Armed with a modest advertising budget, the conservative provocateur (and Salon columnist) set out to buy ads in college newspapers across the country, attacking the notion of slavery reparations: "Ten reasons why reparations for slavery is a bad idea -- and racist too." But so far at least 10 papers have rejected the ad, editors at three of the four that agreed to run it have since apologized and the result has been a windfall of free publicity for Horowitz and his case against reparations. The San Francisco Chronicle and the Wall Street Journal have come to Horowitz's defense; in the Washington Post, Jonathan Yardley called the attacks on the ad "hogwash," concluding "I have read the ad several times and can find no racism in it."

"Now we're sending the ad to about 100 papers," an excited Horowitz says by cellphone, rushing from meeting to meeting. "We can't afford to place it everywhere, but since most are refusing to run it, we might as well try. Can you believe it? Harvard, Columbia, the University of Virginia all rejected it! I expected a hue and cry, but I never expected this." Horowitz hasn't gotten so much mainstream media attention since Time's Jack White called him a racist.

Are these campus journalists secretly on Horowitz's payroll? Of course not, but they're working for him just the same. The rightist rabble-rouser is running circles around his ideological enemies, making idiots of them, winning thousands in free publicity for every dollar he tried to spend with the campus papers. Meanwhile, activists are taking to the streets again in Berkeley, Calif., and Madison, Wis. -- which might be a welcome sign of life on the mostly dormant campus left if their cause wasn't so insufferably self-destructive.

Lost in the ruckus over the reparations ad is the fact that Salon ran a version of it as Horowitz's biweekly column last June. The column ran at greater length than the ad, and was more carefully edited, perhaps (full disclosure: I edited it, and I'm pretty sure I wrote that catchy headline), but it made essentially the same points. Of his 10 points, most are variations on the argument that forcing Americans to pay for reparations would be unjust, in large part because it would be difficult, if not impossible, to decide exactly who should pay them. Black Africans, brown Arabs as well as white Europeans were involved in the slave trade, while the immigrant ancestors of most white Americans were not. And should whites who are descended from abolitionists and other slavery opponents get an exemption?

We received hundreds of letters about the column, most but not all of them critical. We ran a rejoinder by a regular Salon contributor, Earl Ofari Hutchinson, supporting reparations. We got even more letters, as Horowitz supporters slammed Hutchinson. The debate was lively, arguments on all sides got thoroughly aired, a good time was had by all.

Nobody picketed our offices. Nobody came to Salon with a list of grievances to be addressed. Nobody sought or was given an apology. Nobody called us racist.

Why, then, is Horowitz's ad campaign stirring up such craziness on college campuses? On this point, at least, it's hard to avoid agreeing with my conservative colleague. (And as he knows, I respectfully disagree with him on just about everything.) The Horowitz ad is explosive because for too many years campuses have been places where ideological bullies, usually on the left, have been devoted to blocking political debate, rather than engaging in it -- and they've succeeded.

I've become a conscientious objector in the war over political correctness in American universities. There are more important issues to me, and campus p.c. crackpots are just too easy a target. Besides, it seems overwrought to insist that hotheaded identity-politics power-struggling by self-important, hormone-addled, coming-of-age undergrads (even though it's abetted by doctrinaire professors) is any kind of microcosm for the state of American race relations, politics or civic life.

Plus, in the Horowitz fracas, the campus journalists and activists being interviewed seem overmatched by the adults piling on, and I've been a little reluctant to join the fray. These are students, after all. Poor Daniel Hernandez, editor of the Daily Californian at UC-Berkeley, has become a poster boy for political correctness run amok -- and the crisis in liberal education -- with his apology for having run the Horowitz ad. Jonathan Yardley attacked him for bad grammar -- two split infinitives! -- as well as bad reasoning. As someone who can't resist splitting an infinitive now and then, my heart went out to Hernandez. The executive editor of Foxnews.com, Scott Norvell, took time from his busy day to write a personal e-mail to young Hernandez, attacking his "cowardice and audacity" in apologizing for the ad. "I'm getting letters from journalists all over the country telling me I'll never get a job in journalism again," the editor admits gloomily.

But if the piling on is unseemly, Hernandez brought it on himself. He defends his apology, though he admits he might have put it differently had it not been written in the heat of a clash with campus activists who'd stormed the Daily Cal offices to protest the ad. "It was purposely confrontational," he says of the ad, explaining, "We don't run any ad that's blatantly inflammatory -- that's just our policy." It's probably worth noting that most media outlets reserve the right to reject controversial ads, and regularly do. But it's also worth noting that Horowitz's anti-reparations position is thoroughly mainstream: A Time poll of about 30,000 respondents showed 75 percent were opposed to reparations for slavery.

"Our editorial policy is as open as it can be," Hernandez continues. When I ask if he's ever run an editorial feature as "confrontational" on the question of race as the Horowitz ad, he admits he hasn't.

In the end it's probably condescending to protect these student journalists and activists from themselves, especially when they so desperately need serious intellectual engagement. The reaction to Horowitz's ad proves at least one of the points he makes in it: A morbid attraction to the role of victim, and an unhealthy fear of disagreeable ideas, are all too common in campus politics, and they seem to afflict left-liberal students of color disproportionately.

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