perhaps it might be easier to dismiss him.