BERKELEY, CA--Subverting the right to free speech, leftists at the University of California, Berkeley, have stolen more than 1,000 copies of the campus newspaper to punish the newspaper for running an advertisement calling for a principled defense of America.

Sponsored by the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI), the ad features an essay by Dr. Leonard Peikoff titled "End States Who Sponsor Terrorism" (full text: www.aynrand.org/medialink/endterrorism.shtml), which has also appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post and numerous other campus papers.

Seeking to justify their action, the thieves replaced the newspapers with unsigned fliers, which call the ad "hate speech," and vowed "until the Daily Cal [Berkeley's newspaper] shifts its policy we will not allow business to continue as usual."

"By trying to silence free speech, the leftists once again prove that Berkeley is a cesspool of anti-Americanism," said Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of ARI. "The thefts betray a contempt for private property--the principle that makes free speech possible. They are supporting the aims of the terrorists who have sought to annihilate the principles on which America was founded."

The advertisement coincided with a lecture at U.C. Berkeley by ARI senior fellow Dr. Gary Hull. Titled "Twin Towers Destroyed by the Ivory Tower," the lecture details how the ideas of modern academia have contributed to the terrorist crisis.

The lecture will take place--as planned--in Evans Hall, Room 10, at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, October 25.

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ARI executive director Dr. Yaron Brook is available for interviews. For further information, contact ARI Media Relations.  Phone: (949) 222-6550 ext. 213; fax (949) 222-6558; e-mail: interview@aynrand.org or visit ARI's Web site at: http://www.aynrand.org.

The Ayn Rand Institute, an educational organization established in 1985, seeks to advance novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism and its principal tenets: reason, rational egoism and laissez-faire capitalism.