Last week, Duke University's African and African-American Studies Department made the Best of the Web for including Laura Whitehorn, a revolutionary activist who did fourteen years of jail time for planting a bomb in the Capitol building in 1983, on its roster of Spring speakers. Duke defended AAAS' right to invite speakers regardless of their politics or past records, and posted a notice of the university's commitment to free expression; meanwhile, AAAS' official blurb on Whitehorn, which had initially glossed over the nature of her crime by describing her as having been a "political prisoner," was amended to include the reason why she had been jailed.

Today, the Duke Chronicle returns to the story, explaining how Whitehorn got invited to speak and how the Duke Conservative Union brought the scheduled talk to James Taranto's attention, and giving both Becky Thompson, the professor who invited Whitehorn to Duke, and Whitehorn herself, a chance to speak. Here are their words.

Thompson expresses dismay at the sloppy reasoning and poor diction of those who have labelled Whitehorn a terrorist: "Her work was actually the opposite of terrorism," she said. "Part of being patriotic is trying to encourage the government to stand by principles of equality and democracy." According to Thompson, the article notes, Whitehorn was protesting terrorism, not committing it, when she tried to bomb the Capitol building.

Whitehorn likewise describes herself as a pacifist who is "very against terrorism": " Terrorism is the targeting of civilians, a reactionary form of arms struggle," she declares. "I've never been involved in targeting civilians. [The U.S. Capitol bombing] was a symbolic action. Great care that no one would be hurt was taken, even the janitorial staff." Like Thompson, Whitehead is disturbed by the failure of her opponents to make the crucial distinction between a terrorist, who targets people, and a (ahem) "pacifist," who blows things up when people are (hopefully) not around. "I am shocked that students would use this definition [of terrorism] without knowing what it means," Whitehorn said. According to Whitehead, the article notes, the real terrorism is that perpetrated by the U.S. government--first in Vietnam, and now, most likely, in Iraq.

Let the record show that terrorism is defined in the U.S. by the Code of Federal Regulations as: "..the unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives" (28 C.F.R. Section 0.85) (my emphasis).

For Whitehead, it seems, terrorism is not terrorism when she is committing it, and war becomes terrorism when she does not like it. Terrorism when Whitehorn commits it is metaphoric, a symbol. It doesn't really exist, except as an idea. Words define it away, leaving behind only the purity of the noble concept behind it. By contrast, war when Whitehorn doesn't like it can be converted into terrorism via metaphor: if you call war terrorism, then that must be what it is. And if that's what it is, then you can oppose it by equating it with the activities it seeks to arrest. You can even condone "symbolic" action against the government you have defined as terroristic. And so you rationalize activities like, say, bombing the Capitol buiilding, or, perhaps, flying commercial jets into skyscrapers.