THE RETURN OF “FREE SPEECH” WARS TO MADISON

PHILIP J. MCDADE

he culture wars simply exercising its are back at the First Amendment TUniversity of rights. To many cam- -Madison. pus observers, protest In March, dozens represented a new of students stormed and disturbing turn the offices of the stu- on a campus where dent-run Badger Herald “sifting and win- , calling the nowing” — the tra- paper racist and dition of hearty, full- demanding the resig- fledged, open nation of the editor-in- debates — is usually chief. The Herald’s viewed as a sacred offense? Printing right. David Horowitz’s by- now-famous advertise- The protesters ment: “Ten Reasons demanded that the Why Reparations for Badger Herald be Blacks is a Bad Idea for punished. Among Blacks — and Racist Too.” the more alarming demands — having UW- Madison administrators remove the newspa- Of course, protests by the perpetually per from campus newsstands. The free paper aggrieved left of the UW-Madison campus are is distributed widely throughout campus. nothing new. Starbucks coffee shops, Reebok sweatshirts, and genetically engineered agri- The protesters were apparently embold- cultural products have all been targeted in ened by similar demonstrations at leftist recent years by the campus leftists. Sandal- havens like the University of California at wearing, bandana-clad protesters regularly Berkeley. There, after the student-run Daily camp out at the UW-Madison chancellor’s Californian had published Horowitz’s ad, cam- office, on the Library Mall, and even at UW pus activists took to the newspaper’s office in Board of Regents meetings. protest. The newspaper capitulated, writing a front-page apology for running the ad. Similar But the protests against the Badger Herald apologies have appeared in campus newspa- represented a new turn in the perennial politi- pers at the University of California-Davis and cal correctness wars on campus. An indepen- Arizona State University. Protests have fol- dent newspaper, publishing an advertisement lowed the ad’s publication in student newspa- that fell well within the bounds of mainstream political debate, was targeted by protesters for Philip J. McDade is a Madison-based writer and former reporter for the Wisconsin State Journal.

Wisconsin Interest 19 pers at elite campuses like Brown University payments to Blacks, for instance, as a form of and Duke University. reparations. As political commentator Mickey Kaus pointed out, Horowitz seems to forget The Badger Herald issued no apologies. that many states initially discriminated against Indeed, the Herald editorialized on the day of Blacks when starting up welfare programs. the protests that it had no intention in caving in to the demands of demonstrators. The But many of Horowitz’s arguments against Herald’s defiance in the face of protests made reparations fall well within the mainstream national . A week after the protests, debate about reparations and, more broadly, Editor-in-Chief Julie Bosman wrote a column race relations. His view, for instance, that repa- defending the Herald’s running of the rations would only serve to broaden the coun- Horowitz ad for the high church of the anti-PC try’s racial divide parallels many of the argu- movement — the editorial page of the Wall ments made by opponents of affirmative Street Journal. action programs. Bosman said Horowitz’s ad, dubbed racist The publication of Horowitz’s ad brought and characterized as hate speech by protesters, about an all-too-predictable response, both at fell clearly within the bounds of acceptable UW-Madison and other college campuses. advertising for the Herald. UW-Madison protesters claimed the ad, and the Badger Herald editors who published it, cre- “We have a pretty open advertising poli- ated a hostile climate for Blacks and other cy,” she said. “I would certainly do it again.” minorities on campus. Horowitz’s ad was a response to the grow- “They’re not addressing how their opinion ing demand among American Black leaders for is affecting the campus environment,” UW- reparations to pay for the injustice of slavery. Madison senior Jayson Pope told the Milwaukee Black leaders such as Randall Robinson said Journal Sentinel. the nation owes a debt to the descendants of American slaves. Some Black commentators The ad brought even more dismaying have equated reparations to the payments — comments from other campuses. At Brown albeit on a much smaller scale — made to vic- University, long known as the most left-lean- tims of the Tuskegee, Alabama, syphilis exper- ing of the Ivy League campuses, the ad’s publi- iments, or those being considered for descen- cation prompted student protesters to steal dants of race riots in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the 4,000 copies of the Brown Daily Herald. One 1920s. Some Black congressmen have said the teaching assistant in the university’s Afro- federal government should consider repara- American Studies Department characterized tion payments. the ad as a “racist attack on Black students” and said students on campus “can’t perform Horowitz is a particular thorn in the side basic functions like walking and sleeping of the left and especially the African-American because of this ad.” Professor Lewis Gordon of left. His political views have swung from the the university’s Afro-American Studies militant left (he once admired the Black Department labeled the ad “hate speech,” and Panthers, for instance) to the pugnacious right. dismissed complaints about the stolen newspa- He has particularly soured on racial politics; pers. “If something is free, you can take as for instance, he argues that many of the many copies as you like.” nation’s Black leaders have moved from a stance of calling for civil rights improvements While the UW-Madison student protests to one of fostering the view that Blacks are per- failed to sway the Badger Herald, the tactics petual victims of a permanently racist have worked on other campuses. Horowitz, on America. his website that tracks the ad’s publication, said 18 campus have rejected his Some of Horowitz’s 10 reasons opposing ad, including papers at leading universities reparations seem dubious. He views welfare

