Thursday, March 23, 2006

Dumb professor

I asked the David Horowitz outfit a while back why I couldn't make his evil liberal/communist professors list. In return, I was placed on the Horowitz mailing list.

UPDATE:

Here's the online poll Horowitz did of living evil liberal/communist professors. Michael Bérubé won, but his fellow travelers gamed the system.

From Michael on February 28th:

Michael Berube, Penn State University: 233238
John Bellamy Foster, University of Oregon, Eugene: 106393
Norman Finkelstein, De Paul University: 50852
Eric Foner, Columbia University: 40323
Noam Chomsky, Massachusetts Institute of Technology: 32756
Gregory Dawes, North Carolina State University: 14448
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, City University of New York: 13332
Jose Angel Gutierrez, University of Texas, Arlington: 13225
Bell Hooks, City University of New York: 12693
Gayle Rubin, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor: 12191
Todd Gitlin, Columbia University: 12131
Timothy Shortell, Brooklyn College: 11380
Jerry Lembcke , Holy Cross College: 11154
Ward Churchill, University of Colorado: 8470
Sam Richards, Penn State University: 5340
Alison Jaggar, University of Colorado, Boulder: 3743

Those were the top sixteen. They were followed in turn by nine more professors in quadruple digits:

Angela Davis, University of California, Santa Cruz: 3536
Robert Jensen, University of Texas, Austin: 3259
Melissa Gilbert, Temple University: 3174
Howard Zinn, Boston University: 2079
Juan Cole, University of Michigan: 2075
Sasan Fayazmanesh, Cal State University, Fresno: 1698
Larry Estrada, Western Washington University: 1313
Victor Navasky, Columbia University: 1059
Gil Anidjar, Columbia University: 1049

Now, I didn’t get these figures from a snapshot; I wish I had. I got them from a Google cache of Sunday night’s tally—a cache that has since disappeared. And if anyone out there does have a snapshot, you can confirm the following Amazing Facts: on Monday, the numbers underwent a seismic shift. The redoubtable Noam Chomsky rocketed out of fifth place into second, picking up almost 150,000 votes in one day, and Greg Dawes shot from last place into fourth, thanks to the heroic efforts of one single voter. Foner fell to sixth. There was even some speculation that Chomsky would overtake me at the 300,000 mark....

5 comments:

Eric Gordy said...

Y'know, I had never bothered to look at the list until I followed your link. It seems like a lot of his profs are mostly journalist-publicist types, some are not professors at all (or have honorary positions), most of them are of the older generation, and some of them are dead. So if you're honored with a pick, see that they factcheck.

helmut said...

You're right, Eric. I updated the post to show the living evil professors.

I like the idea PZ. If we put our heads together, I'm sure we could find a way to completely demolish the Horowitz system. Only evil professors would do that.

MNObserver said...

I'll nominate both of you! But Helmut, are you an atheist? I know of PZ's salient features, but you're a mystery man. I'll have to concentrate on reading your blog so I have fuel for the fire.

helmut said...

MN,

I'm not atheistic, agnostic, or religious, which should make me especially evil. But I do feel a small tinge of guilt when I say something like "God poops his pants." I think this is probably a holdover from my Lutheran upbringing.

MT said...

Not one damned atheistic soul from UC Berkeley. Now that's a scandal.