Professor Ellen Schrecker of Yeshiva University (go figure) has written a howler in the Chronicle of Higher Education that charges that "the new McCarthyism" is threatening universities. This is such a howler that Campus Watch has awarded it their Howler of the Month award, with good reason.
http://www.nea.org/assets/img/PubThoughtAndAction/TAA_05_11.pdf
So Schrecker conjures up the ghosts of Joe McCarthy, J Edgar Hoover and Richard Nixon to make her case that criticism of the leftist indoctrination in our colleges is tantamount to McCarthyism. She even goes so far as to defend characters like Sami Al Arian and Ward "Little Eichmanns" Churchill comparing the latter to Paul Robeson.
Of course, one of Shrecker's pet peeves is the "Zionist" criticism of Middle East studies departments, which are nothing more than ethnocentric, anti-Israel propaganda centers largely funded by Saudi Arabia.
If you want to see McCarthyism in action, try speaking at an American university as a conservative. Schrecker's diatribe is fascinating in that the left- and the pro-Palestinian lobby for that matter- totally control US universities, institutions that are more dedicated to indoctrination than education. Dragging the ghost of Joe McCarthy into this is laughable.
What is happening is that while the Schreckers of the world use their right of free speech to say what they want, others are using their right of free speech to disagree with their views and criticize them. People like Schrecker can't stand that.
The Germans have a word for this article: schrecklich (terrible).
I appreciate it when an Orange County conservative like Gary recognizes that McCarthyism was wrong. No better way to measure this, than the fact that he uses it as an epithet to critique those he despises most.
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