Liberals mount a campaign to defend a longtime professor and activist from Glenn Beck and the false attacks and subsequent death threats he and his followers have launched, according to reports from multiple sources.
Frances Fox Piven, a 78-year-old professor and political theorist, has been the subject of harsh criticism by Beck for years. Beck has cast Piven—who is now a professor at the City University of New York—and her late husband, fellow academic Richard Cloward, as the architects of the economic crisis and key influences behind what Beck sees as Barack Obama’s drive to break down and radically transform the American government. Now, the Center for Constitutional Rights has written a letter to Roger Ailes, CEO of Fox News, asking for his “immediate help in stopping false accusations by Glenn Beck that are putting Professor Piven in danger.”
Piven’s name has become a kind of shorthand for “enemy” on Beck’s Fox News Channel program, reports the NY Times. His show is watched by more than 2 million people, and on one of his Web sites, The Blaze. Last week, Beck suggested on television that she was an enemy of the Constitution.