Editorial: Free speech and terror

An African and African American Studies visiting professor is paying to bring Laura Whitehorn - a radical who bombed the U.S. Capitol in 1983 and spent 14 years in prison because of this heinous action - to speak on campus as part of a graduate seminar. Although the original advertisement to bring her to campus is misleading at best, few people should question Whitehorn's right to speak and AAAS's right to bring her to campus.

The original profiles of Whitehorn advertised her as an activist for HIV/AIDs awareness in prison and for women's rights. This obscures the fact that she at one time used a bomb to damage offices in one of our government's most important buildings. Someone who has bombed the U.S. Capitol fits the definition of the terrorist, one who uses violence - particularly bombings - to intimidate and instill fear in society and the government, and the University's attempt to pass Whitehorn off as something other than a terrorist is insulting.

Those sponsoring Whitehorn's speech should be honest about who she is and why she is well-known: The only reason anyone has ever heard of Whitehorn is her involvement in the bombing of the Capitol. The speech's sponsors - AAAS, the John Hope Franklin Center, the Women's Studies Program and Becky Thompson, the visiting professor of AAAS before whose course Whitehorn is speaking - should honestly represent who Whitehorn is and why they are bringing her. To do otherwise hurts any credibility Whitehorn might possibly have as a speaker and any credibility the sponsors have.

But Whitehorn's past does not mean that she should not be speaking on campus. Quite frankly, if Osama bin Laden were available as a speaker, anything he had to say would certainly be compelling. The University, nor any institution dedicated to open dialogue, should not engage in censoring speakers or preventing professors from inviting whomever they wish to speak to their classes. Any university that values academic freedom and the ideals of the academy should be very wary of regulating how professors teach their classes, let alone who speaks to them. Duke officials who have defended Whitehorn and Thompson's right to invite her should be applauded for recognizing this.

Chair of AAAS Charles Payne hit an important note when he said that people stop thinking when they hear the word "terrorist." Certainly there is good reason to label Whitehorn a terrorist for her past actions, but the word does not fully describe her as a person and she should not be wholly dismissed because of it. There have been some hard-line politicians who, especially since Sept. 11, have exploited the word "terrorist" to condemn anyone with whom they disagree. Due to Whitehorn's past, her denouncement by some does not rise to the level of some of the worst examples of such exploitation. Nevertheless, community members should not let the label blind them to Whitehorn or her ideas.