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Under fire, U of Nebraska cancels speech by Obama friend William Ayers
LA Times ^ | 10/20/2008 | Andrew Malcolm

Posted on 10/20/2008 10:43:05 AM PDT by markomalley

As much of the media obsessed this weekend about Barack Obama's large numbers -- crowds and dollars -- William Ayers, the controversial '60s radical who helped launch the Democrat's political career in his Chicago South Side living room, popped back up in the news in the Midwest.

It seems the cofounder of the violent Weather UndWeather Underground founder, University of Illinois education professor and friend of Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama, William Ayers in a Chicago alley posing for a magazine article photo shoot a few years agoerground that bombed public buildings during the Vietnam War was invited as a keynote speaker by the University of Nebraska in Lincoln right after the presidential election next month.

(snip)

The Omaha World-Herald reported that one prominent group -- the Gilbert M. and Martha H. Hitchcock Foundation, a multimillion-dollar university donor in past years -- threatened to halt all of its donations to the university over the invite, and numerous other donors promised such action if the event proceeded.

Some university teachers warned the Omaha paper that canceling the Ayers speech would hurt the school's academic reputation as an appearance of censorship and make future faculty recruiting more difficult.

Saturday, however, a university spokeswoman announced that the invitation to Ayers, now an education professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and an Obama neighbor, had been rescinded for the College of Education and Human Sciences centennial celebration for "safety reasons."

She would not elaborate.

(Excerpt) Read more at latimesblogs.latimes.com ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Politics/Elections; US: Nebraska
KEYWORDS: academia; ayers; highereducation; ne2008; pinheadintellectual
The Omaha World-Herald reported that one prominent group -- the Gilbert M. and Martha H. Hitchcock Foundation, a multimillion-dollar university donor in past years -- threatened to halt all of its donations to the university over the invite, and numerous other donors promised such action if the event proceeded.

And that's the real reason…money could have been impacted.

1 posted on 10/20/2008 10:43:06 AM PDT by markomalley
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To: markomalley

You say Obama,
I say Ayers

Obama!
Ayers!

Obama!
Ayers!


2 posted on 10/20/2008 10:45:22 AM PDT by scottinoc
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To: markomalley

It’s about time people point at this guy and yell terrorist.


3 posted on 10/20/2008 10:45:31 AM PDT by nufsed
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To: markomalley

I’m thinking the other way on this. Obama’s people don’t want Ayers in the news until after the election, so they got his speech scrubbed.

Just like they got Rev. Wright to “resign”.


4 posted on 10/20/2008 10:51:56 AM PDT by BigBobber
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To: markomalley

Strange how these Socialist institutions cringe when money is mentioned as they hate it so. Ayers is nothing more than a Ward Churchill with powerful Chicago thugs as friends. He and his murderous wife should both be in jail but instead they are free to corrupt young minds and I will give them credit as they seem to do an outstanding job of that. I wish the people who support the Universities would take a more active part in seeing to it that truth rather than brainwashing is what goes on behind the hallowed doors of academia. Critical thinking skills are being neglected in favor of political indoctrination.


5 posted on 10/20/2008 10:55:14 AM PDT by pepperdog (The world has gone crazy.)
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To: pepperdog
Ayers is nothing more than a Ward Churchill with powerful Chicago thugs as friends.

Ayers is much more. He is one of the enablers.

6 posted on 10/20/2008 10:58:09 AM PDT by E=MC2
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To: markomalley
friend of Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama

Hey wait, I thought Ayers was just a guy who lived in Obama's neighborhood!

7 posted on 10/20/2008 11:02:11 AM PDT by T. Buzzard Trueblood (Odinga is the new Ayers.)
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To: markomalley

Ayers should be in Gitmo with his terrorist soul-mates. Unfortunately, it’s slated to close down shortly after January 20th, unless Obama decides to keep it open for right-wing radio commentators and other thought criminals. Perhaps Ayers will make it there after all, as warden.


