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October 14th, 2008 6:36 am

The Distinguished Professor, or More Comic Relief From the University

Until Barack Obama’s campaign really got going and Obama himself–a cipher in search of the White House–began to attract the normal scrutiny any presidential candidate in this country attracts, Bill Ayers had not had much of a public profile for decades–not since the late sixties and early 1970s when his activities setting bombs and engaging other radical activities as one of the leaders of the Weather Underground made headlines. True, every now and then his name would pop up above the usual news chatter–on September 11, 2001, for example, when, as luck would have it, The New York Times ran one of those friendly, nostalgia-laced profiles of former radicals. Readers could sip their coffee that morning while turning to the Arts section and Dinitia Smith’s coy valentine: ”I don’t regret setting bombs,” Bill Ayers said. ”I feel we didn’t do enough.” Then they could turn on their televisions and watch as the World Trade Towers collapsed after someone else took over where Bill Ayers and his friends left off in their efforts to “smash bourgeois society.”

Ayers quickly disappeared again from the radar screen. He wasn’t idle–far from it–but, hey, the 1960s seemed so long ago and radical Islam, the eocnomy, the war in Iraq, immigration–so many other issues clamored for the public’s attention. In so far as anyone thought about Bill Ayers, he thought correctly that he was a dangerous radical. But mostly people just didn’t think about him.

Until, that is, his alliance with Barack Obama became an issue. What’s happened over the last months is that the radical activist has emerged reborn as an “educational reformer.” That, anyway, is the epithet the Times decided to employ in its most recent piece on Ayers, an anodyne effort to diffuse the growing chatter about the political and spiritual filiations between Ayers and Barack Obama that appeared on October 3.

Language is a marvelous thing, for you can easily use it to lie while telling the truth. Consider the phrase “educational rerformer.” What does it conjure up? Earnest but boring do-gooders, mostly: Robert Maynard Hutchins, maybe, or John Dewey. But most revolutionaries are also “educational reformer”–look at the career of Robespierre, of Stalin, of Pol Pot–and it is into this later category that Bill Ayers belongs. As Sol Stern, commenting in City Journal on this latest effort by the Times to paint things white, noted:

Calling Bill Ayers a school reformer is a bit like calling Joseph Stalin an agricultural reformer. (If you find the metaphor strained, consider that Walter Duranty, the infamous New York Times reporter covering the Soviet Union in the 1930s, did, in fact, depict Stalin as a great land reformer who created happy, productive collective farms.) For instance, at a November 2006 education forum in Caracas, Venezuela, with President Hugo Chávez at his side, Ayers proclaimed his support for “the profound educational reforms under way here in Venezuela under the leadership of President Chávez. We share the belief that education is the motor-force of revolution. . . . I look forward to seeing how you continue to overcome the failings of capitalist education as you seek to create something truly new and deeply humane.”

Ayers turned to the educational system for the same reason that revolutionaries turn to the family: the hand the rocks the cradle rules the world: and the hand that controls the schools shapes the future.

Stern’s piece provides a useful corrective to the Times’s whitewash. It reminds us of how radical Ayers’s “reforms” are meant to be, and it also touches here and there on his radical past. When he learned that the government decided not to prosecute him for his spate of bombings, for example, he crowed: “Guilty as hell, free as a bird—America is a great country.” (It was great in that it decided not to prosecute him: otherwise, he recently said, the idea that America is a great country “makes me want to puke.”)

I think that the subject of Bill Ayers’s relationship with Barack Obama is a matter of great public interest, not least because were Obama to be elected Ayers would be the unofficial architect of Obama’s educational platform. (At least, I assume it would be unofficial. But who knows, perhaps Obama would nominate Ayers to be Secretary of Education.) The Obama camp has been deeply reticient about exactly how close the two were. It is clear from the work of Stanley Kurtz (e.g., here) and Andrew McCarthy (e.g., here) that the idea that, as Obama put it, Ayers was just “a guy in the neighborhood,” no one special in his life, is simply not true.

