Clifton Snider - Activism

Activism

A political/peace activist, Snider has posted poems on the national web site, Poets Against the War, and maintains his own web page, A Poet Against the War, on which he has posted some of his own poetry. The page includes many news items, photos, and links regarding the war in Iraq, not the least of which are statistics of the dead and wounded and information about the slaughter in Iraq of academics and gay people. He has served as an officer in the Long Beach Lambda Democratic Club.

In the midst of the presidential election during the fall semester of 2004 at Cal State Long Beach, Snider became involved in a national controversy over academic freedom when two of his students, a young woman and a young man, went on Fox News to complain about Snider's comments the first night of a freshman composition class. Because his emphasis in a class that is supposed to promote critical thinking about controversial issues was on morality and spirituality, Snider used the war in Iraq as an example of immorality. He invited any student who disagreed to say so, and these two did. A number of others in the class agreed with Snider. Fox News, however, and a number of other right-wing commentators, responding to a complaint by the female student on David Horowitz's site, Students for Academic Freedom, concentrated on Snider's argument paper topics and his book list for a book review, both of which were perceived as biased (the student said the list had "a dominant theme: Sexual perversion and anti Bush rhetoric"). The homophobic drumbeat was picked up by other sites, such as Agape Press.

The hate mail and death threats were such that for a time Snider received police protection while teaching that class ("Attack of the Killer Hipublicans," Whole Life Times). The student became a spokesperson for Horowitz, writing numerous articles for right-wing blogs and other web sites, including Horowitz's online FrontPage Magazine, and appearing again on national television on Paul Gigot’s The Journal Editorial Report on September 23, 2005, which at that time was on PBS. Not allowed to respond to his former student's accusations on the Gigot program or on its web site, Snider, who had felt constrained by his employer to keep silent, finally told his side of the story on Insidehighered.com. His former student was claiming Snider had been unfair to her by giving her a "B" on a paragraph she wrote on the film Fahrenheit 9/11 when she had been achieving a “straight-A record” in the class. Snider wrote he had "the grade book" for the class which proved she was not telling the truth. Neither she nor Horowitz ever contested what Snider said, and indeed neither she nor the male student ever followed university policy regarding complaints against professors.