One of the most important political scholars of our time, David Horowitz, founder of the Freedom Center, wrote a letter to Philip Hanlon, president of Dartmouth College, which encapsulates all that has gone wrong with most American universities.

Horowitz demands an apology for the treatment he received at Hanlon’s academy. It is clear that he deserves it.

We quote from the letter (a must-read-in-full):

On October 23, I spoke at your college. I was invited by members of College Republicans and Students Supporting Israel. They probably wanted to hear what I had to say because I am one of the most prominent conservative intellectuals in America …

Despite my credentials –

Extremely impressive credentials, of which he gives a summary –

– and even though these conservative students pay the same tuition – $75,000 per year – as your leftwing students, I was forced to raise the money to underwrite my visit and lecture. This was particularly galling to the Dartmouth conservatives who invited me, because the previous spring Dartmouth’s “Office of Pluralism and Leadership” sponsored a visit by notorious anti-Semite and terrorist supporter Linda Sarsour – who has no academic credentials to speak of – underwriting her expenses and paying her a reported $10,000 honorarium for her talk.

Linda Sarsour is a genuine, fanatical, total bigot: outspokenly anti-Semitic, an agent and defender of the terrorist organization Hamas, a propagandist for intolerant Islam, she is a prime example of the vicious and immoral type of person idolized by the Left in this era of Western decadence.

My hosts were also probably interested in what I had to say because over the preceding decades, Dartmouth has purged conservative intellectuals from its faculty so effectively that the students could only name two Dartmouth liberal arts professors who were conservative. This reflects a collective faculty attitude that intellectual diversity is dangerous and unwanted. This is a disgraceful fact of academic life, which could easily be remedied, which prevents Dartmouth students from getting a decent liberal arts education, where all issues are controversial and intellectual diversity is the only guarantee that students are being educated rather than indoctrinated, or that there are reasonable checks on unchallenged leftist professors going off the deep end. As it happens my visit elicited a professorial outburst showing just how far leftwing bigotry and anti-academic discourse can go on your campus. …

He describes the outburst in some detail. It was aggressive, arrogant, lying, unjust, savage.  

And it was encouraged to be what it was by faculty staff.

Leading the pack of Dartmouth character assassins who mobilized to combat my presence was Professor Annelise Oreleck, an out-of-control Gender Studies professor who tweeted:

Long-time hater, Islamophobe and anti-intellectual David Horowitz is speaking today in Rocky 3 at 6pm. He is a hater of the first order. If you’re so inclined, support students who are organizing a protest – Bring signs. Turn your back. Stage a walkout.

… There were several Dartmouth administrators overseeing this event, including Keysi Montás, the Director of Safety and Security who was in charge. Unfortunately, they were not there to enforce an educational decorum but to encourage the protesters by tolerating their antics and refusing to eject them. …

You had no personal role in these travesties, but you are president of the institution that made them possible. I’m not going to ask you to have your “Office of Pluralism (how Orwellian is that)” sponsor a return visit from me, since it might well provoke a faculty riot. I just want you to think about these signs of a damaged institution. and the warping of the educational experiences of your students.

And –

I would like an apology from you on behalf of the Dartmouth community. …

Will he get an apology?

If he does, it will mean that there is still a trace of moral responsibility in at least one highly-paid Big Cheese of the educational establishment.

What if anything is the Trump administration’s secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, doing to stop this rot in the mind-nurseries of the nation?