The IL Gov's Race: I don't like Kennedy.

To be honest, I just don't like this guy. 

Needless to say, dumping Rauner is our main goal in next year's race. But until then, I'm trying to sort out the gaggle of Democrats running in the primary. The way things look now, any of them --or Dave the cable guy -- could beat the billionaire incumbent, even in this, the most expensive gov's race in history.

Chris Kennedy is definitely not my favorite among the Dems running for governor. Yes, I know the Kennedy name still puts lots of liberals in nostalgia mode and the name alone may be enough to beat Rauner.

But to be honest, I just don't like the guy. It might have something to do with the way he tried to use his power as head of the U of I Board of Trustees and family wealth (president of the Merchandise Mart) to tarnish the career of my friend and former UIC colleague, Distinguished Prof. of Education, Bill Ayers over something "uncivil" Bill supposedly wrote 40 years earlier about Kennedy's father.

Then there was matter of Kennedy denying a UI teaching job to Prof. Steven Salaita over his tweeting critically about Israel. It was a move that ended up costing the scandal-ridden, cash-strapped university more than $2M in settlement and legal costs and the university president her job.

That kind of pettieness and propensity for taking revenge on critical writers, educators or journalists, belies the progressive line Kennedy is pushing now. Reminds me too much of Trump and Rauner. 

So I couldn't help chuckle while reading this. 

Capitol Fax's Rich Miller:

"Chris Kennedy spoke at the Mom+Baby governors candidate meet and greet yesterday. I didn't see anything on his Twitter page about it, but I'm told about 30 moms and 10 kids had to wait at least half an hour for him to arrive. And it went downhill from there."

And this...

 He was a hot mess. Shirt barely tucked in. He had on biking shoes. He spoke about Trump the entire time. Crazy! 

It was embarrassing. He misquoted stats that our members corrected him on. He got called out on lack of supporting single payer and marijuana legalization. He also starting talking education inequity and misspoke on the cps funding. It was nuts. Story here

Finally, Kennedy won't show his hand on hot-button school reform issues like charters and vouchers. Why not? Makes me suspicious.

Kennedy is welcome to come on Hitting Left and try and prove me wrong. We've already had candidate Ald. Ameya Pawar on and State Sen. Dan Biss will be our in-studio guest on August 4th. Others may soon follow.

It would be nice if there was at least one woman running.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison

This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal. -- The Nation

Rick Ayers

Threats and bluster might work when you are building a casino but they don’t really work on the world stage. -- Huffington Post

Betsy DeVos

"Critics want to make my life a living hell." -- Washington Post

DeVos flees D.C. school protest

“I said I’d like to visit a public school with her, and then I’d like her to visit a choice school with me,” DeVos told Axios Thursday, recounting a recent phone call with Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). -- The Hill

Former WaPo Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein
 “Trump's attacks on the American press as 'enemies of the American people' are more treacherous than Richard Nixon's attacks on the press...We are into terrible authoritarian tendencies." -- CNN

Teacher/Author Tim Mullen

The rhetoric about “fixing” failing schools is only political posturing until the real discussion about what is happening in the communities and homes of those students is addressed. -- AJC, Get Schooled

This is what Sec. DeVos said about our teachers after her visit. Needless to say, we're about to take her to school... @dcpublicschools pic.twitter.com/Wcx1YyqDHL

— Jefferson Academy (@JATrojans) February 18, 2017

TUNE IN THIS MORNING

Our in-studio guest, Bill Ayers. 

The Klonsky brothers are back on the air this morning at 11 (CST), live and streaming on Lumpen Radio, WLPN 105.5 FM from Bridgeport (the Daley's old hood) on the south side of Chicago.

We’re trying to stay profanity-free, according to FCC regs this morning, so I’ll try and refrain from using the word “PUZDER” while we talk education, politics, education, and social justice, and whatever else is whirling around the Trumpisphere.

You can tweet your comments or questions using hashtag #HittingLeft17 and we'll try and read them on the air.

Our in-studio guest this morning is distinguished scholar, prolific author, and long time radical political activist, Dr. William Ayers. 

