Harvard students print Danish cartoons
A conservative student newspaper at Harvard University has become one of the few media outlets in the country to show inflammatory Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, angering students on campus and prompting a forum to discuss the controversy.
The four cartoons appeared in the Feb. 8 issues of The Harvard Salient, a conservative, biweekly newspaper, under the headline, ''A pox (err, jihad) on free expression." The student editors called the cartoons, including a sketch of Mohammed carrying a bomb in his turban, ''relatively innocuous."
''Publishing materials that criticize the ways Islam has been usurped worldwide for purposes of violence and oppression is a risky, but honest and necessary, business," the editors wrote in an accompanying editorial.
Muslim students and others were angered when copies of the paper arrived on campus Thursday, calling the decision to reprint the cartoons a show of disrespect to Muslims. ''What really bothers them are that these are schoolmates who are out to offend them," said Khalid M. Yasin, a junior and president of the Harvard Islamic Society. ''They're people their age that are really attacking things that are very integral to their lives."
Travis R. Kavulla, a junior and the editor of the paper, said the student journalists meant no disrespect to Muslims, and had hoped instead to provoke a debate on campus. ''Now that [the cartoons] have provoked such a firestorm around the world, it's a shame that the mainstream media isn't publishing them because many people don't understand what they look like," he said.
On the same page, the paper also reprinted two anti-Semitic cartoons that ran in newspapers in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, including one that superimposed a swastika over the Star of David.
After the paper was published, some students called for Kavulla to resign. Tomorrow night, the Harvard College Interfaith Council is hosting a forum to discuss the cartoons.
''With the Salient's decision and the corresponding debates, Harvard has become . . . a microcosm for the real-world situation," wrote Om Lala, president of the council, in an e-mail to the Globe yesterday. Lala said he hopes the forum will become a broader discussion about incidents in which other religious groups have been offended by ''disrespectful depictions of what they hold sacred."
Most American media decided not to publish or air pictures of the cartoons, although Fox News and the Philadelphia Inquirer decided otherwise. At least one other student newspaper, the Daily
Kathleen Burge can be reached at kburge@globe.com 