But I suspect that the public still does not have a good grasp of who Ayers was and is. Everyone now knows he is an unrepentant bomber who wished he had “done more.” But what, really, was the Weather Underground all about? And what was Bill Ayers’s role in it? The best capsule answers to those questions is to be found in chapter 2 of Peter Collier’s and David Horowitz’s Destructive Generation : “The Rise and Fall of the Weather Underground,” which shows in gripping detail how Ayers and his colleagues planned and executed their “long march through the institutions.” Given the place of Ayers’s sentiments and ideas in the constellation of Obama’s thought, you should regard it as a civic duty to read the book.

Meanwhile, while you contemplate Collier and Horowitz’s description of Ayers’s various efforts to “smash monogamy” through group sex and overthrow capitalist society by infiltrating and overturning its institutions, you might also want to contemplate this communiqué from the redoubts of the American university, to wit, a petition making the rounds, dated September 24, 2008 and issued by “Friends and supporters of Bill Ayers,” opposing the “demonization” of the “Distinguished Professor” William Ayers. Really, you cannot make these things up. It reads, in part:

Support Bill Ayers – 3247 Current Endorsements –

Dear friends and colleagues in the field of education,

It seems that the character assassination and slander of Bill Ayers and other people who have known Obama is not about to let up. While an important concern is the dishonesty of this campaign and the slanderous McCarthyism they are using to attack Obama, we also feel an obligation to support our friend and colleague Bill Ayers. Many, many educators have reached out, asking what they could do, seeking a way to weigh in against fear and intimidation. Many of us have been talking and we agree that this one gesture, a joint statement signed by hundreds of hard-working educators, would be a great first step. Such a statement may be distributed through press releases or ads in the future. . . .

We write to support our colleague Professor William Ayers, Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who is currently under determined and sustained political attack. Ayers is a nationally known scholar, member of the Faculty Senate at UIC, Vice President-elect of the American Educational Research Association, and sought after as a speaker and visiting scholar by other universities because of his exemplary scholarship, teaching, and service. Throughout the 20 years that he has been a valued faculty member at UIC, he has taught, advised, mentored, and supported hundreds of undergraduate, Masters and Ph.D. students. He has pushed them to take seriously their responsibilities as educators in a democracy – to promote critical inquiry, dialogue, and debate; to encourage questioning and independent thinking; to value the full humanity of every person and to work for access and equity. Helping educators develop the capacity and ethical commitment to these responsibilities is at the core of what we do, and as a teacher he has always embraced debate and multiple perspectives.

All citizens, but particularly teachers and scholars, are called upon to challenge orthodoxy, dogma, and mindless complacency, to be skeptical of authoritative claims, to interrogate and trouble the given and the taken-for-granted. Without critical dialogue and dissent we would likely be burning witches and enslaving our fellow human beings to this
day. . . .

The current characterizations of Professor Ayers—“unrepentant terrorist,” “lunatic leftist”—are unrecognizable to those who know or work with him. It’s true that Professor Ayers participated passionately in the civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s, as did hundreds of thousands of Americans. His participation in political activity 40 years ago is history; what is most relevant now is his continued engagement in progressive causes, and his exemplary contribution—including publishing 16 books— to the field of education. The current attacks appear as part of a pattern of “exposés” and assaults designed to intimidate free thinking and stifle critical dialogue. Like crusades against high school and elementary teachers, and faculty at UCLA, Columbia, DePaul, and the University of Colorado, the attacks on and the character assassination of Ayers threaten the university as a space of open inquiry and debate, and threaten schools as places of compassion, imagination, curiosity, and free thought. They serve as warnings that anyone who voices perspectives and advances questions that challenge orthodoxy and political power may become a target, and this, then, casts a chill over free speech and inquiry and the spirit of democracy.

Is there anything they left out? “McCarthyism” is here, as is plenty of postmodern mumbo jumbo (”multiple perspectives,” “critical thinking” etc.). But the thing to take somber note of is the transformation of Ayers as a bomb-setting, antinomian radical into a disciple of the “civil rights movement.” In a normal world, this petition would be worth a contemptuous laugh before discarding it to the oblivion it deserves. But given the times, I fully expect its endorsements to swell far beyond the 3000 plus it had on September 24.

