Wednesday, October 22, 2008
3000 professors "support" William Ayers
Three thousand professors have signed a statement of support for William Ayers. Presumably the purpose of this is to mainstream Ayers and show solidarity with the version of Barack Obama who was Ayers' friend, as opposed to the more recent Obama who just happened to live in the same neighborhood.
Then there are those who hope to validate their own anti-war years:
Keach voiced a similar opinion regarding Ayers's involvement with the Weather Underground, saying he "disagree(s) with Ayers's tactics," but he signed the statement "without any hesitation." Keach also protested the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s, and said he wanted to show "solidarity" with Ayers.
My reaction: Only 3000 professors have signed this petition? There are, after all, 1.7 million tertiary education instructors (professors and instructors universities, colleges, and junior colleges), a majority of whom hold opinions well to the left of the center of even the Democratic Party.
MORE: The list is here. The only Princeton name is one Jan Logan, the Assistant Director, University Center for Human Values. Hilariously,
38 Comments:
By 
Cassandra, at
Wed Oct 22, 11:34:00 PM:
Oh goody. Then they'll be ready to attend his latest book signing.
Sometimes, the comedy just writes itself.
By JPMcT, at
Thu Oct 23, 12:07:00 AM:
"Guilty as Hell...Free as a bird...what a great country"
A quote from Mr. Ayers following his case dismissal on a technicality.
We are on the verge of witnessing a populace incompetent to vote choose a man incompetent to lead.
Good Lord...is there any refuge for the rest of us???
By 
, at
Thu Oct 23, 12:41:00 AM:
Is there any refuge for the rest of us?
Eventually, humans will leave Earth or we will disappear. I believe that it won't be governments who lead us to the stars. It will instead be people wanting leave governments behind and pushes out toward the Final Frontier.
By , at
Thu Oct 23, 12:45:00 AM:
3000 Professors support a man who was involved in the killing of four people, who bombed the Capital, the Pentagon and a police station. My son is finishing off his university studies as he works as a full time police officer. How many of his professors support killing cops in name of political change?
By torabora, at
Thu Oct 23, 12:57:00 AM:
I wonder if Ayers (and wife), even if for only a fleeting moment, ever wonder if there is a bomb ticking on THEIR front porch.
Bastards...and that includes ALL those that signed the crapetition.
By Georg Felis, at
Thu Oct 23, 01:04:00 AM:
Thank you professors for coming out and putting your names out there. We now know which "teachers" to avoid when attempting to get a useful education.
By , at
Thu Oct 23, 01:22:00 AM:
I did a quick search for my Alma Mater on the petition--so far, nobody from my school seems to be an Ayersbot. *whew*
Also, after you sign the online petition, the petition tells you that submissions will be reviewed before being posted. That's too bad--no chance to sign up as Professor Ima M. Oron from Wassamatta U.
Spoilsports...
By Georg Felis, at
Thu Oct 23, 01:22:00 AM:
Whoops, missed two things on first read.
1. The quote is "More than 3,200 supporters--most of them educators", not 3,000 professors. My bad.
2. The actual list is here. I did not see Mickey Mouse or Asdfasdf in there, but I wonder what the result would be if it were cross-referenced against the Obama donation records. Hm....
By smitty1e, at
Thu Oct 23, 05:39:00 AM:
It would be unfair to hold Senator Obama accountable for the sins of his mentor, but, then, fa(ir|re) is what you pay to ride a bus...
By , at
Thu Oct 23, 06:05:00 AM:
And how many 'professors' signed the petition denouncing the guys at Duke for a crime they didn't commit, and hopped on that bandwagon? just because you have a PhD doesn't make you intelligent.
And I note that many of the signers have no affiliation noted as to university, or are lawyers, concerned parents, etc.
How many of those who won't say what they're affiliated with are real people, ala ACORN?
By , at
Thu Oct 23, 08:30:00 AM:
I Noticed one of my daughters profs was on the list and wrote a nasty email . Maybe someone can start a petition to have terrorist sympahizing profs fired.
