Post by repeater on Mar 20, 2005 4:41:31 GMT -5
Horowitz concedes he misrepresented facts in Colorado case
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
March 17, 2005
GREELEY — Conservative firebrand David Horowitz has conceded he misrepresented a University of Northern Colorado student’s complaint against her instructor.
Horowitz, who has been outspoken about faculty bias on college campuses around the country, has told the story of a UNC student who refused to answer an essay question which asked her to “explain why George Bush is a war criminal.”
Horowitz claimed the student received an F for instead writing an essay explaining why Saddam Hussein was a war criminal.
On Tuesday, Horowitz published an article titled “Correction: Our Facts Were Wrong; Our Point Was Right,” in his online magazine, FrontPageMagazine.com.
UNC spokeswoman Gloria Reynolds said Wednesday the student had not failed the test and that there was a choice of two essay questions, neither of which included the phrase “explain why George Bush is a war criminal.”
Criminal justice professor Robert Dunkley said it was frightening how far Horowitz has taken the incident without doing thorough research.
“The bottom line is if you’re going to make claims you ought to do your best to get the facts,” Dunkley told the Greeley Tribune.
One of the questions was phrased this way: “The American government campaign to attack Iraq was in part based on the assumptions that the Iraqi government had ’Weapons of Mass Destruction.’ This was never proven prior to the U.S. police action/war and even President Bush, after the capture of Baghdad, stated ’we may never find such weapons.’
“(R)esearch on deviance discusses this process of how the media and various moral entrepreneurs and government enforcers can conspire to create a panic. ... Make the argument that the military action of the U.S. attacking Iraq was criminal.”
Dunkley, a registered Republican, said the question was a critical thinking exercise, not a political statement.
Horowitz apologized “for not having fully checked and corrected this story,” but called the question loaded and unusual for a criminology class.
“What happened in Professor Dunkley’s class at the University of Northern Colorado is not education, it is indoctrination,” he wrote. “And that violates the academic freedom of the students who were subjected to it.”
www.summitdaily.com/article/20050317/NEWS/50317005
Here's What Horowitz has to say
Colorado: The Student Speaks
By David Horowitz
FrontPageMagazine.com | March 18, 2005
In the saga of the Colorado student who claims that she was failed on a criminology exam for not following the professor’s instructions to explain why George Bush is a war criminal (but wrote that Saddam Hussein was instead) there is no hard evidence because the professor claims to have destroyed all copies of the actual exam, while also claiming that the student’s bad grade (he won’t reveal what it is and probably can’t because there is a federal law against such public disclosure) was given because she handed in only two pages instead of the required three. Our question to him is, how can he know this if he destroyed the exams?
At legislative hearings on the Academic Bill of Rights, the President of the University of Northern Colorado, Kay Norton said the following according to the audio transcript, (we will post the audio as soon as we are able; our web technician is on vacation): "...and actually last year, a young woman did raise a question about what she thought was an inappropriate examination question, I referred her to our procedures, she followed them, and I'm pleased to report to you that the original version of what would have been an inappropriate examination question proved not to be what was actually on the examination, and so the process worked."
Please note how deceptive this testimony is. President Norton did not have access to the examination question since all the exam papers were destroyed. What she had access to in making this statement was a question supplied by the professor after the student had filed a formal complaint about her grade. She is simply taking the professor at his word. She also does not indicate whether the grade on the exam was altered through the appeals process or not.
After a series of one-sided newspaper reports in the Colorado press in which only the UNC administration and the professor were interviewed, the student emailed us the following comments reiterating her claim (and ours based on her claim) that the original exam question was different from the question that the professor supplied after that fact. As we have pointed out the chief difference between the question supplied after the fact and reported by the university spokesperson was that students were required to explain why the United States was a war criminal rather than George Bush (see Addenda 1 below):
“I did fail the final exam, at least that is what I was told, however based on Dunkley's and the schools comments you never really know what is truthful. It has always been my understanding and my story that I got an “F” on the exam but a B in the class. I don’t think Dunkley disputed that but he is such a manipulative person you never really know.
