THERE HE GOES AGAIN

Back at the beginning of this blog, I reported one of David Horowitz's many audacious untruths, his claim, made in the course of his ramble at Duke University, that Cornel West had not published a scholarly paper in the past twenty years. As I pointed out then, anybody who had twenty seconds to spare for a google search could quickly dispense with this nonsense. Even if we disregard Wests's multitude of essays in publications that are not peer-reviewed, we still have such entries in the West bibliography as his 2000 essay in ENGLISH JOURNAL (Vol 89, Number 6 for those of you keeping track of such things), a journal with impeccable credentials.

But now, Horowitz not only repeats this falsehood, he amplifies it. Currently on his blog at Frontpagemag he has a piece titled, "The Predictable Stupidity of the Racist Left." Now, making statements that are demonstrably false might well be taken to be stupid; repeating them might well be considered predictable; continual attacks upon a black scholar might well make one wonder if some mode of racism might be at work; and, come to think of it, Horowitz was once among the more stupid elements on the Left -- So perhaps he is the best person to publish under that title.

Here he writes that Cornel West:

"is one of the academic world’s most honored and distinguished figures and yet hasn’t written a scholarly paper or book in twenty years (if ever)."

Well. let's see about that. It appears that THE AMERICAN EVASION OF PHILOSOPHY, a book widely considered to be the strongest of West's early scholarly books, was published in 1989, and 1989 is (let me check now) less than twenty years prior to 2006, which means that the sentence Horowitz has posted today is

A LIE -----

Whatever one may think of West's recent publications and speeches, whatever one may think of West's CD, the fact remains that he has indeed published scholarship within the past twenty years. The only way that one could not know that would be not to look it up -- which fits nicely with the usual Horowitz research methodology.

Horowitz goes on to claim, speaking of West's salary, publishing opportunities, speaker's fees and so forth, that:

"Cornel West is blessed with these unearned and undeserved perks solely because he’s black -- there is no other explanation . . ."

This assertion certainly strikes me as racial in nature - I'll leave it to my readers to decide for themselves where the racism may be found in this episode.

I do not believe that David Horowitz receives his enviable speaking fees, the generous support of the donors to his center (and his living standards) and his subsidized "research" just because he is white. I do believe he receives these things from people who have considerably less respect for the truth than do the likes of Cornel West.