I haven’t had a chance to read David Horowitz’s new book, The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America but I have followed with fascinated/horrified interest the ensuing furore. I was finally moved to comment when I read Todd Gitlin’s response to being one of the 101 in which he notes in passing that he is accused by Horowitz of "immersing" his students in the "obscurantist texts of leftist icons like Jurgen Habermas."

It’s beyond me to conceive of teaching courses about the place of the media in society (for example) without ensuring some familiarity with Habermas‘ absolutely crucial work on the public sphere (even if only to critique it whether from the left or from the right). There’s a reason why the guy’s an icon. If that makes me a "dangerous academic"-in-training number 102, so be it!

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 25th, 2006 at 12:47 pm and is filed under Academic, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.