The ad was run on the site in mid-January, probably as an attempt to target voters in the northeast in hopes of gaining votes in the New Hampshire Primary, Dona Kim said.
The ad contract did not place any limitations on the content of the sites upon which the ad would appear. As a result, McCain 2000 may not have been aware that their ad ran on the website.
"I was sort of amused that [McCain] wasn't aware enough to see what had happened, " Dona Kim said.
Bom S. Kim '00, the Current's co-founder and co-president, said that the magazine has received "a flood of e-mails" about the report.
Dona Kim said many of the letters accused the publication of trying to villify McCain. She said The Current denies such accusations and stresses that it is a non-partisan magazine.
This is the second issue of the year for the Current, which was founded at Harvard in 1999 and is now distributed to students at 20 universities.
The Current also drew national media attention last year, when it reported that Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura would consider a bid for the presidency if his state's voters rallied behind him.