“Hope leads to education, education leads to dignity, dignity leads to hope and hope leads to peace,” said Mariane Pearl in the closing minutes of her speech last Sunday evening in Clowes Memorial Hall.

The topic of her speech as part of the Celebration of Diversity Distinguished Lecture Series was the book Pearl wrote - “A Mighty Heart: The Brave Life and Death of My Husband, Daniel Pearl.”

The book is a memoir of her husband’s life and the story of his disappearance and death. Daniel Pearl was “The Wall Street Journal” reporter (Mid-Eastern correspondent) who was kidnapped and brutally murdered in 2002 by a militant Islamic fundamentalist group in Pakistan.

Pearl is also a journalist. She works specifically as an international freelance journalist and columnist. Around the time before her husband’s disappearance, she was reporting on media coverage of the war in Afghanistan.

Pearl opened her speech with a statement concerning education in relevance to being on Butler’s campus.

“Education is the solution to all of the problems in the world,” Pearl said. “It really deals with the essence of what it means to be human.”

As she went on, she started to share her story about her husband from the beginning -- discussing her family, how she grew up and when she met her husband for the first time, all to help the audience understand the determination she had during her husband’s disappearance.

Her husband was actually dating someone else when they met in Paris, but he invited her to his office in London after several weeks of correspondence. She realized he was the one simply by the many belongings he had in his cubicle including a beach chair.

“This is going to be an interesting ride,” she said.

Pearl defined her husband at first introduction as very self-confident. She also said, “The fact that he had the courage to not shelter himself in cynicism really touched my heart.”

They started out living in what she defined as a great apartment in Paris that overlooked the Eiffel Tower, in a great lifestyle that was comfortable. Eventually, they moved to Bombay, India, a decision she said theymade before she had her necessary cup of coffee.

When they moved to Karachi, Pakistan on Sept. 12, 2001, she defined the atmosphere in the hotel (with many other journalists) as “weird” due to the confusion and excitement of the war.

Daniel refused to go to any war zone after an experience he had before. While in Pakistan, he wrote a document about the safety for journalists in a war zone and he also requested journalists be trained in danger zones.

The day her husband disappeared, Pearl said they had a system where they called each other every 20 minutes or so. When she did not hear from him after a significant amount of time, she knew what happened.

At the time of his disappearance, she was four months pregnant. The fact that she understood the nature of the battle allowed her to stay calm. Pearl worked with a group of people in order to try to save him.

About five weeks later when they received the news of his death, Pearl ran out of the house with a gun, with an “urge to kill someone.”

But she said as she thought of her husband, he inspired her to do something more difficult.

“I had to have the same kind of courage in life that he had in death,” Pearl said.

“One of the most difficult things I have had to do in my life is to put down this gun,” she said.

She finished her speech with the mention of the birth of her son, Adam, which occurred several months after the death of her husband.

She said, “It’s Danny who chose his [her son] name, and he chose to call him after the first man as wishful thinking for the 21st century.”

Hope was one of the key themes to her speech.

“One thing I know is that hope can not be taken for granted,” Pearl said.

After the death of her husband and the birth of her son, Pearl continues to work as a journalist, including as a reporter for "Global Diary" and a columnist for "Glamour" magazine.

She also started the Daniel Pearl Foundation in memory of him “to further the ideals that inspired Daniel's life and work. The foundation's mission is to promote cross-cultural understanding through journalism, music and innovative communications,” according to the foundation Web site.

Before her speech, the mayor’s press secretary, Marcus Barlow, and Dr. Levester Johnson both gave remarks about Pearl. Preceding her speech, she was presented with numerous gifts on behalf of Butler and the mayor’s office.

The next event for the Celebration of Diversity Distinguished Lecture Series will by Tuesday, April 1 with Michael Eric Dyson and his wife, Rev. Marcia Dyson.