Who Hired Bill Ayers and Why?

Who Hired Bill Ayers and Why?

http://www.noquarterusa.net/blog/2009/08/12/who-hired-bill-ayers-and-why/#more-30276

By Cliff Kincaid
8/12/09

The State of Illinois Admissions Review Commission issued a report on
August 6 analyzing "The Influence of Power & Money on University of
Illinois Admissions." The investigation was the result of the Chicago
Tribune revealing that eight hundred students were improperly granted
admission to the university because of high-level political and
financial connections. But the question of how a Communist terrorist
named Bill Ayers became a "Distinguished Professor" at the same
university never got answered ­ because the question was never asked.
My public policy group America's Survival, Inc. (ASI) has been asking
it, and we will release our findings at an August 20 news conference
at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. The conference is open
to the press and the public.

In advance of the event, Professor Mary Grabar has written a
devastating report, The Extreme Make-Over of William Ayers: How a
Communist Terrorist Became a "Distinguished" Professor of Education,
which is available on our web site www.usasurvival.org The report
proves that Ayers is an educational fraud and that his "teaching"
methods consist of communist tactics of brainwashing and
disinformation, similar to what had been exposed decades earlier in
Communist Party defector Louis Budenz's book, The Techniques of Communism.

Copies of the Grabar report have been provided to the Tribune
reporters who covered what the paper dubbed the "Clout U" scandal. We
will be waiting to see how they cover this controversy and our August
20 event because the evidence so far points to Thomas Ayers, who sat
on the board of the Tribune Company, which publishes the Chicago
Tribune, as providing the "clout" to get his terrorist son ensconced
at the University of Illinois. There is no other reasonable
explanation for how Ayers got this job. By the same token, Thomas
Ayers may also have played a role in getting Ayers' wife and fellow
terrorist, Bernardine Dohrn, a teaching job at Northwestern
University in the Chicago area. Thomas Ayers had been the chairman
of the board of trustees at Northwestern.

We say "the evidence so far" because there are countless stories that
demonstrate that Thomas Ayers (1915-2007), the CEO of Commonwealth
Edison, was a major mover and shaker in Chicago politics and cultural
activities. There can be no doubt that he was a heavy hitter. If he
didn't lift a finger to help his son, after he managed to escape
punishment for a series of bombings of police stations and government
buildings, it would have been shocking. Stories say that Ayers and
his rich father were very close.

However, the University of Illinois, in response to our state Freedom
of Information Act requests, refused to tell us how Ayers got his job
and got tenure. But how can an investigation of "Clout U" be truly
over if the controversy surrounding Ayers is not addressed?

Stories about far-left and kooky radicals getting academic positions
are not new. But Ayers is different because of his terrorist acts,
including his reported involvement with Dohrn in the planning of a
bombing that took the life of San Francisco Police Sergeant Brian V.
McDonnell in 1970. My group America's Survival, Inc. held events this
year in Washington, D.C. and San Francisco to publicize the evidence
in the case, mostly from an FBI informant in the Weather Underground
named Larry Grathwohl. The case is still open and under investigation.

We have followed-up our demand for justice in this case by looking at
how Ayers got his teaching job, and what exactly he is teaching his
students. After appealing a denial of another of our state Freedom of
Information Act requests, University of Illinois President B. Joseph
White finally agreed to release copies of syllabi from some of Ayers'
classes. We found a couple more on line. Mary Grabar has analyzed
Ayers' work product, academic history, and these courses, including
one on "Social Conflicts of the 1960's," and will have much more to
say about all of this at our August 20 event.

You may recall that during the presidential campaign, then-Senator
Hillary Clinton had raised the issue of Barack Obama's relationship
with Ayers. In response, Obama made his famous statement that Ayers
was "a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English
in Chicago, who I know and who I have not received some official
endorsement from. He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a
regular basis."

