Horowitz either didn't realize he was going to be debating someone (as opposed to giving a speech) or didn't realize he was going to be debating a libertarian (as opposed to a conventional liberal or leftist), and a few weeks before the event he called me to try to get me to pull out. Debating someone who might be construed as another member of the political right was not on his agenda; he didn't like how that might look in the media. (This point was moot, since as far as I know there was no press coverage.) He proposed instead a "private" debate, to be held before a select audience either after or before his public speech.
The head of the college libertarian club refused to co-sponsor such an affair and instead proposed a slightly revamped version of the initial idea, in which the debate would be billed as a "discussion" and the topic would be broadened from the Academic Bill of Rights to academic freedom in general. Horowitz agreed and so did I, though it left me a bit uncertain as to just what I was going to be addressing when I spoke.
The next day I privately circulated an account of the evening. After Horowitz passed away, I dug it up to refresh my memory of what had happened. I did not post it here immediately, because it didn't feel like the sort of thing to publish right after a man died. But now more than a week has passed, and so—in the interests of the historical record, and also because it's kind of funny—here it is. I have fixed a few typos but otherwise have not changed a thing:
* * * * *
He very nearly didn't show up. The student who picked him up in DC had his car break down on the way to UMBC. Apparently someone else was following in the car behind him (part of the crack Horowitz security team no doubt), but despite this he was still delayed. At one point we got a call about him from a police station, Lord knows why. But he did finally turn up, half an hour late, and delivered a rambling talk to the forty-odd attendees in which he said (I paraphrase) "I'm going to show you how you're not getting both sides of the story. I'm going to give you some conservative views that I'm sure you're not getting in the classroom." He then gave some garden-variety libertarian-conservative comments about the inner city, DDT and malaria, and one other topic that I've already forgotten. When it was my turn to speak the first thing I did was ask how many people *had* heard these views. As I expected, nearly everyone raised their hands. (I had asked the heads of the campus Republican and libertarian clubs before the talk what the state of intellectual diversity on campus was, and they both said, "Actually, it's pretty good.") If I won the debate, it happened right then.
Or maybe I won it way before the talk began. At the end of the evening, a couple of the College Republicans who organized the thing complained to me about what a prima donna Horowitz had been. They also thanked me for actually sticking to the topic when I spoke.
But it was a civil discussion, and we agreed about a number of things. (It's hard not to when so much of his speech is given over to talking about how inner city schools are mismanaged and how banning DDT hurts people in Africa.) The main difference between us was that he seems to think it's inappropriate for a college professor to ever spend time presenting a political point of view in class. He's also opposed to putting political cartoons on doors. Someone asked him about his, um, polemicist streak, and I took the opportunity to razz him about an article he'd written on an antiwar march that he had headlined "100,000 Communists March On Washington To Give Aid and Comfort to Saddam Hussein." (I also asked him if he still wanted to add political and religious diversity to Title IX, and he said he'd given up on the idea.)
The most bizarre part of the evening was dinner, though. Mostly the conversation was dominated by an elderly Libertarian activist who's a fan of both Horowitz and Reason and who, like most Libertarians, loves to talk. (I didn't mind this, as I wasn't really up to making a lot of conversation with my sparring partner.) But there were other exchanges as well. Horowitz had said during his speech that ordinarily—when his car doesn't break down—he comes to campus early and spends hours interviewing students about the state of affairs on campus. I hope his interview method doesn't ordinarily consist of trying to browbeat students into seeing that they're being discriminated against—why, how much money do you get compared to the campus gay and lesbian group?
"Actually," says the libertarian, "we get more." And he begins to explain how student fees are distributed on campus, and to suggest that the culture of UMBC isn't much like that of UCLA or the University of Wisconsin.
"I'm shocked," says Horowitz. "That's very rare." But then he seems to forget what he's been told, because he goes back to his main theme of the evening: the fact that the one administrator at the university who attended the debate didn't approach him to introduce himself afterwards. This was an insult, he kept saying—not just to him, but to all conservative or libertarian students on campus. "If Angela Davis were here, this room would be packed with deans."
"I don't think it would," says a student. "It's not a very political campus."
"Oh, it would," says Horowitz. "You don't see how you're being insulted. You don't see how all this is connected. I go to campuses all the time, but I'm almost NEVER invited by the administration, and the administrators almost NEVER introduce themselves to me. I could make three times, FOUR times as much as I do now if I were a leftist."
There was also a loud conversation at dinner about just what was good and bad for black people in America. The only black person present was the lady silently collecting our dishes. I abstained from that one.
