When most people think of a university, they think of degrees and professors, of term papers, late nights at coffee shops, or even sports teams. When David Horowitz thinks of a university, he thinks of deception, trickery, activism, and indoctrination. For the last few years, he has been making it his duty to turn a spotlight to what he feels is a significant threat facing modern academia – the supposed transformation of higher education into a platform for the mindless indoctrination of America’s youth.

Mr. Horowitz makes two main claims throughout the bulk of his rhetoric. Firstly, he believes that many of university-level academic disciplines have, over time, been subverted and fundamentally transformed into platforms for ideological indoctrination. Then, to support this conspiracy of dangerous leftist educators, he makes the claim that there is an institutional policy of excluding conservative viewpoints completely by refusing to hire conservative professors. In his article entitled General Introduction to the "Indoctrination Studies" Section he even goes so far to claim that “[Liberals have] put in place the largest and most effective blacklist in the history of the country.”

These are provocative claims indeed, and in many ways it’s a shame that, while he is perpetually invoking scientific inquiry, pluralistic education, and the disinterested search of truth, the man evidently knows little about any of those principles.

The most blindingly problematic aspect to his argument is that, while he cites study after study, and pulls quotes from countless student anecdotes, he never actually provides any definitive evidence that there is any actual indoctrination going on – at least in the way he means the word.

There are two primary accepted definitions for the word “indoctrination,” as evidenced by the entry in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. The first meaning of “indoctrination” is “to instruct especially in fundamentals or rudiments”, while the second – the sort that Horowitz is presumably trying to expose – is “to imbue with a usually partisan or sectarian opinion, point of view, or principle.” If, by using the word “indoctrination” in the first sense, then he would be absolutely correct, and there wouldn’t be a controversy. As for the second, we can look high and we can look low, but we can find no actual evidence given in any of Horowitz’ writings that would definitively prove, using the principles of disinterested inquiry, that actual indoctrination of the sort he is describing is actually going on.

He gives evidence of the unmitigated expression of opinion and even of attempts to persuade , but he has yet to produce any evidence of any trend among higher education students to accept, without critical analysis or question, everything that is presented to them. In fact, most of his anecdotal evidence makes a much better case for a lack of tactful consideration on the teacher’s part, telling tales of offended and emotionally distraught students.

However, offense is hardly indoctrination.

One might think that this might be bad enough, and that all education must be completely inoffensive and impartial, but if radical thought and controversy is sterilized from higher education, how would students ever learn how to hold their own opinions in the face of opposition? Not only does Horowitz assume that students are obsequiously malleable, the environment which he proposes actually encourages blind faith in anything that is presented as being authoritative. After all, if bias is ostensibly not allowed, what reason would students have to try to stand up to the common doctrine?

Of the statistics Horowitz seems to enjoy citing, a particularly high concentration of liberal professors as compared to those of a more conservative leaning seems to be of his favorites. This, he claims, is proof of a “blacklist,” and a widespread institutional bias against the hiring of conservative professors. It’s fairly conspicuous, however, that he never produces any actual evidence of procedural wrongdoing in hiring practices at any of the universities that he has supposedly investigated, much less proof of systemic political corruption. The best information he can present is a trend for certain disciplines to have higher percentages of liberal professors as compared to conservative ones. Unfortunately, anyone who’s taken an entry-level statistics class knows that it is incorrect to say that a correlation between two things inherently shows a causal relationship.

To give a somewhat more exaggerated example, there is also a statistically clear correlation between the rise in global temperatures, and the steady decrease of instances of naval piracy, but it would be ludicrous to say that global warming is caused by the global decline of pirates.

A bit more seriously, however, Horowitz’ claim of a national hiring conspiracy would have to present more evidence than a simple statistical bias. Such a bias could easily be caused by naturally occurring sociological phenomena, such as a tendency for people of certain political views to hold different priorities regarding issues of human interest, which could affect the field someone may go into. If one political faction believed that keeping the national and global economy stable was fundamentally important, that would cause a greater number of them to enter the fields of business and economics, whereas a political faction that placed greater emphasis on social work or education would see greater representations in schools and jobs suited to that mentality. Not to say that any of these rules are hard and fast, but such things could more than account for the sorts of trends that Horowitz is seeing.

If only he knew enough about critical analysis and statistical logic to realize that causal relationships must be proven, not simply assumed.

Throughout his campaign, Horowitz is perpetually attempting to needle liberal educators and administrators, saying things like “How can any self-respecting liberal countenance academic programs in which there is only one side presented to the most controversial issues of the day?” in attempts to seem as though he is righteous and universal in his pursuit of academic freedom, and pluralist education, and to attempt to discredit those academics who would disagree with him. After all, what honest man would be against academic freedom, and the pluralistic pursuit of truth?

One name comes to mind – Horowitz.

As much as Mr. Horowitz fashions himself to be an old-fashioned muckraker journalist, exposing a dangerous trend in modern academia, he never makes a single attempt at non-partisanship. The anecdotes that he uses is almost always a case of perceived attack on an explicitly conservative opinion by the “radical left”. If Mr. Horowitz is so staunch a defender of academic freedom, how is it that he isn’t also lobbying for Marxism to be taught in modern capitalist-centric business schools? Third-party opinion is also conspicuously absent in any of his arguments.

It would seem that whenever Horowitz examines something, it can easily be grouped into two categories, conservative and liberal. Funny how all of human opinion throughout history so neatly follows the socio-political “black-and-white” of the current political factions of our specific country’s government.

Or, perhaps, it might just be simply that Horowitz realizes that if he uses the much more accurate labels of “Things I Agree With” and “Things I Don’t Agree With”, he would sell a great deal fewer books.

So much for unbiased observation and his much-lauded principle of disinterested inquiry.

As for Horowitz’ own effect on the educational landscape, the solution he seems to be asking for is dangerously close to mass institutional censorship.

Any sort of institutional restriction on the scope or content of academic discourse holds within it the potential for corruption, and, ironically, poses the threat of a loss of academic pluralism, not necessarily because professors aren’t presenting more than one viewpoint, but because they would be presenting institutionally approved viewpoints, in bureaucratically defined measure. Horowitz definitely feels that there is a systemic conspiracy to squelch conservative viewpoints in higher education, so it’s odd that he is, at the same time, calling for more institutional control of curriculum.

In fact, if these radical instructors are actually trying to teach unconventional opinion to their students, then by definition they are acting either against the prevailing doctrine, either of their society or of their field. If this is the case, then they are of the very educators that most closely follow Horowitz’ stated ideal; these are the instructors who are most faithfully working to bring balance to an inherently biased world, and provide counter-arguments for pervasive common doctrines.

However, rather than defending these attempts at truly diverse and pluralistic education, Horowitz insists that the teaching of any doctrine other than that with which he agrees should be minimized. He doesn’t even make the pretense of being universally “pluralistic” in his efforts, using examples and anecdotes taken exclusively from politically conservative fronts, no matter how much emphasis he may place on “disinterested inquiry”.

Using faulty logic and politically loaded rhetoric he has created a scandal that he makes no attempt to definitively prove. To be honest, he seems wholly uninterested in pursuing any form of scientifically valid form of inquiry to actually find the truth.

Disinterested inquiry indeed.