Support For Bill Ayers
You Idiots Are Not Helping

Here's a petition for "educators" in support of William Ayers.

What unmitigated bullshit.

Life's too short to go through this and ridicule it with the care that it deserves. So here's a lesser degree of ridicule.

Note: I don't really know much about William Ayers. But Vietnam was, of course, awful. What's the appropriate reaction when your country is napalming children, anyway? Anybody got a snappy answer to that one? Though, as any sane person should be able to see, this is not to say that there weren't good reasons for trying to hold back the North Vietnamese. The point is: I don't have a position on William Ayers, though, prima facie, he's probably not the kind of person my ideal candidate would hobnob with. But I could be wrong. I can certainly imagine information that would change my tentative default position on Ayers.

This letter is not such a thing.

First, you know what I've found never helps anything? A little quasi-postmodernist cant, that's what:

All citizens, but particularly teachers and scholars, are called upon to challenge orthodoxy, dogma, and mindless complacency, to be skeptical of authoritative claims, to interrogate and trouble the given and the taken-for-granted.

Ah, yes. "Interogate" and "trouble" the given. Nothing like a little interogation and troubling. (And incidentally: that's not the way the term 'given' gets used in the relevant discussions.) And we're "called upon" to do this, are we? By whom exactly?
It's not that I disagree with the core sentiment here. On this point, it's really just the cant that irritates me.

Then there are some grammatical and stylistic errors I'll pass over in silence.

And then:
"Teachers have a heavy responsibility, a moral obligation, to organize classrooms as sites of open discussion, free of coercion or intimidation. By all accounts Professor Ayers meets this standard. His classes are fully enrolled, and students welcome the exchange of views that he encourages."

So, fully-enrolled classes and students who welcome the blahblahblah are all the accounts? Seriously? This is moronic. Students flock to many kinds of classes. Popularity among students is about the weakest evidence you could have for the claim that some given professor is fulfilling his responsibilities.

"The current characterizations of Professor Ayers---'unrepentant terrorist,' 'lunatic leftist'---are unrecognizable to those who know or work with him."
Ah, so he's repented then? If so, this has all been rather a misunderstanding...

"It’s true that Professor Ayers participated passionately in the civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s, as did hundreds of thousands of Americans."

Um...so does "he participated passionately in the civil rights and antiwar movements" seem like a fair summary of his activities to you? Did John Brown "participate passionately" in the antislavery movement?

"His participation in political activity 40 years ago is history; what is most relevant now is his continued engagement in progressive causes, and his exemplary contribution---including publishing 16 books--- to the field of education."

Really? that's what's most relevant? 'Cause it doesn't seem like what's most relevant to me, frankly. Oh, and: you do realize that education is approximately the most lightweight and intellectually bankrupt of the university disciplines, right? Just want to make sure y'all realize that. 'Cause pretty much everybody else does.

"The current attacks appear as part of a pattern of “exposés” and assaults designed to intimidate free thinking and stifle critical dialogue."

No. The current attacks "appear as" a pattern of distortions aimed at slandering/libeling Barack Obama in order to allow John McCain to win the Presidential election.
You self-centered twits.

"Like crusades against high school and elementary teachers, and faculty at UCLA, Columbia, DePaul, and the University of Colorado, the attacks on and the character assassination of Ayers threaten the university as a space of open inquiry and debate, and threaten schools as places of compassion, imagination, curiosity, and free thought."

Which crusade would that be against what faculty at the University of Colorado exactly? Because I'm afraid I may know who you have in mind. And you really need to give that one up.
Oh, and: no, the dust-up about Ayers in no way threatens schools in those ways. Ayers is largely irrelevant here, and schools are not being threatened as "spaces" of debate, nor as "places" of imagination. Whatever TF that is supposed to mean. This is about Obama. Nobody cares about schools at all in this.
You self-centered twits.

"They serve as warnings that anyone who voices perspectives and advances questions that challenge orthodoxy and political power may become a target, and this, then, casts a chill over free speech and inquiry and the spirit of democracy."

No. They serve as warnings that anyone who blows shit up will be politically radioactive for the rest of his life. Surely that's a forseable cosequence of blowing shit up, no?
This is perhaps the stupidest part of this whole stupid thing. It really does take a prodigious act of willful stupidity to believe that Ayers is controversial because of what he has said. What a bunch of dumbasses.

Jesus. There are so many idiots in academia you simply cannot believe it. In fact, as I've said before: when I left grad school and took up an actual position in which I had to deal with faculty from across the university, I simply could not believe what a high percentage of the people were dumb as posts. Add a bunch of postmodernism and other bone-headed theories to the mix, and you get a real intellectual cesspool.

As I said at the outset, I can imagine reasonable defenses of William Ayers. But this is certainly not such a defense.