Posted on 01/21/2003 8:56:59 AM PST by conservativecorner
DURHAM -- A speaking invitation to a woman who spent 14 years in prison for conspiring to plant a bomb in the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., has riled some Duke students.
The Duke Conservative Union is questioning why Laura Whitehorn -- a woman it calls a convicted terrorist -- was invited by a visiting professor to speak at the university March 3.
"It is rather perverse to have her here on campus when we’re at war with terrorism," said Bill English, a Duke senior and adviser to the group. "We are challenging the values of having an ex-terrorist on campus who is not repentant and who still advocates violence."
On Nov. 7, 1983, a bomb exploded around 11 p.m. in a public corridor near a Senate cloak room. No one was injured, but the explosion damaged a wood-paneled conference room near the Senate Chamber and the offices of Sen. Robert Byrd.
Whitehorn was convicted of conspiring to plant the bomb. She said she was protesting U.S. military action and that she and others took "great care" to make sure no one would get hurt. The group’s aim was to cause property damage only, she said.
"I have never been a terrorist," Whitehorn, 57, said in a telephone interview Monday night. Terrorists target civilians, she said.
"This is really a free speech issue," she said of the campus controversy. "The most important thing in college is to listen to different viewpoints and then you make up your mind. ... If we can shut people up and so easily intimidate them, then we’re back in the ’50s."
The university has defended Whitehorn’s invitation, saying it hosts speakers with a wide range of views and urges debate on a wide variety of ideas.
"Duke does not exert control over or pressure its faculty and departments in their selection of campus speakers," associate vice president David Jarmul said in a statement posted on Duke’s Web site Friday. It was posted in response to an online opinion article appearing on the Wall Street Journal’s Web site criticizing Whitehorn’s appearance.
"One of our nation’s greatest values, and one we at Duke celebrate, is the freedom for people to express their thoughts openly," the statement said.
It also explained that Whitehorn was invited to speak by Becky Thompson, a visiting professor at Duke, about HIV and AIDS in prisons. Whitehorn has researched the topic and worked with POZ Magazine, a monthly magazine aimed at communities affected by HIV and AIDS.
Whitehorn was convicted in 1985 and charged with "conspiracy to oppose, protest and change the policies and practices of the United States government in domestic and international matters by violence and illegal means." She spent 14 years in prison, and was released on parole on Aug. 6, 1999.
It was in prison that Whitehorn first saw women dying of AIDS, she said. At Duke, she will speak about her AIDS work and also about the history of "white radicals’ solidarity with the black liberation movement."
"I was a freshman in college when the Birmingham bombing happened," she said. "I swore I was not going to sit around and go, tsk, tsk."
In college, Whitehorn worked with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a group dedicated to ending segregation in the South and giving blacks a stronger voice in the civil rights movement. In the 1970s, Whitehorn worked with the Black Panther Party and the New Afrikan Independence Movement. In 1971, she led the takeover and occupation of a Harvard building with 400 other women to protest the war in Vietnam and to demand a Women’s Center.
"I’ve been an anti-racism activist for years and years and years. Now I’m doing that through my anti-AIDS work," Whitehorn said. "That’s why the students want to hear from me."
Her visit is being sponsored by the African and African-American Studies Program, the Women’s Studies Program, the Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture and the John Hope Franklin Center.
Leon Dunkley, director of the Mary Lou Williams Center, knew little about the event when contacted Monday.
But he said that Whitehorn was invited to campus "with the same amount of integrity that the Conservative Union has when it brings a speaker to campus."
One of those speakers was David Horowitz, a conservative author who has spoken out against reparations for slavery and caused protests at Duke when he bought advertising space in the student newspaper.
Dunkley said dissenters would be welcome.
"I invite all contesters to find out why such a speaker would come," he said.
The students say they oppose sponsoring such an event with student funds.
"I think it would be an entirely different issue if a student group were to fund her visit, or if she were to speak for free," English said. "We think it’s the nature of the support, the nature of the funding that makes this so odious."
Whitehorn said she did know how much she would be paid for her visit to Duke. "That will be worked out," she said.
English said his group is also upset at the misleading nature of the university’s advertising for the lecture.
When the university first announced Whitehorn’s visit, the posting on the African and African-American Studies Department Web site read: "Laura Whitehorn is a revolutionary anti-imperialist who spent over 14 years in federal prison as a political prisoner."
On Sunday, the same announcement read: "Laura Whitehorn spent more than 14 years in federal prison for her role in planting a bomb in the U.S. Capitol building in 1983, in protest of the U.S. invasion of Grenada."
English said his group is encouraging students and alumni to e-mail Duke University President Nan Keohane with their opinions.
When Whitehorn does come, English said his group won’t be afraid to question her.
"If she comes to campus, I expect a lot of members will come to the talk and have very deep questions for her," he said. "We would try to turn this into an educational experience. It would just be a little different than what was originally intended."
Night metro editor Mark Schultz contributed to this article.
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