Ex-terrorists' campus visit cancelled

The Walid Shoebat Foundation, whose plans to speak on campus Thursday fell through last week, instead held a press conference Thursday featuring three people who self-identify as former Arab terrorists at a nearby hotel on Route 1.

The group criticized the University for canceling the event, saying that they had pressured the Princeton Israel Public Affairs Committee (PIPAC) — a pro-Israel student group that originally invited the speakers — to call off the talk.

The foundation's executive director, Keith Davies, said, "We have strong evidence to believe it was pressure from the University that led to the event's cancellation," but declined to give specifics about his claims.

PIPAC said in a statement last week that it decided to postpone the event after the Shoebat foundation promoted the event nationally without mentioning the student group.

Associate Dean of Undergraduate Students Thomas Dunne, whose office signs off on student group-sponsored events, said in an email Monday evening, "If you speak with any of the students involved in the proposed event, I am confident they will tell you that they were not discouraged at any time from holding this event due to the content of the proposed topic."

Because the proposed talk was advertised by the foundation on its website, the University said that the event had changed in scope. The larger event would have required more substantial funding for security reasons, University spokesperson Cass Cliatt '96.

Davies challenged the University's position, saying that the foundation had sent an email to PIPAC in October outlining "what we were going to do and how we were going to do it. They knew what we were going to do to the nth degree."

Davies said that in initial talks with PIPAC, the foundation had requested an auditorium large enough to seat an audience of 1,000 people. He said he was told only McCosh 50, a 451-seat auditorium, could be secured to host the event.

Davies also said a meeting between the foundation's security forces and University Public Safety had been planned for last weekend to finalize security preparations for the talk.

Walid Shoebat, formerly of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and the two other speakers then recounted their personal experiences engaging in terrorist activities and shared insights into alleviating what they called "an epidemic" of terrorism in the Middle East.

Shoebat called radical Islamic movements "collective mass brainwash" that stem from universities, mosques and other cultural institutions in the Arab world.

"The problem is inherited hatred," said Zak Anani, another speaker who led an Arab gang prior to the Lebanese civil war. "If we can't change that hatred, it's going to be a tough, tough world."