On Friday, March 27, administrators at Catholic, Jesuit Boston College cancelled a talk on education and civic engagement by notoriously unrepentant domestic terrorist Bill Ayers scheduled to take place on campus this evening. Boston College called off the lecture after the university became the focus of protests conducted by those angered at Ayers’ alleged connection to terrorists responsible for the death of a Boston police officer in 1970.

“Allowing Bill Ayers to speak on a Catholic campus would not only have insulted Catholics, but all men and women of good will,” said Patrick J. Reilly, President of The Cardinal Newman Society. “I pray that Boston College’s admirable move to disinvite Ayers was not only to save face in the local community, but to also preserve and nurture its own Catholic identity.”

Ayers is currently a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is a co-founder of the Weather Underground, which from 1968 to 1972 participated in several acts of domestic terrorism, including setting off bombs at the New York City Police Headquarters and the Pentagon. In 2001 The New York Times reported Ayers to have said, "I don't regret setting bombs... I feel we didn't do enough."

The cancelled talk, entitled “The State of Democracy in America: Education Reform and Civic Engagement,” was being organized by the Boston College chapter of Americans for Informed Democracy, the College Democrats, and the AHANA Leadership Council, among others.

The assistant dean in the office for student development at Boston College met with the student organizers last Friday to inform them the talk had been cancelled due to planned protests of the event. According to the BC Heights, protesters were to include “Boston Police and family members of Boston Police Sergeant Walter Shroeder, who was allegedly killed by members of the Weather Underground in September of 1970.”

A Boston College spokesman said, “The emotional scars of the murder of Boston Police Sergeant Walter Schroeder allegedly at the hands of the Weather Underground, which left nine children fatherless in the shadows of this campus, was an issue that we could not ignore.” He continued, “This remains a particularly divisive and emotionally charged issue here in Boston, one that is exacerbated by Ayers' refusal to demonstrate contrition for his actions of 40 years ago.”

According to the BC Heights, the event-organizing students issued a press release complaining that Boston College is suppressing academic freedom by disinviting Ayers to speak on campus. The students also cited past incidents to bolster their argument that “BC administrators abandon[ed] academic freedom.”