dave submitted a link to a Chicago Tribune article mentioning how the Daily Illini published the photos of the Danish cartoons that have sparked violence in Europe.

While UN Secretary General Kofi Annan chastised newspapers Thursday that continue to publish the cartoons, Daily Illini editor-in-chief Acton Gorton said he decided to print them so students could better understand the Muslim response.

"All across this nation, editors are gripped in fear of printing for fear of the reaction. As a journalist, this flies in the face of everything I hold dear. By refusing to print these editorial cartoons, we are preventing an important issue from being debated by the public," Gorton wrote in a column next to the drawings.

The cartoons portray the prophet as a terrorist, including one that depicts Muhammad wearing a turban shaped as a bomb and another showing him turning away suicide bombers from paradise because, he says, heaven ran out of virgins to be given to martyrs. The cartoons have led to protests in Denmark, Iran, Lebanon, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

In a letter to the Daily Illini to be published Friday, U. of I. Chancellor Richard Herman wrote that he is "saddened" that the newspaper decided to publish the cartoons. He suggested that the editors could have informed the public by giving readers a Web link to the cartoons instead.

Given all that has happened, it seems like a stupid move to go ahead and publish these, considering all the major papers in the U.S. have already declined to do so. How does not publishing the photos prevent debate about the topic? It's the principle of what's going on, not the specific cartoon, that's the issue at hand.