As a “state-related” university Penn State must occasionally suffer state legislators who poke their noses into campus business.
In 2001, former state Rep. John Lawless complained about the supposed depravity of a campus Sex Faire.
On another occasion, some lawmakers decided that those pointy-headed academics weren’t working hard enough.
Some of them teach for six hours per week? And they’re off for three months in the summer?
Then someone informed these guardians of the public’s money of all the things profs do outside the classroom, like prepping, grading, advising, serving on committees, peer reviewing, researching and writing, and they all calmed down.
The latest outcry has to do with William Ayers coming to town this week. Ayers was a co-founder of the Weather Underground, the group of 1960s radicals who bombed public buildings to protest the war in Vietnam.
Ayers is not expected to advocate the violent overthrow of the U.S. government during his Penn State visit. He is participating in a panel on the “school-to-prison pipeline” at the Dickinson School of Law on Thursday and in a workshop on “teaching toward democracy” at the Pasquerilla Spiritual Center on Friday.
These happen to be Ayers’ areas of expertise. He is a retired professor of education at the University of Illinois and, by most accounts, a well-regarded scholar.
But to State Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati, a wild-eyed radical Bill Ayers was, and a wild-eyed radical he shall always be. Scarnati wrote to Penn State President Eric Barron to express his displeasure that Ayers had been invited to campus and to ask how much the university was paying him.
The answer: zilch. The money is coming from student activity fees, not from Harrisburg.
A university spokeswoman also clarified that Ayers was coming at the behest of student groups, and that these groups are free to invite whomever they like. A beautiful thing, academic freedom.
Ayers’ name, you may recall, surfaced when Barack Obama was running for president in 2008. The Republicans wanted voters to believe that Bill A. and Barry O., a couple of Chicago guys, were buddies, which they weren’t, though they knew each other.
At the time, we learned that the government botched its case against Ayers so he never paid a legal price for his role in the Weather Underground’s bombing campaign. Nor has he ever emphatically and unambiguously renounced violence.
On the other hand, his bombs never killed or injured anyone and he has not committed an act of violence in 43 years. In 1997 he was named Chicago’s Citizen of the Year for the work he did on school reform.
So you can see how some folks might be discomfited by his visit and some might say he has redeemed himself.
At the heart of the matter lies a simple question of whether an invitation to speak constitutes an endorsement of the speaker. I encountered this sort of thinking as a reporter when I profiled Huey Newton, a member of the Black Panther Party who was serving time in the local prison on a weapons charge.
I came away from my interview impressed with Newton’s intelligence and charisma. I also found him condescending and grandiose. I tried to get all that across in my story. But many readers were incensed: In their view I was glorifying a thug. He didn’t deserve to be written about.
Similar questions arose when a thug who became known as the Unabomber said he would stop mailing bombs to people if the New York Times and the Washington Post agreed to publish his 50-page anti-technology manifesto. The FBI urged the newspapers to publish, not only because it would save lives if the Unabomber kept his promise, but because they hoped widespread dissemination of his words would lead to his arrest.
The papers hated publishing at the behest of the government, hated giving a platform to a murderer and hated the idea of setting a precedent, but they did it anyway, in hopes of saving lives, primarily, but also, it must be said, because they thought readers would be interested in the ravings of a brilliant lunatic.
The FBI couldn’t have scripted it better. A reader heard his brother’s voice in the manifesto, directed the feds to his brother’s cabin in Montana, and the arrest was made. Ted Kaczynski, 72, is serving a life sentence without possibility of parole.
With these precedents in mind I understand how state Sen. Scarnati and those who agree with him think Penn State students have honored a dishonorable man by inviting Bill Ayers to campus. They needn’t attend, however. Or, if they want to question Ayers about his words and deeds, they may have an opportunity to do so.
But it would be a shame if, as a result of political grandstanding, Ayers’ past as a ’60s radical overshadowed the important topics he and other attendees came here to talk about.
