Horowitz Blames Liberals for Terrorism

Liberals in the Clinton administration and on college campuses are largely to blame for America’s failure to prevent the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, conservative author and pundit David Horowitz told an audience of about 300 yesterday.

Horowitz, who in the past year has fueled national controversy primarily by arguing against reparations for slavery, said the Democratic responses to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and to attacks on U.S. embassies were inadequate.

“The Clinton administration was completely uninterested in terrorism,” he said, arguing the former president let the CIA become a “mediocre” organization.

Liberal college campuses like Harvard, Horowitz said, have been complicit in this weakening of national security.

“The left has undermined our security,” he said, through “leftist professors who bash the CIA” and undermine recruitment on college campuses.

Horowitz said the CIA can’t easily recruit at Harvard because of liberal pressure—if students do join they are made to “feel unclean about defending their own country.”

Horowitz also addressed the controversy he has stirred through a series of lectures on college campuses and with his most recent book, Uncivil Wars: The Controversy Over Reparations for Slavery.

In February 2001, Horowitz submitted an advertisement to about 30 college newspapers entitled “Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Slavery is a Bad Idea—and Racist Too.”

Most of the papers—including The Crimson—declined to publish the ad, but papers at Brown and the University of California, Berkeley did print it, drawing student protest on both campuses.

Horowitz acknowledged that his stance on reparation has made him a villain to many over the past year.

“I am the scary guy,” he said to open his speech. “I am the target of a hate campaign across this country.”

Before Horowitz spoke, a handful of members of the socialist Spartacus Youth Club protested his speech in front of the Science Center.

Jesse Alt, spokesperson for the club, denounced Horowitz as a “racist ideologue.”

But Horowitz was not always a target of left-wing criticism.

He was affiliated with the left in the 1960s as the editor of Ramparts magazine and worked with the Black Panthers in the 1970s.

Horowitz said he turned away from left-wing politics after some members of the organization were implicated in violent crime.

“I realized these [leftist] ideas lead to murder,” he said. “I never threw a rock in the 1960s, but got involved with murderers because they said the right words about socialism and people’s rights.”

Though no longer a radical leftist, Horowitz denied he is a racist.

“I am still a civil rights activist,” he said. “We should all be Americans first, not judged by race, status, gender or sexual orientation.”

Horowitz said that while there will always be individuals who are racist, anyone who espouses racism in a public forum will never succeed—and that’s “as good as it’s going to get.”

As “the ethos of this country is anti-racist,” Horowitz said reparations for slavery are unnecessary and would in effect be “telling blacks to hate their own country” and to segregate themselves.

Brandon A. Gayle ’03, president of the Black Students Association, criticized the Harvard Republican Club (HRC) for sponsoring the speech, arguing that the HRC should have known that Horowitz would depart from the topic of leftism and national security to make comments on race.

“I’m not too happy with the HRC right now,” Gayle said. “Any time you bring a speaker, you are responsible for what comes out of his mouth.”

HRC President Brian C. Grech ’03 said the club did ask Horowitz to focus on national security issues. He said while he hoped that the speech would not “isolate other groups on campus,” that was not his main concern.

Grech said the club wanted to give Horowitz a forum on campus and “let the students decide for themselves” whether or not they agree with him.

“We know he’s a controversial guy, but we don’t think his ideas are at all racist,” Grech said.