By , at
Thu Oct 23, 09:31:00 AM:
I also checked for profs from my school. None there (yet); if there had been (or if one shows up later), the petition will be printed and sent in instead of the customary check when the annual fund drive beg-letter arrives.
The only way to get their attention is through the wallet.
By , at
Thu Oct 23, 10:21:00 AM:
ATTENTION ATTENTION 3000 STUPID BRAINLESS IGORAMUSES SIGN LETTER SUPPORTING A FELLOW STUPID BRAINLESS IGNORAMUS NO SURPRISE N SURPRISE THEIR ALL STUPID SQUAWK SQUAWK
By , at
Thu Oct 23, 10:33:00 AM:
From a link on Instapundit:
http://chronicle.com/free/v54/i34/34b01701.htm , the title is America's Most Overrated Product: the Bachelor's Degree.
I don't think it takes a college education to realize that the people who back Ayers come from the same ilk that have made a bachelor's degree a pointless endeavor because, as the column points out, the students didn't/won't learn anything useful in college.
It is really, as I said when I got my bachelor's 25 years ago, just mental masturbation for a four year degree. I worked at the university to pay my way through so I encountered faculty, staff and students. By far the most deranged people on campus were the faculty.
By , at
Thu Oct 23, 10:47:00 AM:
...right, the Republican party isn't anti-education and anti-knowledge -- it's just anti-higher-education! After all, you can't learn anything that *really* matters in school from professors who are experts in their field. Only in church and as mayor of Wasilla can you learn these deep, important truths that will enable our nation to compete with young men and women from China, India, and Europe in the global economy!
Brooks is right, you guys are hopeless. I take comfort only in knowing that the cities will continue to siphon anyone with talent and ambition out of the federal-subsidy-sucking "heartland," so that hopefully one day its stifling traditions, and restrictive, xenophobic, and ignorant customs will be a thing of the past.
By , at
Thu Oct 23, 11:00:00 AM:
Ah, the Ghost of Chambers speaketh ... I don't see folks condemning all of academia (although I do agree that a bachelor's is more like advanced high school for some disciplines), just the tiny percentage that backs this clown Ayers. Like the faculty at Duke, with their PhD's in african-american studies, and publications from the Duke publishing company they control, they are clowns hiding behind the illusion of 'advanced knowledge', force feeding their ideas on the students.
They are NOT the type of Professor that TH described his father to be ... the kind who received the praises from students who spent a year under him and never knew his politics.
By Dawnfire82, at
Thu Oct 23, 11:08:00 AM:
Absurd premise: check.
Sarcastic comments: check.
Hope for 'progressive' result: check.
Belittling an entire swathe of the country because you don't think like them: check.
Palin smear: check.
Well, you didn't mention Bush or fascim, but that's still 4 out of 6. Congrats, you're a leftist troll!
*applause*
Maybe next time you visit you might deign to contribute something more worthwhile, and perhaps 'educate' us.
Just so you know, the hosts of this blog and most (if not all) of the regular contributors are college educated, several with post-graduate educations.
By Dawnfire82, at
Thu Oct 23, 11:09:00 AM:
5 out of 7. Added one, and forgot to edit.
I guess I need more edumacation.
By , at
Thu Oct 23, 11:29:00 AM:
Three thousand might not seem like a big number, but think of it this way: That's 3,000 professors who are palling around with terrorists. That's 3,000 professors who are teaching your children that it's okay to pal around with terrorists. And let's be honest: If you're palling around with terrorists, then you stand a good chance of being a terrorist yourself. Which means that we've got 3,000 terrorist professors teaching at top universities.
And that doesn't even take into account all the professors who are sympathetic to the petition writers but didn't sign it, for whatever reason -- you know, maybe they were home sick that day, or were traveling, or hadn't heard about the petition.
I think we need to push for an investigation of America's universities to root out all the anti-American professors who signed this petition, as well as all the professors who might have signed it if they had seen it.
By , at
Thu Oct 23, 11:47:00 AM:
I find it amusing to juxtapose DF82's post and Kathy's post after it. No response from me could have been more effective!
