WI-Spring 2001
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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- Wisconsin-Madison. pus observers, the Badger Herald 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- newspaper, 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 news. 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 newspapers 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.