UNL's own prairie fire: Professor William Ayers

By Miles Bryant

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) invites many scholars to campus to address various student and faculty groups. Most visitors do not agitate the sensibilities of Nebraskans. But, this past year, one speaking invitation to a Chicago professor by the name of William Ayers stirred up a storm of controversy, a veritable prairie fire fed by the volatile dry grass of a presidential campaign. E-mails, phone calls and commentary in local and national media deluged university officials in a matter of hours. Between Oct. 16 and 18, the “heckler’s veto” became a howl. How could the university, in its wildest imagination, invite a former Weatherman and unapologetic terrorist to campus? Regents, political leaders, alumnae and donors demanded the invitation to this evil professor be withdrawn immediately.

The end result of the turmoil was that the invitation to Professor Ayers was withdrawn and his speaking engagement was canceled. UNL administrators reasonably hold that this was because of fears over campus security, not over the past politics of Professor Ayers. This all took place in mid-October of 2008.

As universities like to do when faced with controversy, the Faculty Senate convened a committee to investigate this canceled visit as a violation of academic freedom. The report of that committee has been made public. The report chronicles the attack that was made on UNL by those external to the university. The report concludes that the university did violate the vital academic freedom of students and faculty.

When the publisher of Prairie Fire spoke with me about an article on a former radical Vietnam resister now turned prominent education professor and this professor’s canceled speaking engagement at UNL, I thought such a piece should be easy. But this turns out not to be the case. Professor Bill Ayers and the cancelation of his visit is one of those lightning-rod moments in the university’s history. It thus a worthy topic for the readers of a newspaper like Prairie Fire with its mission of “bipartisan discourse on public policy matters.” And when the next history of UNL, a prairie university, is written, this controversy may have a chapter all of its own.

The events surrounding this cancelation are complex and chaotic, but it is clear that faculty and students at the university were denied an opportunity to hear and interact with a nationally prominent and accomplished educator. Challenges to academic freedom at UNL are not new, but this particular incident presents particularly worrisome concerns for a campus that would provide free access to competing ideas and knowledge. Thus, the cancelation of this speaker’s visit to the campus stands as one of the most significant violations of academic freedom in recent years.

Academic freedom is defined by the Academic Freedom Coalition of Nebraska (AFCON) as “intellectual freedom in educational and research contexts.” This includes general freedoms of belief, expression, discussion and inquiry relevant in diverse contexts. With specific relevance to formal education, academic freedom includes the right of students to a curriculum determined on academic grounds and the corresponding responsibility of teachers to provide such a curriculum:

Formulation of Curriculum. Curriculum should be determined by teachers and other professionals on the basis of academic considerations. It is a responsibility of administrators and school boards to support justifiable curricular decisions and to educate their constituencies about the educational importance of an inclusive curriculum and the critical role of respect for academic freedom (AFCON Principle 5).¹

The Supreme Court of the United States has weighed in frequently over the years to protect academic freedom as described in the AFCON statements. Here are just a few examples, complied by Uerling and Strope in 1998.²

“The essentiality of freedom in the community of American universities is almost self-evident… To impose any strait jacket upon the intellectual leaders in our colleges and universities would imperil the future of our Nation… Teachers and students must always remain free to inquire, to study and to evaluate, to gain new maturity and understanding; otherwise our civilization will stagnate and die.” Sweezy v. New Hampshire, 354 U.S. 234 (1957).

“Our Nation is deeply committed to safeguarding academic freedom, which is of transcendent value to all of us, and not merely to the teachers concerned. That freedom is therefore a special concern of the First Amendment, which does not tolerate laws that cast a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom.” Keyishian v. Board of Regents, 385 U.S. 589, 603 (1967).

“It is the business of a university to provide an atmosphere most conducive to speculation, experiment and creation, an atmosphere in which prevail the four essential freedoms of a university—to determine for itself on academic grounds who may teach, what may be taught, how it shall be taught, and who may be admitted to study.” (emphasis added) Sweezy v. New Hampshire, 354 U.S. 234.

Yet commentary in the Omaha World-Herald and Lincoln Journal Star in October 2008 seethed with the indignation of many of Nebraska’s political leaders seeking to do exactly what the Supreme Court has said should not be done. Said Gov. Dave Heineman in a press release:

Chairman of the Board of Regents Chuck Hassebrook and President of the University J.B. Milliken should immediately rescind the invitation extended to Bill Ayers to speak at the University of Nebraska on November 15. This is an embarrassment to the University of Nebraska and the State of Nebraska. Bill Ayers is a well known radical who should never have been invited to the University of Nebraska.

Other political leaders spoke out as well.

“A former domestic terrorist?” said Mark Quandahl, the Nebraska GOP chairman, UNL graduate and father of a current student. “I’m flabbergasted as to why anyone would think that’s a good idea.”

“The invitation made to William Ayers to speak at my alma mater in the midst of a heated national election when he is such a highly controversial figure is an outrage,” Representative Terry opined.

Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson and Nebraska Rep. Lee Terry argued that the speech should be cancelled. The state’s attorney general, Jon Bruning, and auditor, Mike Foley, also raised questions about the invitation. The UNL committee that investigated the Ayers incident characterized the actions of Auditor Foley as political harassment.