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Malcolm Jenkins

Eagles' safety Malcolm Jenkins on tonight's team protest

 “Really it’s just to continue to push forward the conversation about social injustice, and that’s a range of things from police brutality to wages and job opportunities, education. There’s just a lot of things systematically that have been set up in this country since its inception that put minorities, especially African Americans, at a disadvantage when you talk about quality of life and actually growing in this country.” -- Washington Post

Pres. Obama

"My name may not be on the ballot, but our progress is on the ballot. Tolerance is on the ballot. Democracy is on the ballot. Justice is on the ballot. Good schools are on the ballot. Ending mass incarceration, that’s on the ballot right now.” -- Speech to Congressional Black Caucus

Leonard Peltier

Leonard Peltier

I call on all my supporters and allies to join the struggle at Standing Rock in the spirit of peaceful spiritual resistance and to work together to protect Unci Maka, Grandmother Earth. -- CounterPunch

Charles Blow

 Trump has claimed that Bill Ayers wrote the President’s acclaimed, best-selling memoir because surely this black man couldn’t have the talent to write the book. -- New York Times

Bernie Sanders

“So I would just simply say to the Millennials – to anybody else – look at the issues. Don’t get hung up on Trump’s kids, or whatever the story, the birther issue – stay focused on the issues of relevance to your life. I think Clinton is far and away the superior candidate.” -- Dead State

Kate Aronoff, ITT writing fellow

Between Trumka’s DAPL endorsement and the Fraternal Order of Police’s endorsement of Donald Trump for president, this week has shown a stark divide between parts of American labor and today’s social movements. -- In These Times

Civility? Do the Math

Do the math...
Two years ago, Chicago Public School budgeted for 454 librarians.
Last year: 313 librarians.
This year? 254. -- WBEZ

They're not librarians...Comcast is doing all right, here and most everywhere. Their proposed $45 billion takeover of Time Warner Cable Inc. has Rahm Emanuel and 70 other city mayors applauding like trained seals.

“We’re proud to have the support of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel,” writes David L. Cohen,  Comcast Comcast’s executive vice president and chief merger lobbyist. 

Comcast want them. Rahm helps. 

IBT reports that Rahm wrote a letter to the FCC on Aug. 22 saying he believes the merger would be good for the Windy City, maintaining and enhancing Comcast’s “generous presence” in the area. And by GENEROUS, Rahm means...

• Big campaign contributions from Comcast and its employees, including from Cohen himself, who contributed $5,000 to Rahm’s mayoral campaign. 
• Cohen also contributed $10,000 to the Chicago Committee, which the Chicago Tribune has described as Emanuel’s “other political fund." 
• In all, records from the Illinois State Board of Elections show Emanuel’s mayoral campaign and his other municipal political organizations have received $50,000 from Comcast employees since he began running for mayor in 2010.
• Comcast was also one of the top donors to Emanuel’s congressional campaigns, giving $46,000 to Emanuel between 2003 and 2008, according to records from Open Secrets. 
• Additionally, employees of Comcast made more than $25,000 worth of contributions to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee when Emanuel chaired that organization, according to data from PoliticalMoneyLine.com.

Civility... Am I being uncivil by mentioning these things? Some of the most uncivil people from the ranks of corporate reform and brass-knuckles philanthropy are now lecturing overly-polite progressives and resistors on the need to be more "civil". This, even as they spend millions to promote dirty personal attack ads and otherwise defame their political opponents. By civil, they mostly mean "pipe down".

Chairman, U of I Board of Trustees

How about Chris Kennedy? Civil or uncivil?

Until 2012 well-mannered billionaire's son Chris Kennedy (yes, those Kennedys) was president of Kennedy family business Merchandise Mart Properties. He's no educator, but he now heads the U of I Board of Trustees and gets to decide who's "civil" enough to teach American Indian Studies there.

The Tribune reports: 

In defending its decision to rescind a job offer to Steven Salaita, a professor who posted controversial tweets about Israel, University of Illinois trustees said they would not tolerate demeaning speech. The university's position — particularly its use of the word "civility" — mirrors language used by U. of I. Board Chairman Christopher Kennedy when the board denied emeritus status in 2010 to retired faculty member Bill Ayers, the controversial University of Illinois at Chicago professor and Vietnam War-era radical.

