What was Barack Obama's true relationship with Bill Ayers, unrependent terrorist?
Given the code of silence among Senator Obama's friends in the media, we may never get a better answer than one in today's Wall Street Journal.
Despite having authored two autobiographies, Barack Obama has never written about his most important executive experience. From 1995 to 1999, he led an education foundation called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), and remained on the board until 2001. The group poured more than $100 million into the hands of community organizers and radical education activists.
The CAC was the brainchild of Bill Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground in the 1960s. Among other feats, Mr. Ayers and his cohorts bombed the Pentagon, and he has never expressed regret for his actions. Barack Obama's first run for the Illinois State Senate was launched at a 1995 gathering in Mr. Ayers's home.
. . . .
The CAC's agenda flowed from Mr. Ayers's educational philosophy, which called for infusing students and their parents with a radical political commitment, and which downplayed achievement tests in favor of activism. . . .
CAC translated Mr. Ayers's radicalism into practice. Instead of funding schools directly, it required schools to affiliate with "external partners," which actually got the money. Proposals from groups focused on math/science achievement were turned down. Instead, CAC disbursed mnoey through various far-left community organizers, such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (or Acorn).
. . . . External partners like the South Shore African Village Collaborative and the Dual Language Exchange focused more on political consciousness, Afrocentricity and bilingualism than traditional education. CAC's in-house evaluators comprehensively studied the effects of its grants on the test scores of Chicago public-school students. They found no evidence of educational improvement.
. . . .
The Obama campaign has cried foul when Bill Ayers comes up, claiming "guilt by association." Yet the issue here isn't guilt by association; it's guilt by participation. As CAC chairman, Mr. Obama was lending moral and financial support to Mr. Ayers and his radical circle. That is a story even if Mr. Ayers had never planted a single bomb 40 years ago.
(Stanley Kurtz, "Obama and Ayers Pushed Radicalism On Schools," The Wall Street Journal, September 23, 2008)
Some weeks ago, I made a run at collecting information about the troubling Obama-Ayers relationship. I've never had time to finish the project, but you can view the work (still) in progress here.
UPDATE: Thanks for the link from Lose an Eye.
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