Students Band Together To Oppose David Duke

Harvard students who are angry about the rise of Louisiana gubernatorial candidate David Duke have decided to band together and lobby against the former Ku Klux Klan leader.

A group of graduate and undergraduate students are plastering the campus with flyers about Duke's past.

In addition to placing posters on kiosks and various campus buildings, the students have been distributing them in the house dining halls.

"It's not a laughing matter. This man is really dangerous," said Maria DeGouzman, a graduate student in the English Department, who is one of the organizers of the anti-Duke effort.

DeGouzman said that she and a small group of friends read about Duke's success in the Louisiana gubernatorial primary last week. Concerns about the media's coverage of Duke prompted them to launch a campaign to inform the public, she said.

Duke will face Democrat Edwin Edwards, a former governor of Louisiana, in an election on November 16.

Officials at Harvard-Radcliffe Hillel said the organization has also decided participate in the distribution of the flyers.

"If he is elected, people all over the country, not only Jews, have to do some serious thinking about how this could happen," said Daniel J. Libenson '92, who chairs Hillel's coordinating council.

The flyer details Duke's past, including his leadership role in the Ku Klux Klan and the National Association for the Advancement of White People and his past assertions that the Holocaust never occured.

The students obtained the information in the flyer from the Lousiana Coalition Against Racism and Nazism, a New Orleans-based organization campaigning against Duke.

"The real way to support is through contributions [to the coalition]," said Libenson.