David Horowitz is an ideologial success story. He proves that even a Communist can see the light. In Radical Son: A Generational Odyssey, Horowitz chronicled his shift from editor at the leftist Ramparts magazine and raising money for the Black Panther Party to activist for academic freedom and against Islamo-Fascism.
Actor Robert Davi told me, “David Horowitz has been inside the belly of the beast. His transformational book, Radical Son, is an important work that must be read and hopefully someday soon brought to the screen. He is a major conservative voice who with laser intelligence and integrity is ahead of the curve when it comes to the big issues of the day. He isn’t just my friend, but also a political mentor.”
Horowitz is a popular speaker on college campuses and the founder of Students for Academic Freedom and the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This week the Young America’s Foundation honored Horowitz at their National Conservative Student Conference. Among those honoring him were Sen. Jeff Sessions, Heritage Foundation President Ed Feulner and Young America’s Foundation President Ron Robinson. Additionally, Rep. Michele Bachmann, Sen. Jon Kyl and Rep. Ed Royce sent taped remarks in support of Horowitz’s work.
Staying true to his fight for academic freedom, Horowitz latest book, Reforming Our Universities: The Campaign for an Academic Bill of Rights, will hit shelves later this month.
He'll also be launching the "Adopt a Dissenting Book Campaign." The campaign will encourage students in classes with a professor who only presents one point of view to ask that a book with an alternative view be assigned. If the professor refuses, the student will take the request to the department chair, dean and college president if necessary. The campaign aims to hold professors to the same standard extolled by the liberal American Association of University Professors, whose principles state, "The faculty member is expected to train students to think for themselves, and to provide them access to those materials, which they need if they are to think intelligently.”
Students will soon be heading back to school and they are lucky to have David Horowitz on their side. As former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said, “No one has been more important to the cause of academic freedom in America than David Horowitz."
1. If there were a television channel that only showed one movie over and over, what movie should it be?
HOROWITZ: We All Loved Each Other So Much by Ettore Scola.
2. What’s one of your favorite movie quotes?
HOROWITZ: "We tried to change the world but the world changed us" (same film).
3. In A Clockwork Orange, Malcolm McDowell is strapped in with his eyes propped open and forced to watch images until he was "cured." If you could give President Obama, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Leader Harry Reid the "Clockwork Orange treatment," what movie would you make them watch?
HOROWITZ: "Animal Farm"
4. What pop culture souvenir do you own that people would be surprised to learn that you cherish?
HOROWITZ: Can't say as I have one. I'm not a souvenir collector.
5. What's your current “guilty pleasure” non-news television show?
HOROWITZ: “10 Dumbest Criminals” on TRU channel.
6. Many have said that Washington, D.C., is like Hollywood for ugly people. How do you think D.C. is like Hollywood? How is it different?
HOROWITZ: Hollywood is the only place where people think you can gain in moral stature by getting next to people in Washington.
7. What was the first rock concert you ever attended and where did you sit and who went with you?
HOROWITZ: Purple Earthquake. It was a Berkeley rock band and it played at a local school.
8. What book is on your summer reading list?
HOROWITZ: Cormac McCarthy, The Border Trilogy
9. What was your first job?
HOROWITZ: Stuffing envelopes in a neighborhood business. I was 13 and I earned a dollar.
10. What’s the coolest thing you’ve been able to do because of your role in the political arena?
HOROWITZ: Be flown onto and off an aircraft carrier.
11. What question do you wish reporters would ask you? What’s your answer to that question?
HOROWITZ: I'm drawing a blank on this one since I don't need to be asked a question by a reporter to tell them what I think.
12. Tell me about the moment you decided to enter the political arena.
HOROWITZ: I was born into a Communist family. Consequently, I was born into the political arena. I never had a choice.
