Horowitz wrote several books with author
Peter Collier, including four on prominent 20th-century American families. He and Collier have collaborated on books about cultural criticism. Horowitz worked as a columnist for Salon.[2]
From 1956 to 1975, Horowitz was an outspoken adherent of the
New Left. He later rejected
progressive ideas and became a defender of
neoconservatism.[3] Horowitz recounted his ideological journey in a series of retrospective books, culminating with his 1996 memoir Radical Son: A Generational Odyssey.
Family
Born in the
Forest Hills neighborhood of
Queens, a
borough of New York City,[4][1] Horowitz is the son of Jewish high school teachers Phil and Blanche Horowitz. His father taught
English and his mother taught
stenography.[4] His mother's family emigrated from
Imperial Russia in the mid-19th century, and his father's family left Russia in 1905 during a time of
anti-Jewish pogroms. Horowitz's paternal grandfather lived in
Mozir, a city in modern
Belarus, prior to leaving for the U.S.[5] In 1940, the family moved to the
Long Island City section of Queens.[4]
During years of labor organizing and the
Great Depression, Phil and Blanche Horowitz were long-standing members of the
American Communist Party and strong supporters of
Joseph Stalin. They left the party after
Khrushchev published his report in 1956 about the crimes Stalin committed and terrorism against the Soviet population.[6][7]
While in London, Horowitz became a close friend of Deutscher, and wrote a biography of him.[14][15] Horowitz wrote The Free World Colossus: A Critique of American Foreign Policy in the Cold War. In January 1968, Horowitz returned to the United States, where he became co-editor of the New Left magazine Ramparts, settling in northern California.[10]
During the early 1970s, Horowitz developed a close friendship with
Huey P. Newton, founder of the
Black Panther Party. Horowitz later portrayed Newton as equal parts gangster, terrorist, intellectual and media celebrity.[10] As part of their work together, Horowitz helped raise money for, and assisted the Panthers with, the running of a school for poor children in
Oakland. He recommended that Newton hire
Betty Van Patter as bookkeeper; she was then working for Ramparts. In December 1974, Van Patter's body was found floating in San Francisco Harbor; she had been murdered. It is widely believed that the Panthers were responsible for her murder, a belief also held by Horowitz.[10][16][17][18][19][20]
Following this period, Horowitz rejected
Marx and socialism, but kept quiet about his changing politics for nearly a decade.
In early 1985, Horowitz and Collier, who also became a political conservative, wrote an article for The Washington Post Magazine entitled "Lefties for
Reagan", later retitled as "Goodbye to All That". The article explained their change of views and recent decision to vote for a second term for Republican President Ronald Reagan.[22][23][24] In 1986, Horowitz published "Why I Am No Longer a Leftist" in The Village Voice.[25]
In 1987, Horowitz co-hosted a "Second Thoughts Conference" in
Washington, D.C., described by
Sidney Blumenthal in The Washington Post as his "coming out" as a conservative.[26]
In May 1989, Horowitz,
Ronald Radosh, and Collier attended a conference in
Kraków calling for the end of Communism.[27] After marching with Polish dissidents in an anti-regime protest, Horowitz spoke about his changing thoughts and why he believed that socialism could not create their future. He said his dream was for the people of Poland to be free.[28]
In 1992, Horowitz and Collier founded Heterodoxy, a monthly magazine focused on exposing what it described as excessive
political correctness on United States college and university campuses. It was "meant to have the feel of a
samizdat publication inside the
gulag of the PC [politically correct] university". The tabloid was directed at university students, whom Horowitz viewed as indoctrinated by the entrenched Left.[29] In Radical Son, he wrote that universities were no longer effective in presenting both sides of political arguments. He stated that left-wing professors had created an atmosphere of political "terror" on campuses.[30]
In a 2001 column in Salon[31] he described his opposition to
