William Ayers turned back at Canadian border TheStar.com - Canada - William
Ayers turned back at Canadian border
January 19, 2009
Debra Black
Staff Reporter
An American education professor, one of the founders of a radical 1960s
group known as the Weather Underground, which was responsible for a number
of bombings in the United States in the early 1970s, was turned back at the
Canadian border last night.
Dr. William Ayers, a professor of education at the University of
Illinois-Chicago and a leader in educational reform, was scheduled to speak
at the Centre for Urban Schooling at University of Toronto's Ontario
Institute for Studies in Education. But that appearance has now been
temporarily cancelled.
"I don't know why I was turned back," Ayers said in an interview this
morning from Chicago. "I got off the plane like everyone else and I was
asked to come over to the other side. The border guards reviewed some stuff
and said I wasn't going to be allowed into Canada. To me it seems quite
bureaucratic and not at all interesting ... If it were me I would have let
me in. I couldn't possibly be a threat to Canada."
Ayers made headlines this summer after Republican vice-presidential
candidate Sarah Palin suggested that then-Democratic presidential candidate
Barack Obama hung around with domestic terrorists like Ayers. The professor
had hosted a meet-the-candidate event at his home for Obama in 1995, during
his run for the state Senate. They also worked together on Chicago school
reform and served on a charity board together.
Ayers first rose to notoriety in the early 1970s with the Weather
Underground. The group claimed responsibility for bombings at the U.S.
Capitol, a Pentagon restroom and New York City police headquarters. In 1970,
a townhouse in New York the group was using to build a bomb blew up.
Nowadays, Ayers is known more for his work in educational reform. He has
written or edited more than a dozen books - including his 2001 memoir
Fugitive Days - and travels around the world giving lectures on education.
Jeffrey Kugler, executive director of the Centre for Urban Schooling, is
deeply disappointed in the turn of events. For him it's a question of
academic freedom. "It's kind of ironic the day before Barack Obama is going
to become president this is what the Canadian border security has done,"
said Kugler. "It seems ridiculous that one university can't have a professor
from another university to come and give a lecture on an important
educational topic."
Kugler waited for five hours at the Toronto Island airport for Ayers. He was
with a lawyer, but the border guard refused to allow Ayers to see the
lawyer.
"The entire four or five hours he was not allowed to have representation at
all. To me this is an issue of academic freedom. He could not be a threat to
anyone ever. Anyone who knows anything about this man - he's a distinguished
scholar at the University of Illinois and he has been involved in education
reform over the past 15 years. To imagine in any way he was a threat to
Canada is really absurd."
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