"The Whole Idea Was to Trigger Reader Insurrections with Outrageous Views"

"As the Times op-ed page took shape, its editors assembled a list of prospective authors and subjects they could address. One list, preserved in the Harrison Salisbury Papers at Columbia University, proposes soliciting pieces from Communist Party USA head Gus Hall, John Bircher Society leader Robert Welch, oil man and right-winger H.L. Hunt, labor radical Harry Bridges and revolutionary Angela Davis. The page's concept was to express ideas and opinions the reader couldn't find on the editorial page or elsewhere in the newspaper. The range and ambition of the page were such that one of the early editors on the page, John Van Doorn, tried (and failed) to hire Tupac Shakur's mother, Afeni Shakur, as an editor in 1971, as Socolow writes elsewhere."

Jack Shafer in a 2017 Politico article writes that "The New York Times Op-Ed Page Is Not Your Safe Space."