Horowitz: "There are 50,000 professors ... [who] identify with the terrorists"

Summary: On MSNBC's Scarborough Country, right-wing activist David Horowitz claimed that "[t]here are 50,000 professors" who are "anti-American" and "identify with the terrorists." There are just over 400,000 tenured and tenure-track full-time university professors in the United States. If Horowitz's numbers are accurate, that means approximately one out of every eight tenured or tenure-track college and university professors is a terrorist sympathizer.

On the March 2 edition of MSNBC's Scarborough Country, right-wing activist David Horowitz claimed that "[t]here are 50,000 professors" who are "anti-American" and "identify with the terrorists." Horowitz, the president of Students for Academic Freedom and a proponent of an "Academic Bill of Rights" for American universities, is the author of The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America (Regnery, January 2006).

According to statistics from the Department of Education, there are just over 400,000 tenured and tenure-track full-time university professors* in the United States. If Horowitz's numbers are accurate, that means approximately one out of every eight tenured or tenure-track college and university professors is a terrorist sympathizer.

From the March 2 edition of MSNBC's Scarborough Country:

MICHAEL SMERCONISH (guest host): David Horowitz, you wrote a book, your new book where you expose this on college campuses. Do you think what we're talking about now is symptomatic of what's going on across the country or is this an aberration?

HOROWITZ: There are 50,000 professors with the views of [fellow Scarborough Country guest and Citizens for Legitimate Government founder Michael] Rectenwald and [Colorado high school teacher] Jay Bennish, who are anti-American, they're radicals, they identify with the terrorists, they think of them as freedom fighters. It's a huge danger for the country. And I tell you, if there was a Christian teacher who was ranting in that way against abortion in the classroom, they would be toast.

Bennish is accused of issuing, during a class, what Horowitz has described as "a Communist political rant on the evils of America, capitalism and George Bush in that order." Bennish has been suspended from his job pending an investigation; Horowitz wrote: "May his suspension last a long time and be a warning to other teachers who think that abusing their students serves a higher cause."

*Tenured and tenure-track professorships are, according to Horowitz, the positions of significance on college and university campuses. He wrote in an April 2003 column for FrontPageMag.com, of which he is editor-in-chief: "Now it is virtually impossible for a vocal conservative to be hired for a tenure-track position on a faculty anywhere, or to receive tenure if so hired. The conservative faculty members I encounter who have achieved this feat, invariably tell me that they were forced to keep their political orientation to themselves until they achieved tenure. Alternatively, they were hired and tenured twenty years ago before the left secured its grip on the hiring process."

—S.S.M.