CRAZY DAVE LOSES AGAIN!

(Via Atrios, Via Berube)

Many faculty leaders have worried that this week’s hearings by a Pennsylvania legislative committee would turn into just the kind of professorial inquisition that they have feared the “Academic Bill of Rights” might set off.

But as hearings ended in Philadelphia Tuesday, critics of the Academic Bill of Rights were saying that they had scored key points. David Horowitz, the conservative activist who has led the push for the hearings in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, admitted that he had no evidence to back up two of the stories he has told multiple times to back up his charges that political bias is rampant in higher education.

In an interview after the hearing, Horowitz said that his acknowledgements were inconsequential, and he complained about “nit picking” by his critics. But while Horowitz was declaring the hearings “a great victory” for his cause, he lost some powerful stories. For example, Horowitz has said several times that a biology professor at Pennsylvania State University used a class session just before the 2004 election to show the Michael Moore documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, but he acknowledged Tuesday that he didn’t have any proof that this took place.

In a phone interview, Horowitz said that he had heard about the alleged incident from a legislative staffer and that there was no evidence to back up the claim. He added, however, that “everybody who is familiar with universities knows that there is a widespread practice of professors venting about foreign policy even when their classes aren’t about foreign policy” and that the lack of evidence on Penn State doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem. “These are nit picking, irrelevant attacks,” he said.

Others think that it’s quite relevant that Horowitz couldn’t back up the example, especially since there have been previous incidents in which his claims about professors have been debunked.

“So much of what he has said previously has been exposed to be lies or distortions that it makes any of his examples questionable,” said Jamie Horwitz, a spokesman for the American Federation of Teachers. The lack of evidence about the Penn State and other examples “should give this committee and any committee anywhere in the country pause about considering an Academic Bill of Rights,” he added. “The bottom line is that there’s not a lot of there there.”

Even if these examples aren’t correct, he said, they represent the reality of academic life. “Is there anybody out there who will say that professors don’t attack Bush in biology classrooms?” he said. Horowitz characterized the debate over his retractions as a diversionary tactic by his critics. “First they say that there is no problem [with political bias]. Then they say I’m a McCarthyite. Then they say I’m spreading false rumors. Everyone who is in public life and makes commentaries makes mistakes.”

Biologists in particular have a good reason to attack Fredo in class because on Aug. 1, 2005, he came out in favor of teaching Intelligent Design. Scientists' reactions:

"What the president has done is give impetus to people who would like to push their side of this agenda, and that's a real problem," says Fred Spilhaus, executive director of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), one of the first groups to respond to Bush's remarks. The AGU statement carried the headline "President confuses science and belief, puts schoolchildren at risk". The American Institute of Biological Sciences, the American Physical Society and the American Astronomical Society also released statements saying that intelligent design has no place in the science classroom.

Lawrence Krauss, a theoretical physicist at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio and a frequent speaker on evolution issues, says that all scientists should be concerned. "Make no mistake — this is not an attack on evolution, but on science," he says.