Since Clinton had established that Obama had worked with Ayers, and
Obama knew this as well, Obama also had to know that Ayers was a
professor of education, not English. He also knew that Ayers and
Dohrn had held an event to promote his run for the Illinois State
Senate. What's more, in 2002, Ayers, Dohrn and Obama were listed as
participants in a University of Illinois event, "Intellectuals: Who
Needs Them?," sponsored by something called the Center for Public
Intellectuals. Indeed, Obama and Ayers were on the same panel,
"Intellectuals in Times of Crisis."

Nevertheless, Obama said of Ayers during the presidential debate that
"He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis." Our
media, of course, mostly let the matter drop, just as they had
largely ignored Obama's father-son relationship in Hawaii with
Communist Party member Frank Marshall Davis, who, interestingly, had
deep roots in Chicago as well. ASI held a conference on this topic in
May of 2008 and we obtained the 600-page FBI file on Davis.

Despite their working relationship, Obama knew that exchanging views
and ideas with a communist terrorist was not something that he wanted
to confirm publicly. He had nothing to say, however, about the
propriety of having Ayers "exchange ideas" with impressionable
students at the University of Illinois. And that is where we have now
focused our attention.

Academia is a place where the free exchange of ideas should take
place. But what if the "educator" believes that education should be
the "motor-force of revolution," as Ayers said during an appearance
in Venezuela in 2006? What if the academic qualifications of this
particular "educator" are thin, if not non-existent?

We will have a lot to report on August 20 about what Ayers was doing
in Venezuela, which also imports educational "experts" from Cuba. The
aim of Hugo Chavez, who was in the audience when Ayers spoke in
Venezuela, is nothing less than the destruction of the patriotic
student movement in Venezuela which threatens his power. Young
people, especially students, are overwhelmingly opposed to Chavez's
"Socialism of the 21st Century" and have led the protests against his
power grabs. As a result, official criminal investigations have been
opened into the activities of Venezuelan students who dare protest
the Chavez drive to make Venezuela into a communist country and take
control of the educational system. These investigations are another
form of harassment and intimidation. On another level, younger
children will be molded into Chavistas through the use of Ayers-style
educational methods. Textbooks are already being rewritten to conform
to the Chavez line.

Another speaker at our conference will be Professor Paul Kengor of
Grove City College, the author of several books who will analyze the
phenomenon of "anti-anti-communism" in the academy. In others words,
anti-communists are being ostracized at our leading institutions of
higher learning, which helps explain why a communist like Ayers could
be welcomed as an educational expert. The corruption at the
University of Illinois goes beyond Ayers and envelops those who
sanctioned his hiring and promotion. This is the scandal that still
must be addressed.

For my part, I will be discussing the career of journalism educator
and Northwestern University Professor Curtis MacDougall (1903-1985),
and the 319-page FBI file on him that we obtained through the federal
Freedom of Information Act. As a young journalism student, I had
studied from MacDougall's textbook, Interpretative Reporting, which
encouraged a form of advocacy journalism, and have always wondered
why he highlighted Walter Duranty of the New York Times as one of the
great figures in the media. Duranty was a stooge of Stalin and one of
the greatest liars in the history of journalism. He helped Stalin
cover-up the deaths of 7-10 million Ukrainians in a forced famine.

The FBI file on MacDougall explains this mind-set, documenting his
involvement in numerous Communist front groups and even his
association with a Soviet-funded publishing house run by a Soviet agent.

When MacDougall's son, Kent MacDougall, came out of the Marxist
closet, after writing for decades for the Wall Street Journal and Los
Angeles Times, someone who knew Curtis MacDougall commented, "Like
father, like son, both in opinions and tactics." This individual, Dr.
Lawrence Cranberg, told me that he had visited Curtis MacDougall a
few years before his death and that MacDougall "confided to me that
he considered the Soviet system far superior to our own." As late as
1978, MacDougall was writing columns hailing Fidel Castro as "a man
with a vision, program and record of achievement."

Our "Communism in the Classroom" conference will be taking place as
students, including my oldest son, return to college. We welcome your
interest, participation and support.

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