8 posted on 10/20/2008 11:02:44 AM PDT by atomic conspiracy (Victory in Iraq: Worst defeat for activist media since Goebbels shot himself.)
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To: markomalley

While I’m glad he will not find one of my alma maters accommodating to him, I wish UNL would have not used the excuse of ‘safety.’ If there is a distinct credible threat then they should involve law enforcement. If there are merely nebulous threats, then they should now cower in fear and let threats dictate their actions.


9 posted on 10/20/2008 11:04:35 AM PDT by posterchild
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To: markomalley

So, the invitation was rescinded for’safety reasons’. Maybe they were afraid he’d be dropping a ‘political bomb’, rather than the kind he is infamous for.


10 posted on 10/20/2008 11:05:52 AM PDT by go-ken-go (i)
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To: Brown Deer
ping

From the last link in the LAT article I found some interesting stuff, among which:

"Barack Obama's Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) office and William Ayers' Small Schools Workshop shared the same address for a number of years - three years that can be proven by tax returns."

Just as you found.

11 posted on 10/20/2008 11:26:41 AM PDT by Aliska
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To: BigBobber

I think you’re on the right track here. Imagine what might have come out of Ayer’s mouth that could have been used in a commercial connecting him to Obama. But now, nothing.


12 posted on 10/20/2008 11:48:27 AM PDT by edweena
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To: pepperdog
I think part of the problem is that alumni think the universities are teaching what and how they taught when THEY attended.

I fell into this trap with a Catholic school my kids graduated from. I donated generously each year after they graduated in the 90s. Then when they created their own website I found that they had gone completely modernist/social justice-focused and catechism and prayer deficient.

I'd had no idea. Their annual newsletter showed the same smiling uniformed kids as always. My fault for not paying better attention.

13 posted on 10/20/2008 11:51:41 AM PDT by informavoracious (Oust all incumbents.)
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Comment #14 Removed by Moderator

To: edweena; BigBobber
"was invited as a keynote speaker by the University of Nebraska in Lincoln right after the presidential election next month. "
15 posted on 10/20/2008 12:49:31 PM PDT by Bigh4u2 (Denial is the first requirement to be a liberal)
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To: Bigh4u2

Thanks for the clarification.


16 posted on 10/20/2008 1:18:23 PM PDT by BigBobber
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To: Peterthegreat14

No, the real question is what is the difference between Ayers and Terry Nichols? Ayers was involved in much more than Nichols and Nichols is now locked up for life in max security. Ayers and his POS wife should have been rotting in a dark hole years ago.


17 posted on 10/20/2008 1:29:18 PM PDT by RJS1950 (The democrats are the "enemies foreign and domestic" cited in the federal oath)
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To: Peterthegreat14

No, the real question is what is the difference between Ayers and Terry Nichols. Ayers was involved in far more than Nichols but Nichols is locked up for life in max security while Ayers lives the good life. Ayers and his POS wife should have been lost in a dark hole years ago.


18 posted on 10/20/2008 1:31:46 PM PDT by RJS1950 (The democrats are the "enemies foreign and domestic" cited in the federal oath)
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To: nufsed

Doggone right! Thst this crap-bird can live so well as an “esteemed” professor speaks volumes about our jacked up higher learning institutions. The terrorist Ayers ought to have his butt locked in a dark prison cell.


19 posted on 10/20/2008 4:47:02 PM PDT by vpintheak (Like a muddied spring or a polluted well is a righteous man who gives way to the wicked. Prov. 25:26)
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To: markomalley
U of Nebraska cancels speech by Obama friend William Ayers The university had no cause to cancel Ayers speech because, if I'm to believe a 2 page pamphlet that I just received in the mail from the Obama campaign, Obama's relationship with Ayers is not as charged by the McCain campaign.

So, how do I know that what the pamphlet says is true? Well, the pamphlet says that all the charges that McCain has made about Obama and his associations with Ayers have been debunked, and fact-checked by such bulwarks of truth-telling as the NY Times, Time Magazine, AP and CNN.
20 posted on 10/20/2008 5:00:50 PM PDT by adorno
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