Williams delivers 'healing' speech in Florida

In the end, Utah writer Terry Tempest Williams' speech at Florida Gulf Coast University was more about "healing" and "openness" and less about the partisan politics that FGCU's president had feared.

That's how Williams described her appearance Sunday before about 500 people on FGCU's Sanibel Island campus. About half in the audience were students, Williams estimated.

"I was so moved by the students' maturity and their power," Williams said Monday while still in Florida on the final leg of a book tour. She is scheduled to return to her home in Utah today. "They were so open-hearted — You couldn't help but be moved by that. Everyone in the auditorium felt a healing as a result of that."

When she was first invited last spring to speak at FGCU, it was assumed she would talk about her forthcoming book, "The Open Space of Democracy," made up of three essays previously published in Orion magazine. FGCU President Bill Merwin had approved bringing Williams to the school.

After the book came out in September, Merwin decided to temporarily pull the plug on Williams' planned speech at an Oct. 24 convocation for all first-year students, who were required to read Williams' new book. His reasoning was that Williams' book contained statements about her dislike of President Bush.

Concerned that Williams' appearance might create a backlash from Republican state lawmakers, Merwin wanted more political "balance" at the convocation. Unable to achieve that, he instead offered to have Williams come to the state-funded FGCU after Nov. 2. Williams declined the offer and returned the $5,000 FGCU had already paid her.

Republican and Democrat student groups quickly joined in asking Williams to keep her speaking engagement, only without official university support. She agreed, waived her speaking fee and, accompanied by her husband and father, spoke at the student union on campus.

Williams described the atmosphere she was speaking in as one that had just experienced an "ecological upheaval" brought by recent hurricanes. Politically, she was in a "highly contestable" county.

"You can imagine I was very nervous," Williams said. Bush had made an appearance at FGCU on Oct. 23.

If there were any jeers or heckling, like at filmmaker Michael Moore's appearance last week at Utah Valley State College, Williams did not hear them. The big difference in their speeches was that Moore repeatedly spoke out against Bush and Republicans.

Williams said she thanked students for embodying the concepts of democracy in her new book. She talked about "the natural cycles of radical change necessary for deep cultural transformation" and how "democracy asks only that we participate."

When asked what she felt was the most political part of her speech, Williams referred to a quote she used from John Stuart Mill's 1859 piece, "Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion." In Mill's words, Williams said, " . . . the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race . . . ."

Williams said she ended her talk by telling students that a single "naked" voice can be the most threatening to those in power. She said the students responsible for her appearance at FGCU had "advocated for the freedom of speech for every person in this country."

"In this situation, the students became the teachers," Williams said. "We've all been transformed by this experience."

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E-mail: sspeckman@desnews.com