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UMass rescinds invitation to former radical

E-mail|Link|Comments () November 5, 2009 08:31 PM

By Abbie Ruzicka, Globe Correspondent

The University of Massachusetts at Amherst today canceled an upcoming talk by Ray Luc Levasseur, a man once listed as one of the FBI’s most wanted criminals and the former leader of the radical revolutionary group United Freedom Front, university spokesman Ed Blaguszewski said.

Representatives from Governor Deval Patrick’s office contacted the university to voice their disapproval upon learning of the event, which was scheduled to be held on Thursday according to a Patrick administration source.

“The governor supports the decision of UMass officials to cancel the appearance,” Patrick spokesman Kyle Sullivan said in a prepared statement. “It was the right thing to do out of respect to the families of the victims of these acts and our law enforcement community.”

Levasseur was released from federal prison in Atlanta in 2004 after serving 18 years for his involvement in the radical group United Freedom Front, which plotted a series of terrorist bombings and bank robberies along the East Coast between 1976 and 1984.

In 1989, after the longest criminal trial in Massachusetts history, Levasseur avoided additional jail time when he was acquitted by a federal jury of attempting to overthrow the government by force, on charges of sedition and racketeering.

Levasseur was invited to the university on the 20th anniversary of his 1989 acquittal to speak at a forum discussing response to social and political unrest during the 1960s, Blaguszewski said.

Robert Cox, head of the Special Collections and University Archives at UMass-Amherst, said continuing with the talk would have been “counterproductive.”

“The UMass Libraries developed this forum as an opportunity to focus on terrorism, one of the most difficult social issues confronting the country,” Cox said. “However, it is now clear that given the strong reaction generated by this event, we can no longer achieve the kind of meaningful exchange intended.”