Horowitz wrote several books with authorPeter Collier, including four on prominent 20th-century American families. He and Collier collaborated on books about cultural criticism. Horowitz worked as a columnist forSalon.[1]
From 1956 to 1975, Horowitz was an outspoken adherent of theNew Left. He later rejectedprogressive ideas and became a defender ofneoconservatism.[2] Horowitz recounted his ideological journey in a series of retrospective books, culminating with his 1996 memoirRadical Son: A Generational Odyssey.
While in London, Horowitz became a close friend of Deutscher, and wrote a biography of him.[15][16] Horowitz wroteThe Free World Colossus: A Critique of American Foreign Policy in the Cold War. In January 1968, Horowitz returned to the United States, where he became co-editor of the New Left magazineRamparts, settling in northern California.[11]
During the early 1970s, Horowitz developed a close friendship withHuey P. Newton, founder of theBlack Panther Party. Horowitz later portrayed Newton as equal parts gangster, terrorist, intellectual and media celebrity.[11] As part of their work together, Horowitz helped raise money for, and assisted the Panthers with, the running of a school for poor children inOakland. He recommended that Newton hireBetty Van Patter as bookkeeper; she was then working forRamparts. In December 1974, Van Patter's battered, decomposed body was found on a beach inSan Francisco Bay; she had been murdered. It is widely believed that the Panthers were responsible for her murder, a belief also held by Horowitz.[11][17][18][19][20][21]
Following this period, Horowitz rejectedMarx and socialism, but kept quiet about his changing politics for nearly a decade.
In early 1985, Horowitz and Collier, who also became a political conservative, wrote an article forThe Washington Post Magazine titled "Lefties forReagan", later retitled as "Goodbye to All That". The article explained their change of views and recent decision to vote for a second term for Republican President Ronald Reagan.[23][24][25] In 1986, Horowitz published "Why I Am No Longer a Leftist" inThe Village Voice.[26]
In 1987, Horowitz co-hosted a "Second Thoughts Conference" in Washington, D.C., described bySidney Blumenthal inThe Washington Post as his "coming out" as a conservative.[27]
In May 1989, Horowitz,Ronald Radosh, and Collier attended a conference inKraków calling for the end of Communism.[28] After marching with Polish dissidents in an anti-regime protest, Horowitz spoke about his changing thoughts and why he believed that socialism could not create their future. He said his dream was for the people of Poland to be free.[29]
In 1992, Horowitz and Collier foundedHeterodoxy, a monthly magazine focused on exposing what it described as excessivepolitical correctness on United States college and university campuses. It was "meant to have the feel of asamizdat publication inside thegulag of the PC [politically correct] university". The tabloid was directed at university students, whom Horowitz viewed as indoctrinated by the entrenched Left.[30] InRadical Son, he wrote that universities were no longer effective in presenting both sides of political arguments. He stated that left-wing professors had created an atmosphere of political "terror" on campuses.[31]
Horowitz appeared inOccupy Unmasked, a 2012 documentary portraying theOccupy Wall Street movement as a sinister organization formed to violently destroy the American government.[32]
In the early 21st century, Horowitz concentrated on issues of academic freedom, attempting to protect conservative viewpoints. He, Eli Lehrer andAndrew Jones published a pamphlet, "Political Bias in the Administrations and Faculties of 32 Elite Colleges and Universities" (2004), in which they find the ratio ofDemocrats toRepublicans at 32 schools to be more than 10 to 1.[33] Horowitz's book,The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America (2006), criticized individual professors for, as he alleges, engaging in indoctrination rather than a disinterested pursuit of knowledge.[34]
Horowitz published anAcademic Bill of Rights (ABR), which he proposes to eliminate political bias in university hiring and grading. He says conservatives, and particularlyRepublican Party members, are systematically excluded from faculties, citing statistical studies on faculty party affiliation.[35] In 2004 the Georgia General Assembly passed a resolution on a 41–5 vote to adopt a version of the ABR for state educational institutions.[36] InPennsylvania, the House of Representatives created a special legislative committee to investigate issues of academic freedom, including whether students who hold unpopular views need more protection.[37][38][39][40]