reparations for slavery, calling it
racism against blacks, as it defined them only in terms of their descent from slaves. He argued that applying labels like "descendants of
slaves" to blacks was damaging and would serve to
segregate them from mainstream society. In the same year during
Black History Month, Horowitz attempted to purchase advertising space in several American university student publications to express his opposition to reparations.[31] Many student papers refused to sell him ad space; at some schools, papers that carried his ads were stolen or destroyed.[31] Walsh said the furor had given Horowitz an overwhelming amount of free publicity.[31][32]
Horowitz appeared in Occupy Unmasked, a 2012 documentary portraying the
Occupy Wall Street movement as a sinister organization formed to violently destroy the American government.[33]
In 2018, Horowitz attracted many critical comments by attacking the
Equal Justice Initiative's new
National Memorial for Peace and Justice, calling it "a real racist project"[34] showing "anti-white racism".[35] "Lynchings were bad but they weren't mainly about whites yanking blacks off the streets and stringing them up".[35] "A third of the victims of lynchings were white. How many of them do you think this memorial features [sic]."[36]
Academic Bill of Rights
In the early 21st century, Horowitz concentrated on issues of academic freedom, attempting to protect conservative viewpoints. He, Eli Lehrer and
Andrew Jones published a pamphlet, "Political Bias in the Administrations and Faculties of 32 Elite Colleges and Universities" (2004), in which they find the ratio of
Democrats to
Republicans at 32 schools to be more than 10 to 1.[37]
Horowitz published an
Academic Bill of Rights (ABR), which he proposes to eliminate political bias in university hiring and grading. He says conservatives, and particularly
Republican Party members, are systematically excluded from faculties, citing statistical studies on faculty party affiliation.[39]
In 2004 the Georgia General Assembly passed a resolution on a 41–5 vote to adopt a version of the ABR for state educational institutions.[40]
In
Pennsylvania, the House of Representatives created a special legislative committee to investigate issues of academic freedom, including whether students who hold unpopular views need more protection.[41][42][43][44]
David Horowitz Freedom Center
In 1998 Horowitz and
Peter Collier founded the David Horowitz Freedom Center.[45]Politico states that Horowitz's activities and DHFC are funded in part by Aubrey and Joyce Chernick and The
Bradley Foundation. Politico stated that during 2008–2010, "the lion's share of the $920,000 it [DHFC] provided over the past three years to
Jihad Watch came from [Joyce] Chernick".[46] Between July 2000 and February 2006 the freedom center provided a total of $43,000 in funding for 25 trips taken by republican senators and representatives including
Mike Pence,
Mitch McConnell,
Bob Barr,
Fred Thompson and others.[47] In 2015, Horowitz made $583,000 (~$732,765 in 2023) from the organization.[48]
Horowitz is a former
Marxist but is now described as being
conservative.[65][66][67] During his time in the New Left, Horowitz supported the
civil rights movement. In the 1970s, he came to believe that the
Black Panthers were involved in the death of his friend
Betty Van Patter, souring the relationship between Horowitz and the Black Panthers.[68]
Horowitz has described himself as "a defender of gays and alternative lifestyles, a moderate on abortion, and a civil rights activist".[80]
Controversy and criticism
Academia
Some Horowitz accounts of U.S. colleges and universities as bastions of liberal indoctrination have been disputed.[81] For example, Horowitz alleged that a
University of Northern Colorado student received a failing grade on a final exam for refusing to write an essay arguing that
George W. Bush is a
war criminal.[82] A spokeswoman for the university said that the test question was not as described by Horowitz and that there were nonpolitical reasons for the grade, which was not an F.[83] Horowitz identified the professor[83] as Robert Dunkley, an assistant professor of criminal justice at Northern Colorado. Dunkley said Horowitz made him an example of
