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The name and Tikkum were familiar to me, but apparently not well enough. Here's from his Wiki:
Student activism
While at Berkeley, Lerner became a leader in the Berkeley student movement, a member of the executive committee of the Free Speech Movement, chair of the Free Student Union, and chair from 1966-1968 of the Berkeley chapter of the Students for a Democratic Society. After teaching philosophy of law at San Francisco State University, he took a job as an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Washington and taught ethics, social and political philosophy, philosophy of literature and culture, and introduction to philosophy. Angry at the SDS group called Weatherman, which had introduced violence into the anti-war movement in response to police violence, Lerner created a new organization as an alternative, called the Seattle Liberation Front. After police attacked a major demonstration that his organization had called to protest, the subsequent trial was the second nationally known federal trial against anti-war activists and became known as the Seattle Seven.
When federal agents testifying at the trial admitted to having played a major role instigating the violence and the riot, the pro-Nixon judge who presided sent the defendants to jail on the grounds of "contempt of court," and Lerner was transported out of the state of Washington (on the grounds that his supporters had so much public support that they might be able to "break him out" of the federal penitentiary in that state) to Terminal Island Federal Penitentiary in San Pedro, California, where Lerner served several months before the 9th Circuit Federal Appeals Court ordered Lerner released (despite the claim made by J. Edgar Hoover in a public statement repeated on radio and television that Lerner was "one of the most dangerous criminals in America" though he had never engaged in any act of violence). The main charges were eventually dropped by the Federal Government after the 9th Circuit overturned the conviction for contempt of court. Meanwhile, Lerner's contract was not renewed and the State of Washington Legislature had passed "the Lerner act" requiring that the University of Washington never hire anyone "who might engage in illegal political activity," a law later overturned by the Washington Supreme Court.
Sounds good enough for me!
pnorman
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