Get it? War-mongering -- civil. Opposing war or Gaza bombing -- uncivil. The un-hiring of Palestinian-American Prof. Steven Salaita -- civil. Protests by faculty, academic and civil rights organizations like The Modern Language Association, Center for Constitutional Rights, the Illinois chapter of the American Association of University Professors, and the national AAUP -- uncivil. A major public university whose mascot remains a mocking, racist "Chief Illiniwek"--to this day--civil?!

U of I mascot, civil or uncivil?

The university rescinded Salaita's job offer in early August after he  tweeted critically about the Israeli assault on Gaza. He was accused of using "inflammatory language."

"We need to learn how to live with each other, to argue, to discuss, to arrive at truths and to move on — and that requires a lot more effort than having a shouting match or name calling," Kennedy said, pointing to Salaita's "manner in which he expresses himself, not the expression itself."

Business Math Translation...

Kennedy goes on: "We have to be sensitive to the community that we were founded to serve. ... At the University of Illinois, we take enormous tax subsidies from people in our state. We can't be so cavalier to think that any behavior is acceptable."

He forgot to mention donations from wealthy pro-Israel donors.

The Nation reports:

Under the spurious claim of protecting “civility,” the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has caved in to the McCarthyite bullying of the Israel lobby.

In the face of mass protests, the university is now offering Salaita a financial settlement to avoid a CIVIL suit. An admission of wrong-doing? Of course.

QUOTABLE 

"Political civility is not about being polite to each other. It's about reclaiming the power of 'We the People' to come together, debate the common good and call American democracy back to its highest values amid our differences."  -- Parker Palmer, author and educational philosopher. 

Let Teachers Teach!...Moses, Ayers, Ravitch, Cunningham...

At yesterday's Let Us Teach rally in Pilsen protesting CPS threats to punish teachers who support parents and boycott useless standardized testing (h/t Michael Harrington)

Moses... Good news from DePaul College of Ed Dean Paul Zionts. Civil Rights leader and Algebra Project founder Bob Moses will be this year's commencement speaker.

THANKS to Bill Ayers for being an inspiring guest speaker in last night's final class of the quarter. Congratulations are also in order for Bill who has been voted to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award at the upcoming AERA convention in Philly on April 4 at 6 pm. Bill says he's worried that such awards mean you're at the end of the line. But I think his best is yet to come.

Last week's NPE Conference in Austin ended with Diane Ravitch's call for congressional hearings on the misuse and abuse of standardized tests used for high-stakes purposes. The Washington Post's Valerie Strauss reports that at a conference in Austin this past weekend, just before the start of SXSWedu, Diane picked up surprising support for her call from Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s former communications director, Peter Cunningham, as well as from AFT Pres. Randi Weingarten.

Diane Ravitch calls for congressional investigation at SXSW.

Speaking of Ravitch... Diane posts at Huffington that the smear campaign against N.Y. Mayor Bill de Blasio is continuing full blast. She does a fact check to counter the B.S. coming directly from charter school hustler and former mayor Bloomberg's pal, Eva Moskowitz.

De Blasio did not abandon charters or evict children from charters. The attacks on him are a power play by charter operators, specifically Moskowitz, to restore the good old days of the Bloomberg administration, when her requests were never turned down. This blowup is also intended to send a message to de Blasio not to mess with charter schools. While it is true that they enroll only 3 percent of New York state's children and only 6 percent of New York City's children, their boards contain the city's financial elite. They can pay millions for a media campaign; they can make $800,000 in campaign contributions to Governor Cuomo, but they refuse to pay rent.

New York public school teacher Brian Jones, who co-produced The Inconvenient Truth behind Waiting For Superman, held his own last night on Chris Hayes' show, defending the Mayor's charter school policies, in a debate with James Merriman, CEO of the N.Y. Charter School Center. You can watch it all here.

Check out the results so far from MSNBC's poll on charter schools. The poll question: Poll: Should more resources be devoted to charter schools? 92% vote NO.