In 1998 Horowitz andPeter Collier founded theDavid Horowitz Freedom Center.[41]Politico states that Horowitz's activities and DHFC are funded in part by Aubrey and Joyce Chernick and TheBradley Foundation. Politico stated that during 2008–2010, "the lion's share of the $920,000 it [DHFC] provided over the past three years toJihad Watch came from [Joyce] Chernick".[42] Between July 2000 and February 2006 the freedom center provided a total of $43,000 in funding for 25 trips taken by Republican senators and representatives includingMike Pence,Mitch McConnell,Bob Barr,Fred Thompson and others.[43] In 2015, Horowitz made $583,000 (~$751,694 in 2024) from the organization.[44]
During his time in the New Left, Horowitz supported thecivil rights movement. In the 1970s, he came to believe that theBlack Panthers were involved in the death of his friendBetty Van Patter, souring the relationship between Horowitz and the Black Panthers.[74]
In a 2001 column inSalon[75] he described his opposition toreparations for slavery, calling it racism against blacks, as it defined them only in terms of their descent from slaves. He argued that applying labels like "descendants ofslaves" to blacks was damaging and would serve tosegregate them from mainstream society. In the same year duringBlack History Month, Horowitz attempted to purchase advertising space in several American university student publications to express his opposition to reparations.[75] Many student papers refused to sell him ad space; at some schools, papers that carried his ads were stolen or destroyed.[75] Joan Walsh said the furor had given Horowitz an overwhelming amount of free publicity.[75][76]
In 2018, Horowitz attracted many critical comments by attacking theEqual Justice Initiative's newNational Memorial for Peace and Justice, calling it "a real racist project"[77] showing "anti-white racism".[78] "Lynchings were bad but they weren't mainly about whites yanking blacks off the streets and stringing them up".[78] "A third of the victims of lynchings were white. How many of them do you think this memorial features [sic]."[79]
Horowitz was critical ofPalestinians, claiming that their goal is to wipe out Jews from the Middle East.[80] “No people have shown themselves as so morally sick as the Palestinians,” he said at Brooklyn College in 2011.[81]
Horowitz published a 2007 piece in theColumbia University student newspaper, saying that, according to public opinion polls, "150 million out of 750 million Muslims support a holy war against Christians, Jews, and other Muslims."[82] Speaking at theUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst in February 2010, Horowitz compared Islamists to Nazis, saying: "Islamists are worse than the Nazis, because even the Nazis did not tell the world that they want to exterminate the Jews."[83]
Horowitz created a campaign for what he called "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week" in parody of multicultural awareness activities. He helped arrange for leading critics of radical Islam to speak at more than a hundred college campuses in October 2007.[84] As a speaker, he was repeatedly met with intense hostility.[85][86]
In 2008, while speaking atUniversity of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), Horowitz criticized Arab culture, saying that it was rife withantisemitism.[87] He referred to thePalestinian keffiyeh, a traditional Arab head covering that became associated withPLO leaderYasser Arafat, as a “symbol of terrorism”. In response,UCSB professor Walid Afifi said that Horowitz was "preaching hate" and smearing Arab culture.[87]
Horowitz used university student publications and lectures at universities as venues for publishing controversial advertisements or lecturing on issues related to Islamic student and other organizations. In April 2008, DHFC advertised in theDaily Nexus, the UCSB school newspaper, saying that the Muslim Students' Association (MSA) had links with theMuslim Brotherhood,Al-Qaeda, andHamas.[88] The next month, Horowitz, speaking at UCSB, said that MSA supports "a second Holocaust of the Jews".[87] The MSA responded that they were a peaceful organization and not a political group.[88] The MSA's faculty adviser said the group had "been involved in interfaith activities with Jewish student groups, and they've been involved in charity work for national disaster relief."[87] Horowitz ran the ad inThe GW Hatchet, the student newspaper ofGeorge Washington University in Washington, D.C. Jake Sherman, theHatchet's editor-in-chief, said claims the MSA was radical were "ludicrous".[89]
He became an early user of the question "Do you condemn Hamas?" which he directed to a Muslim student at theUniversity of California, San Diego (UCSD) on May 11, 2010.[90][91] The student was a member of UCSD's Muslim Student Association, then holding Justice in Palestine Week, which students said Horowitz had referred to as "Hitler Youth Week".[90][91] In 2017, Horowitz's Freedom Center targeted pro-Palestinian professors and students.[92]
In a 2011 review of anti-Islamic activists in the US, theSouthern Poverty Law Center identified Horowitz as one of ten people in the United States' "Anti-Muslim Inner Circle".[93] He was also described as "the godfather of the anti-Muslim movement",[94] and as "possibly the number onecounter-jihad personality", financing many other groups through his organization.[95]