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17 Comments

1. cfbleachers:

Roger, once in a while…when I read things such as this, I wonder where the line is today…between our desire to allow ALL voices to be heard, to have a chance to speak…and treason.

Put another way, in post-modern American culture…is it even possible to engage in treason? Take the despicable duo of Ayers and Dorhn. Let us recount their activities and hold them up against the most notorious traitors of all of history.

They attempted a mass murder of young non-commissioned officers and their innocent dates at Ft. Dix. They attempted to murder police officers, Pentagon workers, they have openly stated that this country makes them want to puke, they advocate brainwashing and indoctrination of self-loating against the country…in our children attending PUBLIC schools.

They conspire with leaders who engaged in wars with our country, they conspire with leaders who are openly opposed to our system of government and they actively seek out enemies to embrace them. Please help me here…when…at what point in time…does the line appear when it is fair game to call someone a traitor to our country? It clearly should not come too early in the expression of their principled dissent. THAT…we should defend with the tenacity and vigor as if they held our own beliefs.

But when? Ever?

And why…in the name of all that is holy and good…is the entrenched media and all the tentacles of their indoctrination machine (major metropolitan newspapers, alphabet news rooms, wire services, foreign broadcasters with outlets here such as the BBC, Hollywood, academia) more stalwart in their defense of treason than they are of our country itself?

It has been proven beyond doubt that it is not because they believe in protecting the sanctity of all ideas having a voice to be heard in their mediums, they have snuffed out every scintilla of objectivity on that front. What possesses these people, with whom we share this land of ours…to advance and defend self-loathing and inwardly directed slander? To paint the picture of the traitor as hero and the patriot as goon?

What, in heaven’s name…has happened to nobility?

And, how does it play into this election…one so bizarre and deflating? A candidate for the Presidency…feels uncomfortable wearing a flag on his lapel, but not uncomfortable engaged deeply with a man who stomps dirty footprints upon it.

A candidate who was, by his admission…mentored at the knee of one man who was a Communist Party USA member and said our college education was “compromising” and another who asked God to damn this land of ours.

We have massive voter fraud, intimidation tactics, “fairness doctrines”, “calls to action”, public libraries secreting documents, speeches calling for racial gang rape, …and the only place where debate seems to be stifled and choked off, is by the entrenched media, who are shooting from those trenches at anyone who dares to raise a hand in protest at the madness.

Where is honor? And what defines treason? Does Tony Rezco define honor…and Rashid Khalidi? Khalid al Mansour? Michael Klonsky and Michael Pfleger? Do foreigners control our election campaigns with contributions under phony names?

And Stanley Kurtz needs to be shouted down?

When a candidate is surrounded by the voices of venomous extremism, not just in one fleeting intance…but surrounded, by the hundreds, over a lifetime…and that extremism is romanticized, watered down and given back to us as pablum for the mind…we have lost our way. Right is right, fair is fair, wrong is wrong.

Venom has entered our body politic and our national soul is becoming necrotic as it spreads.

Oct 14, 2008 - 7:28 am 2. Mrs. Jackson:

A most somber transformation of Bill Ayers, indeed.

Another important piece of misinformation (lie) that the Obama camp (which is the Chicago Machine) has been peddling through David Axelrod is that the Ayers/Dorhns and Obamas were “friendly” because their kids were at the same school. The Obama girls are about 6 and 10 years of age. The Ayers/Dorhn ‘kids’ are in almost in their 30’s. And the activities and writings/editing of one son of Ayers/Dorhn should receive some closer scrutiny. Their adopted son, Chesa Boudin. He is the biological son of Ayers/Dorhns’ fellow Weathermen Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert. Chesa was Yale ‘03 and a Rhodes Scholar. This is from a 2006 article from the Yale News Daily on Chesa where one can easily see he was but just a sponge to the unrepentant terrorist philosophy of both his adoptive parents and biological parents:

“For most Yalies, the name Chesa Boudin ‘03 is not likely to ring a bell. He is the son of Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert, who in a 1981 robbery gone awry, aided in the murder of two police officers and a Brinks security guard in Nyack, N.Y. They were members of the Weathermen, a ragtag group of mostly white, mostly privileged kids who arose from the dark underbelly of the social and political upheaval of the 1960s.

