In 1993, a fiery controversy-even by recent on-campus standards-erupted when the Justice published an advertisement written by the much-maligned Holocaust denier Bradley Smith. Though it was printed in 32 other university papers, the brouhaha over the ad reached a fever-pitch here, inciting a 250-person protest and catching the attention of The New York Times and The Washington Post.

The ad sought to chip away at the legitimacy of the new U.S. Holocaust memorial museum, calling it "manipulative and false," and took issue with Emory professor Deborah Lipstadt's book, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory.

Smith's rhetoric was offensive throughout, but the parts dealing with Lipstadt's book were particularly stomach-churning:

"The Deborah Lipstadts [sic]-and there is a clique of them on every campus-work to suppress revisionist research and demand that students and faculty ape their fascist behavior. . .To many it will appear impossible that deception on such a grand scale can actually be taking place."

While The Times quoted the then-editors as saying they ran the ad so their readers would know these points-of-view existed, the editors soon realized the gravity of their mistake.

After distribution, thousands of copies of the Dec. 7, 1993 issue in which the ad appeared were reported stolen. The issue needed to be reprinted and distributed under the watch of public safety officials. The $130 paid to the Justice for the ad was donated to the U.S. Holocaust museum, but, not surprisingly, the museum refused the gesture.

Soon after, the Editorial Board amended the paper's constitution to prevent such an occurrence from repeating itself; the Justice would no longer accept political advertisements.

It has since refused a slew of advertisements from organizations at every end of the political spectrum, including anti-abortion and pro-Israel ads.

But the last ad we declined because of its political nature, entitled "The Middle East War Is Not About a Palestinian Land or a Palestinian State" caused a little firestorm of its own. Submitted by conservative pundit David Horowitz, the rejected advertisement spurred angry reaction from our readers, some of whom accused the Justice of harboring a liberal bias and of censoring the ad because its content did not jibe with the views of the editorial board.

These accusations, fueled by misunderstanding, were baseless. The Justice was simply following its long-standing charter and would have rejected an ad from an opposing viewpoint with the same justification.

But Horowitz, with the cooperation of the Brandeis Republicans, blanketed the campus with fliers, saying the Justice refused to print the ad not because it was political-but because it was "politically incorrect."
Instead of running Horowitz's original advertisement, the Justice tried to accommodate the author and editor of Frontpage Magazine, who delivered the closing address to "Conservative Coming Out Week" last month, by running an ad for his book and an announcement of his lecture.

For a man who attempts to stem what he believes is rising bias in academia, assuming that the decisions of this university's paper are politically motivated is as disingenuous as it is hypocritical.