Anti-war activist William Ayers, who attracted national attention during the presidential campaign for his past connections to President-elect Barack Obama, highlighted the need for conversation between people of different beliefs in a speech at the Law Center last night.
Ayers, who is currently a professor at the University of Illinois, was invited by the National Lawyers Guild at Georgetown. During his speech, Ayers did not mention his career with the Weather Underground, a radical organization responsible for numerous acts of domestic terrorism, nor did he mention the controversial accusations leveled against him in the recent presidential campaign. Ayers dismissed accusations that he and Obama were closely associated, but expressed the widely felt optimism surrounding the new administration.
“You should have been in Grant Park [on Nov. 4],” he said. “This was the first large crowd I’ve been in that was all love, all unity, all hope – and it was exciting.”
Ayers also emphasized his opposition to the death penalty and gay marriage bans, flaws he perceives in the judicial process.
Ayers specifically condemned the atmosphere at the execution of serial killer John Gacy in 1994 and said that the death penalty evokes disturbing emotions and occasionally punishes the innocent.
“Leading up to the execution, Chicago – and the whole state worked itself into a frenzy of glee,” said Ayers. “There was something about it that was sickening to me.”
Ayers noted that Illinois has reformed its investigative procedures by taping interrogations, but cautioned that circumstantial evidence still results in unfair convictions.
The speech was followed by a question-and-answer session, during which a student asked whether Ayers had ever planned to kill soldiers, referring to rumors that Ayers once targeted an Officer’s Club dance in Fort Dix, N.J., when he led the Weather Underground. According to the New York Times, Ayers wrote in his book that he “participated in the bombings of New York City Police Headquarters in 1970, of the Capitol building in 1971 and the Pentagon in 1972”.
Although Ayers released this information in his book “Fugitive Days”, last night he flatly denied the reports.
“Not only did I never kill or injure another person, but the Weather Underground – in the six years it existed – never killed or injured another person,” he said. “If you ingest way too much Fox News, you’re going to be confused about a lot of things.”
Ayers cautioned against censorship when a student criticized his presence at the Law Center.
“You cannot move forward as a society until you enter into a dialogue with people you do not agree with all the time,” he said. “You have to be willing to accept that there are a range of opinions across the board.”
Ayers also challenged claims that he is a terrorist, criticizing the Vietnam War and the current war in Iraq as terrorist acts.
“Let’s not forget that governments also carry out acts of terror,” he said. “I always think it’s interesting when my name is raised in this notorious context, it is always the question of, `why did you do that tactic at that time?’ and yet when [Henry] Kissinger speaks, no one asks him about the three million deaths [in Vietnam]. How does he account for that?”
Some students and alumni in attendance questioned the Law Center’s invitation to Ayers, arguing that the Law Center should not condone violent radicalism.
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