In 2017 Horowitz's center put up posters on university campuses naming students and professors who support Palestinian rights, with the names taken from the anonymous doxxing groupCanary Mission.[96][97]
Some Horowitz accounts of U.S. colleges and universities as bastions of liberal indoctrination have been disputed.[98] For example, Horowitz alleged that aUniversity of Northern Colorado student received a failing grade on a final exam for refusing to write an essay arguing thatGeorge W. Bush is awar criminal.[99] A spokeswoman for the university said that the test question was not as described by Horowitz and that there were nonpolitical reasons for the grade, which was not an F.[100] Horowitz identified the professor[100] as Robert Dunkley, an assistant professor of criminal justice at Northern Colorado. Dunkley said Horowitz made him an example of"liberal bias" in academia and yet, "Dunkley said that he comes from a Republican family, is a registered Republican and considers himself politically independent, taking pride in never having voted a straight party ticket".[100]
In another instance, Horowitz said aPennsylvania State University biology professor showed his students the filmFahrenheit 9/11 just before the2004 election in an attempt to influence their votes.[101] Pressed byInside Higher Ed, Horowitz said that the claim was hearsay from a "legislative staffer" and that he had no proof it happened.[102]
Horowitz's books, particularlyThe Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America, were criticized by scholars such asTodd Gitlin.[103] The groupFree Exchange on Campus issued a 50-page report in May 2006 in which they take issue with many of the books' assertions: they identify specific factual errors, unsubstantiated assertions and quotations that appear to be either in error or taken out of context.[104][105]
Chip Berlet, writing for theSouthern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), accused Horowitz's Center for the Study of Popular Culture of being one of 17 "right-wing foundations and think tanks support[ing] efforts to make bigoted and discredited ideas respectable."[106] Berlet accused Horowitz of blamingslavery 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".[106]
Horowitz was married four times. He married Elissa Krauthamer, in aYonkers, New York, synagogue on June 14, 1959.[107] They had four children together: Jonathan Daniel,Ben, Sarah Rose (deceased) and Anne. Sarah died in March 2008 at age 44 fromTurner syndrome-related heart complications. She had been a teacher, writer and human rights activist.[108][109] She is the subject of Horowitz's 2009 book,A Cracking of the Heart.[109]
Horowitz's second marriage in 1984, to Sam Moorman, ended in divorce within less than a year.[112] On June 24, 1990, Horowitz married Shay Marlowe in anOrthodox Jewish ceremony.[113] They divorced.
Horowitz's fourth and final marriage was to April Mullvain.[4] The couple met in the mid-1990s, and married two years later.[114] He and April lived in horse country northwest of Los Angeles,[115] where she rescues abused horses and provides equine educational programs.[114]
Horowitz, in 2015, described himself as an agnostic.[116]
Horowitz died from cancer at his home inParker, Colorado, on April 29, 2025, at the age of 86.[117][118]
Party of Defeat: How Democrats and Radicals Undermined America’s War on Terror Before and After 9/11, with Ben Johnson. (Spence Publishing, 2008)ISBN978-1-890626-74-7OCLC224508933
One Party Classroom: How Radical Professors at America's Top Colleges Indoctrinate Students and Undermine Our Democracy. (Crown Forum, 2009)ISBN978-0-307-45255-9OCLC232980253
The Black Book of the American Left. Volume 4: Islamo-Fascism and the War Against the Jews. (David Horowitz Freedom Center, 2015)ISBN978-1-941262-00-9
The Black Book of the American Left. Volume 5: Culture Wars. (David Horowitz Freedom Center, 2015)ISBN978-1-941262-01-6
The Black Book of the American Left. Volume 6: Progressive Racism. (David Horowitz Freedom Center, 2016)ISBN978-1-59403-859-4
The Black Book of the American Left. Volume 7: The Left in Power. (David Horowitz Freedom Center, 2016)ISBN978-1-941262-03-0
The Black Book of the American Left. Volume 8: The Left in the University. (David Horowitz Freedom Center, 2017)ISBN978-1-941262-04-7
The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party.Humanix Books (2017)ISBN978-1-59555-103-0
^Horowitz, David (July 16, 2002)."One fishy argument".Salon. RetrievedApril 8, 2022.
^"David Horowitz".Southern Poverty Law Center. RetrievedJanuary 18, 2022.Despite Horowitz being a founding intellectual member of the New Left in the 1960s, and an advocate for civil rights and equality, he has since the late 1980s become a driving force of the anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and anti-black movements.
David Horowitz delivers a speech to the Ashland University College Republicans at the Ashbrook Center on November 11, 1991.
