A lecturer at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who has faced scrutiny over his ties to the 1970s radical group known as the Symbionese Liberation Army on Wednesday told the university’s board that he is ashamed of actions he committed as a young man, but said he can offer students a valuable perspective if he is allowed to continue teaching there, according to the Chicago Tribune and The News-Gazette.
James W. Kilgore served six years in prison for his role in the SLA. Last month he said he had been told that the university would not renew his contract. The American Association of University Professors has questioned the institution’s handling of his case, and Mr. Kilgore has also won support from faculty members and the university’s graduate-employee union.
The university pledged to review his case and said that no final decision had been made on his employment.
Speaking to the university’s board on Wednesday, Mr. Kilgore said that he was “ashamed” of his acts as a young man.
“For more than three decades I have attempted to move beyond those acts, to chart a different road, working through nonviolent means as an educator in the cause of social justice,” he said. “I, like the ‘convict criminologists’ and many people who have traveled errant pathways, have learned lessons which are important for young people to know. Who better to tell someone how to avoid a destructive path than someone who has walked that path?”
He suggested that the university consider a hiring policy that “recognizes the richness of the experience of those who have fallen, picked themselves up, and found their way back toward success and intellectual inquiry.”
Christopher G. Kennedy, chairman of the university’s board, has said that the university should not employ individuals with a violent criminal past. But he said on Wednesday that the matter was in the hands of administrators on the Urbana-Champaign campus.
