The Indiana University Department of Information and Library Science encouraged students to read the autobiography of known terrorist and convicted felon Assata Shakur. In a post to their official Instagram account, the department wrote that the autobiography is part of their “Winter Reading List” and referred to Shakur as a “social activist.”
Joanne Deborah Chesimard, who donned the name Assata Shakur after joining the Black Panthers, an armed organization whose violent displays of force intended to challenge law enforcement at the time; is currently on the FBI’s list of most wanted terrorists and is a convicted murderer. During her time in the United States, she was a leader of the Black Liberation Army, a violent militant revolutionary movement responsible for the killing and wounding of over a dozen law enforcement officers, the hijacking of Delta Flight 841, and numerous armed robberies and bombings.
In 1973, Shakur murdered New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster, after the officer had pulled her over for driving with a faulty tail light. Four years later, in 1977, Shakur was convicted of first degree murder, assault and battery of a police officer, assault with a dangerous weapon, assault with intent to kill, illegal possession of a weapon, and armed robbery. She was duly sentenced to life in prison.
On November 2, 1979, with the assistance of other Black Liberation Army members, Shakur escaped from prison and subsequently fled to Cuba, where it is believed that she currently resides. The FBI posted a reward of one million dollars for any information that directly leads to Shakur’s capture, followed by an additional million-dollar reward issued by the state of New Jersey.
Aaron Ford, a special agent in charge of the FBI division in Newark, New Jersey, stated that Shakur “is a domestic terrorist who murdered a law enforcement officer execution-style.” “We want the public to know that we will not rest until this fugitive is brought to justice,” he added.
When asked about the reasoning behind the suggestion, the assistant director of the Indiana University Department of Information and Library Science operations, Katie Novak, is reported as saying that the department often does “series of posts, particularly on Instagram, that feature staff reading recommendations, at times related to a specific subject or celebration” and that the “department stands by the right and necessity of supporting people from different backgrounds in their expressions and also in their access to information, toward the goal of forming a more inclusive and more just society, nation, and world, and it is opposed to contrary principles and expressions.”
Whether this approach to an inclusive society, in which domestic terrorists are given credibility and historically violent organizations are justified, is deemed appropriate and relevant by the student body remains to be determined.
