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September 30, 2005 > News > Dalai Lama unlikely to visit Rice soon

Dalai Lama unlikely to visit Rice soon

By Nathan Black | Thresher Editorial Staff

President David Leebron does not expect the Dalai Lama to reschedule his visit to Rice anytime in the near future, after the cancellation of his Sept. 22 speeches due to concerns about Hurricane Rita.

“The Dalai Lama expressed a willingness to come back, but we don’t have any definite information on the timing,” Leebron said.

The Dalai Lama was scheduled to speak at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. at Autry Court as part of the inaugural conference of the Boniuk Center for the Study and Advancement of Religious Tolerance. Carol Quillen, the director of the Boniuk Center, met with the Dalai Lama Sept. 21, while he was in Houston for a fundraiser for the Tibet Fund.

“Rescheduling will be a long and involved process, but we hope to do that,” Quillen, a history professor, said. “I spoke to His Holiness and conveyed that desire to him. He said he was very sorry about the hurricane and that he hoped we would all be safe.”

Quillen said they did not discuss specific dates for his return.

“It wasn’t a time to start negotiating when he could come back,” she said.

Community and Government Relations Director Greg Marshall said the Dalai Lama’s visit might not occur until his next multi-city U.S. tour.

The cancellation of the afternoon speech was announced first, on the morning of Sept. 21. Leebron said Rice was not involved in that decision.

“We received the decision,” Leebron said. “There were concerns by the State Department and others about getting the Dalai Lama out of Houston.”

Later that day, after new weather forecasts became available and Mayor Bill White and County Judge Robert Eckels announced mandatory evacuations for parts of Houston, Leebron advised the Dalai Lama’s delegation to cancel the morning speech as well.

“The policy of the city became clearer, and also the level of preparation that we would need became clearer,” Leebron said. “Hosting a major event that would have attracted thousands of people to campus was completely inconsistent with the policies [White and Eckels] had put in place.”

Leebron also said the speeches would have diverted personnel, such as the Rice Police, from preparing the campus for the hurricane.

“We felt we might have been endangering people at Rice by making it very hard on Thursday morning to engage in any preparation whatsoever,” Leebron said.

Quillen agreed that canceling the speeches was the right decision.

“The city clearly was trying to send a message that people should be focused solely on the hurricane,” she said. “It would not have been helpful for us to have such a high-priority event on that day.”

Despite the cancellations, Quillen said she was pleased with the rest of the Boniuk Center’s conference, entitled “Tolerance and Its Limits,” which included lectures by and discussions between scholars and religious leaders.

“We’re all deeply disappointed that we didn’t get to hear His Holiness speak, but that was a categorically different kind of event from the rest of the conference,” Quillen said. “I don’t think the cancellations interfered with the academic work of the conference or the relationships developed over the three days.”

Many local participants left the conference on the afternoon of Sept. 21, a day earlier than they had planned, but other than the Dalai Lama’s speeches, no events were canceled, Quillen said.

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