Conservative’s Ad Criticizing Antiwar Protests Angers Students

Conservative columnist David Horowitz is at it again.

After placing provocative advertisements in college newspapers earlier this year that denounced reparations for slavery, he once again is rankling students in ads that call antiwar demonstrations an “attack” on this country akin to treason.

Fifteen college newspapers nationally, including the UCLA Daily Bruin and the Daily Californian at UC Berkeley, approved running the ads, said Stephen Brooks, who is coordinating the campaign for Horowitz. Two other newspapers will run his commentary on their opinion pages.

In the piece, Horowitz assails recent campus peace demonstrations after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and bemoans his own antiwar activism in the 1960s.

“This appeal is for those of you who are out there today attacking your own country, full of your own self-righteousness, but who one day might also live to regret what you have done,” he writes in the eight-paragraph essay.

UCLA student Micah Redman, 23, was shocked when he glimpsed the headline: “Think twice before you bring the war home.” He read the piece over the shoulder of another student who had a copy of Thursday’s Daily Bruin, responding with outrage and incredulity.

“Can you believe this?” Redman asked as he showed the full-page ad to two students from the Socialist Action group who were handing out antiwar fliers.

“I am and will be an antiwar demonstrator,” Redman said. “This ad is directed to me. It’s a trick he’s trying to pull. If you’ve got money, you can always get a full page ad in the Daily Bruin.”

UCLA student Julia Wallace, 19, recalled the previous Horowitz ad that infuriated many students. “What he’s trying to do--like in the other ad about African Americans--is get people riled up so we act less rationally, so he can get more people on his side.”

The full-page anti-reparations ad, which ran in February, sparked demonstrations and bitter debates on college campuses from coast to coast. In it, Horowitz argued that black Americans do not deserve compensation because white Christians ended slavery years ago and because blacks already receive redress through welfare and affirmative action.

That ad also raised questions of free speech. Berkeley’s Daily Californian faced harsh criticism from some media outlets after it ran a front-page apology for the ad’s publication.

The Daily Californian said it will run the ad today. Hubert Brucker, general manager, said the newspaper has covered the student antiwar demonstrations extensively and he does not see a problem with running it.

“This has nothing to do with the last ad, this is an opinion piece on its own,” he said. “I hope it raises absolutely no controversy; it’s just a man’s point of view.”

UCLA student Carlos Orellana, 22, disagrees with the ad, but said Horowitz has a right to speak his mind. “He’s exercising his freedom of speech,” Orellana said. “But he’s also suggesting [that] we don’t use our own freedom of speech.”

In a phone interview, Horowitz said he is simply trying to reach students who “hate America so much they are willing to weaken the country,” as well as those who are confused about the importance of the war against terrorism.

In the commentary, he said anti-Vietnam War activists, like himself, only served to prolong the war and deliver South Vietnam to the communists. He added that the United States was too tolerant of treason from its enemies within the country.

“I didn’t do the last [ad] . . . to provoke demonstrations,” he said. “I just want people to think. There are a lot of young people out there who, because there’s an absence of conservative voices on campus . . . are intimidated from speaking out.”

Horowitz is a former editor of Ramparts, a leftist Vietnam-era magazine. He now runs Frontpage Magazine, a conservative Web-based publication. He also heads the Center for the Study of Popular Culture.

Josh Saxe, 19, who is a member of a newly formed student coalition against the war at UCLA, said Horowitz’s comments are outrageous and misguided, but he doesn’t think the ad will change students’ views.

“He can say they shouldn’t protest,” Saxe said. “But students will protest anyway.”