Northwestern Alumni Withhold Money (over terrorist on faculty)

Washington Post ^ | Novermber 1, 2001 | Don Babwin

[cajungirl]

Thanks for the seminar. Interesting stuff.

[March I up]

Evanston: home of prohibition and a "nuclear arms free zone". How Madison has extended it's tentacles...

[Howlin]

This past spring, the head of NOW (name escapes me at the moment) gave a public talk on campus. Prolife hero Joe Scheidler and friends showed up to peacefully protest outside. For this, they were called "terrorist" (?!?) by the campus cops.

I see a pattern here. That is the EXACT same thing Hillary said right after 9-11 about people who came out to protest her at one of her rallies in Washington (I think that's where it was.) Imagine, if you PROTEST, you're a terrorist!

[Howlin]

P.S. This is the second time one us has told you this

One of you who?

[Chemnitz]

That was great timing for the good guys. One could not wish for more damning statements as the WTC fell down and the Pentagon burned. Wake up America.

[Landru]

"Hopefully several will be arrested with the remainder fleeing or being ACCIDENTED.---Yes thats right you leftists, ACCIDENTED. And not by the 'official services'. But your worst nightmares. WE don't forget..."

Facinating.

[Landru]

re; #39?

Even more facinating...

"But lets be clear, there is no such thing as a good leftist or socialist. Just some that are worse than others."

Couldn't be any truer or clear than that.
Some things are just understood & that one's a classic.

Seems to me you've forgotten more than most will ever know -- in a very literal sense.

Thanks for the insights, history & perspective.

[summer]

Also, from The NY Times:

November 4, 2001

Northwestern Alumni to End Donations if Ex-Radical Stays

By JOHN W. FOUNTAIN

CHICAGO, Nov. 3 — It was old news. Bernardine Dohrn, formerly head of the radical Weather Underground group and once among the F.B.I.'s most wanted fugitives, is a faculty member at Northwestern University Law School. But her husband's recently released memoir about their days as Weathermen has apparently opened new wounds.

What that has amounted to in recent weeks for Northwestern University is complaints from some two dozen alumni, about half of whom said they would withhold future donations. All but one complaint was spurred by a Wall Street Journal editorial on Monday that focused on concerns over Ms. Dohrn's position on the law school faculty.

University officials played down the outcry after publication of her husband's book, "Fugitive Days" (Beacon Press), noting that the alumni who had vowed to no longer support the school gave a total of $11,300 last year, when the university raised more than $60 million.

The recent concerns were first raised by Sean F. O'Shea, a member of Northwestern Law School's class of 1981 and a New York lawyer, who weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks complained that Ms. Dohrn's past, and her support of her husband, Bill Ayers, made her unsuitable for university affiliation. Mr. Ayers was quoted recently as saying that he did not regret setting bombs as a member of the Weathermen, a 1970's revolutionary group, and that he could not rule out doing it again.

Mr. Ayers has called his book a work of memory, fact and fiction.

"Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon," he wrote. "Even though I didn't actually bomb the Pentagon — we bombed it, in the sense that Weathermen organized it and claimed it." No one was killed or injured in the 1972 bombing. Damage was extensive.

In a letter last month to David E. Van Zandt, the law school's dean, Mr. O'Shea called Ms. Dohrn an "unrepentant terrorist" and demanded that the university return his $1,000 contribution.

The controversy involving Ms. Dohrn, 59, comes at time when Americans are particularly sensitive about acts of terrorism. This week, Sara Jane Olson, another former radical, pleaded guilty in California to two felony counts in connection with a 1975 bombing attempt by the Symbionese Liberation Army, but then renounced her plea, saying she had entered it only because she felt she could not get a fair hearing given the current pro-government sentiment.

As a member of the Weathermen, Ms. Dohrn was referred to by J. Edgar Hoover as "the most dangerous woman in America." She spent 10 years as a fugitive and in 1980 pleaded guilty to aggravated battery and jumping bail, for which she was fined $1,500 and placed on three years of probation. Two years later, she served seven months in jail for refusing to cooperate with a grand jury investigating a Brink's robbery in Nanuet, N.Y. She is now director of the Legal Clinic's Children and Family Justice Center at Northwestern.

Mr. Ayers is a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, which has received about 70 angry calls and letters, some from alumni. But so far no donors have threatened to withdraw support, said Mark Rosati, a university spokesman.

Mr. Rosati said the school's position was that while many people might find Mr. Ayers's recent comments objectionable, he was within his First Amendment rights.

Attempts to reach Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn Friday were unsuccessful.

Mr. Van Zandt, the law school's dean, is squarely in Ms. Dohrn's camp.

"All the things she's done here in the 10 years she's been here have just been terrific," Mr. Van Zandt said. "If someone continues to advocate breaking the law, that would be a problem. She's told me she abhors violence, past, present or future."

For Stanley Fish, dean of the college of liberal arts and sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the question is whether Ms. Dohrn can do the job that Northwestern wants. "Is she any different a person in terms of obligations now than she was before Sept. 11?" he said.

The answer, Mr. Fish said, is "No."

[summer]

Re your post #47 -- I still think you'd make a great professor. :)

[Landru]

"I still think you'd make a great professor."

...and I think you couldn't be any nicer a person than you already are.
So please make note: Don't change.

OK?

:) -back at'cha.

[summer]

LOL! Thanks for making my day, Landru. :)

[spitzoli]

Accidented? You are so full of it! If you had even the slightest inclination or capability of this, you'd have done it back in the '70s.

Perhaps the Weathermen killed a few people. But perhaps they did the wrong thing for the right reason?

Why is it ok that 69,000 American soldiers, not to mention indigenous civilians, died in Vietnam, (which was a completely meaningless war-for-profit waged by the rich on the poor) but horrible that a few pigs died here?

Oh, but forgive me: Vietnam wasn't a "war", it was a "conflict". Congress can't even own up to their own.

[IM2Phat4U]

bump - just heard Sean O'Shea on Rush's show.

[VOA]

Good for the Northwestern alums!

[Frances_Marion]

BTTT, heard it on Sean O'Shea as well...Mrs. Dohrn isn't repentant in the least for her terrorist actions...she belongs in a dank cell, not teaching impressionable minds in the courses of committing and abetting murder and getting away with it.