Bill Ayers, centerpiece of the failed 2008 McCain-Palin campaign, will not speak at Boston College, even by satellite, after the administration cited “concern for the safety and well-being of our students.” Hilarious. If a satellite speech on education reform is a safety concern, maybe CNN should also be banned on campus.
The real reason the university canceled the talk, it appears, is because they were afraid of protests organized by talk radio host Michael Graham — famous for his comment on Columbine: “They were targeting minorities and athletes – which, the athletes part, (is) one minor benefit to this otherwise horrible story.” — and Boston police officers, who blame Ayers for the 1970 killing of a Boston police officer during a bank robbery by his former Weather Underground associates.
I’m no fan of Ayers, but he is a free man, and a respected education professor. He won the 1997 Chicago Citizen of the Year award for his work on teaching. If students at B.C. want to hear him talk, let them. Student Melissa Roberts put it well:
“BC is setting a dangerous precedent by cancelling this event. In the past, administrators have cancelled events that they see as being at odds with Jesuit, Catholic ideals. Now, a new precedent has been set which permits the cancellation of any event that is at odds with the ideals of BC’s wealthy and largely conservative donors,” said Melissa Roberts, vice president of the BC College Democrats and A&S ’09. “A university should be a place where students can hear all ideas, not just popular or profitable ones.”
So much for B.C.’s alleged “firm commitment to academic freedom.” Final score: Boston College 1, education 0.
pablophil says
They had a similar situation when they invited Ollie North during the Iran Contra period, didn’t they? And Ollie wasn’t allowed to…oh, wait, yes he was…
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p>Never mind.
dweir says
I’ve searched ERIC, Academic Search Premier, PsychINFO and Education Research Complete databases and found only seven articles authored by William Ayers.
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p>Boston College has a responsibility to its alumni, its students, and the institution itself to maintain high standards. The shameful aspect is not that BC prohibited Ayers from speaking, but that did so only after public protest.
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mr-lynne says
Ronald Regan couldn’t be called an academic either, but I’m sure he got plenty of speaking gigs. If you want to argue that Ayers has no merit at all, that’d be fine, but merely not being an academic to your standards is not a sufficient criterion. A better approach may be to demand to know on what basis he was invited and then criticize that.
dweir says
Bob wrote:
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p>Academic freedom presumes academic quality and integrity does it not? A professor of 20 years with such a paltry set of publications is indicative of someone who is not an academic, not a scholar, and not worthy of an invitation to speak as such.
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p>It’s not simply a matter of disagreeing with his philosophy. It’s that his work doesn’t reach a standard of scholarly discourse. The number of his articles is one indication. Their content is another. Start another thread if you want to debate that, but don’t confuse it with academic discourse!
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p>It is the students (and Bob) who argue that this was an academic pursuit. I think he was likely booked for his notoriety. This is more like booking Charles Manson than Ronald Reagan.
mr-lynne says
… that invitations to speak that cite academic freed be limited to scholarship? Again, you’d have to boot Reagan from such a speaking engagement. My point still stands. Citing a lack of scholarship alone is insufficient grounds to to say that an engagement is inappropriate. There may be good grounds out there, but this alone doesn’t make the case.
sabutai says
This keep most climate warming deniers off of campus.
Same with creationists and “academics” carrying Discovery Institute water.
And the entire faculty of Liberty and Oral Roberts Universities wouldn’t be allowed onto their own campuses.
mr-lynne says
… is insufficient. You’d have to eliminate all ‘non-academic’ heads of state from speaking. That point alone indicates that ‘academics-only’ is insufficient by itself to produce a desirable outcome for a “who’s allowed to speak and who isn’t” test.
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p>Your point is well taken though. It might be a very good standard when the topic is science, but there are other reasons and topics related to speakers for which the standard is, by itself, insufficient.
stomv says
The man has written or edited numerous books in the past 10 years.
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p>According to wikipedia, The works of Bill Ayers. Hell, next time just go to Bill Ayers C.V..
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p>Now, some of those may not be particularly scholarly within his field (education), and I don’t know if any of them are any good or how often they are cited. He may be an academic lightweight; I’m in no position to know. But, to claim he’s written 7 journal articles but ignore all of his books isn’t forthright.
dweir says
Of course I know that Bill Ayers has written books. The argument was made for “academic freedom.” Scholarly, peer-reviewed articles are the measure that most aptly applies.
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p>Mr. Lynne says maybe that standard is appropriate for the sciences. I counter that educational scholars — the best of them — are scientific and have been for over 100 years.
