In this view, the someone's expression of bad ideas provides an opportunity for the expression of good ideas. If students were more educated, they'd be able to know the ad's contents were lies and propaganda. Apparently students at Brown are seen as so ignorant that they must be protected from reading Horowitz's ad. Some comparisons have been made to prior censorship of writings by Holocaust deniers. While ardent defenders of free speech, myself included, have reason to question even that censorship, the nature of the ideas is rather different.
Few people give any credence to the claims of such deniers.
In contrast, national opinion polls of adults in this country show that large majorities oppose the idea of paying reparations now for slavery. Aside from the question of whether claiming that opposition to reparations is such an odious idea that it should be banned from expression, and whether the defenders of such banning are showing formidable arrogance regarding the ideas of many others, there are important questions of tactics. If the idea of reparations is to gain ground in this country, surely an open and robust public debate is needed. The irony, of course, in this controversy is that it is exactly what Horowitz wanted. His ad campaign was intended to show that the leading college campuses had become closed to the expression of a range of unpopular ideas.