Stern crawls out from under his rock to attack Ravitch

I haven't heard much from ’60s ultra-radical turned far-right think-tanker Sol Stern since 2008 when he tried to paint Barack Obama as a commie symp and make Bill Ayers the focus of the presidential election debate. He used to write me letters, trying to befriend me. He says he went to the same summer camp as me as a kid but I can't believe that Kinderland would ever turn out a creep like Stern. He even offered to take me to a Yankee game (yuck, I was born with Brooklyn Dodger blue in my veins)  if I would only give him some inside dope about Ayers for a book he was working on.

Last I heard, he had fled the country and was living in Israel. Now I see he's crawled out from under his rock once again, to attack think-tank apostate Diane Ravitch whose new book, Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools, has his and other former fellows' shorts in a twist.

Back in '08, Stern worked for the right-wing Manhattan Institute (he obviously still does) and raged against progressive and social-justice education, calling it akin to "Stalinism." Stern's job at the Institute included hunting down and “exposing” social-justice teachers, whom he accused of “trashing the American system.” In another post Stern, responding to the UFT's Leo Casey, called the teachers union "a shill for Obama" and referred to me as a "good friend of the UFT" (which I think I am).

As for Ravitch, Stern attacks her as a "crude" turncoat, accusing her of "surrendering abjectly to [Deborah] Meier, champion of social-justice teaching and other progressive fads."

He calls her blog "a propaganda hub for the national anti–corporate reform coalition."

This past Labor Day, for example, Ravitch posted the words of militant union songs like “Joe Hill” and “Which Side Are You On?” and lamented that teacher unions don’t have enough power or influence in America.

Stern adds to his list of charges:

Ravitch uses her blog to publicize and organize support for antireform school board candidates from Rochester to Los Angeles. She recently wrote an impassioned endorsement of Bill de Blasio, the most radical of the Democrats running in the New York mayoral primary and the eventual winner. 

Sol Stern

He even accuses Ravitch of apparently agreeing with the progressive-ed icon [his tongue burns and he sputters as he says his name] Jean Piaget.

But as you might expect, Stern's coup de grace is exposing Ravitch's friendship with Ayers and the Klonsky's.

Thus, she has praised the former Weather Underground terrorist and radical educator William Ayers for his contributions to the anticorporate insurgency. (She concedes that Ayers made some political “mistakes” in the sixties.) Ravitch has also had kind words for leftist education activist and onetime Ayers ally Mike Klonsky. On her blog, she recounted visiting two universities in Chicago in 2010, with Klonsky as her host. “For me, the fallen-away conservative, it was a trip getting to know Mike, because he had long ago been a leader of the SDS, which was a radical group in the 1960s that I did not admire. So meeting him and discovering that he and his wife Susan were thoughtful, caring, and kind people was an experience in itself.” 

According to Stern, I "spent several years in China during the horrific Cultural Revolution, attending state dinners with the Great Helmsman." Pure bullshit. He made that part up. That's okay. The legend grows.

All I can really say in response to Stern's diatribe is, thanks for everything you do, Diane. The very things that make you big, make them small.

Right-wing Loony Tunes

EAG's Kyle Olson always appears on FOX in front of a faux bookcase. As if...

Right-wing loony Kyle Olson is at it again. You might remember Kyle as a guy who has made a career out of stalking teacher union activists, like my brother. You might also remember him and his EAG group for backing Rahm during the teachers' strike. Olson is a shade to the right of Rush Limbaugh, but his EAG group has a close affinity for Democrat Rahm's brand of union bashing. They even featured Rahm in one of their movies.

So what's Olson up to now? His latest "expose" produces a list of some of the many Chicagoans who signed on to a "letter of allegation" sent by The Midwest Coalition for Human Rights to the U.N.'s High Commission on Human Rights, asking the Geneva-based organization to watch for “potential domestic and international human rights violations” in Chicago when school starts this year.

The letter –- penned by University of Chicago law professor Sital Kalantry -- explains that school closures will force children to attend far-away schools, where they will have to travel through violent, gang-ridden communities. The letter suggests the school closings breach principles required in a number of international treaties signed by the U.S. It argues the closings violate the right to equality and non-discrimination in education, as they disproportionately affect minority students and students with disabilities and will result in lower-quality education for those affected.

The action comes alongside two federal lawsuits seeking injunctions to block the closure of the institutions by the nation’s third-largest public school district before the new school year begins.