I know TH went to Princeton, it's pretty hard to miss, if you read this blog. I submit, however, that "Only 3000 professors have signed this petition..." is hardly more temperate a comment than what I wrote. Ayers was a criminal asshole back when Obama was 8 and everyone with good sense knows that. But as long as you can find the idiots, it's an indictment of higher ed! It's red meat for your side, so you love it. Too bad it's a facile and ultimately stupid way to make a point.
By Catchy Pseudonym, at
Thu Oct 23, 11:54:00 AM:
"We are on the verge of witnessing a populace incompetent to vote choose a man incompetent to lead.
Good Lord...is there any refuge for the rest of us???"
Wow that's exactly what I said 4 and 8 years ago.
By , at
Thu Oct 23, 12:10:00 PM:
Do these signers understand that this is an indictment of the Education Establishment - not any kind of Exoneration of Ayers? Good grief! With Ward Churchill, Columbia's Madonna Constantine, ConnCollege's Catherine McNicol Stock, UNCLaw's Eric Muller, Metropolitan State College instructor Andrew Hallam on your team, do you honestly think that "professor" is a title of respect anymore?! To all those professors who do NOT indoctrinate your students against AllThingsAmerican, I mean no insult - but you might want to sign your own petition decrying the unrepentant terrorists in your midst (Add Bernie Dohrn, Mike Klonsky, Rashid Khalidi, Khalid al mansour, and many more to that list of disgraced Americans embraced by this DisHonorable and Disrespected Education Establishment.)
By Dawnfire82, at
Thu Oct 23, 02:10:00 PM:
Why don't you click on "Kathy's" name and see where it takes you.
http://libertystreet.wordpress.com/
You'll find such typical conservative gems as: "I guess I don’t live in “real America.” I early voted for Obama, all, and I mean all, of the adults at our “Hot Dawg & Chili” cook-out were fervent Obama Supporters and it looks as if John Boehner’s bastion of red, Miami County, Ohio, may go for Obama."
"Jonathan Cohn at The New Republic has a couple of words in response to Michelle Malkin’s latest frothings over reporters and Obama supporters digging for details about Joe Werzelbacher’s personal and professional life..."
"Dahlia Lithwick at Slate has a lengthy, comprehensive piece there now about right-wing hysteria over fraudulent ACORN voter registrations. Bottom line: Registration fraud and voter fraud are two different things — and the latter just doesn’t happen:"
And the crowning gem: "In addition to liberal politics, my co-blogger Chief and I share a love for animals. I have 3 cats and a dog. I also have an 18-year-old daughter who is a first-year at Barnard College."
Jesus Kathy, if you're going to go around trying to sabotage the credibility of right of center websites, don't be such a moron about it. How do you people expect to 'bring down the system' if you can't even be bothered to hide your identity when blatantly misrepresenting another party's positions? And with pictures? And family information?
And anonymous: You've been played for a fool by a comrade because you have such a low opinion about your political opponents.
I guess this is why KGB disinformation campaigns were often such successes.
By , at
Thu Oct 23, 02:19:00 PM:
Describing the signers as "professors" seems not to be accurate. Of the three Cornell signers, one appears to be a graduate student and two seem to be law school students. Admittedly, if the Cornell faculty were polled probably more than half would want to sign this.
By , at
Thu Oct 23, 03:12:00 PM:
Wow, I guess my sarcasm detector was broken when I read Kathy's comment. So, strike that first part, but I stand by the rest of my post.
By , at
Thu Oct 23, 04:51:00 PM:
Some of these signatures are spoofs. A particularly cutting one is "3083 Diana Oughton Bryn Mawr".
By Jim in Virginia, at
Thu Oct 23, 05:56:00 PM:
There are a few suspect names there. "Community Educator", "Wing Ding Weisenheimer" and "Dr Joques MeHoff."
Ward Churchill from the Martin Luther King Collegium (what the heck?) signed too.
