I'm so regretting not being a Community Studies major now.

October 9, 2007 8:59 PM

And I thought us UC Santa Cruz students and alums only had to deal with the defensive ticks we developed by being the stepchild to that other University of California in the Bay Area. But no! We apparently attended the Worst School in America!

The always endearing David Horowitz, in addition to posting an article showing the university's crimes-against-academia/cool-classes, was on Fox News decrying the University's policy of turning patriotic Midwestern kids into Molotov-throwing Marxists. After watching that clip, I do have to wonder what career paths are available to someone with a skillset that includes "Can organize anti-capitalist revolutions."
posted by Weebot (43 comments total)

DO NOT LOOK DIRECTLY AT THE HOROWITZ.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 9:05 PM on October 9, 2007 [2 favorites]

Go Banana Slugs!

(best mascot EVAR)
posted by BitterOldPunk at 9:12 PM on October 9, 2007

It should be noted that even their mascot is a spineless liberal with a hard-to-pin-down sexuality. (Hemaphrodite with serious S/M tendencies!)
posted by Llama-Lime at 9:13 PM on October 9, 2007 [2 favorites]

It should be noted that even their mascot is a spineless liberal with a hard-to-pin-down sexuality

You forgot to mention slimy.
posted by Weebot at 9:15 PM on October 9, 2007

I do have to wonder what career paths are available to someone with a skillset that includes "Can organize anti-capitalist revolutions."

Question 2: What's this person's email, and how much does she charge per job?
posted by washburn at 9:16 PM on October 9, 2007 [3 favorites]

Horowitz is a troll and a busybody who sees communist conspiracy in even the most benign and even-handed academic enterprise. The problem with UCSC is that it offers convenient low-hanging fruit for conservative activists to swipe at: its the ultra-left fringe they can point to and say "this is representative of all of academia," thus necessitating their phnoy 'academic bill of rights.' Funny how they don't see places like Bob Jones University as a problem, though....
posted by googly at 9:17 PM on October 9, 2007 [1 favorite]

Wait, they teach you how to organize a revolution? I went to the wrong school.

Also he decries the course "Men and Feminisms" by noting that "This course, taught by a onetime graduate student,. . . . The stated goal of the course is to enlist students, especially male students, in the cause of political, specifically feminist, activism." Because men shouldn't believe that women deserve equal status within our society, heaven forbid. (Isn't it quaint that he's upset about the fact that a grad student was teaching this?)
posted by oddman at 9:22 PM on October 9, 2007

The other day I was walking down the street when a homeless guy asked me for some change. I reached into my wallet to give him a buck when *POOF!* Horowitz appeared out of nowhere.

"Are you insane?!?" he cried, "If you just give away money you'll encourage the spread of communism!"

Actually, no, that didn't really happen. But thats roughly about as seriously as Horowitz should be taken.
posted by Avenger at 9:28 PM on October 9, 2007 [1 favorite]

To be hated by one such as Horowitz can only mean one thing: don't change a thing, UCSC.

(me, class of '03, fwiw)
posted by jacobian at 9:33 PM on October 9, 2007 [2 favorites]

Slugs are liberal? How do you explain Limbaugh?
posted by maxwelton at 9:37 PM on October 9, 2007

David Horowitz is something you scrape off of your shoe.
Or you might just want to throw away the shoe.
posted by 2sheets at 9:37 PM on October 9, 2007 [1 favorite]

His wiki page makes him look like a neocon lobbyist paid on a commission basis.
posted by Brian B. at 9:39 PM on October 9, 2007

There is certainly a lot you can laugh about at UCSC. And if you're not really into getting an education, it can be pretty much a summer camp. But if you actually want to learn and engage, it's pretty fucking incredible the stuff you can get into. For me it was the Human Genome Project; for friends it was starting a Dance Company or Software Company; some did research on glaciers in Alaska and some became illustrators for Scientific American or casual game designers. Shit, some *did* go on to be commies and revolutionaries, and are damn good at it.

