Recent events seem to bear out Wilkinson's assessment. For example, attacks against university professors have occurred recently in Northern Ireland, Italy and Spain.

"It is not an unknown thing," he says. "It fits in with the picture of bomb terrorism we have which has attacked all kinds of targets, including the most accessible, most civilian ones."

Different Kinds of Terrorism

Terrorism is often difficult to define generally and is currently used as a catch-word for many different kinds of violence, according to Associate Professor of Government Louise M. Richardson, who in the fall will teach the class Government 90ls: "Terrorist Movements."

Richardson identifies two major kinds of terrorist activity. Many terrorists, she says, belong to specific movements that try to advance particular political objectives and have fairly predictable targets.

Terrorists that perpetrate more random acts, such as the downing of an aircraft, do not belong to movements, she says. Instead, they are individuals from countries without power trying to use violence against a more powerful country.

"Without intelligence, it is incredibly difficult to tell where they will strike," Richardson says. "As to if Harvard is likely to be targeted, it is impossible to say."

Richardson says universities as such have not been the targets of the second type of terrorist, but intellectuals and academics have been the victims of terrorist movements as a part of broader political conflicts.

The Unabomer

But there have been exceptions which could prove to be precursors to the trends St. Andrews' Wilkinson describes.

The most high-profile university terrorist in history has been the Unabomer, an individual who for almost 20 years specifically targeted academia as it relates to the advance of technology.

Theodore J. Kaczynski '62, a Harvard graduate turned Montana recluse, is now being prosecuted in California for the Unabomer's crimes.

During his string of bombings, the Unabomer attacked Yale University and the University of California at Berkeley, among other academic institutions. Last year, two Nobel Prize winners living in the Boston area reported that they received letters from the Unabomer.

Yale University Assistant Police Chief James A. Perrotti says his campus was rocked after being attacked by the Unabomer several years ago.

He says that at the time, Yale had a program in place for dealing with suspicious packages. But after the Unabom incident, the university provided additional training for its mail carriers and educational programs for the school as a whole.