THE CASUAL reader of the Nov. 6 Metro story “UMass-Amherst cancels talk by ex-radical leader’’ would think that Ray Luc Levasseur was being hounded from speaking at UMass-Amherst because of his political views. (A group of faculty subsequently renewed an invitation for him to speak at the school.)
The reporter told Globe readers that Levasseur had served 18 years in prison for “involvement in the radical group United Freedom Front, which plotted a series of bombings and bank robberies.’’ The group didn’t merely plot such activities. It in fact carried them out on about 20 occasions. Group members also attempted to assassinate at least two Massachusetts police officers, and murdered a young New Jersey state trooper, Philip Lamonaco.
Levasseur was not merely involved with this group. He helped found it, another fact your article neglected to mention.
Any decision to bar this individual from speaking at UMass should not come as a surprise: This isn’t the case of an individual being denied a podium because he holds objectionable sentiments or was a political activist. The fact is that he was denied a platform because the United Freedom Front was a terrorist group.
Globe readers were ill-served by the incompleteness of your story.
Jack Tarlin
Hanover, N.H. 