The letter seems to have given Olson and his crew painful wedgies. His team of ace investigators (Did NSA or  Booz Allen help?) went right to work scanning the list of signers for any known rads, unionists, or civil rights leaders. And lo and behold, they came up with some of the usual suspects.

Among the signees: The Chicago Teachers Union, Action Now (formerly known as ACORN), domestic terrorist-turned-professor Bill Ayers, former Students for a Democratic Society leader-turned-professor Michael Klonsky, and retired professor and Barack Obama hero Timuel Black.

Great undercover work, Kyle. But let me just say that I'm proud to be in such esteemed company. And I don't mean yours.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

English teacher Kit McCormick, left, discusses Garfield High School teachers' decision to refuse to give the MAP test to their students (Seattle Times)

Garfield H.S. teachers 

We are not troublemakers nor do we want to impede the high functioning of our school. We are professionals who care deeply about our students and cannot continue to participate in a practice that harms our school and our students. -- Petition

Nancy Carlsson-Paige

"I have decided that because of your collaboration with TFA, it would not be wise for me or for Matt [Damon] to be nominated for the Friend of Education Award. I regret this turn of events." -- Letter to NEA Pres. Dennis Van Roekel. 

Barbara Byrd-Bennett

“We recognize the need for a more granular level of community engagement."  -- Sun-Times

Bill Ayers

In a free society education is based on a common faith in the incalculable value of every human being; it’s constructed on the principle that the fullest development of all is the condition for the full development of each, and, conversely, that the fullest development of each is the condition for the full development of all. -- A Letter to the President

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Linda Darling-Hammond

While students in the highest-achieving states and districts in the United States do as well as their peers in the high achieving nations, our continuing comfort with profound inequality is the Achilles' heel of American Education. ("Soaring Systems"--American Educator)

Bill Ayers

So join me in a resolution for 2011: Say goodbye to complacency in a heartless world, to deference, didacticism, ego and the need to always be right, goodbye to prisons and border guards and walls—whether in Palestine or in Texas—and goodbye to quarantines, deletions, and closures.  Goodbye to all that. (At the End of the Decade)

Jose Vilson

What hurt the most about the discussion around the DREAM Act is that this is as much an education bill as it is an immigration bill, and the implications for our country’s classroom ring loudly from coast to coast.  (DREAM Act: I Know God Has My Back)

Carlos Saavedra (United We Dream Network)

“We have woken up. We are going to go around the country letting everybody know who stands with us and who stood against us.” (Immigration Vote Leaves Obama’s Policy in Disarray--NYT)

Bill Ayers speaks to huge Univ. of Wyoming crowd

University President Tom Buchanan (not the Gatsby character) had banned Ayers from speaking to a group of students last month, using threats of violence from right-wingers as his excuse. But a law suit initiated by student Meg Lanker and favorable ruling by U.S. District Judge William Downes  opened the university to the "dangerous" Mr. Ayers.

Result? Instead of the expected 150 ed students who likely would have shown for the earlier talk, an enthusiastic, overflow crowd of 1,200 turned out on a Wednesday evening. A handful of T-baggers picketed outside. And guess what?--the university is still standing.

Addressing the media beforehand, Ayers said he would have given the speech even if he’d been as “sick as a dog."

“Because in my view, when the people gather at the gates of an institution like this, with pitchforks and torches, and say the things that were being said, that they would burn the place down,” Ayers told reporters. “And I was told several times in e-mails that they were going to take me out to the Matthew Shepard fence and teach me a lesson. That’s exactly when I’m going to show up.” (Billings Gazette)

An important victory for academic freedom and social justice. Bill should send Pres. Buchanan some flowers.

Academic freedom "a core principle..."

Unless of course, it causes "controversy"

CHEYENNE, Wyo. -- The University of Wyoming has canceled a speech by former 1960s radical William Ayers after it raised a slew of objections from citizens and politicians. Ayers -- an education professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago-- was scheduled to speak next Monday on the Laramie campus about social justice issues and education. He was invited by the UW Social Justice Research Center.

