College newspaper editors suspended over cartoons

CHICAGO — The editor in chief and opinions page editor of The Daily Illini, the student newspaper at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, were suspended Feb. 15 after choosing to reprint some of the satirical cartoons of the prophet Mohammed that have caused widespread violence worldwide.

The students said they decided to run six of the 12 cartoons that were first published in Denmark in order to “raise a healthy dialogue about an important issue that is in the news and so that people would learn more about Islam.”

But Richard Herman, the chancellor of the university, criticized the newspaper in a letter, which said in part, “I believe that the D.I. could have engaged its readers in legitimate debate about the issues surrounding the cartoons’ publication in Denmark without publishing them. It is possible, for instance, to editorialize about pornography without publishing pornographic pictures.”

After the cartoons showed up in the paper, the staff later ran an apology, held conversations with Muslim students and promised more complete coverage on the issue, The New York Times said.