Book
lists CSULB professor as ‘dangerous’
By
Patrick Creaven
Online Forty-Niner
Contributing Writer
According to best-selling author David Horowitz, one of the 100 most dangerous
professors in America teaches at Cal State Long Beach.
CSULB’s Ron Maulana Karenga, a black studies professor, is named along
with Noam Chomsky, Ward Churchill and 97 other professors as being dangerous
to the students they teach in Horowitz’s new book, “The Professors:
The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America.”
“
[Karenga] is a torturer,” Horowitz said. “I don’t understand
how a university can hire someone with a past like Karenga’s.”
Horowitz said he has never talked to Karenga, but professors and students who
have interacted with Karenga see him in a different light.
“
Professor Karenga is a great man,” said black studies department Chairman
Alosi Moloi, who has known Karenga since 1971. “He is one of the great
intellectuals of his time, and is one of our very best professors. It is not
even worth responding to criticism from a moron like Horowitz.”
Karenga, probably best known for his role in inventing the holiday Kwaanza,
and Horowitz, who is one of the most popular formerly-liberal-turned-conservative
authors in the country, are on opposite ends of the political spectrum.
But that has not always been the case.
Horowitz was a Marxist for the first half of his life. In his book, Horowitz
says he was one of the founders of the New Left Movement in the 1960s, and
was a member of the Black Panthers in the 1970s.
In 1974, Horowitz recruited one of his friends, Betty Van Patter, to do bookkeeping
for the Panthers. Six months after Van Patter started working for the Panthers
she was murdered. The case remains unsolved, but Horowitz blames the Panthers
for her death.
“
Her death had a profound effect on me,” Horowitz said. “I opened
my eyes that just because what these people said sounded good, it wasn’t
the kind of people I wanted to be a part of.”
After Van Patter’s death, Horowitz became a conservative and has since
spoken strongly against the Black Panther Movement he was once a part of.
In “The Professors,” Horowitz focuses much of his criticism toward
Karenga on an assault and false imprisonment charge, which Karenga was convicted
of in 1971.
Karenga was, and continues to be, the founder of the Black Nationalist Organization
U.S. (the Organization Us, or what
Horowitz called in his book, United Slaves), which at the time was a rival
to the Black Panthers.
The book quotes a May 17, 1971 Los Angeles Times article that detailed the
assault by Karenga and two other U.S. members on two women. Karenga served
four years in prison for the crime.
Media Matters for America, a Web-based non-profit watchdog of conservatives
in the media, has criticized Horowitz for the type of evidence he presents
in his book.
According to Media Matters, Horowitz only printed information about activities
and speeches outside the classroom for 52 out of the 100 professors in the
book. In the four pages about Karenga, none of it covers actual classroom activities.
Horowitz said he wrote the book because he believes professors are less about
educating their students, rather than promoting their own political views.
“
When I was a Marxist in college, my professors treated me with respect and
didn’t try to impose their own political views on me,” Horowitz
said. “Now professors try to push their political agenda rather than
giving their students a fair education. I’m not familiar with the black
studies department at Cal State Long Beach, but I bet there aren’t any
books written by conservatives.”
Yolanda Reed, a black studies professor, has looked at Horowitz’s list
of professors, but doesn’t see how they are dangerous.
“
Does it make you dangerous just because you think outside the box?” Reed
asked. “Just because you are a free thinker and are politically in the
middle or on the left, it doesn’t make you dangerous.”
Both Reed and Moloi also criticized Horowitz for being selective in the choosing
of professors for his book. Of the 100 professors in the book, none are conservative.
“
There aren’t any [radical conservative professors],” Horowitz said. “Conservative
professors have to walk on eggshells to get tenure at a university. Plus, conservatives
usually aren’t concerned about pushing their views. They are there to
educate.”
Christina Watkins, 18, has met Karenga and attended his lectures.
“
He is a very intelligent man and he makes things easy to understand. I would
like to take one of his classes in the future.
Everyone likes to take his class,” Watkins said.
When asked if she felt Karenga was dangerous, Watkins responded, “Dr.
Karenga dangerous? No not at all.” Professor Karenga declined to comment.
|
