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From the Opinion Journal of the Wall Street Journal:

Meet the Newest Member of the Faculty
Clinton pardons a terrorist, and now she's teaching in Clinton, N.Y.

BY ROGER KIMBALL
Friday, December 3, 2004 12:01 a.m.

At Hamilton College--an elite liberal arts institution in Clinton,
N.Y.--you can take courses in Roman civilization, Shakespeare and the
"Emergence of Modern Western Europe, 1500-1815." All well and good. You
can also take something called "Resistance Memoirs: Writing, Identity
and Change." That last course--a month-long, half-credit seminar--is
scheduled to begin next month. Its teacher is Susan Rosenberg, formerly
of the Weather Underground.

Remember the Weather Underground? Its self-described revolutionaries,
mostly middle-class, dedicated themselves to supporting radical black
causes and tearing apart American society in the 1970s and early 1980s.
In 1970, they blew up a townhouse when a bomb detonated prematurely and
killed a few of their troops. Kathy Boudin, Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn
and other high-profile members of the group spent the next decade or so
running from the police and, some of them, continuing to pursue careers
in criminal violence.

Ms. Rosenberg did her part. In October 1981, in an operation code-named
"The Big Dance," several black radicals and members of the Weather
Underground held up a Brinks armored car in Nanuet, N.Y. In the course
of that act of domestic terrorism, they murdered Peter Paige, a Brinks
guard, and police officers Edward O'Grady and Waverly Brown, the only
black officer on the Nyack, N.Y., force. Ms. Rosenberg, then still at
large, was indicted as an accessory.

According to John Castellucci's "The Big Dance," an account of the
Brinks robbery, Ms. Rosenberg's role in the Brinks job was performing
surveillance, driving a getaway car and transmitting orders. "Any white
who had taken part in the robbery," Mr. Castellucci writes, "would have
received orders from her."

Mr. Castellucci reports that the Brinks robbery was only one of several
violent episodes that Ms. Rosenberg was involved with in the late 1970s
and early 1980s. She was finally apprehended in November 1984 while
unloading a cache of weapons--including 740 pounds of explosives--at a
storage facility in Cherry Hill, N.J.

As it happens, a key witness in the Brinks case refused to testify as
the trial approached. Prosecutors dropped their earlier charges against
Ms. Rosenberg, figuring that she could serve a long prison term anyway
for weapons possession. At the time, she was quoted in the New York
Times saying: "We're caught, but we're not defeated. Long live the armed
struggle!" When she was indeed sentenced to 58 years, she announced that
"we were busted because we vacillated on our politics. . . . Our own
principles were not strong enough to fight to win." According to Mr.
Castellucci, one of the officers who apprehended her interpreted this
statement to mean that "she regretted not shooting them." Given the
context, Mr. Castellucci notes, "he was probably right."

So why isn't Susan Rosenberg still in prison? Because in January 2001,
Bill Clinton commuted her sentence. The outcry at the time was loud and
furious. And no wonder. Just as important: Why is Hamilton College
opening its doors to her?

Ms. Rosenberg is coming to Hamilton under the auspices of the Kirkland
Project for the Study of Gender, Society, and Culture, a left-wing
enclave run by Nancy Rabinowitz, a professor of comparative literature
(and, incidentally, the daughter-in-law of Victor Rabinowitz, of the
radical law firm Rabinowitz, Boudin, et al., which defended, among
others, Kathy Boudin). It was Ms. Rabinowitz who invited Ms. Rosenberg.
And it was she who rechristened an "artist/scholar-in-residence program"
as an "artist/activist-in-residence program." According to Ms.
Rabinowitz, Ms. Rosenberg is "an exemplar of rehabilitation" whose
"story is about how you can make something productive out of something
that was really awful."

It is by no means clear that Susan Rosenberg is "an exemplar of
rehabilitation." In an interview on Pacifica radio soon after she was
released, she tentatively renounced individual violence. But nowhere in
her evasive circumlocutions did she renounce collective violence, what
she described in 1993 as "the necessity for armed self-defense" in the
pursuit of "revolutionary anti-imperialist resistance." She still denies
having taken part in the Brinks job and likes to call herself "a former
U.S. political prisoner."

And what is Ms. Rosenberg going to teach students? In a statement,
Hamilton administrators described her as "an award-winning writer, an
activist and a teacher who offers a unique perspective as a writer." In
fact, her "writings" consist of political doggerel and radical
exhortation, while her awards are PEN commendations for prison writing.
Here is a representative passage from her poem "To Mumia Abu-Jamal," the
convicted cop killer now on death row:

    Their message so clear
    Do not be Black
    Do not be radical
    Do not be a political prisoner
    There is still time to
    SHAKE IT LOOSE."

As for offering a unique perspective--well, so might Osama bin Laden.
Robert Paquette, a professor of history at Hamilton, was quoted by the
Post Standard of Syracuse, N.Y., saying: "If you're going to bring Susan
Rosenberg here . . . why not bring in David Duke on race or O.J. Simpson
on the sociology of sports?" Mr. Paquette is not the only unhappy
faculty member. Steven Goldberg, a professor of art history, noted that
"there are nine children today who will never see their father . . .
three women who are widowed" because of the crimes with which Ms.
Rosenberg is associated.

Edward Moore, the Saratoga Springs, N.Y., chief of police, is the father
of a Hamilton student. He recently e-mailed Joan Hinde Stewart,
Hamilton's president, to express his distress that "a convicted
terrorist having a violent criminal background is welcome at Hamilton
College."

Under fire, Hamilton administrators have wrapped themselves in the
mantle of free speech. "As long as public safety and the rights of
others are not compromised," they stated, "the college does not normally
put limits on which voices can be heard and which cannot."

Well, that depends. In 2002, it is true, when Annie Sprinkle, a
pornography star and performance artist, came to Hamilton to regale
students and members of the local community about the proper use of
sexual appliances, Hamilton administrators stood high on the pedestal of
free speech. But when Brendan McCormick, a Hamilton alumnus and official
class representative, sought to alert his classmates to the Rosenberg
appointment, the college's development office refused to send out a
letter from him, as it normally would. "I pointed out the hypocrisy of
sending out a press release claiming that you do not censor speech and
then turning around and doing just that," Mr. McCormick later said.

Ah yes: Free speech for me, but not for thee. Hamilton College is set to
kick off an ambitious capital campaign today in New York. Mr. McCormick
suggests that alumni consider withholding contributions. Call it the
right kind of resistance.

Mr. Kimball is the author of "The Rape of the Masters" (Encounter).

Copyright © 2004 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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