William Ayers, a former federal fugitive and confidant of then-candidate Barack H. Obama, delivered a lecture last night at Montclair State University, and gave every indication that he now leans far to Obama's left.
Ayers, married to fellow Weather Underground member Bernardine Dohrn, began his speech at 8:40, in front of an audience of about seventy or eighty. The current iteration of Ayers' old organization, Students for a Democratic Society, sponsored the event.
The speech
The announced title was "Education and the New Activism." But in fact, Ayers spent the entire speech lecturing on education. He called for a new model of education, designed to encourage "free thought," and argued at length for an ultra-egalitarian vision. He contended that the two distinctives of education in a democratic society were two articles of faith:
All human beings are of incalculable value.
And:
The fullest development of all is a condition for the full development of each. Conversely, the full development of each is a condition for the full development of all.
As a more specific declaration, he decried any attempt to "privatize" education. He specifically decried any sort of voucher system, or anything that forces people to compete against one another while getting, or delivering, an education. His attitude toward private schools was ambivalent at best.
Ayers also had some pointed criticisms of the Obama administration, which he actually said was conservative as regards education. He frequently named Obama, his predecessor George W. Bush, and their two respective Secretaries of Education in the same sentence or almost the same breath. Nor did Ayers limit his criticisms to Obama's education policy; several times he spoke, in passing but with clear disapproval, of the current military intervention (several attendees said "war" or even "illegal war") in Libya. (He avowed that he despised the military on general principle and never stated his specific grounds for his disapproval of the Libyan campaign.)
Ayers as ghostwriter for Obama
The most astounding thing that Ayers said came toward the end of the question-and-answer session. A local Tea Party member asked Ayers to comment on the quality of Obama's autobiography, Dreams of my Father. Ayers said,
I think [Dreams] was a very good book, but [Obama's] second book is a prize example of political hackery. And by the way, I wrote that first book.
The participant asked,
You wrote that?
Ayers replied:
You help me prove that, and I'll split the royalties with you.
[This dialog does not appear in the video playlist at left. But this Examiner witnessed the exchange and is attempting to obtain confirmatory footage that another participant shot.]
The attendees
About eighty people attended the event. Forty of these were on an undefined SDS "guest list" or else were MSU students or faculty. But the rest were Tea Party activists who had driven in from across the State, and as far south as Ocean County, after two days of special e-mail notices urging them to attend. One participant came dressed in an American Revolutionary style costume and carrying a hand-lettered sign reading:
AMERICANS FOR A FEDERAL REPUBLIC
But the rest came in casual clothes. Many of them carried cameras and camcorders.
Security at the event was unusually tight, a thing that Ayers noticed and commented upon almost apologetically. The Montclair Police sent two uniformed sergeants, several patrolmen wearing flak vests, and even a K-9 team. This Examiner was present between the hours of 7:00 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. and witnessed no arrests.
The SDS had sent out flyers, a copy of which this Examiner obtained, warning people to expect a Tea Party contingent to attempt to "censor and disrupt" the meeting. In fact, while the Tea Party contingent asked some (but by no means all) of the most skeptical questions, they attempted no organized disruption. When some of their number received Ayers' answers with disbelief and tried to shout him down, others said, "Let him speak" and called for order.
One Tea Party participant commented to this Examiner that the SDS and student contingent had all taken seats to the left of the center aisle, while the Tea Party contingent sat to the right of the center aisle, in coincidental imitation of the seating arrangement between the Republican and Democratic caucuses in the United States Senate and House of Representatives (or the New Jersey Senate and General Assembly).
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