“Chesa caused a minor stir in the media four years ago when he won a Rhodes scholarship, due to the way in which he spoke admirably of his parents’ sordid past. Today, he would not be worth writing a column about were it not for his obsession with keeping himself in the spotlight. Nor, for that matter, should the sins of the father be held against the son. But when the son rationalizes away those sins and conflates them with his own political work, he becomes harder to stomach.

“Last month, along with several other Western political pilgrims, Chesa was interviewed by The New York Times about his working for the regime of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. He has translated into English a book of interviews with Chavez and this year published “The Venezuelan Revolution: 100 Questions and 100 Answers.” He has delivered two master’s teas at Yale in the past few months, extolling the virtues of the Caudillo of Caracas.

“Chesa follows in a long tradition of alienated Westerners like Paul Robeson, Jean-Paul Sartre and George Bernard Shaw who, during the Cold War, extolled the virtues of totalitarian societies while condemning the free world. He calls Chavez’s Venezuela the “first participatory democracy I have ever seen.” But as Amherst College Associate Professor of Government Javier Corrales explains in a recent issue of Foreign Policy magazine, Chavez is an authoritarian, who, like his idol Fidel Castro, has ably used “progressive” rhetoric to win over the hearts of the international left.

While Venezuela does not yet look like Cuba, Chavez is slowly destroying the vestiges of a democratic society. He has overseen changes to the country’s constitution eliminating the Senate and ensuring that major legislation can pass with only a simple (rather than two-thirds) majority, and he has packed the Supreme Court in a move that Franklin Roosevelt only dreamed of accomplishing. Not content with being the commander-in-chief of the nation’s armed forces, Chavez has formed a paramilitary that he plans to number two million men (by comparison, the U.S. military and National Guard have 550,000 reservists). Like his ally Robert Mugabe (the two embraced and tried to outdo each other in condemning the United States at a U.N. meeting in Rome last October), he has seized tens of thousands of acres of privately owned land and given it to his cronies. Chavez also heads the body that oversees elections and through state monopolies controls the country’s oil wealth. Corrales’ damning conclusion: “If democracy requires checks on the power of incumbents, Venezuela doesn’t come close.”

“Like his parents, Chesa sees no moral relationship between means and ends. About Venezuela, he told the Times that, “The fact that we have a country that’s trying to create an alternative model is bold and ambitious and unique, and that’s why people are wondering, ‘Is it possible?’” The horrors of the 20th century ought to have erased any doubt in the mind of a Yale-educated Rhodes scholar about attempts to yet again create Heaven on Earth and Socialist Man.

“It is incorrect to label Boudin a useful idiot. Idiots do not become Rhodes scholars. His obvious intelligence makes his embrace of undemocratic tactics all the more troubling. Chesa calls Venezeula’s democracy “protagonistic.” People without hard-headed, Marxist political illusions call it “authoritarian.”

“In addition to the tracts on the Venezuelan New Jerusalem, Chesa recently edited “Letters from Young Activists: Today’s Rebels Speak Out,” a book that includes the epistles of some 40 precocious radicals. In a letter written to his incarcerated father, Chesa demonstrates his terrifying ethical calculus. He tells Dad that his life sentence as an accomplice in three homicides is “largely a product of your own commitment to progressive political change and to the inherent value and equality of human life.” Apparently this “commitment” does not extend to the pigs.

