Prof. William Ayers, Weather Underground Founder, Won't Get Emeritus Status
William Ayers. Gerald Herbert/AP Photo hide caption
The East Central Illinois News-Gazette called it "a move that hasn't happened in years."
The University of Illinois Board of Trustees has voted to deny William Ayers, formerly Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), emeritus status, the Chicago Tribune reports:
The vote, at a U. of I. board meeting in Urbana, was unanimous and came after a passionate speech by board chair Christopher Kennedy, who invoked the 1968 assassination of his father, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, in saying that he was voting his conscience.
The other trustees, without comment, also voted against the appointment.
In his remarks, Kennedy noted Ayers dedicated one of his books, Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-Imperialism, to a list of figures that includes Sirhan Sirhan, the man who murdered his father, Sen. Robert Kennedy.
There is nothing more antithetical to the hopes for a university that is lively and yet civil, or to the hopes of our founding fathers for their great experiment of a self-governing people, than to permanently seal off debate with one's opponents by killing them. There can be no place in a democracy to celebrate political assassinations or to honor those who do so.
The Tribune article goes on to summarize the longstanding controversy surrounding Ayers:
Ayers became a controversial figure in Barack Obama's presidential campaign because they worked on a school-reform initiative together, leading opponents to say Obama was linked to a "terrorist." UIC was forced to release more than 1,000 files detailing the activities of that group. The university also faced questions in 2001 after Ayers wrote in his memoir about helping with the non-fatal bombings of government buildings.