Students at Marquette University reacted with surprise and dismay when they were informed that a textbook used in a freshman education course was written by William Ayers, former domestic terrorist and founding member of the Weather Underground.
Charlie Kirk, Executive Director of Turning Point USA, asked Marquette students what they thought about the fact that Ayers, a communist revolutionary, had authored the textbook, and recorded their reactions in a video uploaded to YouTube Monday morning.
“You’d think they’d use somebody a little more trustworthy,” one girl noted. Another said she felt “a little violated.”
Marquette lists Ayers book “To Teach The Journey, In Comics” as required reading for the course EDUC 1210: Introduction to Schooling in a Diverse Society.
The course examines “the impacts of race, ethnicity, class and gender,” as well as the “demands, conditions, and rewards of the teaching profession.”
Kirk writes, in a column published to Townhall earlier this year, that Ayers’ text “argues ‘white privilege’ is a bias that is prevalent throughout our schools and in our society. The book openly promotes increased social justice programs and big government initiatives.”
Those students might be shocked to know that Ayers taught at the University of Illinois for over 20 years – a tenured “Distinguished Professor” of Education and a respected member of liberal academia.
He was denied emeritus faculty status when he retired in 2010, after trustees Chairman Christopher Kennedy noted Ayers dedicated a book to, among others, the man who killed Kennedy’s father, Robert F. Kennedy.
But some political observers have wondered how the self avowed “small c” communist revolutionary got his job at the university in the first place.