“Given the prevarication regarding his parents’ crimes, it should not be surprising that Chesa’s definition of “activism” extends beyond the antiwar theatrics he orchestrated during his time at Yale. Waving placards, as any authentic revolutionary knows, is so bourgeois. “Letters from Young Activists” is blurbed by none other than Mumia Abu-Jamal, who murdered Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner while he lay bleeding on a sidewalk the very same year that Chesa’s parents committed their crimes. Apparently, Chesa’s admiration for those who kill our nation’s finest extends beyond paternal affiliation.

“But much of Chesa’s rhetoric is false bravado. In 2002, speaking of his left-wing activism at Yale, Boudin told The New York Times, “We have a different name for the war we’re fighting now — now we call it the war on terrorism, then they called it the war on communism. My parents were all dedicated to fighting U.S. imperialism around the world. I’m dedicated to the same thing.” Fortunately for us Yalies, his “dedication” to fighting the Great Satan was not one and the same with that of his mom and pop. If it had been, there is no telling how many bombs Chesa would have set on Cross Campus.”

The rest is here:
http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/17647

Oct 14, 2008 - 7:35 am 3. The Eagle:

This letter of support is simply unbelievable!
I’d like to have the names of each “educational reformer” endorsing it, so as to make sure that my kids will never – I mean never – become a victim of one of them.

Oct 14, 2008 - 8:32 am 4. Paul:

There will be many more endorsements.

Very many members of an entire generation of current academics were at best sympathizers of the SDS and at worst soldiers in its more ridiculous, more “activist” progeny, such as the Weather Underground and here ion Boston, the Rosa Luxemburg branch.

Most of those people remain convinced that they were not only absolutely right about everything, but good too. Attacks on Bill ayers are instantly recognized by them for what they are: attacks on the idiots they themwselves were and, in many cases, still are. The defense of Bill Ayers by academe will turn out to be, I suspect, more troublesome politically, and altogether more emetic for honest observers of the acaemic life, than was the defense of Ward Churchill. Note that Ward is a mere child of Chomsky, but that Ayers embraced a really practical and politically puissant Chomskyite — H. Chavez.

Oct 14, 2008 - 8:32 am 5. Será o dr. Hoppe a reincarnação do dr. Fantástico? | Dicta & Contradicta:

[...] dúvida, não procurarei Bill Ayers para saber a [...]

Oct 14, 2008 - 9:46 am 6. mtraven:

Since Roger is well-known to be a fair, balanced, judicious, and non-partisan public intellectual, I’m sure he will give equal attention to the fact that John McCain has actively “palled around” and sought the support of convicted criminal and terrorist G. Gordon Liddy, a man who has advocated killing federal agents and assassinating Presidents. But until he gets around to this (I know he’s very busy), you can read about it here and here. There’s also the matter of Sarah Palin and her husband’s “palling around” with separatist extremists.

Oct 14, 2008 - 10:46 am 7. heather:

ok, through the magic of Amazon and a credit card, I have ordered ‘Destructive Generation.’

I fear that American people will have to experience first hand the ministration of such as Obama and Ayers, and Pelosi and Reid.

You have one advantage though. the freedom of speech can be shredded; your court system can be wrecked; but you have a Second Amendment. You are lucky.

Oct 14, 2008 - 12:43 pm 8. MikeH:

…Ooh…ooh…mtraven! And John McCain was behind the World Trade Center bombing!!! and rhe Murray Federal Building!!! And.. and… he was in Dallas in November 1963!!! And…and… he kidnapped Jimmy Hoffa!!!!!
Oh wait, look there’s a squirrel over there….

Oct 14, 2008 - 1:17 pm 9. Steve Skubinna:

Right, mtraven, but you forgot to tell us how many murders Liddy and Todd Plain’s erstwhile compatriots performed. Minor detail and I’m sure you meant to address it but we understand you’re busy with that whole moral equivalence thing.

Oh, and since when have Democrats been against secession? Turned away form it after that disastrus experiment in 1860, did you?

Ayers and Dorhn are filth, and they are no less vile for the qulaified supprot they obtain from moral cripples such as yourself.