In a statement released by the university, UW President Tom Buchanan thanked the center for reconsidering its invitation to Ayers. Buchanan says academic freedom is a core principle of higher education, but he says the visit by Ayers would have adversely impacted the public's confidence in the university. He noted that the Ayers invitation had caused intense controversy.
-- Associated Press

No it's not the Onion

It's the other McCarthy--just as funny though

Andrew McCarthy our favorite commie hunter during the Obama campaign, is back again raising that hair-raising question--did Bill Ayers really write Obama's autobiography, Dreams From My Father? Real conservatives must be nauseous over what's become of Buckley's old National Review.

What McCarthy doesn't realize is that Ayers actually ghost wrote War & Peace and the New Testament. Shhh!

In the mailbox

On Sunday, AOL had a story on Obama wanting kids to spend more time in school (it was in the Boston Globe today and I assume many other papers. On extending the day, AOL asked for thumbs up (40%) or thumbs down (45%), with144K respondents (non-random, of course). Of 142K who responded to the adjacent question, what do you think of Obama's education policy in general?, the response was poor 48%, fair 18%. Wonder what a real (randomized) survey would show on the latter question? Monty Neill, Ed.D.
Interim Executive Director
FairTest

******

There is a brilliant small book just out by the incomparable Mike Rose called Why School? Published by the New Press it has garnered neither reviews nor much attention. This is a shame because it is an important argument against the controlling discourse strangling public education today. I write to urge each of you to get it, read it, spread the word among your networks, and if at all possible, review it!

Bill Ayers

The politics of disaster

Memo to Arne Duncan's PR guy and speechwriter, Peter Cunningham. Please tell Arne to stop calling this, possibly the worst global economic crisis ever, "this magical opportunity." It sounds too much like the late free-marketeer Milton Friedman calling Hurricane Katrina, "an opportunity to radically reform the educational system," while the bodies were still being dragged out of the flood waters.

Who's playing with numbers in N.O.?

While Louisiana's laughing-stock Gov. Bobby Jindal continues to say he will refuse to take any stimulus money, New Orleans Recovery District schools boss, Paul Vallas is debating the numbers in hopes of grabbing more federal dollars. Before Katrina, New Orleans had about 65,000 public school students. For the 2007-08 school year, the data used by the Department of Education, enrollment was 32,000, increasing to about 36,000 for the 2008-09 school year. Vallas is claiming the DOE owes the district $39 million while the census count of poor kids in the District has only $673K coming their way. Quite a discrepancy!

Rick Ayers makes the case for small schools at Berkeley H.S.

While Berkeley has a proud tradition of progressive politics and social justice initiatives, our public high school continues to practice tracking, inequity, and an educational experience which is so much less than it could be. The recent spate of attacks hurled at a redesign proposal and at the small schools shows that some elements of our community will go to great lengths to prevent even modest reforms. (Berkeley Daily Planet).

Limbaugh: Obama's a 'Maoist'

Republican Party boss says ed plan is "Bolshevik, Maoist, Klonsky-ist, Ayers-ist"

For those of you are concerned that Obama's education policies may be drifting rightward, Limbaugh will straighten you out.

A March 12 entry (subscription required) on Limbaugh's website, he stated that Obama's policies are "about 'social justice.' " It continued: "His education plan is Maoist (no surprise given the Ayers/Klonsky influence), and he is otherwise a Bolshevik. I'm also quite sure, given his character traits, that he would be a Stalinist if he thought he could get away with it ... and he's working on that, too. I wonder what the country will look like in his 10th or 15th year as president?" (Media Matters)

Goodbye academic freedom

Banning Ayers

The banning of Bill Ayers has become a symbol of the collapse of academic freedom, residue from eight years of neocon power and the use of the politics of fear to push a conservative agenda in the schools.

Debra Pickett has a pretty good piece on Ayers in Chicago Magazine this month. It's good because it focuses on Bill Ayers the educator, not Ayers the cartoonish radical monster created by the Palin/McCain gang and then ratified in the media and even by many liberal educators and academics.

Writes Pickett:

Many of his tenets are hardly revolutionary—that parents and communities should control their own schools, that students learn better in “small learning communities,” that teachers are most effective when they ask questions and facilitate projects and discussions, rather than simply lecture or drill. These ideas in particular have become components in most major school reform efforts across the country, influencing not only educators but also private philanthropists and public policymakers.

