As the Stanford community grappled with how to respond to graffiti containing ethnic slurs, editors of the Stanford Daily were trying to decide whether to publish "Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Slavery is a Bad Idea -- and Racist Too," a full-page advertisement by conservative writer David Horowitz. The ad has ignited protests at campuses around the country this year with statements like "there never was an anti-slavery movement until white Anglo-Saxon Christians created one." More than 30 student papers rejected the ad outright, and those that published it sparked a backlash. At Brown University, students who objected to the ad confiscated all the copies of the Daily Herald they could find, and editors of UC Berkeley's Daily Californian issued a front-page apology for being "an inadvertent vehicle for bigotry."
The Daily published the ad on May 9 -- as a guest editorial, without accepting payment from Horowitz. They also gave the Black Student Union space for a full-page response. Why? Student papers ought to be "an excellent forum" for discussing controversial issues, said editor in chief Nadira Hira, '02, adding that she hoped a campus dialogue would result.
