Student newspapers and those cartoons of Muhammad.

While major newspapers in the United States have declined to reprint the inflammatory cartoons that depict the Prophet Muhammad, some student newspapers have reprinted them:

Editors at some student publications at the University of Wisconsin, Harvard University, Northern Illinois University and Illinois State University have published some of the cartoons.

The decisions have set off a painful clash, seemingly pitting two of the values so often embraced in university environments — freedom of speech and sensitivity to other cultures — directly against each other....

The issue has prompted letters to the editor, community meetings and public forums. Officials at the University of Wisconsin were organizing a forum in Madison for next week after The Badger Herald on Monday ran one of the cartoons, one that portrayed Muhammad with a turban in the shape of a bomb.

"Universally, we found the cartoon to be repugnant," said Mac VerStandig, the editor in chief of The Badger Herald. "But we believe that there was a certain endangerment of free speech here, especially given the general prudishness of the American press. We believe our readers are mature enough to look at these images."

I wonder what that "forum" is going to consist of. Here are some letters to the editor of The Badger Herald, many of which stress that the cartoon is "racist."