Former Domestic Terrorist to Join Faculty at University of Illinois
Can anyone name a professional field other than academia that welcomes so many people who were involved in domestic terrorism?
Michael Cipriano of the College Fix reported.
University of Illinois OKs hiring of former radical with domestic terrorist group
Leaders of the University of Illinois on Thursday paved the way for the school to rehire convicted radical James Kilgore, a controversial scholar whose criminal past has thrust the university into the spotlight once again.
This is the same university that employed former terrorist Bill Ayers as a professor, and more recently rejected a teaching position for Steven Salaita after he posted a series of extreme anti-Israel tweets during the summer.
Kilgore, who was involved in illegal activities with the leftist Symbionese Liberation Army in the 1970s, has been an adjunct professor of global studies and urban planning at the Urbana-Champaign campus for the last four years. But the university did not renew his contract after board members raised questions about his employment once his criminal activities became public earlier this year.
The Symbionese Liberation Army is famous for kidnapping Patricia Hearst in 1974. Its members also built bombs and killed the first black Oakland, Calif., superintendent of schools with bullets laced with cyanide, allegedly because he wanted students to show I.D. on campus.
As for Kilgore, he participated in a 1975 armed bank robbery during which a 42-year-old mother, Myrna Opsahl, was shot and killed. Kilgore was not the shooter, but served five years in prison for his involvement during the 2000s. Prior to his imprisonment, he was living in South Africa under a false name.
Despite all this – including board Chairman Christopher Kennedy referring to Kilgore as a “domestic terrorist,” the board allowed the university to rehire Kilgore at its discretion. Kilgore, 66, praised the decision in a comment Thursday to The Chicago Tribune.
“The university in making this decision, if I am rehired, is recognizing that people can change and that people should be given second chances and that when they prove themselves, they shouldn’t simply be dismissed from their position on the basis of their criminal background or their past,” he said.
University of Illinois OKs hiring of former radical with domestic terrorist group (The College Fix)
Comments
I am disgusted at the actions of my Alma mater. I am not surprised mind you. The U of I is unfortunately no different than the vast majority of universities. It is immoral and corrupt. The education you could get there is probably 1/10th as good as I got many years ago.
I don’t see the problem with this. Unlike Ayers, he says he’s a reformed character, that he acknolwedges and regrets his past crimes, for which he has paid the price. Is there any reason to doubt him? Ayers is different because he says that he regrets nothing, and if the circumstances were the same today he would do it again.
I agree. People deserve a second chance. Especially since he served many years in jail as punishment.
Unless he uses the classroom to promote hate and terrorism or radical causes (like many of his colleagues) he should be allowed to stay.
Ayers got away with murder, brags about it, taught radical theories while a professor. Much different.