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It was announced over the weekend that administrators at Boston College had vetoed a planned campus appearance by former Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers. The student sponsors of the engagement, who included the BC chapter of the College Democrats, were said to be seeking an off-campus venue to move the speech to.
Now comes word that the event will take place on campus as originally planned, though without Ayers in attendance. Ayers will remain in Chicago, where he lives, and speak via satellite hookup to the audience at the college’s Devlin Hall.
His speech, at 6 o’clock this evening, will be open to BC students, faculty, and staff only.
Postscript: A separate Ayers speech in an educational venue has just been cancelled outright. He had been scheduled to give a talk at Naperville North High School in Illinois next week, but his invitation has been withdrawn. A statement from the school district’s superintendent cited “the level of emotion and outrage” that had greeted news of the speech as the reason for the cancellation.
Update: The BC administration nixed the video link, too. Here’s the chief of the campus police, Robert Morse: “It is canceled, there is no telecast. It’s virtually the same thing, it would be viewed by the community as the same thing.” The speech organizers held a forum on academic freedom instead.
Second Update: BC cancelled Ayers’ speech because of alleged links between the Weather Underground and the notorious 1970 murder of Boston police officer Walter Schroeder. But Schroeder was killed in the course of a bank robbery that was intended to fund the Black Panthers, not the Weather Underground, and there is apparently no evidence of any Weather connection to the crime.
An Australian friend draws our attention to two stories that appeared in the Australian press last week:
The government of Western Australia is considering placing police officers in that state’s high schools, in response to a recent increase in assaults on teachers there…
…And an officer assigned to an “elite unit designed to be the public face of [the] police in high schools” in the state of New South Wales has been arrested on charges that he sexually assaulted a child.
This is just one incident, of course. But it does serve as a reminder that whatever the benefits to teachers and students of bringing police onto school grounds may be, the practice carries real costs as well.
(Thanks to lauredhel of Hoyden About Town for the tip.)
A professor at the University of East London has been suspended from his position for predicting that there may “be real bankers hanging from lampposts” at Wednesday’s protests against the G20 economic summit.
Chris Knight, a professor of anthropology, is an organizer of G20 protests in London this week. He told the BBC that if bankers and government ministers don’t “surrender their power, obviously it’s going to get us even more wound up and things could get nasty.”
Knight’s G20 Meltdown is just one of many groups planning actions in London this week, but Knight’s eagerness to make incendiary statements to the media has made him the most quoted figure in the movement right now.
The UEL’s decision to suspend him has confirmed that position.
The British police have in recent months opened files on more than two hundred students who have been identified as potential “criminals and would-be terrorists” by teachers and other authority figures.
Under a program called the “Channel project,” launched in selected British localities 18 months ago, Muslim students who have expressed “bad attitudes towards ‘the West'” have been reported to the police and subsequently subjected to formal intervention by community members or government officals. Such intervention is said to range from meetings with religious leaders to investigation by social services workers and “intervention directly by the police.”
Students targeted by the Channel project have been as young as thirteen.
Connecticut eighth grader Patrick Abbazia attended classes wrapped in duct tape Friday morning to protest his East Shore Midddle School’s “no touching” policy.
Earlier in the week, East Shore principal Catherine Williams sent home a letter telling parents that “physical contact is prohibited to keep all students safe in the learning environment.” The announcement was prompted by an incident in which a student required medical attention after being kicked in the groin, but the letter specifically banned “hugging” and “horseplay” as well.
Contacted by the Connecticut Post, Williams said she was “only concerned about unsafe behaviors,” but Abbazia claimed teachers had told him that high-fives and pats on the back were out of bounds as well. Superintendent of Schools Harvey Polansky told the paper that principals would use their discretion in interpreting the policy.
Abbazia had a friend tape his torso at the shoulders and elbows while he was waiting for the school bus, and kept the tape on until fourth period, just after noon. School officials called his father in for a conference, telling him that Patrick had misunderstood the policy.
The elder Abbazia told a reporter that he supported his son’s actions. “He is using his freedom as an American citizen to protest,” he said. “Those are the kind of people who get ahead in the world.”
studentactivism.net 
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