free-speech on rightwing campuses

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Mon Apr 30 10:17:01 PDT 2001


Chronicle of Higher Eduation - web daily - April 30, 2001

Most Newspapers on Conservative Campuses Reject Ad Supporting Abortion By ALEX P. KELLOGG

An academic skeptical of the conservative critic David Horowitz, who has accused the country's leading liberal universities of being aggressively hostile to open dialogue and free speech, says he has proved that conservative colleges are no better. When the professor asked student newspapers at Bob Jones University and 10 other campuses to run an advertisement supporting abortion rights, only one had agreed to do it as of last week.

Mr. Horowitz sparked controversy in recent months by sending an ad to dozens of student newspapers across the country arguing that paying reparations to the descendants of American slaves would be racist and wrong. Most papers refused to print the ad, though some -- like the University of California at Berkeley's student daily -- later apologized for having published it. Mr. Horowitz said the response proved that liberal orthodoxy at American campuses was quashing free speech.

David B. Mazel, an assistant professor of English at Adams State College in Colorado, decided to test Mr. Horowitz's argument by trying to place a provocative ad stating that "abortion is not murder" and "God is an abortionist" in the campus newspapers at 11 institutions across the country, including the Collegian at Bob Jones, Liberty University's The Liberty Champion, and Virginia Military Institute's The Cadet.

Mr. Mazel wrote an article recounting the results of his experiment in Friday's issue of the online magazine Salon.com, the very venue where Mr. Horowitz had made his argument about the culture of censorship plaguing America's liberal-arts institutions. In his piece, Mr. Mazel states that only one of the 11 papers he asked to print the ad -- the Hillsdale College Collegian -- had agreed to do so as of Salon's deadline, some offering more-vague reasons than others.

"We regret that your ad is not suitable for publication in The Tropolitan" Candy Jones of Alabama's Troy State University wrote in an e-mail message to Mr. Mazel. "I'm sorry but we are not allowed to publish any advertisements dealing with this nature," said an e-mail message from Cassandra Lopez, advertising manager for Abilene Christian University's campus newspaper, the Optimist. The advertising director at the Bob Jones paper, John Cofer, wrote, "Please understand that we reserve the right to deny any advertisements that promote issues with which the university would disagree."

To Mr. Mazel, the implication is simple: Conservative colleges and universities are at least as hostile to open discussion and free speech as liberal campuses have ever been.

"When censorship occurs on a campus like Berkeley it becomes news because that sort of censorship contravenes the values of the left but it doesn't contravene the values of the right," Mr. Mazel said in an interview. "That's a man-bites-dog story -- so it's news. When you see censorship on a campus like Virginia Military Institute or Brigham Young or somewhere like that, it's just business as usual."

Mr. Mazel also pointed out that, like Mr. Horowitz, his intent was to be rejected, not merely to exercise his free speech. Given that intent, he said, campus newspapers may have very legitimate reasons for refusing to run an ad.

"It's not quite true to say that a paper that decides not to run an ad is necessarily stifling free speech," he said. "Was Horowitz's goal simply to commit an act of speech or to commit an act of incitement? In sending out my ad, was I playing a game? Was Horowitz playing a game? Of course we were. And I think an editor or an advertising manager can certainly decline to play that game."

Many of the campus newspapers that rejected Mr. Mazel's ad seem to agree with him.

"As a whole our editorial staff did not agree with some of the religious views that were stated in the ad," said Eric Burkett, editor of The Tropolitan. "We just felt that the content was inappropriate."

"Every paper has the right to publish what they want to publish," said Elaine D. Pecore, the advertising director for The Liberty Champion. "We don't have to accept an outside person's opinion."

"That's not really free speech," said Mr. Burkett. "That's trying to hide behind free speech."

But Mr. Horowitz said in an interview that Mr. Mazel's experiment merely verified his view that liberal colleges are among the most hostile to free speech in the country.

"He's confirmed what I'm saying," said Mr. Horowitz. "He has shown that the Columbia [Daily] Spectator and The Harvard Crimson are as narrow-minded, partisan, and authoritarian as the paper at Bob Jones University."



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