“I still feel at peace with my decision, I think Erin [our original student interviewer] is upset with me as she keeps calling and emailing me to share [more of my] perspective, but I need some time away from this. It has put unnecessary stress on me and put a damper on my Spring Break. I hope you understand my decision and in talking to you it doesn’t seem like you are upset with me, but I need to do what is best for me in this situation.
rest here: www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=17412
He has also apparently gotten himself into a pissing match with Media Matters
Horowitz "corrects" prior correction; claims "We were right" and accuses Media Matters again of "lying"
Discredited right-wing pundit David Horowitz claimed in a March 17 article on his website Frontpagemagazine.com that an anecdote he has told repeatedly as a purported example of anti-conservative bias on college campuses was, in fact, true, despite his issuance of a "correction" two days before and his acknowledgement then that the story -- concerning an alleged incident at the University of Northern Colorado (UNC) -- "appears to be wrong." In the March 17 article, titled "Correction: We were right," he also attacked Media Matters for America for "lying" about his claims; attacked the press for "report[ing] the MediaMatters claims about us as though they were true"; described the university as "dishonest"; suggested the professor involved may have "tampered" with the exam question after it was administered; and suggested that the student may have lied to him about her grade.
As Media Matters has noted repeatedly, Horowitz and his group Students for Academic Freedom had alleged that when asked on a midterm essay exam to explain "why President Bush was a war criminal," a student in " criminology class at a Colorado university" received a failing grade for explaining instead why Saddam Hussein was a war criminal. Horowitz and SAF claimed that this incident constituted anti-conservative bias. Questions were raised repeatedly about the veracity of the story -- first by Mano Singham, the director of Case Western Reserve University's Center for Innovation in Teaching and Education, who questioned the Colorado story March 4 in a Cleveland Plain Dealer op-ed; then by Media Matters; then, on March 15, InsideHigherEd.com refuted nearly all of the claims Horowitz and his SAF group had made about the alleged UNC incident, quoting a UNC spokeswoman as saying that "the test question was not the one described by Horowitz, the grade was not an F, and there were clearly non-political reasons for whatever grade was given." Horowitz's March 15 admission of error appears to have been prompted by the InsideHigherEd.com article.
But in the March 17 article, apparently stung by press coverage of his admission that the SAF story was wrong, Horowitz tried to backtrack: "[W]e admitted two minor points. We did not know whether the student got an 'F' as she claimed and we did not know whether the question itself was required (as opposed to the answer). I made a mistake from ignorance here and said we had not 'checked' these points. In fact, we could not check them because the University Administration would not release them to us."
rest here: mediamatters.org/items/200503180001
This media matters site seems interesting it basically keeps track of all the rightwing lies and campaigns
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
March 17, 2005
GREELEY — Conservative firebrand David Horowitz has conceded he misrepresented a University of Northern Colorado student’s complaint against her instructor.
Horowitz, who has been outspoken about faculty bias on college campuses around the country, has told the story of a UNC student who refused to answer an essay question which asked her to “explain why George Bush is a war criminal.”
Horowitz claimed the student received an F for instead writing an essay explaining why Saddam Hussein was a war criminal.
On Tuesday, Horowitz published an article titled “Correction: Our Facts Were Wrong; Our Point Was Right,” in his online magazine, FrontPageMagazine.com.
UNC spokeswoman Gloria Reynolds said Wednesday the student had not failed the test and that there was a choice of two essay questions, neither of which included the phrase “explain why George Bush is a war criminal.”
Criminal justice professor Robert Dunkley said it was frightening how far Horowitz has taken the incident without doing thorough research.
“The bottom line is if you’re going to make claims you ought to do your best to get the facts,” Dunkley told the Greeley Tribune.
One of the questions was phrased this way: “The American government campaign to attack Iraq was in part based on the assumptions that the Iraqi government had ’Weapons of Mass Destruction.’ This was never proven prior to the U.S. police action/war and even President Bush, after the capture of Baghdad, stated ’we may never find such weapons.’
“(R)esearch on deviance discusses this process of how the media and various moral entrepreneurs and government enforcers can conspire to create a panic. ... Make the argument that the military action of the U.S. attacking Iraq was criminal.”
Dunkley, a registered Republican, said the question was a critical thinking exercise, not a political statement.
Horowitz apologized “for not having fully checked and corrected this story,” but called the question loaded and unusual for a criminology class.
“What happened in Professor Dunkley’s class at the University of Northern Colorado is not education, it is indoctrination,” he wrote. “And that violates the academic freedom of the students who were subjected to it.”
www.summitdaily.com/article/20050317/NEWS/50317005
Here's What Horowitz has to say
Colorado: The Student Speaks
By David Horowitz
FrontPageMagazine.com | March 18, 2005
In the saga of the Colorado student who claims that she was failed on a criminology exam for not following the professor’s instructions to explain why George Bush is a war criminal (but wrote that Saddam Hussein was instead) there is no hard evidence because the professor claims to have destroyed all copies of the actual exam, while also claiming that the student’s bad grade (he won’t reveal what it is and probably can’t because there is a federal law against such public disclosure) was given because she handed in only two pages instead of the required three. Our question to him is, how can he know this if he destroyed the exams?
