Horowitz Ad Ignites Controversy, Newspapers

By Alexander Talcott | Monday, April 9, 2001

David Horowitz, president of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture and editor-in-chief of FrontPageMagazine.com, has become the left's Enemy Number One as of late, for his 'racist' ad entitled, 'Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Slavery is a Bad Idea—and Racist Too' (see TDR, 3/12/01).

Sent to 59 college and university student newspapers, the ad has been rejected by 35, despite an offer of payment. 14 papers have published the ad, but only 8 of these have published it without subsequently apologizing or provoking unruly protest. One college paper not only refused to print Horowitz's ad, but ran an ad opposing it in its place. Two college newspapers—one at Penn State and one at Notre Dame—refused to publish the ad although they have previously run ads that denied the Holocaust ever took place, says the Anti-Defamation League.

The ad has sparked demonstrations at Duke, Brown, Wisconsin, and most notably, Horowitz's alma mater, UC-Berkeley. After the ad ran at Berkeley, black students raided the offices of the Daily Cal and destroyed papers and intimidated staff members. Leftist activists, protesting the paper's decision to run the ad, presented to the Daily Cal a list of demands, including that the paper 'hire a person to review the paper for offensive racial context,' that it run 'two formal apologies' with photos of members of the paper's board and staff, that it run photos of students opposed to the ad, and that it run 10 columns, each rebutting one of Horowitz's 10 points. After presenting their list, the protesters then proceeded to steal the remaining issues of the paper that contained Horowitz's ad. This last fact was not even mentioned by the Daily Cal, but was covered in other papers such as the San Francisco Chronicle.

A formal apology soon followed. Editor David Hernandez wrote a letter to readers, stating his belief that the ad contained 'incorrect or blatantly inflammatory content.' He admitted that the staff should not have decided to run the ad, and finally added, "I promise readers it will not happen again.' Berkeley College Republicans Chairman Robb McFadden noted, 'Unfortunately, it seems like freedom of speech at Berkeley only applies to those who don't stray from the liberal line of thought. I'll be the first to admit that I do not agree with all of the things that Mr. Horowitz said in his advertisement, but I cherish the fact that in America he has the right to say them.' When Horowitz gave a talk in the Life Sciences Building at Berkeley on March 15 (as part of his 'Freedom Tour'), he was accompanied by 30 armed campus police officers.

A similar response took place at the traditionally liberal University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. After The Badger Herald ran Horowitz's ad, over 50 student protesters stormed the paper's offices, calling the editors racist. They also called for The Badger Herald to be punished, either by having the editor apologize or resign, or by having administrators remove all issues of the Herald from campus newsstands. Later, a rival campus publication, the Daily Cardinal, ran an advertisement that called the Badger Herald a 'racist propaganda machine.' A rally, attended by about 150 students, ended with police officers instructing the staff members of the Herald to lock their office doors for their own protection.

The Golden Gate Xpress, the campus newspaper of San Francisco State University, decided not to run the ad, instead featuring articles on reparations, free speech, and political correctness. Early in March, however, someone stole all of the newspaper ads from the editor's mailbox, leaving behind a note which denounced the staff as racist, and which also contained a vague threat. This influenced their overturning of their earlier decision to run the ad and donate the $775 advertising payment to charity. The current issue of the Xpress carries ads for, among other things, surrogate mothers, egg donors and the faculty union, that ad chiding college trustees for its contract negotiation tactics.

Closer to home, angry students stole the entire press run of the Brown Daily Herald in protest of the papers' running of Horowitz's ad. Staffers had to physically restrain their fellow students, who were attempting to obtain and destroy the remaining 100 copies of the issue that contained the ad. Once again, the protesters demanded a formal apology, in addition to, ironically enough, 'financial amends.' The leaders of Brown's minority student associations went around the campus removing over 5,000 papers from their distribution bins and replacing them with neon fliers that accused the paper of unacceptable insensitivity. The College, in a wonderful display of hypocrisy, also decided to ban the press from a forum on free speech.

The Herald was the first Ivy League campus paper to run the ad, which was rejected by the Columbia Daily Spectator, the Harvard Crimson, the Cornell Daily Sun, the Yale Daily News, the Daily Pennsylvanian, and finally, the Dartmouth. The Yale Daily News did invite Horowitz to write an op-ed piece, which was published on April 2. The Daily Princetonian is still pending a decision about the ad.

While the editors of the Herald have refused an apology, the Brown College Republicans recently decided to not hold a previously scheduled appearance by Horowitz at the campus. Fearing violent protests, a debate between Horowitz and Clifford Montiero, president of the Providence chapter of the NAACP, that was set for Wednesday, April 4th was canceled. According to the Providence Journal, Josh Segall, former president of the Brown College Democrats, claimed that he heard several students burst in to tears when they heard of Horowitz's coming to campus. Irene Tung, a member of the Coalition of Concerned Students, the group that formed to protest the newspaper's decision to publish the ad, thought that Horowitz's appearance would be an affront to the minority students on campus.

The opposition to Horowitz's ideas does not stop at the campus level. His most recent book, 'Hating Whitey: And Other Progressive Causes,' which was released last fall, has been rejected by many Barnes & Noble and Borders stores across the country.

Horowitz Ad Ignites Controversy, Newspapers

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