But even though the elections are over, Ayers the caricature, is being banned from speaking at schools and public meetings across the country. Ironically, those doing the banning aren't mainly the right-wing Palin types any more. All too often they are liberals who are quick to abandon academic freedom and 1st Amendment rights out of fear. Shades of the '50s.

The most recent cases: the principal of Naperville (IL) High School where Ayers was invited and then dis-invited to address only those students who had signed parent permission slips. And then at Boston College, where Ayers' invitation was yanked and where even his virtual speech via satellite was virtually (I guess) banned.

A sign of the times

Just to show where the country is at right now, there was even serious talk about banning Pres. Obama from speaking at Notre Dame because his position on abortion and stem cell research upset the church hierarchy. Somewhere, the late senator from the state of Wisconsin is resting comfortably in his grave.

One voice that leaves me with some hope, is that of UMass Professor David Lisak who was scheduled to give a lecture at Boston College later this month. In the wake of the College’s decision to ban Ayers from campus, I received a copy of an email Lisak sent to the individual who had invited him to campus:

Dear Dr. Marchetti,

I am very sad to have to cancel my colloquium at Boston College, “The Undetected Rapist: Exploring the Causes and Consequences of Interpersonal Violence,” scheduled for April 27^th. I do so because I cannot, in good conscience, provide a lecture to the Boston College community in the immediate wake of the College’s decision to block Mr. William Ayers from speaking on campus, and to further prevent him from being heard by the campus community. Freedom of speech is a critical component of vibrant public discourse and a pillar of our democracy. When it is attacked – and I view Boston College’s decision as such an attack – it is incumbent on each of us to take whatever steps we can to challenge such actions. Unfortunately, the step that I can take creates an inconvenience for individuals who likely had no part in the College’s decision, and who may strongly disagree with that decision. For that I am truly sorry, and I ask you for your understanding.

Sincerely,

David Lisak

What price academic freedom?

Closed parking lots at Georgia Southern

Bill Ayers was barred from speaking at Georgia Southern. The lame excuse the university gave was, “security costs.”

A spokesman for the university said that security would have cost $13,000 for the Ayers appearance and that several major parking lots would have been closed.

The Times’ Deborah Solomon (“Radical Cheer”) seems to have worked her way around the security problem with this Ayers interview. Does the Times building have free parking?

GW vs. MB

David Bloomfield posting on Presidents Day at NYC Public School Parents, compares the leadership styles of George Washington and Mayor Bloomberg.

The Mayor’s top-down approach is also well known, even to the point that his appointees to the city school board are removed if they oppose him and forbidden to speak publicly about their work.

Humerus

Last week Bill Gates released a jar full of mosquitoes into the audience during a presentation about malaria. People in the audience haven’t slapped themselves this much since Gates released Windows Vista. (Weakly Humerus News)

Quotables

She's in!

“Hilda Solis comes from a working family herself so she understands how the troubled economy is hurting average Americans,” said committee Chairman Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.). “American workers deserve to have her voice and her leadership as their Secretary of Labor, and I’m pleased that our committee approved her.” (Politico)

Bill Ayers on being blocked from speaking at Georgia-Southern

“It seems that they have bowed and caved into the will of a mob. And if they did that, they should be ashamed.” (The George-Anne Daily)

Nick Kristof’s "two-step" program

First, tar and feather America’s 100 leading bankers; and, second, take over insolvent banks and distribute shares to members of the public (without ever using the term “nat...” — oh, never mind)… America’s horror of “nationalization” could be defused by handing out shares to all American households. President Bush used to talk about building an “ownership society.” Well, giving shares in big banks to all American households would be a terrific way to do that. (NYT)

A look inside Renaissance 2010

CBS2 News investigator, Dave Savini on school life and culture as we head into the (hopefully) final year of Mayor Daley’s school “Renaissance.”

The 2 Investigators found reports of students beaten with broomsticks, whipped with belts, yard sticks, struck with staplers, choked, stomped on and pushed down stairs. One substitute teacher even fractured a student's neck. (The 6^th Ward)