
Logo of the David Horowitz Freedom
Center.
The
David Horowitz Freedom Center is a
conservative foundation founded in 1988 by
political activist
David Horowitz and his
long-time collaborator, co-author, and friend,
Peter Collier. It was
established with funding from conservative philanthropies, such as
the
Olin Foundation the
Bradley Foundation and the
Sarah Scaife Foundation.
2006 change of name
In July 2006 the center changed its name from the
Center
for the Study of Popular Culture, giving the following
explanation:
[328498]
"We took this action for two reasons", said Board
Chairman Jess Morgan.
"First, when the Center began, just as the Cold War was
ending, we thought that the significant issue of our time would be
the political radicalization of popular culture.
The culture is still a battleground, but after 9/11, it
is clear that freedom itself was under assault from the new
totalitarianism of terror.
Secondly, David Horowitz, the Center’s founder, has
become increasingly identified with issues of freedom at home and
abroad.
We wanted to honor him and also support the efforts he
has undertaken.
The name change does this and rededicates us to the
mission at hand."[328499]
Purpose and scope
The
original intention of the CSPC was to establish a foothold in
Hollywood
. According to Horowitz, the center would
eventually attract 50,000 "contributing supporters."
It led to the
establishment of the Wednesday Morning Club, which serves as a
platform for conservative speakers - both within the Hollywood
community and the world of polemics - to address their ideas to
people living in the Los
Angeles
area. It also hosts regular debates between
conservative and liberal speakers.
In 2003 Horowitz expanded the scope of the CSPC to include
monitoring what his organization views as an ingrained hostility
towards conservative scholarship and ideas within the world of
academe. The organization
Students for Academic Freedom
was created to accomplish this task.
DHFC reported that in
2006 its websites were
visited more than 32 million times, its radio and TV audiences were
tens of millions, and it distributed 800,000 pamphlets and
books
DHFC is a
501(3) charity. In 2005 it had
revenues of $4.9 million, expenses of $4.0 million, 8.4% of which
was $336,000 compensation for its head, David Horowitz.
[328500][328501]
Programs
The Center has the following ongoing programs.
[328502]
- FrontPage
Magazine -- an online "conservative" political
magazine and website, edited by Horowitz, that is the successor to
Heterodoxy (see below). Its main focus is on issues pertaining to
foreign
policy, war, and terrorism.
- Discover the Networks (previously, and still often
referred to as, "Discover the Network") - A database of what it
describes as organizations and "activists for leftwing agendas and
causes -- egalitarians, socialists, and opponents of American
'imperialism'",[328503] with a Java applet to display their
interconnections in graphic form.[328504]This description can include Jihadists,
"anti-American" strains of anti-Iraq War activists, etc. After two
years of development, went online in February, 2005, with a staff
of two at a cost of about $500,000. [328505]
- Students for
Academic Freedom- claims chapters on 150 campuses.
Opposes "indoctrination".[328506]
- Wednesday Morning Club - In 2006 the Center
held twenty-one Wednesday Morning Club events with speakers ranging
from former Speaker Newt Gingrich,
Victor Davis Hanson, Wafa Sultan, General Georges Sada,Judge Charles W. Pickering, Dennis Prager, Shelby
Steele and Melanie Morgan with
Catherine Moy. Speakers in 2007
include Dinesh D'Souza, Dore Gold, Bruce Herschensohn and John O'Sullivan. In previous years speakers
have included then-Governor George W.
Bush (1999), then-Secretary of
Defense Dick Cheney, Robert Bork, Representatives Tom DeLay and Henry
Hyde, Senators Trent Lott, Bill Frist and Joseph
Lieberman, Christopher
Hitchens, Bill Kristol, Fred Barnes and George
Will.[328507]
- Jihad Watch (or
Jihadwatch; also Dhimmi Watch) - blogs and articles attacking
Islamism.[328508]
- The Individual Rights Foundation -
Organization of lawyers to fight speech codes and political correctness on campuses and
elsewhere. Participated as Amicus Curiae in Boy Scouts of America v.
Dale, the successful
defense of the Boy Scouts of
America against the ACLU in the Supreme
Court. [328509][328510]
- Libertas - A forum for promoting conservative
films in Hollywood. It presents the conservative
Liberty Film Festival.[328511]
- Restoration Weekend - Annual conservative
fundraising and networking event.
Heterodoxy magazine
Heterodoxy was a
newsmagazine
published in a
tabloid format by the center,
edited by David Horowitz and
Peter Collier.
Its focus was on
exposing the excesses of political
correctness on college and university campuses across
the United
States
.
Funding of Congressional travel
Between July 2000 and February 2006, the center (under its old
name) was the sponsor of 25 trips by U.S. Senators and
Representatives, all Republicans, to six different events. Total
expenditures were about $43,000.
[328512]
Effectiveness
The Center claims credit for a "growing willingness of
conservatives to identify radicals as 'leftists' and not
'liberals'" and for getting "mass market conservatives" such as
Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and Tom DeLay to use terms like
“
fifth column”, “hate America left” and
“Shadow Party”.
Criticism
Chip Berlet, writing for the
Southern Poverty Law Center
(SPLC), an organization devoted to "combat racism and promote civil
rights through research, education and litigation," identified the
CSPC (now DHFC) as one of 17 "right-wing foundations and think
tanks support[ing] efforts to make bigoted and discredited ideas
respectable." 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,' rejecting the idea that they could be the victims
of lingering racism."
Responding with an open letter to
Morris
Dees, president of the SPLC, Horowitz stated that his reminder
that the slaves transported to America were bought from African and
Arab slavers was a response to demands that only whites pay blacks
reparations, not to hold Africans and Arabs solely responsible for
slavery, and that the statement that he had denied lingering racism
was "a calculated and carefully constructed lie." The letter said
that Berlet's work was "so tendentious, so filled with transparent
misrepresentations and smears that if you continue to post the
report you will create for your Southern Poverty Law Center a
well-earned reputation as a hate group itself." The SPLC
refused,
[328513] and subsequent critical pieces on
Berlet and the SPLC have been featured on Horowitz's website and
personal blog.
The liberal advocacy group
People For the American Way
(PFAW) points out that FrontPage Magazine picked up the columns of
Ann Coulter after she was fired from
National Review Online for her anti-Muslim comments after
9/11. For his part, Horowitz has said that he considers
Coulter a satirist, and "a national treasure".
[328514]
PFAW also quotes Horowitz as saying "Everybody knows -- but no one
wants to say -- that the Democratic Party has become the party of
special interest bigots and racial dividers. It runs the one-party
state that controls public services in every major inner city,
including the corrupt and failing school systems in which half the
students -- mainly African American and Hispanic -- are denied a
shot at the American dream. It is the party of race preferences
which separate American citizens on the basis of skin color
providing privileges to a handful of ethnic and racial groups in a
nation of nearly a thousand. The Democratic Party has shown that it
will go to the wall to preserve the racist laws which enforce these
preferences, and to defend the racist school systems that destroy
the lives of millions of children every year." –David Horowtiz,
"Challenging the Racist Democrats in California," August 5, 2003"
[328515]
See also
References
External links