Six hundred people filled the Michigan Union Ballroom to hear David Horowitz speak March 19 night - with over 400 people standing in the hallway, unable to enter due to the fire code. He spoke about slave reparations and why he finds them insulting to black Americans, about national security and why racial profiling is empirically sound and about historical narratives that he feels leftists are using to push anti-American ideals.

For those who did not attend, it should be obvious by this summary that his speech was contentious. For those who attended, the inflamed and raucous crowd showed that some people wish that Horowitz would just go away.

Tolerable opinions

The question is not whether we should agree with Horowitz. The question is whether we should accept him as a legitimate political thinker.

While there is a vocal and incredibly dangerous minority that sought to disrupt and silence Horowitz' presentation, the possibility for healthy dialogue does exist at the University. The efforts of the Black Student Union and the Department of Public Safety to maintain order should be praised: The BSU for encouraging civil conduct within the Ballroom and DPS for managing an unwieldy crowd in a professional and respectful manner.

Besides the expected - though still entirely immature - middle fingers, loud and pretentious sighs, derisive laughter and barely whispered comments about "this mother-fucking racist," there were plenty of tense moments. When asked about the tenor of the meeting, Horowitz said that it had gotten somewhat out of hand. "At the University of Wisconsin, I spoke to twice as many people, but it was much quieter," Horowitz said. He noted that he had "never had so many black students come" to one of his speeches before. Horowitz willingly admitted his blame for some of the tension. "I shouldn't have reacted to that first kid. It's very hard when emotions run so high," referring to the first question asked, when a student insulted Horowitz' intelligence for mispronouncing Sierra Leone.

The trouble began when a much larger crowd than expected crammed into the long corridor on the second floor of the Michigan Union. The event's organizers, Young Americans for Freedom and The Michigan Review, expected the large turnout, but due to their status as student groups, could not properly handle the crowd. Limits on their funding and influence forced YAF and the Review to settle for a smaller venue with an ill-conceived ticketing system.

The University's role

This forces us to question why the University did not take an active role in presenting Horowitz, or on a broader scale, why conservative student groups feel the need to bring conservative speakers to campus themselves.

Randall Robinson, a proponent of slave reparations, Donna Shalala, former President Clinton's Secretary of Health and Human Services and Jonathan Kozol, author of "Savage Inequalities," are a few of the notable speakers that have recently been invited here at the behest of the University. The political bent of these speakers is obvious; they are all very liberal. The University needs to reevaluate its role in facilitating public debate; the University is pushing a debate on this campus not about liberalism versus conservatism, but only over nuances of liberalism.

"The faculty, the adults here, have totally abdicated their responsibility to these kids," Horowitz said. One of his major points is that the education system is skewed to the far left. Horowitz came out strongly against the sort of education that universities provide, saying that he "cannot fix four years of miseducation in one hour."

We do not agree with Horowitz' politics. However, the response Horowitz received on March 19 illuminates the relevance of his criticism of higher education.

One-sided liberalism

The self-proclaimed "intelligent" liberals who polluted the mostly respectful gathering with inane and ultimately self-defeating monologues did nothing to advance debate. Certain liberal students have put on blinders, refusing to acknowledge conservative perspectives yet hypocritically becoming indignant when they feel that conservatives do not take them seriously. The intellectual right voraciously consumes leftist literature; the left is complacent, reading Chomsky and considering themselves well-informed (Horowitz noted that "Chomsky is a sick human being"). "A true liberal should be very concerned about the one-sided nature of the debate," he said.

We are liberal, yet we begrudgingly agree with his indictment of intellectual liberalism.