So really it's exactly what right-wingers should approve of: it's entirely up to your and your initiative. If you get nothing out of UCSC, you probably didn't bring much to it.
posted by freebird at 9:43 PM on October 9, 2007

I'm a current UCSC student. I am in my 6th year at UCSC (4 undergrad and now my 2nd year of grad). I am in the engineering program and so for the most part am not involved in the liberal arts classes he mentions.

My girlfriend, however, is a liberal arts student (literature and environmental studies), and personally knows and converses with some of the professors this guy claims are the "most radical professors in the country". Part of what this guy says is true, some of these folks do push their somewhat eccentric idealogies on other people. But from what I understand, they tend not to do so in classes, and definitely not in the large undergrad classes. In some of the upper division and grad classes, the format is often just casual discussion about topics, guided by several texts. In such classes it is inevitable an instructor will discuss their personal beliefs, whether it be radical left or radical right. The thing is, at this stage the students are typically 21 or older. At this age they are quite capable at interpreting new info on their own, and have learned that instructors are just people like anyone else and their ideas can be discarded.

That is kind of the whole point of university, to teach you how to take in new ideas and information, and interpret that information without having to just take the work of others. I can see the danger in entry-level classes, as the students are new to such things (high school largely being the format of "teacher knows best"), but in my experience, in those classes there is so much to cover the instructor does not have time for discussions of their personal beliefs.

For what its worth, I am an engineering student working computer vision. The engineering school is pretty good (though I wouldnt say awesome, like the phyiscs school is).
posted by LoopyG at 9:55 PM on October 9, 2007

Slugs are liberal? How do you explain Limbaugh?

Yes, slugs are liberal! Some good dirt straight from the mouth of the UCSC beast: Home of the Slug Love.

• Slugs form a yin-yang shape while mating (out of wedlock, I might add), a sign of devil worship/voodoo/holistic viewpoints.
• Slugs engage in apophallation, i.e. goodbye penis! Clearly they're feminists.
• Even self-apophallation has been observed, which is straight out of the class "Men and Feminisims" described above.

I don't know how to explain Limbaugh. Maybe a mutant with severe phenotypes?
posted by Llama-Lime at 9:56 PM on October 9, 2007

Also, I am with freebird. Students of all types from UCSC have gone on to do awesome things. Some of of those things are of the "radical" type (a lot of alternative-blank organizations have been created by them), as well as more typical things (tech, teaching, starting a company, etc).
posted by LoopyG at 9:56 PM on October 9, 2007

" ... I do have to wonder what career paths are available to someone with a skillset that includes "Can organize anti-capitalist revolutions." [?]"

Generally, people from SC are good at this, and if they journey further north, they can become quite adept.
posted by Relay at 9:58 PM on October 9, 2007

Good old David Horowitz. He also caused a ruckus at UW-Madison when I was an undergrad there a few years ago, after he placed an anti-reparations ad in one of the student dailies. The other student daily refused to run the ad, instead running a counterpoint ad from the student multicultural group, and it was a story in the editorial pages and in the classrooms for weeks to come. So, hey, at least he started a little campus discussion.
posted by pfafflin at 10:10 PM on October 9, 2007

I started reading/watching the linked to Horowitz material, but it sounds like everything else I've ever heard from him. Am I missing something?

Learn how to organize anti-capitalist revolutions AND become an Illustrator for SA? Sounds cool.
posted by lazymonster at 10:11 PM on October 9, 2007

Yeah, Santa Cruz, the ultimate hotbed of Marxism-Leninism in the Western Hemisphere. Hoo, boy.
posted by blucevalo at 10:29 PM on October 9, 2007

Any college where Tom Lehrer taught mathematics can't be all bad.

