A misguided defense of Bill Ayers

by Fran Eaton, first posted at www.IllinoisReview.com

Should public high schools provide taxpayer-funded venues for cultural revolutionaries to preach American-despising philosophy?  “Yes,” a Chicago Tribune op-ed written by Shawn Healy,  a resident scholar at the McCormick Freedom Museum, says today.  Healy says it was a mistake for Chicago area Naperville High School to back out of inviting Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers from speaking to its students last month:

“Missing a “teachable moment,” the superintendent allowed dissenting voices in the community to override the supportive messages he received, and simultaneously censored the marketplace of ideas. While school administrators may have saved face with angry parents, students were taught that speech is free so long as a majority supports its content.”

You need to read the rest HERE to get the gist of Healy’s thoughtful, but misguided, comments.

First, those “dissenting voices” were parents of the kids in that classroom.  They were voices of taxpayers who would pay for the facilities that would have hosted that class.  They were the voices of a public concerned about placing a suspected domestic terrorist on an ideological pedestal.

Second, there’s a huge difference between a publicly funded high school and a privately funded university. It was freedom of speech in action that pushed school authorities to retract the misguided invitation.  

Lastly, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn are angry counter-cultural snake oil salesmen who are now persons of interest in a newly re-opened domestic terrorist plot investigation involving the death of a San Francisco police officer.  That officer was killed in 1970 when he was busy in his precinct’s office and a homemade bomb exploded in the station’s window sill.

At least one FBI informant from within the Ayers/Dohrn organization testifies as to Ayers commenting that in a revolution the innocent must sometimes suffer, too.  To this day, no one has paid for that officer’s death.  The Weathermen bombed our U.S. Capitol.  Three of its own members — including Ayers’ own girlfriend at the time — were killed while making similar homemade bombs planned for further destruction.

As a U.S. citizen, there is no question Bill Ayers has a right to speak, as he does as professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago. At the same time, ”dissenting voices” have a right to keep him from spouting his angry, anti-American rhetoric on high school-aged students attending class per the state’s compulsory attendance law. 

While all Americans fight for free speech, a taxpayer-funded bully pulpit should be given to those who aren’t suspected of being involved in a plot to kill innocent Americans. There should be a line somewhere on who can dominate a high school discussion — at the very least, we should draw the line at suspected domestic terrorism. 

Academic free speech is important, no question. But so is the freedom for a policeman to carry about his job without fear of radical SDS members or in our day, ruthless Al-Qaeda terrorists.  We would no more allow our public schools to be used to stir Al-Qaeda allegiance than we should Weathermen sympathy.

I hope Mr. Healy reconsiders his position on this serious issue. 

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