An hour and 45 minutes after taking the stage, conservative writer and slavery reparations opponent David Horowitz stepped down from the lectern, uninterrupted.
Horowitz, who addressed a packed Wisconsin Union Theater Tuesday as part of the Distinguished Lecture Series, came into the national spotlight last spring after running a controversial ad that called slavery reparations \a bad idea, and racist too.""
More than 100 students and community members protested The Badger Herald shortly after it ran the ad by marching from Bascom Hall to the paper's 326 W. Gorham St. offices. Protesters said an editorial cartoon about Ku Klux Klan members, in addition to the ad, made students of color feel unwelcome on the UW-Madison campus.
Following the Sept. 11 attacks, Horowitz ran a booklet ad in The Daily Cardinal describing how Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor Noam Chomsky allegedly uses his advantage as a prominent academic figure to spread anti-American sentiment throughout the academic community.
UW-Madison computer science research staff member Derek Wright joined about a dozen others before the speech in handing out pamphlets offering an alternative perspective to Horowitz on the issue of slavery reparations. He said that neither he nor his fellow activists planned to vocally protest.
""We think that shouting him off the stage or heckling him like that is not really going to do anything good, that it's going to focus the issue on the debate around free speech, and not the debate around reparations, the debate around war,"" Wright said. ""We want to keep the issues in the forefront. ... In the interest of trying to keep it focused on the right thing, we're going to try and stay silent.""
In an interview, Horowitz said he does not think his ideas are as extreme as they are perceived to be on college campuses. In his speech, he criticized professors for failing to speak up on politically and socially conservative issues.
""These ideas that I express happen to be very mainstream, it's just that this university and this faculty is dominated by a raucous left,"" he said.
Madison resident Hanah Jon Taylor said that while he supported Horowitz's right to speak, he did not agree with the message.
""I think everybody should have a to chance to speak, and everyone should hear, but the truth is still the truth,"" Taylor said.
Ted Harks, a Union staff member who attended the event, said the amount of security at the event was not unusual.
""I don't think there was anything more special than the norm; there's some security, some plainclothes,"" Harks said. ""From my past experience for other events like this, if there's any controversy around ... they'll do this just for safety. If anything, [the crowd] seemed less rowdy than I expected.\
