Bill Ayers rejected at Canadian border

By Samantha Abernethy in News on Jan 19, 2009 8:05PM

Chicago's resident "unrepentant terrorist"/education reform scholar William Ayers was on his way to give a speech at the Centre for Urban Schooling at University of Toronto's Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, when Canadian border guards refused his entrance.

"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."

There is no comment from Canadian officials on why he was turned away, but the University of Toronto is obviously disappointed and an official from the school is saying it's an issue of academic freedom. Ayers was not permitted to see a lawyer during the five hours he sat at the Toronto Island airport.

In other anti-Ayers news, Ill. state senator Larry Bomke (R-Springfield) wants to ban "admitted terrorists" from teaching at Illinois colleges because he is outraged that Illinois taxpayers are paying his salary.

"If we had a known pedophile, an admitted pedophile who had not been convicted, but an admitted pedophile, any school would be outraged to have that individual teaching kindergarten," Bomke said. "So why would we want an admitted terrorist, an unrepentant terrorist, teaching kids at a university?"

In case you missed it, Ayers penned an Op-Ed for the NY Times in December discussing his invisible role in the 2008 election, his relationship to Barack Obama and his history with the Weather Underground.