The University of Illinois' board of trustees has voted against granting William Ayers emeritus status over a book dedication to Robert F. Kennedy's killer. The late presidential candidate's son Christopher Kennedy is chair of the college's trustees. All nine voting trustees either opposed granting Ayers, a recently retired University of Illinois-Chicago professor, the honorary status or abstained from the vote. Trustees voted after a speech by Kennedy in which he noted the 1974 book Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-Imperialism, by Ayers and other members of the anti-war group the Weather Underground, of which Ayers is a co-founder. The book includes a dedication to a lengthy list of revolutionary figures, musicians and others, including Sirhan Sirhan, who assassinated Robert Kennedy in 1968 after the New York senator declared victory in the California Democratic presidential primary. The past is never really the past until someone brings it into the present. Who better than the son of the man assassinated to remind people of Ayers' questionable decision in 1974 when making a decision about Ayers in 2010?
Read more at MSNBC.com.