News
By Sarah Salwen
|
March 20, 2001
A student coalition at Brown University has become so incensed by The Brown Daily Herald, the school's student newspaper, that it has demanded the paper cease distribution on campus and remove the word "Brown" from its title.
These demands, the newest added to a growing list, were sparked by the publication of a controversial advertisement denouncing the payment of reparations for slavery.
"It is not the place of the editorial board to choose which opinions can run" in the paper, Herald Editor-in-Chief Patrick Moos said.
Written and paid for by conservative author David Horowitz, the full-page ad is headlined "Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Slavery Is a Bad Idea - and Racist Too."
Among the reasons the ad lists, "Reparations to African Americans have already been paid ... in the form of welfare benefits and racial preferences."
The ad also states, "The reparations claim is a separatist idea that sets African Americans against the nation that gave them freedom," and "there is no single group clearly responsible for the crime of slavery."
Many of the 47 school newspapers that received the ad rejected it, including The Cavalier Daily, The Harvard Crimson and The Columbia Daily Spectator.
Three other newspapers, including those at Arizona State, the University of California-Berkeley and the University of California-Davis ran the advertisement but later published apologies.
"We decided to run the advertisement because [it was] a business decision," Moos said.
The ad ran in the Herald last Tuesday.