Oct 14, 2008 - 1:19 pm 10. Diane:

mtraven
Comparing McCain’s appearance as a speaker with Liddy is hardly the same thing as Obama’s years of working with Ayers. Also Liddy was prosecuted and repented, Ayers has not. And as others have pointed out, Liddy’s actions were no where near comparable to Ayers. As someone who attended college during the era of the Black Panthers, SDS, and Weather Underground, I had the chance to meet some of the members. Although I never met Ayers, the members I met spoke proudly of him…much the way these academics do in this idiotic petition/letter. And what were these SDS/Weathermen members like? Quite simply they were Marxist terrorists, and the thought of maiming or killing in the name of their cause was justified. The idea that they are teaching our children has always frightened me, and I imagins most of the signers of this petition are, if not former members, at least supporters of these groups.

The Obama supporters and most of the media fail to recognize that the problem with Obama’s relationship with Ayers is, not just Ayers’ past terrorist activites, but his radical socialist educational ideas.

Oct 15, 2008 - 4:46 am 11. Left, Right and Centered » More On Billy:

[...] Here Money quote: [...]

Oct 15, 2008 - 5:31 am 12. Fred:

Since Roger is well-known to be a fair, balanced, judicious, and non-partisan public intellectual . . .

But certainly not as fair, balanced, judicious, and non-partisan as the Huffington Post and Oliver Willis. Oh Please. Have any more lefty outlets you want to put forward as promulgating self-evident truth? How about DailyKos, Eschaton, MyDD? Now that’s where the reality based community finds out what’s really going on (of course their “reality” is actually an alternate reality, some kind of Star Trek thing).

Oct 15, 2008 - 7:43 am 13. Ilkka Kokkarinen:

“I fully expect its endorsements to swell far beyond the 3000 plus”

Especially if ACORN is collecting the signatures.

From the petition: “All citizens, but particularly teachers and scholars, are called upon to challenge orthodoxy, dogma, and mindless complacency, to be skeptical of authoritative claims, to interrogate and trouble the given and the taken-for-granted.”

Such as the taken-for-granted idea that to prevent the global temperatures rising one or two degrees Celsius in the next hundred years, we need to implement the whole left-wing package deal of policies that they have been advocating for the past fifty years? Are we allowed to challenge that one?

“They serve as warnings that anyone who voices perspectives and advances questions that challenge orthodoxy and political power may become a target, and this, then, casts a chill over free speech and inquiry and the spirit of democracy.”

Leftists are complaining about chilling free speech in universities. My irony meter just exploded.

Oct 15, 2008 - 9:42 am 14. Alo Kievalar:

When discussing 60s radicals, some of the most important points about them are often left out.

In Ayers’ case, the fact that he is married to the equally infamous Bernardine Dohrn, a former leader of the “Weather Underground”, a malevolent radical 60s group if there ever was one, should be noted.

The fact that they are both involved in one way or another in “childhood education” is as unspeakably infuriating and repulsive as is Krugman getting a Nobel Prize for Economics.

I recently saw Ayers on TV in his university office. Forget all the academic paraphernalia surrounding him. What caught my eye was that he was wearing not just one earring but TWO (one on each ear). I don’t know exactly what that is supposed to mean…but I know what it used to mean way back when.

The story and the connection between the “cultural revolution” of the 60s, it’s aftermath and its continued influence and the events of 9/11 is yet to be told. But an important, even crucial connection between the era and the event is quite evident if you look below the surface.

Oct 15, 2008 - 12:37 pm 15. Tom G.:

Alo: TWO earrings on a male means “he gets it”. Don’t you read Vogue??

Oct 15, 2008 - 4:42 pm 16. mtraven:

The Palin’s Alaska Independence Party is a quasi-terrorist group whose founder has said such choice items as:

“The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government.”

“My government is my worst enemy.”

“I hope we don’t have to take human life, but if they go on tramping our property rights, look out, we’re ready to die.”

Much more here.

Oct 15, 2008 - 10:38 pm 17. Steynian 270 « Free Canuckistan!:

[...] KIMBALL: “The Distinguished Professor, or More Comic Relief From the University– Until Barack [...]

Oct 16, 2008 - 10:48 am

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