20 Spring 2001 like Harvard, Penn, Columbia, Virginia, and Rothschild’s magazine is a prime example Notre Dame. of how the left can be hypocritical when it comes to publishing controversial material. The ad will also likely never see the light The Progressive, in a landmark First of day at UW-Madison’s other campus news- Amendment case, went to court in the 1970s to paper, the Daily Cardinal. Horowitz did not publish details on the making of nuclear approach the Daily Cardinal to run the ad. But weapons. Given the magazine’s political lean- Daily Cardinal business manager Eric Storck, in ings, it’s doubtful the Progressive’s editors an interview with Salon.com writer Joan Walsh thought building nuclear weapons and using (herself a Daily Cardinal alumna), admitted the them was a good idea. But the Progressive Cardinal was unlikely to run the ad. (Ironically, fought to publish the material, in pursuit of the Daily Cardinal had published a response ad another noble First Amendment cause — that to Horowitz’s ad submitted by the UW- our government shouldn’t keep secrets of Madison Multicultural Student Coalition. The national importance. The Madison left at the Badger Herald refused to run the coalition’s ad, time cheered the Progressive’s efforts to publish saying parts of it were false and represented an the article on the making of a bomb. attack on the Herald and specific personnel at the paper.) Rothschild noted what few of the student “There’s anger on protesters seem to recog- campus right now,” nize — that free speech is Storck told Walsh. “Given “Our tradition of free often uncomfortable. He the circumstances right quoted former U.S. now, it would be inappro- speech in this country is Supreme Court Justice priate for us to run the ad. to protect the expression William O. Douglas, who With the discussions defended free speech on regarding race on campus, not only of views we the grounds that it ought it’s just not an appropriate to invite dispute and ad. The Multicultural agree with, but also unrest. Coalition is very upset.” those we abhor.” “Our tradition of free Responses like that speech in this country is have drawn howls of to protect the expression ridicule from conserva- not only of views we tive commentators agree with, but also those around the country. But they have also drawn we abhor,” Rothschild wrote. “And whether criticism from the left. Harvard alumni and lib- abhorrent speech inflames or not is really eral New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis, besides the point . . . The proper response to joined by historian David Halberstam, recently bad speech is good speech. To resort to intimi- chided the Harvard Crimson student newspaper dation, to engage in gang suppression of for its unwillingness to print Horowitz’s ad. In speech, is an old and discredited tactic of Wisconsin, Matt Rothschild, editor of the brownshirts everywhere. It’s a tactic that ill fits Madison-based Progressive magazine, chided the left and does our cause no good.” his fellow leftists for their protests against Horowitz’s ad. To UW-Madison philosophy professor Lester Hunt, the protests over the Badger “These responses show what little respect Herald reparations ad had an all-too-familiar there is for the free exchange of ideas on cam- familiar ring to them. Hunt was one of a hand- pus — and, I’m sorry to say, among segments ful of UW-Madison professors who fought suc- of the left,” Rothschild recently wrote. cessfully two years ago to get rid of the univer-

