Last Monday, The Chronicle, Duke's student newspaper, ran an anti-reparations advertisement from conservative David Horowitz. The ad stated 10 reasons why slavery reparations "are a bad idea -- and racist too."
Since then, hundreds of students have protested the newspaper's decision to run the ad and have imposed several demands on The Chronicle and campus administrators.
The eight-person panel included students, a Washington Post columnist and Duke professors.
Panel members offered varying points of view on matters concerning the ad and the role of blacks both at the university and in the community at large.
"Horowitz is deliberately incendiary," William Raspberry, syndicated columnist for the Washington Post and a Duke professor, said in reference to the author of the ad. "I don't want to talk about him. I want to talk about us."
Despite Raspberry's 40 years of journalistic experience and his coverage of controversial issues, he said he does not think one man should be allowed "to upset the campus for an unconceivable reason."
"I do embrace First Amendment rights with The Chronicle," Kelly Black, a senior and president of Duke's chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said. "But this wasn't a First Amendment issue. The paper has been irresponsible to the community."
And Houston Baker, professor of English, repeatedly asked "Why did this happen?" Baker called the ad a "horrific, ill-informed, unscholarly, racist material." He added that the panel was perhaps the first step in answering this question.
But disagreement among panelist and audience members characterized the event. William Van Alstyne, a law professor, said he is in support of the paper's editorial freedom and added, "It is better to err in favor of trusting an audience to read and know propaganda."
