Dakota Beacon

Things take time. They do not happen overnight. I speak of the gradual decay within higher education. Rankness in academia began long ago and progresses year by year.

Consider the following tiny, but typical, group of like-minded professors. Generation X, Millennials, and continuing through the NextGen generation might be too young and naive to perceive what Baby Boomers understand intuitively. Consequently, they would have little basis for recognizing tenured radical professors for who they really are. Instead, they probably view the contemporary university environment as “normal” and their professors as speaking “truth.”

When scanning this representative list, ask the question, “How many other like-minded instructors across the US were acquired by universities through the usual majority vote of the teaching departments for which they were hired or promoted?"

  --Tom Hayden (1939-2016). Political activist, author, and politician. As a leader of the leftist Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), he authored the Port Huron Statement, led protests at the 1968 Democrat National Convention, and stood trial in the resulting "Chicago Seven" case. He and others were convicted of crossing state lines to incite a riot, but the charges were reversed on appeal. Hayden made well-publicized visits to North Vietnam during America's involvement in the Vietnam War. As late as 2006 he was an adjunct lecturer as well as teacher in politics at the Urban and Environmental Policy Institute at Occidental College, Los Angeles. Hayden had no academic training beyond a BA from the University of Michigan that would qualify him for this post.

  --Angela Davis (1944-). Distinguished Professor Emerita in the History of Consciousness and Feminist Studies Departments at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She was an active member of the Communist Party until 1991 and a recipient of the Lenin “Peace Prize.” A former Black Panther, she led a movement to free all minority criminals saying they were political prisoners of a racist United States. Davis was a graduate student studying under Herbert Marcuse at the University of California, San Diego. She never completed her doctoral thesis.

  --Bernardine Dohrn (1942-). Leader of the Weather Underground in 1969 (first US terrorist cult). Dohrn is now retired. She was on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list for years. After coming out of hiding in 1980, Dohrn pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of aggravated battery and bail jumping.

Dohrn graduated from the University of Chicago Law School in 1967. From 1991 to 2013, Dohrn was a Clinical Associate Professor of Law at the Children and Family Justice Center at Northwestern University School of Law. She married Bill Ayers, a co-founder of the Weather Underground. How she gained the prestigious position of professor of law dealing with children and families should be of concern.

--Bill Ayers (1944-). Retired professor of elementary education. He is the former head of the Weather Underground terrorist group founded by him in 1969. The Weather Underground referred to themselves as a "communist revolutionary group". They conducted bombings against public buildings during the 1960s and 1970s. There he met Diana Oughton, who would be his girlfriend until she and three others were killed in 1970 when a bomb they were building blew up.

Ayers married Bernardine Dohrn (above). An FBI informant in 1969 said that "Ayers, along with Dohrn, probably had the most authority within the Weatherman." The federal government brought charges against Ayers for his part in the bombings of New York City Police Department headquarters in 1970, the United States Capitol building in 1971, and the Pentagon in 1972. On technicalities charges were dropped.

After Ayers left the Underground he earned an Masters in Education (M.Ed.) from Bank Street College in Early Childhood Education (1983), an M.Ed. from Teachers College, Columbia University in Early Childhood Education (1987) and an Ed.D. from Teachers College, Columbia University in Curriculum and Instruction (1987).

Ayers retired at the University of Illinois at Chicago, College of Education. He holds the titles of Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar. His main focus was on social justice, “fixing” education in urban areas, children who are in trouble with the law, and related issues.

The discussion above presents a smidgen of leftist activity within academia over the past decades. More faculty names from a multitude of universities grow the list, names like Kathy Boudin (1943-2022), Susan Rosenberg (1955-), Laura Whitehorn (1945-), Noam Chomsky (1928-), Paul Ehrlich (1932-), Howard Zinn (1922-2010), Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979), and dozens more. Not all these leftist professors were radicals although they were sympathetic to extremist causes. What responsibility do universities bear in selecting, hiring, and promoting known radicals realizing the impact these people will have on young minds? We see today how far the rot has spread.

Two worthy sources for further reading include “Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Corrupted Higher Education” (1990) by Roger Kimball and “The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America” (2006) by David Horowitz

Quoting the eloquent seminary adjunct faculty member and leftist anti-American Black pastor Jeremiah Wright, “America’s chickens have come home to roost… Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred.” Ahem!

Dennis M. Patrick can be contacted at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).