Wisconsin Interest 21 sity’s ill-advised speech code for faculty and correctness hasn’t left, but it’s tapered off. It’s staff. Hunt fought to dump the speech code not as prevalent as it was.” after facing disciplinary procedures for telling The pair cite several reasons for this. For a joke in class about the Lone Ranger and starters, the successful two-year campaign to Tonto. He was ultimately exonerated, but the abolish the faculty speech code went a long code’s chilling effect on classroom speech and way toward educating the university commu- guilty-until-proven-innocent overtones nity about the value of free speech and the prompted him to seek its abolishment. First Amendment, they said. “To think that if somebody publishes some- “The good thing is that we not only did thing you disagree with, and you should protest away with the speech code,” Hunt said. “A lot that and intimidate a newspaper, that’s the of people learned a lesson — the importance of same idea behind a speech code,” Hunt said. having diversity of speech and not just diversi- According to Hunt, there is still a segment ty of race and other matters.” on the UW-Madison campus — both among In addition, there is a growing body of students and some faculty — that view speech published works — such as The Shadow codes as necessary and value amorphous goals University: The Betrayal of Liberty on American such as “campus diversity” over First Campuses — that have highlighted the culture Amendment rights. wars at colleges and cast their lot with the First “It’s like they’re in a time bubble,” he said. Amendment defenders. Liberal commentators “Their friends have the same attitudes . . . and like Alan Dershowitz, who bad-mouthed UW- they take classes from professors with those Madison’s speech code in a 1996 campus same attitudes.” appearance, have joined conservative com- mentators in creating a left-right phalanx in Hunt is quick to blame himself and his fel- defense of free speech and the First low faculty colleagues for the student protests Amendment. against the Herald. But Downs also said more UW-Madison “The fact that such a thing has happened faculty are willing to speak out publicly in means we as the faculty have failed them,” he defense of free speech, and against Orwellian said. “It is partly our fault. They certainly intrusions on the First Amendment. To cite one haven’t gotten a liberal education which has an example, Downs said faculty pressure led to appreciation for the value of critical thinking.” the banishment of “anonymous complaint But Hunt and fellow UW-Madison profes- boxes” that had sprouted up on campus last sor Donald Downs also sense that attitudes year. The boxes were designed, in part, to pro- toward free speech and the First Amendment vide easy access to students for registering on campus may be changing for the better. complaints against faculty. But as Downs Sure, a small group of students waged an ill- pointed out, the complaints could be made advised protest against the Badger Herald, they anonymously, and a permanent university said. But the protest seemed to generate little record, possibly accessible to the public, would resonance with other students on campus, and be created. failed to captivate the broader campus com- The system had all the trappings of a sce- munity. nario — unlikely, but still possible — in which “I think the First Amendment argument is students could wage vendettas against faculty prevailing here in a way that it wouldn’t 10 members through anonymous complaints. years ago,” said Downs, a political science pro- “Who knows what it could lead to,” said fessor who was at the forefront of efforts to Downs, who said he occasionally gets threat- abolish the university’s speech code. “Political

22 Spring 2001 ening telephone calls at home for his outspo- vocal but supportive. “We were able to gener- ken views on free speech. “Someone like me, I ate a lot of campus concern.” worry about that all the time.” Still, Downs said he and his faculty col- Downs and sympathetic colleagues quick- leagues remain vigilant on a campus where a ly mobilized, and put pressure on university 100-year tradition of officials to remove the complaint boxes. To his sometimes collides with a tradition of protests credit, Downs said, newly installed UW- nearly as old. Madison Chancellor John Wiley agreed to get “We’re talking about cases that are no- rid of the boxes. brainers,” he said of the Badger Herald’s deci- “We said if nothing’s done, we’ve got fac- sion to publish the Horowitz reparations ad. ulty all over campus who are going to have “It’s up to people like us to support it. problems with this,” said Downs, who estimat- Otherwise bullies are going to prevail. I don’t ed his group of core free speech supporters think this is going to go away. The battle lines totals about 15, plus dozens more who are less are drawn.”

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