A post from guest blogger and Fordham board member Diane Ravitch. Visit her blog, Bridging Differences, at blogs.edweek.org/edweek/Bridging-Differences.
Dear Mike,
It is absurd of Dean Millot to call you a "McCarthyite" for pointing out that Bill Ayers was a terrorist. He was a terrorist. He says so. He doesn't deny it. His actions, which he proudly acknowledges, confirm it.
McCarthy was known for making false charges. Yours were not false. McCarthy was known for saying that someone was guilty if he associated with another person who was clearly guilty. But Ayers was not a terorrist by association with terrorist. He was a terrorist; he planted bombs. Maybe he killed people, maybe he didn't. I don't know, but one thing certain about bombs is that they have the power to kill people.
And it is not true that no one was killed by Weathermen bombs. First of all, I have never heard until Dean Millot wrote it that the Weathermen warned people before they bombed something. That is a new one on me. I lived through that era and can't recall any reports of advance warnings. Second, three Weathermen--including Ayers's girlfriend Diana Oughton--were killed when one of their own bombs exploded as they were building it in a luxurious townhouse in Greenwich Village. By the way, they were packing the bombs with nails, presumably to maim people, not buildings, and to create terror wherever they would be exploded. Also, a researcher was killed by a Weatherman bomb when he was working late in a university lab at the University of Wisconsin.
I don't know much about bomb-making, but I can't see any circumstance in which making bombs and planting them where people can be injured or killed is admirable in a democratic society.