Daily Cals Stolen, Replaced With Protester Fliers
Fliers Call for Daily Cal Boycott
By CYRUS FARIVAR
Daily Cal Staff Writer
Thursday, October 25, 2001
Approximately 1,000 copies of The Daily Californian were stolen from newspaper racks on Sproul Plaza Wednesday, apparently in response to an advertisement titled "End States Who Sponsor Terrorism," paid for by the Ayn Rand Institute.
In place of the newspapers were fliers that called for a boycott of the Daily Cal and alleged the Oct. 23 ad is "irrational and inflammatory," and said that it perpetuated hostility against the Iranian community.
The ad featured an essay written by Ayn Rand Institute founder Leonard Peikoff, who called for the elimination of the "terrorist sanctuaries" in Iran.
"What Germany was to Nazism in the 1940s, Iran is to terrorism today," stated the ad. "Whatever else it does, therefore, the U.S. can put an end to the Jihad-mongers only by taking out Iran.
"Eliminating Iran's terrorist sanctuaries and military capability is not enough. We must do the equivalent of de-Nazifying the country, by expelling every branch of its government."
UC police are currently investigating the case but have no suspects, said UC police Capt. Bill Cooper.
Past thefts of the Daily Cal have never resulted in any arrests or prosecutions, Cooper said.
The flier found in the distribution boxes of the Daily Cal was unsigned, and no one has claimed responsibility for the theft of the papers.
The flier stated that the ad was "the last straw" in perpetuating hate and violence, citing last February's printing of an ad authored by David Horowitz and last month's political cartoon by Darrin Bell as other examples.
Copies of the independent student newspaper were also stolen after the paper ran an editorial in 1996 supporting Proposition 209, which banned the use of affirmative action in state programs.
"We must take a stand against the continuation of a systematic policy of eliciting and reinforcing hatred and racism from our student newspaper," the flier stated. "Until the Daily Cal shifts policy we will not allow business to continue as usual. As a result, we have taken copies of today's issue of the newspaper."
Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, who bought the ad, says theft of the newspaper is a violation of First Amendment rights.
"They do not want the debates. The last thing that they want is to respect freedom of speech," Brook said. "The fact that they stole it says that they have no respect for private property."
The flier's authors, who anticipated such criticism, disagree that this is a free speech issue, calling the ad hate speech.
"We do not believe that hate speech, which advocates the killing of entire nations and the innocent people who live in them, is protected," the flier states. "The Peikoff ad clearly crosses the line between reasoned debate and inflammatory hate mongering."
Hubert Brucker, general manager of the Daily Cal, said the ad falls within the realm of free speech.
"I don't think that the ad advocates the genocide of a society. It's calling for the eradication of governments that sponsor terrorism—but it's their opinion," he said. "By stealing newspapers and denying other people to form their own opinions, they are defeating the First Amendment right to free speech."
Later in the day, other fliers appeared in the newspaper boxes in response to the thefts. They reprinted the First Amendment, with the phrase "freedom of speech, or of the press" highlighted.
Other fliers printed a quote attributed to Thomas Jefferson, saying "Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost."
The ad, which also ran over the past month in The New York Times, The Washington Post and college newspapers nationwide, such as The Harvard Crimson, has been met with varying degrees of reader response.
The Collegian, the student newspaper of Pennsylvania State University, which printed the ad on Sept. 26, ran an explanation in response to criticism from its readers. The paper said a "communication breakdown" led to the printing of the ad, but did not apologize for the "error."
The Daily Illini, the student newspaper of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, which ran the ad in late September, received only one angry letter in response to the ad, said Julie Westfall, copy chief at the paper. |
