Horowitz stirs controversy at forum

Tempers flared at Friday's Penn Forum debate when conservative activist David Horowitz took on an audience of mostly liberal students and two other panelists in a debate over slavery reparations.

Last March, Horowitz created a national controversy with his ad, "Top Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Slavery is a Bad Idea -- and Racist Too," which he attempted to have published in numerous college newspapers including The Daily Pennsylvanian.

And the outspoken Horowitz created controversy again at Friday's event on whether or not the government should pay reparations to African Americans, nearly turning the event into an intellectual episode of Jerry Springer.

"The reparation movement is an anti-American movement, in my opinion," Horowitz said during the debate. "I am against reparations for Jews on the basis of being a Jew and for blacks on the basis of skin color."

The forum boasted Political Science Professor Rogers Smith and College senior and DP columnist Wayman Newton offering the arguments in favor of reparations. Horowitz and College senior Alex Wong, a former DP columnist, presented the anti-reparations side of the controversial issue.

And the 70-plus students and faculty who filled the seats in Vance Hall were certainly in for a wide variety of opinions and emotions.

Horowitz and Wong prefaced their remarks during the debate with "I support reparations of slaves and children of slaves," and "Nobody is going to deny that slavery is a horrible thing."

Horowitz claimed that blacks are approximately 150 times richer in the United States than they would be in Africa, but it was an audience member who drew applause when he retorted, "You wouldn't be 150 times richer if you hadn't brought them here in the first place!"

However, College senior Alice Rink said that she believes such virulent emotions detracted from the forum's intended purpose.

"I wanted to hear about a money-centered measure for slavery," Rink said. "I am not interested in race-based measures."

But she said that the forum quickly turned to the racial.

"It became racial, and it became conservative versus liberal," Rink said. "It took such a turn because this was such a massive audience, it was such a huge debate, and having someone here like Mr. Horowitz, who is so controversial in what he says -- it just gets too heated too quickly."

College of Arts and Sciences Associate Dean Walter Licht, who moderated the debate, said at times, the forum strayed from its intended purpose.

"It was set up as a round table, not a deliberate debate," Licht said. "You had to get everyone talking and that means that everyone has a clipped little time to speak, so some of the remarks, I don't think, had any strength of evidence or anything behind them, but that's only natural in these things."

Horowitz, however, said afterwards that he had no qualms with the panel. He said his concern is with the lack of diversity in opinion that he believes students at Penn receive.

"The problem is that I have no institutional affiliation here, so when I leave, my viewpoint leaves with me," he said. "I will be gone tomorrow and there were a lot of conservative students in the audience who will lack, then, an adult or somebody with my experience to provide them with an alternate viewpoint."

"The left is the greatest obstacle, at this point, to black progress in this country and that's why they want to shut me up," he added.

However, Horowitz said that purporting his specific view -- that reparations for slavery are inherently racist -- is not his main goal.

"I want students to demand intellectual diversity at this university," Horowitz said. "That would be the biggest thing they could do for themselves and for everybody else."

And for those who still think he is a racist bigot, Horowitz responded, "Anyone who says that about me is a Nazi."

Penn Forum is an organization that plans debates and panel discussions open to the Penn community. Forum founder Ethan Laub, a Wharton senior, said that Horowitz stole the show.

"We chose to bring Horowitz, someone who is known to be controversial, because we know it will get people into the seats," Laub said. "The purpose of filling the seats is to get people in here on a Friday afternoon and expose them to as wide a variety of opinions as possible."

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