Prize-winning Utah author and environmentalist Terry Tempest Williams has been dis-invited from
giving an October 24 convocation speech at a Florida university because the President of the University was afraid she might criticize President Bush.
The President of Florida Gulf Coast University, William Merwin, asked Williams to clear the text of her speech with him ahead of time. Williams refused.
"I, in good conscience, cannot permit an unbalanced political commentary ... on a public campus," Merwin told trustees. "We need to do things that are balanced. We cannot use public funds to pay for something that is so blatantly political."
Records show Merwin contributed $2,000 to the Bush/Cheney campaign in 2003 and has given $1,750 to the state Republican party and Republican candidates since 2002. He was appointed president in 1999 of the 5,300 student university, which opened in 1991.
The schools' Board of Trustees voted 12-1 to endorse Merwin's action. The Board is appointed by the governor of Florida.
Merwin offerd to let Williams speak on campus, but only after the election.
Williams declined and returned the $5,000 honorarium for the speech. She called the University's action, "not just a breach of contract, but a breach of democracy."
Williams is on a tour promoting her new book, The Open Space of Democracy.
In it she says, "Since George W. Bush took office as president of the United States I have been sick at heart, unable to stomach or abide by this administration's aggressive policies directed against the environment, education, social services, healthcare, and our civil liberties -- basically, the wholesale destruction of seemingly everything that contributes to a free society except the special interests of big business."
Salt Lake Tribune
Other Florida coverage excerpted in Orion