One year after the printing of his advertisement led to widespread protest on campus, conservative author and pundit David Horowitz will speak in Page Auditorium Tuesday night. Sponsored by the Duke Conservative Union, Horowitz says he plans to talk about the issues raised during the controversy.
"The real reason we wanted to bring him is because Mr. Horowitz is so hated on campus," said DCU Vice President John Zimmerman. "We thought it would be worthwhile to give people the chance to hear what he has to say. This gives people the opportunity to actually see what the guy's like."
Many groups active in last year's protests, including the Black Student Alliance and the Duke Student Movement, said they do not want to legitimize Horowitz by giving him any more public attention and plan little to no formal response to his visit. The only organized campus reaction may be a debriefing session in the Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture following the speech.
"The guy's a publicity hound and on some level, part of his schtick is getting people together and protesting and generating publicity for his erroneous philosophy and views," said Charles McKinney, a history graduate student active in last year's protests.
"I think people are definitely going to be coming together and reflecting on his comments and things of that nature, but there's no action or anything like that planned," he said.
Horowitz became well-known last spring when he approached 47 college newspapers nationwide to print an advertisement against slavery reparations. Entitled "Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Slavery is a Bad Idea--and Racist," the ad insinuated, among other things, that blacks are economically better off than they would be if they had not been brought to America as slaves.
The ad, published in The Chronicle last March, sparked a campus-wide reaction that culminated in the creation of DSM, an ad-hoc race issues protest group. Leaders of the group presented a list of demands urging better institutional support for minority students to President Nan Keohane.
Zimmerman, also a columnist for The Chronicle, said he hopes Horowitz's speech will allow students to hear a conservative voice on campus, a viewpoint he considers underrepresented.
Horowitz said he cannot give up the opportunity to address the events of last spring, despite the fact that he expects to ruffle feathers.
"I can't come to Duke without talking about reparations," Horowitz said. "I've been the target of a hate campaign that extends from the Duke Student Movement to Professor Emeritus John Hope Franklin, so I'm going to have to speak about this."
Horowitz said the DSM used allegations of racism against Duke to bribe Keohane into providing more funding for the John Hope Franklin Center for Interdisciplinary and International Studies--an action he called a shakedown.
McKinney said he does not plan to attend the speech, characterizing Horowitz as an "ideologue" with predictable views on race issues and slavery reparations.
"When it comes to reparations, Mr. Horowitz is a one-trick pony," McKinney said. "Any new anecdotes or any new stories are going to wind back to the same ideas."
According to his biography on FrontPageMagazine.com, Horowitz has actively promoted conservative politics through his organization, the Los Angeles-based Center for the Study of Popular Culture. He is a Fox News political analyst and columnist for the Internet magazine Salon.com. He has written several books on conservative politics and political strategy, including Uncivil Wars, an account of his anti-reparations advertising campaign.
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