Terrorists As Professors

Here's a point that hadn't occurred to me--we've been writing about William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn for years, [1] before their association with Obama made them the subject of the national conversation, but I hadn't thought of what it would be like to study with a terrorist as professor. Sarcasm and the Socratic method make professors objectionable enough [2], but terrorism? You'd be afraid to raise your hand in class.

Evan Coyne Maloney, whose documentary Indoctrinate U exposes political indoctrination on the college campus, shot a scene about the subject. It wound up on the cutting room floor, but he's posted it on his website. [3]

In this deleted scene, we told the story of how 1960s campus radicals morphed into today's academics. Three of those radicals were Ayers, his now-wife Bernardine Dohrn, and Mark Rudd. Together, they led the Weather Underground, a group committed to the violent overthrow the U.S. Government.

To bring about their hoped-for communist utopia, the Weathermen bombed dozens of targets around the country including the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon and military recruiting stations. In executing their various attacks, the Weathermen killed a few of their own and also murdered a security guard while robbing an armored car. They targeted the families of judges [4], celebrated the Manson murders, and through legal technicalities, most of them avoided jail.

Decades later, they're still unapologetic. In an interview published on September 11th, 2001, Ayers told The New York Times [5], "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough."

What does all of this have to do with higher education? Watch the video to find out.