At legislative hearings on the Academic Bill of Rights, the President of the University of Northern Colorado, Kay Norton said the following according to the audio transcript, (we will post the audio as soon as we are able; our web technician is on vacation): "...and actually last year, a young woman did raise a question about what she thought was an inappropriate examination question, I referred her to our procedures, she followed them, and I'm pleased to report to you that the original version of what would have been an inappropriate examination question proved not to be what was actually on the examination, and so the process worked."
Please note how deceptive this testimony is. President Norton did not have access to the examination question since all the exam papers were destroyed. What she had access to in making this statement was a question supplied by the professor after the student had filed a formal complaint about her grade. She is simply taking the professor at his word. She also does not indicate whether the grade on the exam was altered through the appeals process or not.
After a series of one-sided newspaper reports in the Colorado press in which only the UNC administration and the professor were interviewed, the student emailed us the following comments reiterating her claim (and ours based on her claim) that the original exam question was different from the question that the professor supplied after that fact. As we have pointed out the chief difference between the question supplied after the fact and reported by the university spokesperson was that students were required to explain why the United States was a war criminal rather than George Bush (see Addenda 1 below):
“I did fail the final exam, at least that is what I was told, however based on Dunkley's and the schools comments you never really know what is truthful. It has always been my understanding and my story that I got an “F” on the exam but a B in the class. I don’t think Dunkley disputed that but he is such a manipulative person you never really know.
“I still feel at peace with my decision, I think Erin [our original student interviewer] is upset with me as she keeps calling and emailing me to share [more of my] perspective, but I need some time away from this. It has put unnecessary stress on me and put a damper on my Spring Break. I hope you understand my decision and in talking to you it doesn’t seem like you are upset with me, but I need to do what is best for me in this situation.
rest here: www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=17412
He has also apparently gotten himself into a pissing match with Media Matters
Horowitz "corrects" prior correction; claims "We were right" and accuses Media Matters again of "lying"
Discredited right-wing pundit David Horowitz claimed in a March 17 article on his website Frontpagemagazine.com that an anecdote he has told repeatedly as a purported example of anti-conservative bias on college campuses was, in fact, true, despite his issuance of a "correction" two days before and his acknowledgement then that the story -- concerning an alleged incident at the University of Northern Colorado (UNC) -- "appears to be wrong." In the March 17 article, titled "Correction: We were right," he also attacked Media Matters for America for "lying" about his claims; attacked the press for "report[ing] the MediaMatters claims about us as though they were true"; described the university as "dishonest"; suggested the professor involved may have "tampered" with the exam question after it was administered; and suggested that the student may have lied to him about her grade.
As Media Matters has noted repeatedly, Horowitz and his group Students for Academic Freedom had alleged that when asked on a midterm essay exam to explain "why President Bush was a war criminal," a student in " criminology class at a Colorado university" received a failing grade for explaining instead why Saddam Hussein was a war criminal. Horowitz and SAF claimed that this incident constituted anti-conservative bias. Questions were raised repeatedly about the veracity of the story -- first by Mano Singham, the director of Case Western Reserve University's Center for Innovation in Teaching and Education, who questioned the Colorado story March 4 in a Cleveland Plain Dealer op-ed; then by Media Matters; then, on March 15, InsideHigherEd.com refuted nearly all of the claims Horowitz and his SAF group had made about the alleged UNC incident, quoting a UNC spokeswoman as saying that "the test question was not the one described by Horowitz, the grade was not an F, and there were clearly non-political reasons for whatever grade was given." Horowitz's March 15 admission of error appears to have been prompted by the InsideHigherEd.com article.
But in the March 17 article, apparently stung by press coverage of his admission that the SAF story was wrong, Horowitz tried to backtrack: "[W]e admitted two minor points. We did not know whether the student got an 'F' as she claimed and we did not know whether the question itself was required (as opposed to the answer). I made a mistake from ignorance here and said we had not 'checked' these points. In fact, we could not check them because the University Administration would not release them to us."
rest here: mediamatters.org/items/200503180001
This media matters site seems interesting it basically keeps track of all the rightwing lies and campaigns