By Dawnfire82, at
Thu Oct 23, 06:50:00 PM:
That wasn't sarcasm. That was deliberate disinformation. RedState, MichelleMalkin, AceOfSpacesHQ, and HotAir have been complaining about this kind of sneaky lefty bullshit deceit for months. I guess Tigerhawk has finally been graced with targeting reticles as well.
Bet you thought they were just being conspiratorial and paranoid when they talked about deliberate leftist sabotage, didn't you?
"Ayers was a criminal asshole back when Obama was 8 and everyone with good sense knows that. But as long as you can find the idiots, it's an indictment of higher ed! It's red meat for your side, so you love it. Too bad it's a facile and ultimately stupid way to make a point."
Academia swings left. Very left. This isn't a secret.
And that murdering communists like Ayers can find a home among such people and receive petitions of support from them *is* and indictment of that institution, isn't it? This is similar to the line of reasoning that your people used to smear the military when Abu Ghraib occurred.
And AG was a single isolated incident with the perpetrators now in prison, whereas Ayers and his likeminded murdering communistic assholes enter academia and get book signing deals and are hosted at parties by petty intelligentsia and socialists. (but I repeat myself)
Many if not most academics live in campus bubbles, removed from 'real' people and 'real' problems. It's easy for them to rationalize things like, oh, systematic, mass murder, so long as they couch it in sociological or political terms. I suspect that if many of them stopped to imagine themselves taking time out of their lives to design and construct bombs (getting the powder, applying the fuses, putting in the nails, setting up a radio detonator) and using them, or shooting people while stealing money to fund such bombs, they would become ill. But so long as they don't think too hard about what 'revolution,' and 'social change,' and 'violent activism' really mean then it's not so bad.
And neither is Bill Ayers.
But I'm just a dumb Texan. I'm not capable of good judgment, because I don't understand nuance. And I never will, I suppose, unless I either join the ranks of academics myself or just assign they and their cohorts as my enlightened moral compass.
By , at
Thu Oct 23, 10:03:00 PM:
A few years ago when I was jumping through hoops to become a "highly qualified" teacher in NYS, I had to take a number of college courses in teaching. One of my professors at SUNY New Paltz taught from Zero Tolerance by Ayers and Dohrn. I was the only student who protested learning about the struggle for non-violence in impoverished schools from a book by spoiled terrorists. I was one of two students who even knew who Ayers and Dohrn and the Weathermen were, as a matter of fact. Of course, my former professor's name is on the support for Ayers list, along with a bunch of her colleagues. Depressing.
Is anybody getting up a list of teachers who think Ayers is a loathsome scumbag?
By Gary Rosen, at
Fri Oct 24, 03:56:00 AM:
"Ah, the Ghost of Chambers speaketh"
Good catch, John. Is that you, Chrissy, hiding behind "Anonymous"?
By , at
Fri Oct 24, 03:18:00 PM:
DF82: yeah, and the good ol' boys on your side harbor former murderous racists, abortion-clinic-bombers, and anti-science creationist preachers. So what? It no more says anything about the right than the old-school commies do about the left.
People with good sense think there is something rotten in the military because torture was official policy, set from the top. I'm sorry if being unequivocally anti-torture is too "nuanced" for you.
Anyway, your snark toward the bad apples in academia is just as bad as my knee-jerk contempt for small-town life. I agree the humanities types are annoying: why don't you try spending some more time with scientists? They are generally much more reasonable, even if their premises are different than yours.
By , at
Fri Oct 24, 05:43:00 PM:
being unequivocally anti-torture is too "nuanced" for you.
Then McCain is your man!
By , at
Fri Oct 24, 05:59:00 PM:
They also support Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Castro, and Joe Stalin!
Ted
By , at
Sat Oct 25, 01:44:00 AM:
CC/Anonympous
DF82: yeah, and the good ol' boys on your side harbor former murderous racists, abortion-clinic-bombers, and anti-science creationist preachers. So what? It no more says anything about the right than the old-school commies do about the left.
Former murderous racists: are you perhaps referring to Democratic Senator Robert Byrd, who was once a KKK member, and also filibustered for 14 hours against the Civil Rights Bill in 1964?
