Author Archives: E Wayne Ross

BC Heights: Ayers video conference canceled, students to hold lecture on academic freedom in its place

The Boston College administration has decided not to allow a video conference with Bill Ayers, who was scheduled to speak in person at the University tonight, to take place on campus. The event was originally organized by the BC chapter of Americans for Informed Democracy (AID); it was canceled on Friday out of what a statement from the Division of Student Affairs cited as “concern for the safety and well being of our students and respect for the local community where the alleged actions of the Weather Underground continue to reverberate today.”

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Boston Globe: Ayers to speak at BC via satellite link

In an example of what a student organizer referred to as “academic freedom for the 21st century,” William Ayers, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and former member of the Weather Underground Organization, will address Boston College students – but not on campus. After administrators on Friday cancelled Ayers’ appearance, scheduled for this evening, students scrambled to find an off-campus venue, said Melissa Roberts, vice president of the College Democrats of Boston College. They found a large enough location at the last minute, Roberts said, so Ayers will speak via satellite from Chicago. The talk, which is open only to BC students, faculty, and staff, will be held at 6 p.m. in Devlin Hall.

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Inside Higher Ed: Banned in Boston

The norm for protests over a William Ayers appearance on campus these days is for conservative critics to say that the University of Illinois at Chicago professor shouldn’t be given a forum to speak because of the past violence of the Weather Underground, of which he was once a leader.

At Boston College, the debate has taken a new twist — with the college calling off a talk by Ayers planned for tonight and citing a police killing that has never been definitively linked to the Weather Underground and that Ayers and others insist his group had nothing to do with. Nonetheless, that 1970 police killing is still associated by many in Boston with the Weather Underground and remains a political flashpoint — as became clear on Friday.

Michael Graham, a local talk radio host, started calling on Boston College to revoke the invitation to Ayers, and he encouraged alumni, donors and others to call the college to demand that it deny Ayers a forum. Graham repeatedly linked Ayers and the Weather Underground to the 1970 killing of Walter Schroeder, the police officer, who was responding to a bank robbery by a group of radical students. Schroeder left a wife and nine children. His killing is periodically back in the news, and last received extensive coverage in 1993, when Katherine Ann Power — one of those involved in the incident, who had evaded capture and lived under another name — turned herself in.

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