By Karen DeMarco

College students across the country are secretly being brain washed, said activist David Horowitz on his visit to the University on Wednesday.

“You pay $32,000 a year and you are second-class citizens,” Horowitz, founder of the Students for Academic Freedom, said.

Horowitz described the injustices he has seen on college campuses nationwide.

“Ninety percent of your faculty are leftists,” he said. “You can’t get a good education if they are only telling you half the story.”

Horowitz created Students for Academic Freedom because he found that conservative students are often mistreated and professors often include their own politics in their teachings. The organization’s goal is to restore academic freedom and educational values to America’s colleges by uniting campus groups.

Horowitz passed out a pamphlet that described ways to stop these injustices and encouraged University students to form their own coalition.

“Respect and resources, demand it,” he said. “Even a handful of you can make a difference.”

Horowitz said students are graded on their opinions, not on how they get to those opinions. Teachers often make remarks in class or teach from textbooks that are one-sided.

Horowitz recalled an incident at Harvard University where the president said there are biological reasons why more men than women occupy the top positions in science and mathematics.

“The feminist professors and their radical friends brought him to his knees, leaving him begging for his hob,” Horowitz said.

He asked the audience, comprised mostly of Republicans, “How many people are aware that there are different math aptitudes for men than women?”

He addressed the few audience members who did not raise their hands, saying, “Maybe you are so brainwashed that you can’t see an answer when it is politically incorrect.”

He justified the scientific findings and pleaded to students to not let political biases blind them from the facts.

“People are different,” he said. “They have different skills and aptitudes.”

He further criticized the liberal trend at American colleges and said professors presume the truth and disregard their responsibilities to pass on knowledge.

“When they leak their political prejudices they violate your academic freedoms,” Horowitz said.

Horowitz said no professor should ever tell a student who to vote for, or try to persuade a student politically. He said many colleges, including the University, showed Fahrenheit 9/11 right before the election.

“We have a very screwed up intellectual society, thanks to the left,” he said. “Leftists invent injustices to protest.”

He said liberals also have a tendency to harp on the past.

“They want to fight the racism of the 1960s,” he said. “But racism in America as an institutional systematic force is dead.”

If he had said that in a classroom, he would be up on all kinds of charges, but faculty in colleges often assert their beliefs, he said.

“I know conservative students who wore their military uniform and were called baby-killers by their communist professors,” he said.

He suggested that the University was unfair even in its promotion of his lecture. If I had been a liberal speaker, there would have been several professors that would have required their students to attend the lecture, adding a professor should mention all speakers or mention none.

In anticipation of any disturbance, the University provided a public safety officer and cautioned that any student who caused a problem would be warned and then removed.

David Horowitz addressed students on the injustices of conservative students. (Karen DeMarco/The Chronicle)