"liberal bias" in academia and yet, "Dunkley said that he comes from a Republican family, is a registered Republican and considers himself politically independent, taking pride in never having voted a straight party ticket".[83]
In another instance, Horowitz said a
Pennsylvania State University biology professor showed his students the film Fahrenheit 9/11 just before the
2004 election in an attempt to influence their votes.[84] Pressed by Inside Higher Ed, Horowitz said that the claim was hearsay from a "legislative staffer" and that he had no proof it happened.[85]
Horowitz's books, particularly The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America, were criticized by scholars such as
Todd Gitlin.[86] The group Free Exchange on Campus issued a 50-page report in May 2006 in which they take issue with many of the books' assertions: they identify specific factual errors, unsubstantiated assertions and quotations that appear to be either in error or taken out of context.[87][88]
After discrepancies in her autobiography were detailed by anthropologist
David Stoll, Horowitz criticized the autobiography of activist
Rigoberta Menchú, an indigenous woman from
Guatemala: "The fictional story of Rigoberta Menchú is a piece of Communist propaganda designed to incite hatred of Europeans and Westerners and the societies they have built, and to build support for Communist and terrorist organizations at war with the democracies of the West."[89]
Allegations of racism
Chip Berlet, writing for the
Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), accused Horowitz's Center for the Study of Popular Culture of being one of 17 "right-wing foundations and think tanks support[ing] efforts to make bigoted and discredited ideas respectable."[90] Berlet accused Horowitz of blaming
slavery on "black Africans … abetted by dark-skinned Arabs" and of "attack[ing] minority 'demands for special treatment' as 'only necessary because some blacks can't seem to locate the ladder of opportunity within reach of others".[90]
In 2008, while speaking at
University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), Horowitz criticized Arab culture, saying that it was rife with
antisemitism.[91] He referred to the
Palestinian keffiyeh, a traditional Arab head covering that became associated with
PLO leader
Yasser Arafat, as a symbol of terrorism. In response,
UCSB professor Walid Afifi said that Horowitz was "preaching hate" and smearing Arab culture.[91]
Criticism of Islamic organizations
Horowitz has used university student publications and lectures at universities as venues for publishing controversial advertisements or lecturing on issues related to Islamic student and other organizations. In April 2008, DHFC advertised in the Daily Nexus, the
University of California Santa Barbara school newspaper, saying that the Muslim Students' Association (MSA) had links with the
Muslim Brotherhood,
Al Qaeda, and
Hamas.[92] The next month, Horowitz, speaking at UCSB, said that MSA supports "a second Holocaust of the Jews".[91] The MSA responded that they were a peaceful organization and not a political group.[92] The MSA's faculty adviser said the group had "been involved in interfaith activities with Jewish student groups, and they've been involved in charity work for national disaster relief."[91] Horowitz ran the ad in The GW Hatchet, the student newspaper of
George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Jake Sherman, the Hatchet's editor-in-chief, said claims the MSA was radical were "ludicrous".[93]
Horowitz published a 2007 piece in the
Columbia University student newspaper, saying that, according to public opinion polls, "150 million out of 750 million Muslims support a holy war against Christians, Jews, and other Muslims."[94] Speaking at the
University of Massachusetts Amherst in February 2010, Horowitz compared Islamists to Nazis, saying: "Islamists are worse than the Nazis, because even the Nazis did not tell the world that they want to exterminate the Jews."[95]
Horowitz created a campaign for what he called "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week" in parody of multicultural awareness activities. He helped arrange for leading critics of radical Islam to speak at more than a hundred college campuses in October 2007.[96] As a speaker, he was repeatedly met with intense hostility.[97][98]
