David Horowitz's Double

The Associated Press reported yesterday that David Horowitz's plan to purge liberal professors from America's university system is going ahead at full steam. Here's an excerpt:

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) - David Horowitz Freedom Center President David Horowitz called Tuesday for a purge of liberal and secular teachers from the country's universities, urging students to return to 1950s-style McCarthyism.

"Today, students should shout at the president and ask why liberal and secular university lecturers are present in the universities," Horowitz's official organ FrontPageMag quoted him as saying during a meeting with a group of students.

Horowitz complained that reforms in the country's universities were difficult to accomplish and that the educational system had been affected by secularism for the last 40 years. But, he added: "Such a change has begun."

Horowitz, in his role as self-anointed head of his country's conservative Cultural Revolution, wants the authority to make such changes. But his comments Tuesday seemed designed more to encourage hard-line students to begin a pressure campaign on their own, thus forcing universities to oust the teachers.

Update: In reprinting a portion of AP's article on the purge of liberal professors, I mistook David Horowitz for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. I apologize for any confusion I might have caused. Here is the correct AP article:

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran's hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called Tuesday for a purge of liberal and secular teachers from the country's universities, urging students to return to 1980s-style radicalism.

"Today, students should shout at the president and ask why liberal and secular university lecturers are present in the universities," the official Islamic Republic News Agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying during a meeting with a group of students.

Ahmadinejad complained that reforms in the country's universities were difficult to accomplish and that the educational system had been affected by secularism for the last 150 years. But, he added: "Such a change has begun."

The president, in his role as head of the country's Council of Cultural Revolution, does have the authority to make such changes. But his comments Tuesday seemed designed more to encourage hard-line students to begin a pressure campaign on their own, thus forcing universities to oust the teachers.