Don't Censor Horowitz.

• Author: Rothschild, Matthew
• Position: Brief Article

With increasing dismay, I've been following the controversy about the anti-reparations ad that conservative author David Horowitz tried to place in campus newspapers around the country.

The ad, "Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Slavery Is a Bad Idea and Racist Too," has prompted wrongheaded exercises in censorship by editors and repulsive acts of suppression by student groups.

These responses show what little respect there is for the free exchange of ideas on campus--and, I'm sorry to say, among segments of the left.

At least eighteen college papers have simply refused to run the ad, including the Harvard Crimson, the Columbia Daily Spectator, and the Daily Collegian at U. Mass-Amherst, according to the A.P.

Some papers that did run the ad quickly apologized for it, including the Daily Californian at U.C.-Berkeley. "I think the ad is inflammatory and inappropriate, and we should not have run it," said Daniel Hernandez, the

editor.

These editors are off-base. It's not up to them to shield their readers from ideas that may be "inflammatory" or to set up shop as censors who are empowered to make decisions on which ads are "appropriate" or "inappropriate."

Our tradition of free speech in this country is to protect the expression not only of views we agree with, but also of those we abhor. This is fundamental.

And whether abhorrent speech inflames or not is really beside the point.

"A function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute," wrote William O. Douglas in 1948. "It may, indeed, best serve its purposes when it induces a condition of unrest."

The editors who would not print the ad refused to take a chance on free speech. They censored an advertiser on the basis of that advertiser's political beliefs.

Many student groups were even more intolerant.

Conservative columnist John Leo reports that students at Berkeley...