Imagine if 4,000 people – mostly academics proclaiming to be “friends and colleagues” of Professor Eric Rudolph – published a letter defending that terrorist’s association with John McCain, praising his role as a distinguished faculty member in education at a premier university, and willfully ignoring his past as a domestic terrorist. While this particular scenario is easy to dismiss as absurd and unfeasible, that is exactly what has happened regarding Bill Ayers’ association with Barack Obama.