----- Original Message ----- From: "Doug Henwood" <dhenwood at panix.com> To: "lbo-talk" <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Monday, March 19, 2001 10:14 AM Subject: Brown students trash Horowitz
> Chronicle of Higher Education - web daily - March 19, 2001
>
> Newspaper Ad Challenging Reparations for Slavery Ignites a Debate
> About Free Speech at Brown U.
> By ANDREW BROWNSTEIN
>
> Providence
>
> An advertisement attacking the idea that black Americans should be
> paid reparations for slavery led student activists at Brown
> University on Friday to trash roughly the entire press run of the
> campus newspaper in which the ad appeared.
>
> The action capped tense days of protests, meetings, and demands that
> are likely to continue as students examine the issues of free speech
> and race behind it.
>
> In a quick, well-organized action, representatives of 15 ethnic and
> political student organizations removed nearly 4,000 copies of The
> Brown Daily Herald on Friday morning from various delivery points on
> the campus. One student left the Herald's offices with the remaining
> batch of Friday's issue but was chased down by two office managers,
> according to Brooks King, the paper's editor-in-chief.
>
> The editors took to the campus Saturday, hand-distributing a reprint
> of the Friday issue. They are also taking unprecedented security
> measures. They plan to guard delivery sites and carry disposable
> cameras to catch possible thieves. The outer door to the newspaper's
> offices has been locked; unknown visitors must provide identification.
>
> The controversy results from the latest provocation by David
> Horowitz, a 60's radical-turned-conservative who delights in tweaking
> the liberal orthodoxies he once espoused.
>
> Mr. Horowitz, author of The Death of the Civil Rights Movement, and
> head of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, in Los Angeles,
> took an issue with little popular support -- reparations for slavery
> -- and turned it into a personal crusade for free speech on college
> campuses.
>
> The ad, titled "Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Slavery Is a Bad Idea
> -- and Racist Too," suggests that despite the horrors of slavery,
> black Americans are better off economically today that black
> Africans. It calls reparations "one more attempt to turn
> African-Americans into victims" and explains the "debt blacks owe to
> America" for helping end the slave trade.
>
> Most campus newspapers -- including The Harvard Crimson -- have
> refused to publish the ad. Another, The Daily Californian, at the
> University of California at Berkeley, ran a front-page apology after
> facing a series of vociferous protests.
>
> It was the student newspaper at Brown, known for its liberal student
> body, that became the first Ivy League university to publish it --
> last Tuesday.
>
> "There was never a vigorous debate about whether we should run the
> ad," said Mr. King. "We have never refused to run an ad based on
> political content."
>
> He went so far as to say that the decision would have been the same
> even if the ad had declared that the Holocaust never existed. Groups
> that dispute that the Holocaust took place have taken out ads in some
> college newspapers in the past.
>
> "Horowitz's ad is so ridiculous, really," Mr. King said. "It's hard
> to take seriously his implication that blacks should be thankful to
> whites for enslaving them."
>
> The Herald gave a full page this week to opinion pieces from the ad's
critics.
>
> But that wasn't enough for many student activists. They demanded that
> The Herald pay $725 -- the equivalent of the price of a full-page ad
> -- and give them a full-page in the paper to rebut Mr. Horowitz's
> arguments.
>
> Some coalition members said the ad fit a pattern of poor coverage of
> minority students by The Herald. A sore point is that no black or
> Latino students serve on the paper's board or work on its staff.
>
> In a statement released on Saturday, they took aim at the newspaper's
> independence from Brown, which it won after fights with the
> administration during the Vietnam War. "We find this newspaper
> masquerading as a university paper, is in fact simply a private
> corporation," the statement said. "The crux of our actions is to
> create awareness about our lack of a Brown community paper." The
> paper's defenders say that its budgetary independence from the
> university allows it to print controversial articles without fear of
> cuts.
>
> Members of the opposition coalition were generally refusing to be
> quoted by name, as their leaders spent the weekend debating their
> legal and public-relations strategies.
>
> "We're under a press gag order," said one student, who referred a
> reporter to a coalition leader.
>
> Outside Brown's Third World Center, where much of the planning for
> the protests occurred, another student said: "We're afraid of
> repercussions. I'm a senior. I don't want to be ostracized."
>
> Leaders of the coalition told The Chronicle that they preferred to
> remain anonymous to show that they "speak with one voice," or to be
> referred to simply as "persons of color."
>
> "This paper does not allow us to have a voice," said one student. The
> student denied that the removal of the papers was theft or an issue
> of free speech. "The paper is free," the student said. "Students
> could read it on the Web."
>
> Sheila E. Blumstein, interim president, condemned the removal of the
> newspaper this weekend, saying that "such behavior is unacceptable
> within the Brown community."
>
> The Herald's editors plan to continue printing and delivering their
> publication under guard. Mr. King said they planned to seek a
> restraining order against four students who were photographed taking
> papers on Friday.
>
> Meanwhile, the editors recently received words of encouragement from
> the one person who arguably has profited the most from the debacle --
> David Horowitz.
>
> "You and your editors are to be commended for your courage," Mr.
> Horowitz wrote in an e-mail note. "This battle against campus fascism
> -- because that's what it is -- is as crucial as any I can think of."
>
>