Posted by Randy Barnett:
No Urban Legend After All:
[1]This link from a VC reader shows why it is very hard to prove a
negative. It turns out that there IS a student at Foothills College in
California named Ahmad al-Qloushi who claims this happened to him,
though [2]Media Matters--"a Web-based, not-for-profit progressive
research and information center dedicated to comprehensively
monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in
the U.S. media"--reports that the professor denies it. So perhaps the
incident did not occur as Horowitz contends. Nevertheless, a factual
dispute between two parties to an event is not an "urban legend" as
claimed by Mano Singham.
What I found truly shocking about Singham's op-ed is where he writes:
The story, even if true, also lacked the kinds of details that are
required to sustain the allegation that this was indeed an abuse of
power. After all, it is not uncommon for students to be assigned to
take positions that they don't agree with. Being a devil's advocate
is a perfectly legitimate method of sharpening one's understanding
of an issue. Socrates liked it.
So I decided to track down the professor to ask what the full story
was. And this is where things started to get interesting, because
the professor seems to be more elusive than the Scarlet Pimpernel.
My first clue was when Horowitz was quoted as saying that the
professor was from the University of Northern Colorado. The Utah
Statesman newspaper wrote an article with this information on March
26, 2004, and it was reproduced on the Web site of Horowitz's
organization, Front Page, which implies that he acknowledged its
veracity.
Not only does the professor exist--as he is quoted by the Media
Matters denying al-Qloushi's version of the events--but also on the
Front Page website is a first person report of the incident by
al-Qloushi (dated January 6th) that Singham somehow missed.
Don't write to point out alleged holes in al-Qloushi's story. That is
not the issue. The issue is the claim made in the pages of the
Cleveland Plain Dealer by Mano Singham that David Horowitz fabricated
or perpetuated an urban myth. The Plain Dealer's headline for
Singham's column is "That liberal fiend can't be found." Unless, that
is, you look on the internet at both conservative and progressive
websites.
References
1. http://mediamatters.org/items/200502220005
2. http://mediamatters.org/etc/about.html
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