Who Hired Bill Ayers and Why?

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 21^st 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.