* In 1996, Navasky was honored at the annual Eugene Debs Award Banquet in Terre Haute, Indiana. The award was named after the man who founded the Socialist Party of America and ran for U.S. President five times on the Socialist Party ticket.
* In September 2002, Navasky was appointed by Columbia University president Lee Bollinger to serve on a special task force to investigate, in Bollinger’s words, “how future journalists should be taught.” This panel made no attempt at ideological diversity, and its three-dozen members also included such leftists as journalism professor Todd Gitlin, Newsweek columnist Anna Quindlen, the Chicago Tribune‘s Clarence Page, and The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward.
* When Navasky was publisher of The Nation, he dispatched special representatives to some 160 college campuses to distribute copies of his magazine and urge students to purchase subscriptions. Also under Navasky’s stewardship, The Nation sponsored numerous speaking engagements and debates at universities across the United States. It even launched a program called Radio Nation, which aired on approximately 40 college radio stations.
* Navasky once defined “patriotism” as “fighting to make sure your country lives up to its highest ideals.” And “from that perspective,” he explained, “even those who burn the flag—not all of them but some of them—may have been as patriotic as those who wrapped themselves in the flag.” “Going back to the beginning of our history,” Navasky added, “… those people who fought to achieve the American dream of equal rights for all were scorned at the time as, in effect, unpatriotic and later on as Communists.”