Animal rights conclave will go on

By Kristin Palpini
Staff Writer

Published on November 09, 2007

After negotiating with Hampshire College administrators, an animal rights student group will be able to hold a controversial conference, "Smash the State Crush the Cage," this weekend.

Administrators first objected to the Hampshire Animal Liberation Advocacy group's conference for safety reasons. A planned keynote speaker, Jerry Vlaska, a spokesman for the Animal Liberation Federation, has on several occasions noted he supports violence against scientists who test on animals.

Elaine Thomas, Hampshire spokeswoman, said Tuesday anyone associated with ALF had to be dropped from the conference for the event to be held on campus.

"The students who are organizing the HALA conference have met with the administration and have given them assurances that they complied with the requests and the conference can now go forward," Thomas said.

Students also had to agree to allow anyone on the campus to attend the conference. Participants will have to identify themselves before entering the event. The conference will be held at the school today through Sunday.

"We wanted to assure that no advocacy of property desecration or violence is part of any session or speech," Thomas said.

College administrators may have had good reason to be concerned. On ALF's Web site, Vlaska's biography describes his justifications for violence on moral grounds.

Vlaska "believes that any tactics - ranging from threats and break-ins to sabotage and even assault or murder - are legitimate given the suffering exploiters inflict on animals (and) the impossibility of ending their misery through legal systems," his biography reads.

Concern over the conference is shared by faculty, including one professor, who declined to be named, who described the conference as dangerous.

HALA students said they were unable to respond to inquiries Tuesday, but in a letter to "Hampshire Activists," HALA called Hampshire College administrators' decision to challenge the conference a violation of free speech.

"If they are allowed to cancel our conference due to its controversial nature, this could just as easily happen to other student groups," the letter states. "As students who are involved in more than one student group we are disturbed by what we have seen happen to this conference and fear for the future of activism on campus."

On the conference's Web site, HALA describes the event as a place to devise "practical ways of ending animal testing on and outside college campuses." Scheduled events include lectures titled, "Guerrilla PI Tactics for Exposing Animal Abuse," "Understanding the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act" and "The Intersection of Sexism and Species-ism." Workshops will be held on prisoner support, guerrilla workshop space and climbing.

Another keynote speaker is Peter Young, who was arrested in 2005 in connection with a 12-day spree in which 8,000 to 12,000 minks were released from farms in the Midwest in 1997. He served two years for the crime and was released from federal prison in February.

Pattrice Jones, author, animal-rights activist and eco-feminist, is also scheduled to speak.

Kristin Palpini can be reached at kpalpini@gazettenet.com.