Posted Jan 15th 2011 at 3:02 am
This is the most recent installment of exclusive interviews with Dr. Paul Kengor on his book revealing how communists, from Moscow to New York to Chicago, have long manipulated America’s liberals/progressives. Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century is based on an unprecedented volume of declassified materials from Soviet archives, FBI files, and more. Larry Schweikart, author of A Patriot’s History of the United States, calls Dupes “a great contribution.” Fred Barnes calls it “an incredibly important book.” Big Peace’s own Peter Schweizer calls it the “21st century equivalent” to Whittaker Chambers’ classic Witness.
Big Peace: Professor Kengor, the Arizona tragedy has dominated the headlines, along with all kinds of nasty accusations. A lot of the accusations started with the Tucson sheriff who, with no evidence, divided America along party lines with his “speculation” about the shooter’s motives.
Kengor: The sheriff is Clarence Dupnik. An emailer named Woody, who is reading Dupes, wrote me with this clever suggestion: “You should redo the cover of this book, put this guy’s picture on it, and give those who were duped by communists the nickname—Dupniks. It kinda has a Russian sound to it. A person who was misled by liberal propaganda could be said to have been Dupniked.”
I tip my hat to Woody. That’s one of the more novel contemporary applications I’ve heard of “dupe.” This sheriff prompted many dupes who swallowed his “speculation” hook, line, and sinker.
This is a tragedy, and nothing to deal with lightly. That’s why the sheriff’s careless comments are so disturbing. The anger level is already lethal.
Big Peace: World Net Daily published an article regarding the Arizona shooter and the “Small Schools” initiative funded by Bill Ayers and Barack Obama in Chicago. The article asked if Ayers had “provided [the] Arizona shooter’s curriculum?” You wanted to clarify some things here.
Kengor: Yes, the article was first brought to my attention by another emailer who read Dupes, knowing that I discuss this initiative in the book. The article reported that Jared Loughner attended a high school that is “part of a network in which teachers are trained and provided resources by a liberal group founded by Weatherman terrorist Bill Ayers and funded by President Obama.” The group is “Small Schools Workshop.” As the article noted, “Obama provided the group with funds in the 1990s when he worked at an education reform group alongside Ayers.”
The article gives a bunch more details. It adds that the Small School Workshop “originally was associated with the University of Illinois in Chicago,” where Ayers taught. More than that, the group was “headquartered for a time inside the university’s department of education building.” WND reported that, “In 1995, with Obama as its chairman, the newly formed Chicago Annenberg Challenge, or CAC, a school reform organization, gave the Workshop a grant of $175,000. The CAC provided another $482,662 to the Workshop over the next few years.”
Obama, Ayers and Klonsky.
Big Peace: You were contacted about this because in Dupes you discuss this “Small Schools” initiative at length.
Kengor: I devote a number of pages and footnotes to the subject. And before addressing the facts on funding, Obama, and Ayers—significant in and of themselves—let me say categorically that there’s absolutely nothing in “Small Schools” that would compel anyone to murder. The shooter was a sick, deranged young man. Obviously, if “Small Schools” created shooting sprees by madmen, then this guy would be merely the latest among millions.
Big Peace: Share the larger concern over “Small Schools,” and how this relates to the bigger picture regarding the prolonged “progressive” takeover of education. Also, we need to know that it was in fact a joint Ayers-Obama project, right?
Kengor: That’s correct. And therein, on its own merits, this is worth knowing about. At one level, it’s a further reflection of our current president’s genuine, meaningful relationship with Bill Ayers. That relationship should not be shrugged off. Moreover, it’s a sign of the continual progressive drift in our nation’s educational system, which has been ongoing for over a century. You can trace the roots to Professor John Dewey and Columbia Teachers College, which, not coincidentally, is where Bill Ayers got his Ph.D., and he got it after he had been wanted by the FBI, along with his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, who likewise is now in higher education.
Big Peace: Let’s re-emphasize that point: Columbia University offered admission and gave a doctorate to Bill Ayers not before he created the Weather Underground, but after.
Kengor: Precisely. Ayers had been a fugitive in the 1970s, when he wrote, among other communist manifestos, Prairie Fire. After all that, Columbia rolled out the red carpet. Ayers got his Ph.D. there in 1987. From there, he was hired as tenured faculty at the University of Illinois-Chicago, where, in Dewey’s footsteps, he trained America’s public-school teachers. You can’t make this up.
Big Peace: And it was at the University of Illinois-Chicago that he met Obama and started the “Small Schools” initiative?
Kengor: Yes. I should add that also involved in “Small Schools” was Michael Klonsky, who we discussed in earlier “Big Dupes” (click here and here and here). Klonsky, a devout Maoist, was another leader in Students for a Democratic Society who suddenly reemerged as a “progressive” for Obama. After pilgrimage to Red China, Klonsky came home to likewise get a PhD in education. All the erstwhile ‘60s comrades looked to the American classroom as the best platform for Marxist dogma. Klonsky landed in Chicago, where he worked closely with Ayers—same university, same department, the University of Illinois-Chicago’s College of Education. Klonsky and Ayers have been described as joint “pioneers in small school development.”
Significantly, Klonsky and Ayers have been especially successful packaging their wares under the rubric of “social justice,” a handy cliché they use as a substitute for their socialism, even authoring books on the subject—published, naturally, through Columbia Teachers College. I provide the full citations in Dupes. Predictably, the language has worked brilliantly in enlisting gullible left-leaning Christians, especially at liberal Catholic and Protestant colleges.
Big Peace: You note that Klonsky and Ayers were big fans of Arne Duncan.
Kengor: They raved about Arne Duncan, longtime head of Chicago public schools. Today, Arne Duncan is President Obama’s secretary of education.
Don’t tell me this stuff doesn’t matter.
Big Peace: It matters. So, it was this Small Schools initiative that received a grant from the foundation of Bill Ayers and Barack Obama?
Kengor: These “Small Schools” projects were funded by almost $2 million in grants, underwritten by the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), with Barack Obama as chairman of the board, and by the Joyce Foundation and Woods Fund, where Obama also served. Ayers was on the CAC and Woods boards.
Big Peace: Returning to “Progressives for Obama” and also progressive education, all of these folks are Obama supporters and in education.
Kengor: Yes. And as for Ayers’ and Klonsky’s work, not only did Obama approve huge grants, but even hosted a “social justice” blog for Klonsky at the official Obama ’08 campaign website.
It’s all linked: “social justice,” progressivism, communist dupery, “Small Schools,” Dewey, Ayers, Klonsky, progressive politics and education. Why do you think they demonize the likes of Glenn Beck when he merely notices?
The progressive long march hasn’t stopped. What they’ve lost at the ballot box, they’ve made up for in education, where their success has been breathtaking.
The shocker in 2008 was that they won at the ballot box as well, as our nation’s exalted “moderates” and “independents” obliviously elected Barack Obama their progressive-in-chief, under the banner of “change”—talk about dupes. For Obama, “change” was “progress”—or progressivism.
I’ll never trust the American voter ever again.
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