Obama kicked off his political career at the house of Bill Ayers, a terrorist and a commie. That was not the only connection. In Prairie Fire, Ayers and his other co-authors talk about creating a “dictatorship of the proletariat.” Etc. Etc. McCain’ s distance from such wackos is considerably greater.
I agree the humanities types are annoying: why don't you try spending some more time with scientists? They are generally much more reasonable, even if their premises are differentthan yours.
When you talk about premises, you are making an assumption about someone you do not know. You might be surprised at the amount of math science, and engineering knowledge on the other side of the political fence from you. DIFFERENT THAN: when you write like that, you come across as a grammar-challenged yahoo whose grasp of the English language is no better than that of a dropout from Podunk Valley Junior High. Or P.S. #765.
By , at
Sat Oct 25, 03:59:00 PM:
BT: I'm a physicist at Penn, and I don't know any scientists or engineers voting for Palin. Why not? In part I'm sure because of gems like this latest one from Palin. It shows the priorities of the Republican party quite clearly: they don't care enough to be scientifically informed. And their contempt for educated people is clear.
I'm sorry the nonstandard, though common enough, colloquialism I used provoked you to invective. Perhaps you should try to deal with your anger issues in another way?
By , at
Sat Oct 25, 08:19:00 PM:
Anonymous physicist:
Engineers for McCain: my sister, myself, and other engineers I work with. Inside your academic cocoon, apparently things are different. I repeat my point about premises: it is not wise to make assumptions about the premises of those whom you do not know.
It shows the priorities of the Republican party quite clearly: they don't care enough to be scientifically informed.
If the Democratic candidate for President were not an ignorant, pretentious fool on similar matters, who refuses to admit his mistake, you might have convinced me.
And their (Republicans) contempt for educated people is clear.
I am quite well educated, and do not detect that contempt towards me. What I DO detect is a contempt for the politically correct atmosphere of the contemporary university, where the assumption is made that “all the right people” vote Democrat, and those who do not are racist, ignorant yahoos. Scorn is likewise directed towards those academics who are of the opinion that Ayers and Dorhn are respectable, in spite of Dohrn’s and Ayer’s unrepentant attitudes towards their past : such as the petition.
I'm sorry the nonstandard, though common enough, colloquialism I used provoked you to invective. Perhaps you should try to deal with your anger issues in another way?
If you express scorn towards the yahoos, such as “knee-jerk contempt for small-town life,” best you not write like them. Know what I mean?
By , at
Sun Oct 26, 06:48:00 PM:
Anonymous @ 03:59:00 PM:
"I'm a physicist at Penn, and I don't know any scientists or engineers voting for Palin."
Now you do.
--Princeton Physicist voting for McCain-Palin
By Dawnfire82, at
Sun Oct 26, 08:31:00 PM:
"yeah, and the good ol' boys on your side harbor former murderous racists, abortion-clinic-bombers, and anti-science creationist preachers. So what? It no more says anything about the right than the old-school commies do about the left."
Firstly, it's funny how you listed 'creationist preachers' there alongside bombers and murderers. More nuance? Or just no moral compass?
Secondly, why don't you name a few 'murdering racists' and 'abortion clinic bombers' who are being honored, toasted, and publicly defended by Republicans like Ayers is being defended by Democrats. I'm sure the authorities would like to know.
"People with good sense think there is something rotten in the military because torture was official policy, set from the top. I'm sorry if being unequivocally anti-torture is too "nuanced" for you."
Then perhaps you could explain why the perpetrators of acts that would presumably fall well within the limits of such a policy are now rotting in prison?
Hmm?
That is complete bullshit. Joking about, or even saying the word 'torture' can get you booted out of the Army interrogator's course. And since AG, the MP's are even worse. Not anybody with good sense would know that, of course. Those people know better than to sign up for an evil imperialist, serial torturing institution like the US Army.
Or perhaps I should be grateful and you have so graciously demonstrated the 'ivory towers' theory before my very reading eyes.
