• Home
  • News
  • Ex-Radical Now a Law Prof and a Campaign Issue

Law Professors

Ex-Radical Now a Law Prof and a Campaign Issue

Posted Apr 18, 2008 10:14 AM CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss

Bernadine Dohrn, a former member of the Weather Underground, is now a law professor at Northwestern University with an expertise in children’s law. Her husband, former Underground member Bill Ayers, has also joined the mainstream as an advocate of school reform who is an informal adviser to Chicago Mayor Richard Daley.

But that didn’t stop Hillary Clinton from raising their links to Barack Obama, who is their neighbor in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago, the Washington Post reports. During a televised debate, Clinton said Republicans will certainly be raising the issue.

The couple hosted a gathering for Obama when he first ran for the state Senate in 1995 and contributed $200 to his campaign, the Post story says. Ayers and Obama also served together for three years on an anti-poverty board that met four times a year.

Obama defended his ties to the Ayers. “The notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn't make much sense," he said.

Stanford law professor Lawrence Marshall told the Post the couple are now “absolutely upstanding establishment citizens.” He said judges who worked with the couple on a juvenile justice project agreed. "Judges who were lifelong ardent conservatives had no trouble recognizing that the work that Bernadine and Bill are now doing is completely divorced from anything in their background."

Comments

1.

john fears
Apr 18, 2008 10:53 AM CST

Actually,  Ayers has expressly stated in public that he not only did not regret particpating in bombings against the Pentagon and police, he said “we” didn’t do “enough”. This article is not well researched, if not openly biased. As to working with children, apparently Ayers and Dorhn were unconcerned about children in the late 60s, and do not now regret trying to make fatherless the children of Pentagon workers and police.

Flag this comment

2.

Randolph Drake
Apr 18, 2008 11:19 AM CST

Re First comment: I believe what Ayers said was that he did not believe he had done enough to end the Vietnam war. 

Regardless, to denigrate Obama for knowing him seems illogical for a profession that prides itself on logic and I hope that is what Mr. Fears is concluding.

Flag this comment

3.

Phil
Apr 18, 2008 3:23 PM CST

Re Comment 2: Is it illogical to denigrate Jimmy Carter for meeting with Hamas leaders? Of course it is.  Obama should also be judged by the company he keeps.  The people who putative leaders (or Presidents) surround themselves with says something about the person—as a matter of fact, it speaks volumes.

Flag this comment

4.

ThaLawyer Dude
Apr 18, 2008 3:55 PM CST

Here is what Ayres said:

“In the film, Mark Rudd talks about his qualms and his very divided feelings about what he did. You don’t make any equivalent statement, and I wondered why not… How do you feel about what you did? Would you do it again under similar circumstances?

Bill Ayers: I’ve thought about this a lot. Being almost 60, it’s impossible to not have lots and lots of regrets about lots and lots of things, but the question of did we do something that was horrendous, awful?… I don’t think so. I think what we did was to respond to a situation that was unconscionable.

Two thousand people a day were being murdered in Vietnam in a terrorist war, an official terrorist war… This was what was going on in our names. So we tried to resist it, tried to fight it. Built a huge mass movement, built a huge organization, and still the war went on and escalated. And every day we didn’t stop the war, two thousand people would be killed. I don’t think what we did was extreme…. We didn’t cross lines that were completely unacceptable. I don’t think so. We destroyed property in a fairly restrained level, given what we were up against.”

Here is the Website: http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/weatherunderground/interview.html

Flag this comment

5.

True Patriot
Apr 18, 2008 4:20 PM CST

It is unclear from the short article above whether Obama has previously stated—to his colleagues Dohrn and Ayers or to anyone—that he found their past radical conduct to be “detestable.”  It suggests, though that their past was not too despicable for them to raise money for him or for him to accept their contributions.
Obama could defend his relationship with them in their current positions without judging their prior, no doubt sincere, beliefs in how to affect social change.  Instead, Obama’s words show an opportunistic ability to vilify friends and colleagues in order to keep favor with potential so-called patriotic voters.  I can hardly see how he would allow the “detestable” couple to hold a fundraiser in their home when he ran for the U.S. Senate.  He took a similar tack when he described as “hate speech” and “despicable” his pastor’s sharply critical, and no doubt sincere, words about America’s perpetration of an unjust war.  Either the heightened scrutiny of the presidential contest has raised Obama’s moral bar, or he is willing to throw his former supporters or champions to the media wolf pack when it’s expedient to do so.

Flag this comment

6.

Jay
Apr 21, 2008 3:45 PM CST

REGARDLESS, Obama is an idiot for getting involved with this terrorist.

“He tried to kill people when I was 8” is not a rational argument.

Bottom line: Obama is incapable of making rational decisions. That should disqualify him for any job in politics.

By the way, I was in my teens when the 1993 WTC attacks occurred. Does that mean I should have Khaled Shaikh Mohammed help me campaign for my congressional run in a few years?

What a joke.

Flag this comment

7.

J. Cornehls
Apr 21, 2008 5:22 PM CST

I’m old enough to have been around when these events occurred.  It never ceases to amaze me how some citizens can so vehemently denounce someone who had only tangential contact with an anti-war activist decades after the fact, while failing to condemn anyone who ever lent their support to the real murderers who orchestrated the unjustified and immoral wars against the independent peoples of Vietnam and now Iraq. cannot be taken seriously.  Millions of children were left fatherless and motherless by the wanton killing of many millions of the Vietnamese people, all in the name of combating the great ogre labeled Communism.  Anyone who has given any support whatsoever to the current White House occupant and his gang of murderous thugs by voting to help them prosecute an illegal, unjustified and falsely represented war, should not receive voter support for any public office.

Flag this comment

8.

PS
Apr 30, 2008 11:59 AM CST

Re Comment 7:  Hey Pal, the Six to Seven HUNDRED THOUSAND boat people who fled that Communist Paradise would not agree that the Viet Cong were just some boogy men created by the USA.  If I recall, the Viet Cong did not coming riding into Saigon on horseback with bandanas wrapped around their heads, but on Soviet made personal carriers and tanks, wearing helmets and carrrying AK-47s..  I am sure that DIth Pran, the journalist portrayed in the “Killing Fields” (who just died last month) would agree with you that the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia were just real nice communists who got a bad rap in the Western press. Being “old enough”  apparently does not necessarily translate into knowing the facts, as you have demonstrated.

Flag this comment

Add a Comment

We welcome your comments, but please adhere to our comment policy.

Commenting has expired on this post.