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Louise Richardson, the executive dean at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, a senior lecturer of government in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, and a lecturer on law at Harvard Law School, begins by mentioning that the Schlesinger Library does not yet have significant holdings on women terrorists. However, the library was able to provide Richardson with a collection of poems and songs written by members of the Weather Underground, a radical left-wing organization and one of America's contributions to the terrorist lineage.
Among historians, academics, and politicians, there exists some dispute as to the meaning of the word "terrorist." To illustrate how the term is embraced differently even by various terrorist organizations, Richardson cites lyrics from a 1974 song written by the Weather Underground, a statement from Al Qaeda, and a quote from Bin Laden and notes the contradictions among them. Richardson suggests that any discussion about terrorism first attempt to define the term. For Richardson, this definition will implicate whether we agree or not about who and what constitutes a terrorist or terrorist group and resultant relations with that group or individual.
Richardson then provides her own definition, stating that "a group is a terrorist group if they deliberately target noncombatants to convey their political message. It's the means that they use, not the ends that they seek that determines whether or not a group is a terrorist group." It is Richardson's belief that, until we are prepared to call such people terrorists, "we will not make much progress in fashioning international agreements in how we collectively manage this issue."
She concludes with the historical observation that America's September 2001 declaration of war on terrorism was in part justified as a response to Al Qaeda's declaration of war on us. Citing a 1970 declaration of war by Bernardine Dohrn on behalf of the Weather Underground, Richardson reminds us that Al Qaeda's two fatwas on America were not the first time a terrorist group had declared war on the United States.
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