Dear Readers,

David Horowitz and editors of college newspapers have become embroiled in a controversy in recent weeks surrounding Mr. Horowitz's attempt to place an advertisement, "Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Slavery is a Bad Idea —and Racist Too," in college publications throughout the country.

Mr. Horowitz sent the advertisement to The Observer in late February, and The Observer rejected his request that it be published on Feb. 28. We do not regret the decision we made; however, we do regret the erred process by which we made the decision.

Like any other newspaper, The Observer's advertising department accepts and rejects advertisements on a regular basis according to an outlined advertising policy. The usual procedure for refusing controversial advertisements, however, includes a referral of the advertisement to The Observer's editorial board for internal review.

This did not happen in the case of Mr. Horowitz's advertisement. Based on past precedent, it appeared to the advertising department that the decision to reject the advertisement was obvious. The Observer's editorial board never saw the advertisement before it was rejected and did not have the opportunity to review it.

However, had the proper channels been used, the advertisement still would have been rejected by the editorial board.

Mr. Horowitz and others have turned the debate surrounding the advertisement's rejection into a debate about the First Amendment and free speech. In truth, the decision regarding whether to print the advertisement is not a free speech issue, but an issue of a newspaper's right to control its own content. While we respect Mr. Horowitz's right to have and spread his opinions, the First Amendment does not mandate his opinions must appear in The Observer.

As Clarence Page, a member of the Chicago Tribune's editorial board wrote in the March 25 Tribune, "The First Amendment only protects you from government censorship. This is not a censorship issue. It is an editing issue. On the day that an outsider can force an editor to run an ad, that's the day you will have a true free speech issue."

That being said, The Observer has a history of fighting to ensure its pages, above and below the ad line, are unbiased, yet respectful of the community it serves.

Although Mr. Horowitz claims in a letter to Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, that his advertisement was designed to promote a discussion of reparations and respond to pro-reparation viewpoints, this advertisement clearly intended to catapult Mr. Horowitz to the front of national debate.

Mr. Horowitz's treatment of Daniel Hernandez, editor in chief of the Daily Californian, proves this advertising campaign is more of a publicity stunt than an academic debate. On Feb. 28, the Daily Californian ran the advertisement. The next day, Hernandez ran a front-page apology for running the advertisement and denounced it for turning the paper into an "inadvertent vehicle for bigotry." Mr. Horowitz responded to the apology with attacks against Hernandez accusing him of censorship and a conservative journal, The American Spectator, named Hernandez "Enemy of the Week." Considering Hernandez ran the advertisement and then responded with his opinion of the advertisement, it is hard to understand how Mr. Horowitz can accuse Hernandez of censorship.

If Mr. Horowitz's goal was to open a discussion about reparations, he should have accepted Hernandez's response and recognize that it served as the perfect springboard to launch an academic discussion of the material in the advertisement. Mr. Horowitz's response proves he is not interested in academic debate as much as he is in gaining notoriety. Mr. Horowitz is nothing more than a bully using the institution of college media to further his own agenda.

He launched his advertising campaign in an attempt to ensure that he emerged the victor regardless of college newspapers' responses to the advertisement. If editors rejected the advertisement, Mr. Horowitz played the role of the victim because they were suppressing his self-proclaimed right to put forth his views on their pages. If they accepted the advertisement, Mr. Horowitz portrayed himself as the victor in his cause against what he has called "a horrific situation on American campuses in which the political left" is "fully in control of the campus public square."

If Horowitz wanted to stimulate a debate on reparations, he could have submitted his viewpoint for publication in college opinion sections without spending a dime. When the Harvard Crimson requested Horowitz resubmit his advertisement as an op/ed piece, he refused. Were Horowitz truly interested in stimulating debate, it shouldn't have mattered if the opinions were submitted as an advertisement or an op/ed piece.

Advertising controversy is not a new issue for The Observer. In past years the paper has dealt with two specific advertising policy questions worth noting. In 1999-2000, The Observer fought for its right as an independent publication to retain control of its own advertising policy. Spawned by attempts to ban unrecognized student groups from advertising, we argued that advertisements should be considered editorial content and should be subject to the same editorial freedom and review as the articles published.

Secondly, The Observer ran in 1993, as Mr. Horowitz has pointed out, an advertisement from CODOH, a group that claims the Holocaust never happened. At the time The Observer ran the advertisement, it did not realize CODOH's mission; the group misrepresented itself in the advertisement. While the advertisement appeared to be an academic discussion of the Holocaust, in reality the group is blatantly anti-Semitic, denying the Holocaust. Mr. Horowitz has repeatedly claimed The Observer is espousing a double-standard by rejecting his advertisement after accepting the CODOH advertisement. However, in yet another attempt for sensationalism rather than accuracy, he has failed to mention that we realized our poor judgment in running the CODOH advertisement and ran a front-page apology in the newspaper's next edition. Subsequent attempts by CODOH to run similar advertisements have been rejected.

Unlike CODOH, however, Mr. Horowitz is clearly not misrepresenting his viewpoints in his advertisement. Wariness stemming from the past incident with CODOH led the advertising department to reject the advertisement believing that editorial review was unnecessary in this situation. The Observer's advertising department had reservations regarding the volatile language in the advertisement, the relevance of the advertisement in regard to the current discussion on campus and had doubts about the reliability of the information presented as facts to strengthen the opinions in the advertisement and therefore rejected it without the approval of the editorial board. The Observer's editorial board is reviewing the newspaper's current advertising policy to ensure this situation of miscommunication does not occur again.

As editors of The Observer, we do not fashion ourselves as thought police, fascists or suppressors of free speech as Mr. Horowitz and other columnists have alleged, but we do understand our role as editors. We encourage healthy debate by our community on all issues. While we disagree with Mr. Horowitz's tactics, we welcome the opportunity for our community to debate slavery reparations and free speech.

To encourage this debate, we will set aside Wednesday's Viewpoint section for this discussion. We encourage all of our readers to write in and let their opinions on these issues be heard. If you are interested in Mr. Horowitz's views and/or the advertisement The Observer rejected, they are readily available on the Internet at www.frontpagemag.com.

We do not fear Mr. Horowitz or his perspectives; we merely disapprove of his tactics to communicate those perspectives. As editors with a responsibility to our newspaper and community, we refuse to let The Observer be a pawn in Horowitz's manipulation of college media.

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