Does calling Bill Ayers a “terrorist” make me a “McCarthyite”?
Dean Millot at Edbizbuzz seems to think so.
I’m tempted to leave it at that, because, as Millot himself implies, this debate is pulling us further and further away from education policy and more and more into the realm of the bizarre. But it’s not every day that I’m likened to one of the most despicable characters of the 20th century so, alas, let me respond.
Millot argues that the term “terrorist” is “hyperbolic” because the Weather Underground did not practice “the deliberate indiscriminate use of force against innocents to strike fear in the general public.” Instead, they “just” blew up government buildings, taking care not to injure anyone.
This strikes me as semantic jujitsu (the Weathermen did use violence to forward their political aims), but I’m certainly happy to concede that what Al Qaeda perpetrates, for example, is much, much, much worse.
Still, were the Weathermen’s actions defensible? Hardly. Sometimes we at the Fordham Institute are considered “bomb throwers”—but only figuratively. We tend to disagree strongly with the teachers unions, but it would be morally reprehensible for us to call on school reformers to bomb their headquarters, even in the middle of the night when no one could be hurt. That’s not how democracies are supposed to work.
Furthermore, Millot argues that Ayers was a “fugitive from justice,” but since all charges were dropped because of “prosecutorial misconduct,” he is presumed to be “innocent until proven guilty.”
Yet in this article, Ayers is quoted as saying, “Guilty as hell. Free as a bird. Isn’t America a great country?”
So yes, I think the American Educational Research Association might want to think twice before allowing a man who partook in political violence and refuses to apologize for it to join its leadership team. (As I explained on the Education Gadfly Show last week, I’m not arguing that the AERA should strip his membership because of his wacky educational views; if that were the standard, the group would have no officers.) In fact, if a young Bill Ayers walked into an education school wanting to be a teacher, I don’t think he would even qualify for that, under the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education’s “dispositions” standard, which all ed schools are supposed to apply to teacher candidates:
Professional attitudes, values, and beliefs demonstrated through both verbal and non-verbal behaviors as educators interact with students, families, colleagues, and communities. These positive behaviors support student learning and development.
Is using violence to promote your political beliefs a “value” that the education community wants to embrace? Is blowing up government buildings a “positive behavior”?
So yes, I think it’s less than ideal that our education system is willing to embrace Bill Ayers regardless of his past activities, for which he refuses to apologize. (And I’m hardly alone.)
And that, supposedly, makes me a McCarthyite. Millot writes:
Labeling someone who has never been found guilty of a violent crime—let alone terrorism, a “terrorist” is irresponsible. If it becomes socially acceptable for people in positions of responsibility who have the respect of a larger following to make such statements, I fear a return to the chilled atmosphere of policy discourse in the 1950’s called McCarthyism. “If you don’t agree with me, you must be a Communist—or in this case a terrorist (and I, by implication, must be a patriot).” This is truly a serious threat to a free society.
I didn’t call Bill Ayers a terrorist because I disagree with him, but because he blew stuff up to forward his political views. But fine, call him whatever you want. And while you’re at it, have the guts to say that an unrepentant bomber (is that better, Millot?) shouldn’t be welcomed with open arms by the education field.
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May 19th, 2008 at 11:20 am
Actually, that is better, because it’s accurate.
On the McCarthyist issue, I was torn between calling Mike McCarthyist outright and pointing out that this is the direction in which this rhetoric takes us. The former sentiment was refelected in my “have you no shame” line. The latter in the paragraph Mike quoted above. My intent was to steer a fine line between the two. I tried not to call him a McCarthyite, but to emphasize the direction is rhetoric could take us.
Senator McCarthy took people with left-leaning views or leftist relationships in their youths and called them Communists. Mike labeled someone a terrorist who, in his youth, planted bombs in government offices and phoned in so the buildings could be evacuated and no one harmed - and in fact no one but Weathermen were harmed. There are those who call Secretary Rumsfeld a war criminal for his role in the authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques. All such statements are irresponsible because they are inaccurate and will incite others.
My “fear (of) a return to the chilled atmosphere of policy discourse in the 1950’s called McCarthyism” is reflected in the tendency of many who use the web to move from Ayers’ leftist views on k-12 education, to his leftist political philosophy, to his days as a Weatherman, to the terrorist label - and then to equate the last with the first. Readers need only Google “Bill Ayers Education AERA” to see how many partisans to the right of center in the education wars subscribe to that train of logic http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&q=Bill+Ayers+Education+AERA
It’s perfectly relevant and reasonable to argue against Ayers political philosophy as the basis of any public education policy. Throwing in “by the way, the guy’s a terrorist” is an appeal to readers’ emotions rather than rational thinking on the merits of the case. I accept that Mike’s motivation was based only on what Ayers admits to have done and his lack of repentance for it. But intentional or otherwise, it was entirely forseeable that readers would infer a nexus between terrorism and Bill Ayers’ educational ideas.
Mike is the number two in a respectable think tank. Things he says are made respectable among many of those who follow Fordham; they are picked up by others, used and even twisted. People in positions like Mike’s need to think about the consequences of what they say. What he said has had consequences. And Mike bears some responsibility for helping the debate on education policy to sink a bit more.
May 19th, 2008 at 11:55 am
P.S. regarding: “And while you’re at it, have the guts to say that an unrepentant bomber (is that better, Millot?) shouldn’t be welcomed with open arms by the education field.”
I never joined AERA - for two reasons. First, I felt it had low standards of research as reflected by it’s annual meeting agendas. Second, it struck me as left of center, and so not entirely conducive to my own research interests, which follow from a value judgment about the relative advantages of markets over central planning.
I didn’t do a detailed study of the group’s politics, but I did act consistent with my impressions. I believe the Constitution’s freedom of assembly, and that’s a group I chose not to assemble with. The fact that someone with roots in the radical left of the 1970s was elected an officer of AERA was hardly a great surprise to me.
Had I been an AERA member, as an adherent of left, center, or right politics, and had the Weatherman intended to kill innocent people, but through poor planning or otherwise managed to kill no one, I could not vote for Bill Ayers. Nor could I have voted for him if the Weatherman had accidentally killed people and Ayers remained unrepentant for his actions. Had I somehow decided to join despite with my pro-market views, I would not have voted for Ayers under any circumstances because of his leftist educational philosophy. My guess is I would have abstained from many votes - which is why I didn’t join in the first place.