Three issues ago I wrote about the witch hunt surrounding Khalil Shikaki (NEJS), describing how David Horowitz's online magazine, FrontPageMag.com, convicted the Palestinian of terrorism in a single headline. But his campaign didn't end there: In Horowitz's new book, The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America, he has added two more Brandeis instructors to his list of "truly frightening" intellectuals.

I know one of them, Prof. Dessima Williams (SOC). I took her class, worked for her as an undergraduate teaching assistant, spent at least 10 hours interviewing her, and wrote a 40-page profile of her for an independent study. What I'll try to do is fill in the parts of Williams' life story that Horowitz left so conveniently open to interpretation.

Horowitz wrote: "Professor Williams was an ambassador for the dictatorship of Grenada, which was established as the result of a coup d'tat carried out by the Marxist Leninist New Jewel Movement led by Maurice Bishop."

This is only half-true. Here's the rest of the story: In 1979, Williams' colleagues did come to power forcibly, but only after it was clear that fair elections weren't an option. When Bishop came to power, records indicate that he had every intention of holding democratic elections.

During the early 1980s, Bishop was upheld as someone willing to fight for the interests of his people. But high ideals couldn't prevent the Cold War from seeping into the sunny island. Crippled by an atmosphere of secrecy and suspicion, Bishop's party divided into two groups: one which wanted to transform Grenada into a Marxist regime, and another which, in order to reduce poverty while still encouraging entrepreneurship and investment, hoped to blend socialism and capitalism. Bishop and Williams were members of the latter group. Unfortunately, the former faction-led by Brandeis alumnus Bernard Coard '66-proved stronger, and bloody killings, total chaos and a U.S. invasion were the result.

Here is the really scary part of The Professors: It complains, "[Williams'] course's stated mission is explicitly political-'expanding social justice.'" The idea of a bestseller turning "justice" into a bad word is as alarming as it is bizarre.

Most of the rest of Horowitz's complaints center around the notion that Williams punishes students for not assimilating to her views on globalization, feminism and environmentalism. From my personal experience, this couldn't be further from the case. I'm not exactly "liberal"-I'm a free-market advocate, I wouldn't call myself an ardent feminist and I think a lot of environmentalism is silly-but Williams still wanted me to be her teaching assistant.

It might well be that some professors in Horowitz's book deserve to be there, but his entry about Williams is simply indicative of poor research. And, as was the case with Shikaki, when influential members of the media throw around accusations of anti-Americanism without doing their homework, the result is that innocent people suffer.

To read The New York Times' editorials from 1983-the year the New Jewel Movement imploded-is an eerie experience. At that time, journalists disparaged the President's tight control over the press, his campaign of good against evil and his mission to "liberate" undemocratic societies.

Sound familiar? The United States cannot allow itself to fall back into an unnecessarily suspicious, distrustful Cold War mentality. Moral crusades against wrongdoers are well and good, but encouraging a global atmosphere of fear is inescapably dangerous-more dangerous, even, than teaching college students to care about social justice.