And just the thought of walking on trails through a redwood forest to get from one class to another is so relaxing.
posted by eye of newt at 10:48 PM on October 9, 2007

Gee, when I was there ('84-88) everyone said this eden in the redwoods was created specifically to lure the smart, radical kids away from UC Berkeley, where they might actually cause trouble. Certain longtime professors were "known" to freelance for the CIA. The only left wing extremism I witnessed was in the uptight, PC management of the radio station. UCSC's reputation is, I think, very different from the reality and always has been.
posted by Scram at 11:03 PM on October 9, 2007 [1 favorite]

Sometimes people call me "David Horowitz." But they never do it twice.
posted by Citizen Premier at 11:04 PM on October 9, 2007 [2 favorites]

I'm an alum. (Coool, slugz!) I have never been prouder of my alma mater. David Horowitz is pathetically weak voiced, shivering and slavering in this piece, carried by the regrettable Hannity. What a nematodish pair you guys make. Truly beneath all of us!
posted by telstar at 11:13 PM on October 9, 2007

Thanks to the Tom Lehrer Wikipedia link, I now know that Tom Lehrer is credited with coining the phrase "copious free time" and my life is better for knowing this.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 11:13 PM on October 9, 2007

The city of Santa Cruz was taken over by conservative yuppies about 15 years ago. They recently banned blowing bubbles downtown fer Pete's sake. Sitting on the sidewalk within 50 yards of a business has been illegal since about 1993 and the city pumps the local rivers dry every year for water to irrigate all those "hippies" lawns I heard they even paved over the little elf village thingy they used to have.

If you want to pick a truly radical environment to corrupt midwesterners Santa Cruz ain't it. They're too busy turning it into Iowa circa 1950.
posted by fshgrl at 11:16 PM on October 9, 2007

True, fshgrl, but does ultra-trotskyist turned ultra-neocon David Horowitz get to cap on us because of it? I fear your answer.
posted by telstar at 11:26 PM on October 9, 2007

oddman quotes: "This course, taught by a onetime graduate student...."

One-time graduate student, aka a Professor. What a douchebag this Horowitz is.

I'm a grad student at UA, and a few months ago he was blitzing us. I was very proud when I saw that one of my favorite faculty mentors and member of my dissertation committee was on his hit list.

Although, I will give Horowitz some credit. Higher education is in many ways a fundamentally subversive enterprise. And it should be so: the idea that one goes to college simply to learn a skill set in order to get a job and support your country -- basically the mindset of DH and his ilk -- is completely antithetical to any real education. In my mind, being a "good citizen" means being one who will question, challenge, and if necessary, revolt, not one who spouts blind patriotism. Horowitz is part of a growing number of conservatives who realize that when people are taught to think for themselves, they don't always support the status quo, and thus they (the conservatives) wish to attack and hamstring education. Fuck them up the ass.
posted by papakwanz at 11:46 PM on October 9, 2007 [3 favorites]

Horowitz's ideal college students: Generation Chickenhawk.
posted by homunculus at 11:46 PM on October 9, 2007

One-time graduate student, aka a Professor. What a douchebag this Horowitz is.

Dammit, that's what I was going to say! I like that, dissing people by their former educational status. From now on, whenever I refer to this guy, I'm saying 'One-time illiterate drooler, Horowitz'
posted by graventy at 12:08 AM on October 10, 2007

The very people who invoke the name of tolerance are shown to be quite intolerant themselves.
posted by chlorus at 12:38 AM on October 10, 2007

Your revolution is over, Mr. Lebowski. Condolences. The bums lost. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose.
posted by samh23 at 1:12 AM on October 10, 2007 [1 favorite]

That's pretty amazing. I recently graduated from UCSC; I know a fair number of the faculty mentioned, I took many of the classes, and from an ideological standpoint, he's actually somewhat on-target. I took six or seven classes that were entirely/partially focused on Marxism; I met many inspirational aging-hippie instructors with middling-leftist views; I lived in a big community-oriented house with a bunch of environmental science and community studies kids.

If I were looking for schools to attend now, and I saw Horowitz' list, chock full o' lesbian instructors, social justice programs, classes focusing on equal rights, human rights, and revolutionary change, I would sprint as hard and fast as I could to attend that motherfucker. That's exactly the sort of education that people need.

The best part is, Horowitz missed all of the previously publicized UCSC news, such as these helpful links. For these three acts alone, UCSC and its students caught crap from the administration, the local police, the UC Regents, the FBI, the Army, and Bill O'Reilly, that I can name off the top of my head.

