Dr. Stanley Kurtz was initially rebuffed by the U of I – Chicago Library for access to the Obama-Ayers use of Annenberg Challenge grant funds in their efforts at reforming Chicago Public Schools. Late last week the Library agreed to release the files to Dr. Kurtz. Here’s some words from Kurtz, blogging in The Corner:

I’ll have more to say about the Chicago Annenberg Challenge in some follow-up posts, but first I want to express my gratitude to the many readers who contacted UIC to call for release of the records. UIC has now agreed to make these records public. I received cc’s from several hundred emailers, and I have indications that the actual number of messages to UIC may have been in the thousands. I’m also extremely grateful to the radio talk-show hosts, bloggers, and columnists who helped build pressure for release of the records. Although UIC has sought to portray this as a simple misunderstanding. It’s clear from Chicago radio talk-show host, Jerry Agar’s interview with a UIC spokesman that the university and donor were keeping alive the option of UIC giving all the records back. It’s also clear from my initial struggle with library personnel that their schedule for release of the records was several weeks down the road, at the very least. I believe that public scrutiny and pressure foreclosed the options of return or delay and led to swift release of the records. So, again, to all who helped with this battle, a hearty and happy thank you.

It’s clear quite a bit of pressure was applied to the Library by the public and that Dr. Kurtz gives credit to everyone who wrote and blogged on the matter.

See more of Kurtz posts here and here.

But there’s more. Steve Diamond has led on this from the beginning. Here’s something from his latest post where he asks what role did Bill Ayers play in all of this:

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Bill Ayers, the former terrorist leader of the Weather Underground, is now a prominent member of the UIC faculty in their College of Education. He was the founder of the CAC and helped pick Barack Obama as the CAC Board Chair in 1995.

Bill Ayers co-chaired the key operational arm of the CAC, the Chicago School Reform Collaborative, which he had helped organize in 1994 when preparing the original application for the $49.2 mn Annenberg Challenge grant. The CAC’s offices were actually originally set up, rent free, in the same building as the College of Education of the UIC, where Ayers has long taught.

Then this of Ayers:

Of course, Ayers is a close political ally of Barack Obama and it would have been highly inappropriate of the UIC Library to warn him of the entry of an Obama critic onto UIC turf only to allow him and the Library to invent an excuse – the allegedly missing but legally unnecessary “deed of gift” – to prevent access to the validly possessed CAC records.

Without a full explanation of the role of Ayers in this series of events, it is unlikely that the public will feel reassured that the CAC documents have not been tampered with.

Writing in Pajamas Media, Clarice Feldman covers the possible political problems it may cause Barack Obama:

Will the voters regard it as relevant that while Ayers and Obama were furthering their career interests in the disposition of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge millions, they did absolutely nothing — per a formal review of the program — to improve the academic performance of the pupils in their program and, indeed, may have hindered their academic progress by trying to turn every school they worked with into laboratories of revolutionary action in line with Ayres’ authoritarian agenda and belief that the public school system is “nothing but a reflection of capitalist hegemony”?

While the Obama team make questionable decisions like the one to pick Joe Biden for VP, they do have a sense of timing. As with the decision to string along the actual Biden announcement keeping the Clinton campaign out of the news, so goes the CAC file controversy.

Its easily plausible that Obama’s allies kept the noted conservative Kurtz from accessing the papers now but knew they would have to release them at some point. They couldn’t have bad news out in the days just prior to the convention as it might give the Clintons ammo for stealing the nomination. If there is indeed bad news in the files, they kicked the can down the road. The Obama campaign might even try to circumvent Kurtz by pre-empting him with a Friday style document dump of their own for spin control.

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