Biehl Wanted to Make a Difference--and Did

Amy Elizabeth Biehl wanted to change the world.

By the age of 26, the Newport Beach woman had already begun to make some difference, her family, friends and colleagues said Thursday.

Professors at Stanford University said her 1989 undergraduate thesis on the election process in South Africa was so impressive that government and diplomatic officials still request copies.

Former colleagues at the National Democratic Institute in Washington, co-founded by former Vice President Walter F. Mondale to promote democracy abroad, credit her with increasing the role of women in the institute’s programs.

Institute officials also say she wrote an extensive report on Malawi that in effect introduced the Washington Establishment to the plight of that East African state, then governed by a dictator.

Finally, Biehl was using her Fulbright fellowship to the University of Western Cape in Cape Town, South Africa, to research the role of women in that country’s political transition to majority rule.

“Amy was young but she made things happen,” said Thoko Banda, 29, a Malawian who was a friend of Biehl. “She had more wisdom, sensitivity and simple sense about life, people and politics than anyone I know.”

Biehl was killed Wednesday by a group of black youths two days before she was to return to the United States and resume her studies at Rutgers. She had planned to earn her Ph.D. there in political science, specializing in South African issues.

In interviews with a dozen people who knew Biehl well, a portrait emerged of an extraordinary woman committed to women’s rights. She wanted to see the women of South Africa join the men in striving for political power.

“The irony of her death is that here is someone who was so committed to peaceful change, and she’s killed in trying to do that,” said Michael McFaul, a research associate at the Cape Town university and a consultant for the National Democratic Institute.

Thursday, her family in Newport Beach was besieged by phone calls from strangers and friends alike. A White House representative called to express President Clinton’s condolences. A State Department spokesman told the family that Nelson Mandela, leader of the African National Congress, would send a telegram conveying his own thoughts.

Biehl, who went to high school in Santa Fe, N.M., developed her interest in South Africa while a student at Stanford. She graduated in 1989 from the College of International Relations with honors.

“We all thought that she was going to study medicine, but then she discovered the humanities,” her father, Peter Biehl, said with a bittersweet smile.

While at Stanford, Amy Biehl recognized that the winds of change in South Africa could lead to democratization. It was during her college years that South African President Frederik W. de Klerk started his ongoing mission to dismantle apartheid, or rule by white minority. (Next year, the country is expected to hold the first democratic election in its 300-year history.)

In 1989, Biehl completed her honors thesis on the country’s numerous elections.

Kennell Jackson, Biehl’s African history professor and adviser at Stanford, said her thesis was then the most thorough documentation of the role of the U.S. government in promoting elections in the Namibia region of South Africa.

“Usually, these theses end up on a shelf . . . but not so with this one,” Jackson said. It is still requested by political scientists, government and United Nations officials because it was the first scholarly research on the topic, he said.

After graduation, Biehl was a program assistant at the National Democratic Institute, where she worked on Africa-related issues. On the strength of a report she wrote on Malawi in 1991, the institute set up a seminar on the country and its one-party rule.

“It was Amy who brought that country to our attention at NDI,” said Lionel Johnson, staff member of the State Department and Biehl’s former boss at the institute. “She did a lot to bring Malawi to a level of consciousness, at least in Washington at a time when there was not a lot of interest in that country.”

In June, Malawi held a non-binding referendum in which the people voted for a multiparty system of government. Biehl’s friend Thoko Banda said he believes that her work and the attention it brought to Malawi helped make that vote possible.

Biehl also brought to the attention of her former colleagues what she felt was the need for more women to be involved in institute-run programs.

“Basically, she took us to task because she thought we were not living up to our ideals when it comes to the involvement of women in our programs,” said Eric Bjornlund. “Ask any man or woman here now and they’ll say that there is more consciousness around here about women and the work they do because of the talks Amy use to give us about that.”

It was a combination of her interests in women’s activism and South African politics that led Biehl to decide to conduct her Fulbright Fellowship research on women and their role in South Africa’s political transition.

“She was looking at ways women would be assured of their rights in areas where traditionally they had not been afforded to African women due to some of the old African ways or customs,” said McFaul of the University of Western Cape. “She was more than an observer. She was a real player in what was going on. For a young woman over there, that was astonishing.”

Johnson, her former boss at the National Democratic Institute, said Biehl was dedicated to South Africa. “She wanted to make a difference where there had been none,” he said.

Her friend Gina Giere, 27, put it more succinctly: “She was going to change the world. She told us she was. We believed her.”

Times staff writer Jeffrey A. Perlman and correspondent Jon Nalick contributed to this story.