I suppose the lesson here isn't that UCSC is the worst school in anything, but the best school for learning things that institutionalist whores such as Horowitz don't want students to learn. Which sounds just about perfect.
posted by duende at 2:50 AM on October 10, 2007

Someone is still paying attention to David Horowitz?
posted by foxy_hedgehog at 5:36 AM on October 10, 2007

Q. How is a (W)Hor(e)owitz thread any better than an Ann Coulter thread?

A. At least fucking Horowitz swallows.


FUck David Horowitz. He knows nothing about anything and is a completely narcissistic and self-aggrandizing attention whore. He's dangerous, and stupid, which is a hell of a combination.

What he craves is attention and we are now giving it to him.

which means he'll probably read this someday, so: david horowtiz, lick my balls
posted by spitbull at 6:34 AM on October 10, 2007

All you need to know about David Horowitz was that he was a radical left-wing liberal until liberals started embracing affirmative action. That's when he "reassessed" his views.
posted by Pastabagel at 6:51 AM on October 10, 2007

Please, enjoy some banana slug nookie - NSFW if your workplace doesn't approve of video of "hemaphrodites with serious S/M tendencies" (thanks, for the great description, Llama-lime!) goin' at it...
posted by twsf at 7:07 AM on October 10, 2007

I do have to wonder what career paths are available to someone with a skillset that includes "Can organize anti-capitalist revolutions."

Cherished Comrade,

I am writing to apply for the position of Gender Relations Analyst as advertised on your website. Although I have predominantly identified as male for the majority of my life, I feel that I have achieved a good understanding of the issues involved in gender-relations politics, and would welcome the opportunity to further explore my sexuality in the context of helping your management team better understand the issues of gender in the socially-important enterprise of toothpaste manufacturing.

My relevant life experience is as follows:

2007-2009 - Completed two years of the Community Studies program at UCSC.
April 2009 - Participated in anti-capitalist rally in Washington DC. I helped organize a dance circle, which continued until it was dispersed with tear gas.
May-November 2009 - Became the fifth member of the management committee of the Sacred Village sustainable anarcho-communist eco-commune. Of the eight permanent long-term residents, I was voted most dedicated to the cause.
January 2010 - Moved to a small apartment in Seattle in order to serve as director of water management theory for the Society Economic Justice And Feminism.
July-October 2010 - Concentrated on my art, which expressed through the medium of pudding the global struggle for equality.
December 2013 - As is well known, I was instrumental in organizing the revolution which finally overthrew capitalism in America.
January 2014 to present - Completed a two-year course of study in Feminist Methods of Teaching, at the Minneapolis People's Collective School.

In Peace and Brotherhood,
sfenders

posted by sfenders at 8:29 AM on October 10, 2007 [1 favorite]

Anyone want to go down to Zachary's and discuss this?
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 9:08 AM on October 10, 2007

July-October 2010 - Concentrated on my art, which expressed through the medium of pudding the global struggle for equality.

Good luck getting a job, you fucking Cosby-ist splitter.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:29 AM on October 10, 2007

Alum here too. The thing I don't understand is why we give a damn about what Horowitz says here. I've had a course with Bettina (the ultra commie brainwasher he mentions), and her way of disseminating information is pretty passive. She presents her viewpoint, and you have a choice of agreeing or not -- she makes sound and strong arguments.

As far as I can tell, this is just nonsensical liberal-bashing.

uptight, PC management of the radio station
KZSC is no different nowadays, fwiw. Although I think most college radio stations would appear uptight to me because of the ultra-pretentious indie kids running them.
posted by spiderskull at 9:43 AM on October 10, 2007

In Peace and Brotherhood,

No sisterhood? You are a pawn for the patriarchy, and your job application has been rejected.
posted by naoko at 9:55 AM on October 10, 2007 [3 favorites]

And just the thought of walking on trails through a redwood forest to get from one class to another is so relaxing.

There are also bunches of nice deer who appear out of the mists.

(Also, that guy wearing short shorts who had stringy red hair down to his butt used to appear out of the mists and try to take pictures of girls. But that's not as picturesque.)
posted by lemuria at 10:24 AM on October 10, 2007