If you were watching the Democratic Debate hosted by ABC, you may have noticed a reference to a storied part of Michigan history: the Weather Underground. The Weather Underground traces it’s roots back to the University of Michigan’s rich history of student activism in the 1960s, proving too radical for even the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). The Weathermen were strong proponents of militancy over non-violence, participating in numerous “urban guerrilla” tactics that they hoped would start a revolution.

One of these weathermen was current University of Illinois - Chicago Professor of Education Bill Ayers (above), of whom George Stephanopoulos made a loose connection to Barack Obama in the debate. Bill Ayers would later be purged from the group, and later returned to academia to complete his doctorate and work on education theory and policy. The Weather Underground too dissolved in the 1970s in part due to internal struggles over their role in racial issues and factions desiring a movement away from violence. The remnants of the organization survive today in the Prairie Fire Organizing Committee, a name taken from a book published by the Weather Underground: Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-Imperialism.

The Weathermen and SDS offer a vibrant return to the role of student activism in enacting widespread change not just on campus, but around the world. SDS opened the Port Huron Statement with this:

“We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit.”

Bill Ayers like many others of that era took a radical approach towards enacting change in the uncomfortable world they lived in. His loose association with Barack Obama may have provided a nice segue in the debate towards a discussion of the perils of the 1960s over race, inequalities, and an unjust war that are largely prevalent today. Instead, a loose association between two individuals turned into a petty debate over the necessity to take ownership of all words said by all persons of association. Mr. Gibson and Mr. Stephanopoulos would be wise to further the discourse of a substantive debate, not a superfluous one. For the record, Professor Ayers has responded to the allegations here (I’m not quite sure how strong of repudiation this really is).