Those damn leftist professors: The things they teach are helping defeat the war on terror, says David Horowitz. So, next week, he’s hosting a public humiliation party at the University of Washington to try to shut them up.
Horowitz, the namesake of the David Horowitz Freedom Center in Los Angeles, is an author of The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America, a 2006 book that calls down Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn and other left-leaning intellectuals — whom Horowitz encourages students to report at a website devoted to “academic freedom.” Horowitz has now turned the witch hunt into a pro-war campaign called Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week, which will converge on the UW and 200 other college campuses Oct. 22-26.
“According to the academic left, the Islamo-fascists hate us not because we are tolerant and free, but because we are the ‘oppressors,’” says a student organizing guide from the Horowitz center. “[Our] goal will be to refute the curriculum of the left, which teaches that America is the enemy in the war on terror and the terrorists are ‘freedom fighters.’”
The student guide lists a number of activities to expect at the UW, including speeches by Horowitz and others (talk radio host Michael Medved is scheduled Oct. 26, 7 p.m., at Smith Hall), film screenings and a sit-in at the UW Women’s Center. Feminists are a target because they have supposedly failed to speak out against the oppression of women in Islamic nations.
“It’s stifling dissent over U.S. domination in the Mideast,” says Emma Kaplan, an impeachment activist who is working with the Muslim Student Association and other groups on a response to the event. “These people aren’t about democracy. They aren’t about critical thinking on campus. They’re about hammering into place a Nazi Youth that will spy on its professors and tell on them if they say something out of line.”
If you think that’s extreme, see what Horowitz’s group has to say at
terrorismawareness.org.
—Cydney Gillis
The 411 on 311
It seems that 684-CITY’s days are numbered. Starting in mid-2009, citizens requesting non-emergency city services will need only to dial 3-1-1. The call center will take calls for services ranging from streetlight outages to noise complaints, dispatching services directly to some callers and connecting others to the appropriate city government department. In the latter scenario, the center will monitor the department’s response in order to, over time, identify which departments may be deficient.
It is this aspect of the call center, its ability to evaluate the performance of government departments, which excites Mayor Nickels. “311 is more than a new call center and telephone number. It is a fundamental attitude change making local government more open, accountable, inclusive and responsive,” he says.
But none of it will come cheap. The proposed 2008 budget allocates $9 million to construct the building and information infrastructure necessary to get the project off the ground; it does not include the center’s operating costs.
311 is intended to fill the gap between 911, which is for emergency services such as police, fire, or paramedics, and 211, the number for health and human service requests which is managed at the state level and provided in King County as a service of the Crisis Clinic.
But 311 runs the risk of duplicating the non-emergency number already in place. Currently a call to 684-CITY already provides access the phone number of any non-emergency city service, albeit only from the hours of 8 to 5, Monday through Friday.
The 311 proposal, as a part of the 2008 budget proposal, is presently being debated in City Council, and will be adopted or eliminated from the final budget by Nov. 13.