BY DAN E. WAY

dway@heraldsun.com; 419-6654

CHAPEL HILL -- Acclaimed Hollywood actor and ardent leftist activist Danny Glover, who once admonished America for moralizing against the 9/11 terrorists because "One of the main purveyors of violence in this world has been this country, whether it's been against Nicaragua, Vietnam or wherever," will lecture at UNC during Martin Luther King Jr. Day activities next month.

Reaction to offering an invitation and forum to Glover, who is a personal friend of dictators Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and Cuba's Fidel Castro, was mixed.

"I appreciate that a celebrity is coming to my town from which I have graduated and to give out a scholarship for someone to go to college in honor of Martin Luther King Day," said Joshua Hilliard of Chapel Hill.

The two friends with whom Hilliard was walking down Franklin Street did not know who Glover was, even when prompted about him starring with Mel Gibson in the "Lethal Weapon" box office action movie series, among his many other Hollywood roles over the years.

"I would say that it is very typical of UNC, not surprising," said John Newman, who is in graduate school there after a stint of teaching.

"The school, I guess since the '60s, has had a large concern about social justice," Newman said. "I'm sure he will be very popular. But if it were George Will or Bruce Willis or Arnold Schwarzenegger, or somebody like that, probably not."

Raleigh-based writer Mel Lewis, a 1969 UNC graduate who attends a weekly Bible study in Chapel Hill, took Newman's observation a step further.

"My prevailing ideologies grew separate from the university's over the years," Lewis said.

"Having Danny Glover come for Martin Luther King Day or Hugo Chavez come to deliver the commencement speech doesn't surprise me," he said. "I'm being a little facetious there," he allowed, because Chavez is not giving the commencement speech.

Despite the leftist protests that rocked the campus and disrupted speeches by Republican former congressmen Tom Tancredo and Virgil Goode earlier this year, Lewis believes UNC Chancellor Holden Thorp is trying to bring more political balance to the campus.

Recruiting author John Grisham as the spring commencement speaker is an example because, though he's a Democrat, "he's not the type of overt demagogue they normally get," Lewis said. "I give Holden credit for saying, 'Folks, let's hold back a little bit.' "

Glover lecture

Actor and social activist Danny Glover will deliver the 29th Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Lecture and present the 27th Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Scholarship at 7:30 p.m., Jan. 21, in Memorial Hall.

Tickets are free for UNC students, and free, reserved-seat tickets are available for the general public, faculty and staff. For more information, call the Memorial Hall Box Office at (919) 843-3333.