David Easterbrook sent a letter back to Unabomber Ted Kaczynski last week rejecting the rare African books that the convicted felon offered two weeks ago to the Northwestern’s Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies.
Easterbrook, the library’s curator, said he did this because NU already had the works Kaczynski offered and didn’t need more copies. That it was the Unabomber who offered the books was not the deciding factor.
Easterbrook received a letter from Kaczynski offering two books by German anthropologist Paul Schebesta, who studied Pygmy culture in the Eastern Congo. The proposed books were two volumes of a multivolume work written in German titled “Die Bambuti-Pygmaen vom Iturvi.” NU already has the entire work in English.
“We are offered many gifts, and some we accept and some we don’t,” Easterbrook said. Accepting books from donors is a routine decision that Easterbrook said he makes all the time.
The African studies library receives between five and 10 gift offers each week, he said. Duplicates are rarely accepted because stack space is limited. The library primarily collects books written in English, NU’s main language of instruction.
“We purposely don’t collect multiple editions of the same book in multiple languages,” Easterbrook said.
Rejections are not unusual, said Alan Cubbage, vice president for university relations. The library houses an extensive collection of more than 260,000 bound volumes.
“It is something that Northwestern has specialized in for decades,” he said.
If NU hadn’t already owned the proposed books, Kaczynski’s background would have been considered before the books were accepted, Cubbage said. The decision did not reach this level.
“Certainly the history and reputation of the potential donor is something that the university takes into consideration when it receives a gift of anything,” he said.
Kaczynski, who grew up in Chicago and is now serving a life sentence in federal prison, was responsible for letter-bomb attacks across the United States. He carried out his first two attacks on NU’s Evanston campus, one in 1978 and another in 1979.
In addition to the books Kaczynski offered, the African studies library has at least 10 books by Schebesta that focus on the same African region, Easterbrook said. The anthropologist’s works have been translated from German into English and French, and NU has a few copies in multiple languages.
Easterbrook said his letter to Kaczynski was a standard letter of rejection.
“I explained that we already had the work, and that was it,” Easterbrook said. “And I thanked him for his offer.”
Reach Lauren Pond at [email protected].