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p>Teacher preparation programs are already full of the social justice agenda pap that Ayers markets and profits off of via his book sales. It’s not a simple difference of opinion. It’s snake oil. To elevate it to the level of scholarly discourse would be a disservice, and on that grounds BC should have made it’s stand.
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p>Exercising academic freedom — by your standards — would have been more aptly expressed by bringing in someone with a different opinion — Jay Matthews or Zig Englemann. Zig is more a scholar and a scientist than Ayers could ever dream of being and has the successful track record (measure by student success, not his $$$) to prove it.
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stomv says
And I’m no scholar in education, that’s for sure. It just strikes me as less than forthright to include academic journal articles on his academic subject but not books written on his academic subject. In my mind, it’d have been more appropriate to list all of it, and then opine that the books aren’t significant in an ivory tower* sense.
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p>But speakers at universities aren’t required to have massive academic C.V.s. Sometimes universities just bring in people who happen to have something interesting to say, to foster general discourse. That’s legit too methinks (as does B.C., who has certainly had speakers who weren’t renowned academics).
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p> * I don’t mean this negatively — simply that they’re subject to full academic rigor: peer reviewed, based on science and evidence and not cherry picking and rhetoric, etc.
leo says
One need only google “ayers chicago CV” to bring up William Ayers’s 49-page curriculum vitae.
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p>Too much to ask of a “Registered Republican as of Dec. 2006”?
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p>–Leo
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stomv says
that’s not 49 pages of refereed papers and edited books. That includes lots of academic work that isn’t peer-reviewed. He still did it, it’s still on his CV, and I have no idea how much review happens in his field… but that’s a hell of a lot different than a 49 page CV for an electrical engineering professor.
leo says
Some are reviewed; some aren’t. And Ayers’s CV indicates which articles and books are (and aren’t).
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p>Having done some academic work, and having reviewed articles for a couple of academic journals, I wouldn’t overly elevate or fetishize that particular academic convention.
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p>–Leo
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mrstas says
Every college and university should set up a committee composed of wealthy alumni and neighbors to decide what should happen on campus.
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p>Any proposed course, prospective student, potential speaker, professor, employee, food menu item, flower color, and any other item of issue at the university should first be proposed to the committee.
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p>The forms must be signed and triple stamped by three deans and sealed with wax.
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p>The committee will deliberate and render judgment within six months.
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p>Right?
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p>——-
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p>*The preceding post contains sarcasm. Please consume at your own risk. The FDA does not recommend consumption of sarcasm to those missing a sense of humor.
justice4all says
because I wouldn’t consider William Ayers a respected anything. I am old enough to remember the killing of Officer Schroeder. I was ten years old when it happened. I think one has to remember that the murder happened in Boston and feelings still run highly about it. I also think that the lack of remorse regarding the Weather Underground has a lot to do with how people feel about him. Most people are willing to forgive and forget…but this guy has never renounced a very violent past.
stomv says
what is the exact connection between Katherine Ann Power and Bill Ayers?
jconway says
More like BC: 1 Free Speech: 0
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p>I would hardly call Rev. Wright or Bill Ayers, who both spoke at U Chicago, and whose speeches I attended, educational.
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p>Wright was incredibly inflammatory and downright anti-semetic. My liberal Jewish friends who were all Obama supporters felt incredibly offended so these were not rabid right wing pro-Israel types, but he went hard after Jews in the speech, claiming that real Jews were black and European Jews stole their land from the ‘black jews’ of Palestine and other ahistorical non-sense. I am offended we even gave him a degree, but coming out of our divinity school Im not surprised.
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p>Ayers was not nearly as offensive, just somewhat hypocritical in being unapologetic for his terrorist activites and violent ways but still claiming that non-violence is the best solution. His ideas on education were a lot more interesting and he actually said that he feels that right wingers should be more represented on campus and said the student left shouldnt become an echo chamber of its professors but constantly challenge even their authority. That part was interesting. But again not particularly educational just one mans opinion.
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p>I would argue that “academic freedom” is a contradiction in terms. Academia takes away several freedoms. The freedom to present fiction as fact, opinion as reason, someone elses work as your own, its one of the few professions still guided by a noble sense of duty and discipline not to mention honor. Would we really want a physics professor to make up equations? Or a biology professor to deny evolution? The Academy should be committed to an endless search for the truth, and believe me the Ward Churchills and Rev. Wrights of the world do not spout truth. When a history professor is fired because he denies the historical reality of the holocaust or 9/11 I say that is not a mark against academic freedom but a mark against academic dishonesty. Similarly we have a few economists who spout their political views as reality without backing it up with empirics, and we got a few global warming deniers who need to be purged. Academia should be free of partisan politics and only committed to the sacred search for the truth.