---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2001 12:46:45 -0800
From: radtimes <resist@best.com>
Subject: Professor Weatherman
Professor Weatherman
Wall Street Journal
http://interactive6.wsj.com/articles/SB1004305428136329560.htm
Every day the ways in which September 11 changed the culture become
clearer, among them a deepening hostility to the glamorization of crime and
terrorists. The horrors of that day may have put the final end to what is
left of the romance of radical chic, which is finally being seen for what
it is: both callous and absurd.
None of that would come as news to New York attorney Sean F. O'Shea,
already startled, months back, when he learned that former Weather
Underground leader Bernadine Dohrn enjoyed the position of faculty member
at his alma mater, Northwestern University Law School. Ms. Dohrn was the
most prominent leader of the Weathermen, a group whose favored form of
political expression was the planting of bombs in government buildings. Her
activities during the 1970s catapulted her to an even more prominent
position -- the F.B.I.'s 10 Most Wanted list. For the next several years
she lived underground with William Ayers, a fellow leading light of the
Weathermen, whom she later married.
In the days since September 11, Mr. O'Shea has become even more concerned
about what he sees as the contempt for the law shown by Northwestern, which
has on its faculty someone who could not pass a character and fitness test
and who could not be admitted to the bar. The university's representatives
point out that membership in the bar isn't a requirement for the law
faculty. Dean David Van Zandt issued a statement on academic freedom,
saying that the law school's ability to understand and relate to
controversial views was one of its strengths and that Ms. Dohrn, director
of a family law center, channeled "her energy and her passion into making a
difference in our legal system."
Mr. O'Shea wants Northwestern to consider what it means to confer a
platform of legitimacy on an unrepentant lawbreaker who -- notwithstanding
her later general condemnations of violence -- never took responsibility
for her own crimes. Ms. Dohrn (and Mr. Ayers) escaped prosecution when the
court threw out evidence on grounds that it was illegally obtained. She
served seven months for criminal contempt for her refusal to testify about
the 1981 Brinks robbery in New York in which the Black Liberation Army
killed two police officers.
Mr. O'Shea's feelings were in no way ameliorated by his discovery that, at
the party Ms. Dorhn and Mr. Ayers gave to celebrate Mr. Ayers's recently
published memoir, guests were given stick-on tattoos of the Weatherman
symbol. Asked if someone might not accuse him of lacking a sense of humor,
he responds, "Right. After September 11, I lost my sense of humor about
terrorists."
And indeed September 11 has much to do with this story. It has everything
to do, too, with the lightning speed with which the public now detects all
efforts to rationalize acts of terrorism, and with the detestation those
efforts provoke. One of the unluckier things to happen to Mr. Ayers was the
publication, on September 11, of a lengthy New York Times profile of his
life in the Weather Underground. This came complete with a list of the
bombings he'd organized -- at New York City Police Headquarters, the
offices of the National Guard in Washington, D.C., the Pentagon, and more.
That is, on the very morning of the terror attack on America that killed
thousands, readers could find Mr. Ayers's announcement that he had no
regrets about the bombings he had planned and helped execute. They could
also read that, asked whether he would ever do such a thing again, Mr.
Ayers answered, "I don't want to discount the possibility." It was not the
best of times to expound on the worth and importance of the motives guiding
terrorists, and so it remains today.
As for Mr. O'Shea, he says he seeks better answers from Northwestern and
plans to contact the school's trustees for help. In the meantime, the
school will be returning a donation check he sent earlier this year. It
will now go, he says, to the fund for victims of the September 11 terrorist
attacks.
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