An AIA Editorial

On November 22 stacks of Liberty’s Flame, a conservative publication at the University of California-Davis, were removed from distribution stations on campus. The environmentally conscious thieves bypassed a trash-can and the option of burning the papers, and instead placed copies of the publication in a nearby recycling bin.

While we may never know who stole the papers, one needn’t be Sherlock Holmes to figure out why.

Writers for the publication have been subjected to harassing emails labeling them “bigots” and “segregationists” for disagreeing with the conventional wisdom on campus. Articles outlining the anti-American aims of the Mexican group MEChA-members of which stole large quantities of newspapers at the University of California-Berkeley earlier this year-are one example among many of how the paper infuriates campus leftists.

In recent years, mass-thefts of campus newspapers for printing conservative content have occurred at Brown University, UC-Berkeley, Georgetown, Villanova, and scores of other schools. Even if caught, it’s doubtful the newspaper thieves will be reprimanded.

At Brown, a prominent faculty member justified the thefts of the campus newspaper. A school spokesperson at Cornell reacted to a 1998 newspaper burning at the Ivy League campus: “The students who oppose The Cornell Review have claimed their First Amendment right to be able to have symbolic burnings of The Cornell Review.” The recently departed president of Georgetown reacted to the confiscation of an entire press run of a conservative paper at the school by condemning the paper. At Villanova, the perpetrator of the theft of the entire press run of a conservative student publication turned out to be the school’s dean of students!

While it’s uncommon for faculty and administrators to help engineer censorship against campus newspapers, it is common for academics and campus bureaucrats to look the other way when it happens.

Jonathan Otero, managing editor of Liberty’s Flame, remarked that “on a campus that prides itself for diversity, it is shameful that there is no respect for diversity of opinion.” On campus, unfortunately, diversity pertains to skin color and not ideas. Newspapers that are too “diverse,” like Liberty’s Torch, find themselves torched-or at the bottom of a recycling bin.