Terrorists As Teachers?
Former domestic terrorist Bill Ayers - whose association with Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama has placed him under a national microscope - has accepted six speaking engagements at the University of South Carolina over the last 13 years, receiving stipends and travel reimbursements from South Carolina taxpayers for his lectures at the University’s School of Education.
Amazingly, at least two of those events included lectures to South Carolina teachers and public school children.
At one lecture in 2006, Ayers participated in a University-sponsored program called “Carolina Shout - A Celebration of Teachers” where he joined South Carolina’s Education Oversight Committee Director JoAnne Anderson and Claudia Smith-Brinson of The State newspaper in addressing a group of South Carolina public school children.
Ayers addressed another group of South Carolina public school children at a similarly-themed University-sponsored event in 2004.
We attempted to obtain this information from University spokesman Russ McKinney, but his office failed to return our calls after promising to get back in touch with us regarding the information we requested.
Ayers has become a central figure in GOP nominee John McCain’s last-ditch effort to change the conversation in the 2008 presidential race, as his vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin publicly accused Obama of “paling around with terrorists” over the weekend.
Those accusations prompted Obama’s campaign to reveal Ayers’ connection to the University of South Carolina, noting that its board is chaired by Republican Gov. Mark Sanford.
“By Governor Palin’s standards, that means Governor Sanford shares Ayers’ views,” Obama’s campaign said in an e-mail released Tuesday.
“If her logic is to stand, it could be said that Gov. Sanford has been palling around with William Ayers,” an Obama spokesman later told the Associated Press.
Sanford, of course, is the ex-officio Chairman of the USC board - meaning he is a non-voting member and serves in an exclusively ceremonial capacity. The current USC board chairman is Herbert C. Adams.
Frankly, we could care less about all this presidential bickering between two candidates who are - in our view - equal opportunity panderers and sellouts.
What we want to know is why the University of South Carolina let a former terrorist anywhere near our school children … to say nothing of paying him to speak to them.
Comments
By Sally Calder on October 7th, 2008 at 10:35 pm
I agree completely with you about Ayers. My husband was ranting about this earlier this evening. His question was how many parents scrimp and save to send their children to a university where they are going to be taught by a professor who once advocated young people killing their parents and bombing the federal government. My guess would be precisely none. I hope USC gets bombarded by complaints from alumni, as well as taxpayers.
By Kirsten Barr on October 8th, 2008 at 1:14 am
the better question is whether you will reconsider comments about Governor Sanford being an inappropriate/unqualified running mate for McCain because of his performance when speaking to the national media. seems pretty eloquent in retrospect, eh?
By Toyota Kawaski on October 8th, 2008 at 8:18 am
I park next to 2 board members and I will be axn about this at the LSU game.Thanks for this story.
By Wow... on October 8th, 2008 at 8:34 am
Can I tell you - for what little it’s worth - that I actually attended several of these events at USC and was astonished years later to learn of Ayers’ past with the Weather Underground. The man is very well respected in his field and I found his lectures(which had absolutely nothing to do with the current controversy)pretty interesting at the time.
None of this excuses his past - or the invitation in hindsight, but I can tell you firsthand that it would be a total mis-characterization to suggest that the content of these events was out of line. Totally focused on education policy.
By mijeel on October 8th, 2008 at 10:59 am
One has to wonder the value of Mr. Ayers’ education policies given his worldview and societal philosophies. Certainly Mr. Ayers has a right to free speech and an opinion. That doesn’t mean his speech or opinions are credible and deserving of any respect – including respect in the form of remuneration from a SC state institution of higher learning.
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