It is worth noting that it is not only the U.S. Supreme Court that has afforded universities the right for self-determination in matters of teaching. Nebraska’s own Supreme Court has addressed the matter of academic freedom in the Board of Regents v. Exon (256 WL 330, 1978): “Though the Legislature may prescribe the duties and powers of the Board of Regents the general government of the University must remain vested in the Board of Regents” (p. 146, vol. 199).

Thus, the public posturing of Nebraska’s political leaders can be read as a threat to academic freedom.

Within the university’s regents, reactions varied. Some were quite critical and said so. Regent Randy Ferlic of Omaha suggested that donors should consider withholding financial contributions to the university. He also said the planned appearance of Ayers “speaks volumes of the arrogance” of Perlman and the education faculty. Other regents observed the many e-mails and phone calls demanding that they (the Regents) cancel the speech and felt that since they left the decision up to the campus, they were in effect supporting the academic freedom of the university to make its own decisions.

Some chastised faculty members for poor judgment.

“I take a negative view of people who go around blowing up other people. I don’t expect the president [Milliken] to apologize for every bad decision faculty make. If he did, he would probably spend a lot of time apologizing” (Regent Chairman Chuck Hassebrook, Lyons).

“I’m personally disappointed in the judgment of the university’s leadership to invite him to campus. They shouldn’t expect to save me a seat” (Regent Jim McClurg, Lincoln).

The University of Nebraska’s president was also critical of faculty judgment.

“While I believe that the open exchange of ideas and the principles of academic freedom are fundamental to a university, I also believe the decision to have Ayers on a program … represents remarkably poor judgment. The University of Nebraska in no way condones Ayers’ past terrorist acts, which I consider reprehensible” (NU President J. B. Milliken).

The cancelation of the Ayers’ visit to campus was actually made in the small hours of Thursday, Oct. 16 and Friday night, Oct. 17, as Chancellor Harvey Perlman and the dean of the College of Education and Human Science, Marjorie J. Kostelnik, conversed about the deluge of threatening e-mails and phone calls. We don’t know the details of that conversation, but the result was a decision to cancel that preceded some of the rhetoric of Nebraska’s politicians. It was the concern over campus security that led to the cancelation. Cynics suggest there were other reasons, like the threat of some foundation leaders to withdraw all future funding if the Ayers’ visit occurred.

What is at stake here and why should readers take interest in this case? There are two important lessons to be learned that speak to public policy development.

First, it is quite easy for a misguided public to interfere in the work of a public university if that public wishes to do so. The ease of Web-based social networking provided those with access, an agenda and a presence on the Web the maximum of opportunity to mount an influential firestorm of protest. It matters little that Professor Ayers was invited to campus to speak about educational research and that this invitation was made by an group of UNL faculty members who wished to provide an opportunity for themselves and for their students to hear a well-known national expert in educational research. The protest did deny faculty and students with this learning opportunity. Thus, academic freedom was and is threatened by new media communication channels—by bloggers and talk-show hosts possessed of an audience they can motivate to quick action. The university was surprised by this and did not have in place strategies to manage a protest of the volume that occurred.

Second, UNL will almost always have some initiative in play that could draw the fire of ideologues to the right or left. In a new book about academic freedom,³ David Moshman identifies three critical aspects of academic freedom: (1) the freedom of educational institutions from external control, (2) the freedom of faculty from institutional control, (3) the freedom of students to formulate, express and discuss their own views. The cancelation of the Ayers’ invitation violated all three.

Ayers was invited to campus to talk about research and education, not politics. But even if he had been invited to speak about politics, that invitation from a group of faculty should have been protected. The university should be able to resist external control over the content of its curriculum. It is the business of the university to stimulate controversy and embrace a spectrum of ideas and opinions. UNL must be protected when it seeks to do just what it is supposed to do: “to inquire, to study and to evaluate, to gain new maturity and understanding” (Sweeney v. New Hampshire, 1957).

Back in 1974, Ayers and his Weather Underground colleagues published a tract called “Prairie Fire” that outlined the political ideologies motivating their movement. It is no doubt somewhat ironic that a prairie fire of a different sort erupted many years later, this time blown by the winds of the right, not the left. This fire was particularly destructive to a university that seeks to improve its prestige among the ranks of American universities.

In its report to the Faculty Senate, the ad hoc committee investigating this controversy includes an e-mail from a Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University—certainly not known as a bastion of leftist thinking. Joseph Herzog wrote Chancellor Perlman with these thoughts:

Students and community members at Stanford went through a similar crisis last year when Donald Rumsfeld assumed a position at the Hoover Institution. In our case, the commotion came from the Left rather than the Right, but the danger to academic freedom was the same. This will blow over, and the angry segments of our society will redirect their attention to new battles. But if you cave to their demands, it will be seared into the faculty’s consciousness—and into the very soul of your university—for some time.

It remains to be seen how searing the Ayers cancelation will be for the university. If nothing else, those of us within academe are now more aware of the threats that can rain down on us via the heckler’s veto.

Notes

1. Academic Freedom Coalition of Nebraska (AFCON), “Principles,” http:// www.afconebr.org/Principles (accessed Sept. 26, 2009).

2. D. Uerling and J. Stropke, “Academic Freedom in Classroom Settings: The Myths and Realities” (paper presented at Education Law Association 44th Conference, Charleston, S.C., 1998).

3. David Moshman, “Liberty and Learning: Academic Freedom for Teachers and Students” (Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 2009), 3.