In a 2011 review of anti-Islamic activists in the US, the
Southern Poverty Law Center identified Horowitz as one of 10 people in the United States' "Anti-Muslim Inner Circle".[99] He has been described as one of the most important personalities and public funders of the international
counter-jihad movement.[100][101]
Personal life
Horowitz has been married four times. He married Elissa Krauthamer, in a
Yonkers, New York, synagogue on June 14, 1959.[102] They had four children together: Jonathan Daniel,
Ben, Sarah Rose (deceased) and Anne. Sarah died in March 2008 at age 44 from
Turner syndrome-related heart complications. She had been a teacher, writer and human rights activist.[103][104] She is the subject of Horowitz's 2009 book, A Cracking of the Heart.[104]
Horowitz's second marriage, to Sam Moorman, ended in divorce. On June 24, 1990, Horowitz married Shay Marlowe in an
Orthodox Jewish ceremony.[107] They divorced. Horowitz's fourth and present marriage is to April Mullvain.[1]
Horowitz, in 2015, described himself as an
agnostic.[108]
Works
Books
Student. (Ballantine, 1962)
Shakespeare: An Existential View. (Tavistock, 1965)
The Free World Colossus: A Critique of American Foreign Policy in the Cold War.Hill & Wang (1965)
From Yalta to Vietnam: American Foreign Policy in the Cold War.Penguin (1967)
Indoctrination U: The Left's War Against Academic Freedom. (Encounter, 2007)
Party of Defeat, with Ben Johnson. (Spence Publishing, 2008)
One Party Classroom: How Radical Professors at America's Top Colleges Indoctrinate Students and Undermine Our Democracy. (Crown Forum, 2009)
A Cracking of the Heart. (Regnery, 2009)
Reforming Our Universities: The Campaign For An Academic Bill Of Rights. (Regnery, 2010)
A Point in Time : The Search for Redemption in This Life and the Next. (Regnery, 2011)
Radicals: Portraits of a Destructive Passion. (Regnery, 2012)
The New Leviathan: How the Left-Wing Money-Machine Shapes American Politics and Threatens America's Future. (2012)
The Black Book of the American Left. Volume 1: My Life and Times. (David Horowitz Freedom Center, 2013)
The Black Book of the American Left. Volume 2: Progressives. (David Horowitz Freedom Center, 2014)
The Black Book of the American Left. Volume 3: The Great Betrayal. (David Horowitz Freedom Center, 2014)
Take No Prisoners: The Battle Plan for Defeating the Left. (Regnery, 2014)
You're Going to be Dead One Day: A Love Story. (Regnery, 2015)
The Black Book of the American Left. Volume 4: Islamo-Fascism and the War Against the Jews. (David Horowitz Freedom Center, 2015)
The Black Book of the American Left. Volume 5: Culture Wars. (David Horowitz Freedom Center, 2015)
The Black Book of the American Left. Volume 6: Progressive Racism. (David Horowitz Freedom Center, 2016)
The Black Book of the American Left. Volume 7: The Left in Power. (David Horowitz Freedom Center, 2016)
The Black Book of the American Left. Volume 8: The Left in The University. (David Horowitz Freedom Center, 2017)
The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, And Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party.Humanix Books (2017)
Big Agenda: President Trump's Plan to Save America. (
Humanix Books, 2017)
The Black Book of the American Left. Volume 9: Ruling Ideas (David Horowitz Freedom Center, 2018)
Dark Agenda: The War to Destroy Christian America. (Humanix, 2019)
Mortality and Faith: Reflections on a Journey through Time. (Regnery, 2019)
BLITZ: Trump Will Smash the Left and Win. (Humanix Books, 2020)
The Enemy Within: How a Totalitarian Movement is Destroying America. (Regnery, 2021)
I Can't Breathe: How a Racial Hoax is Killing America. (Regnery, 2021)
Final Battle: The Next Election Could Be the Last. (Humanix, 2023)
Articles
Oglesby, Carl, and David Horowitz. "In Defense of Paranoia: An Exchange Between Carl Oglesby and David Horowitz." Ramparts Magazine (March 1975), pp. 15–20.
^"David Horowitz". Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved January 18, 2022. Despite Horowitz being a founding intellectual member of the New Left in the 1960s, and an advocate for civil rights and equality, he has since the late 1980s become a driving force of the anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and anti-black movements.