University of Maryland terrorism center database includes peaceful pro-lifers

Two peaceful pro-life students appear to be listed by a University of Maryland’s terrorism center database.

UMD did not respond to inquiries from The College Fix, but a pro-life group said its attorneys would review the research to consider legal action.

The university’s National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism has endeavored to track alleged “extremism” from 1948 to 2021 through a database titled, “Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the United States.”

PIRUS lists mainstream pro-life organizations, like Pro-Life Action League, among threats such as the Ku Klux Klan and Al Qaeda. Moreover, two subjects affiliated with Students for Life of America appear to be peaceful protesters who were cleared of charges, The Fix found.

“We have not been contacted by START or given a look at what they seem to be alleging,” Students for Life spokesperson Kristi Hamrick said in an email on Friday. “Our attorneys are looking into this program.”

Two Students for Life members made national news in August 2020 when Washington, D.C. police arrested them for trying to write “black pre-born lives matter” on a sidewalk. The group sued, and an appeals court later found the city was selectively enforcing the law and letting Black Lives Matter protesters off the hook.

Students for Life has maintained the students, Warner DePriest and Erica Caporaletti (pictured), never broke the law because police permitted them in advance to draw on the sidewalk. Their charges were eventually dropped.

PIRUS shows the demographic information and political affiliation of each “offender” and their home state. It relies entirely on public sources describing “individuals in the United States who radicalized to the point of violent or non-violent ideologically motivated criminal activity, or ideologically motivated association with a foreign or domestic extremist organization,” according to START’s website.

Two people affiliated with Students for Life are listed as a college-aged man from D.C. and a college-aged woman from Maryland who is also tied to the Towson University chapter of Students for Life. PIRUS notes that both acted as part of a group and were non-violent. These details describe DePriest and Caporaletti.

The dataset also lists the ages for the two individuals in the database – 22-years-old and 29-years-old. These are the ages of both as reported by The Washington Post soon after the incident. The listed residencies for the two individuals also match the two students.

“We are very concerned about government-funded programs engaging in viewpoint discrimination as they attempt to insinuate that there may be future harms from peaceful pro-life people,” Hamrick told The Fix.