Bernardine Dohrn

Bernardine Rae Dohrn (née Ohrnstein, born January 12, 1942) is an American former leader of the Anti-Vietnam War radical organization Weather Underground. She is an Associate Professor of Law at Northwestern University School of Law and the Director of Northwestern's Children and Family Justice Center.

Personal life

Bernardine Dohrn was born Bernadine Ohrnstein in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1942 and grew up in Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin, an upper-middle-class suburb of Milwaukee. Her father, Bernard, changed the family surname to Dohrn when Bernardine was in high school.. Her father was Jewish and her mother, Dorothy, was a Christian Scientist with a Swedish background. Dohrn graduated from Whitefish Bay High School where she was a cheerleader, treasurer of the Modern Dance Club, a member of the National Honor Society, and editor of the school newspaper. She attended Miami University for one year, then transferred to the University of Chicago, where she graduated with honors with a B.A. in Political Science in 1963. Dohrn received her J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School in 1967. She moved to New York to work for the National Lawyers Guild in 1967.

Early radical history

Dohrn became one of the leaders of the Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM), a radical wing of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), in the late 1960s. The ninth annual national SDS conference was held in Chicago in June 18-22, 1969, and the SDS collapsed in an RYM-led upheaval.

Dohrn led the Weatherman faction in the SDS fight and continued to be a leader afterward.

In July 1969, Dohrn, Eleanor Raskin, Dianne Donghi, Peter Clapp, David Millstone and Diana Oughton, all representing "Weatherman", as Dohrn's faction was now called, traveled to Cuba and met with representatives of the North Vietnamese and Cuban governments.

Controversial statement about Tate-LaBianca murders

Dohrn was criticized for a comment she made about the Charles Manson-led Tate-LaBianca murders in a speech during the December 1969 "War Council" meeting organized by the Weathermen and attended by about 400 people in Flint, Michigan: "Dig it! First they killed those pigs and then they put a fork in pig Tate's belly. Wild!" Sharon Tate was over 8 months pregnant at the time. Dohrn also charged that her fellow left-wingers showed themselves to be scared "honkies" for not burning down Chicago when Black Panther leader Fred Hampton was killed, and urged her audience to arm themselves and be "a fighting force alongside the blacks". Dohrn's husband Bill Ayers has written that Dohrn was being ironic when she made the statement:

I didn't hear that exactly, but words that were close enough I guess. Her speech was focused on the murder just days earlier of our friend Fred Hampton, the Black Panther leader [...] She linked Fred's murder to the murders of other Panthers around the country, to the assassinations of Malcolm X and Patrice Lumumba, the CIA attempts on Fidel's life, and then to the ongoing terror in Viet Nam. "This is the state of the world," she cried. "This is what screams out for our attention and our response. And what do we find in our newspapers? A sick fascination with a story that has it all: a racist psycho, a killer cult, and a chorus line of Hollywood bodies. Dig it! ..."

Ayers wrote in 2008 that he always thought Dohrn's controversial statement was uttered to make a political point, "agitated and inflamed and full of rhetorical overkill, and partly as a joke, stupid perhaps, tasteless, but a joke nonetheless", and similar (he said) to jokes about Charles Manson that were being made by Hunter S Thompson and Richard Pryor. Ayers said he had been present at interviews with reporters in which Dohrn had tried to put her statement in context but the reporters had dismissed her explanation.

In 2001 David Horowitz contested Dohrn's and Ayers' contention that she was not serious. She at least appeared that way to others, he wrote: "In 1980 I taped interviews with thirty members of the Weather Underground who were present at the Flint War Council, including most of its leadership. Not one of them thought Dohrn was anything but deadly serious".

Later radical history

A founder of the Weatherman group, Dohrn was a member of the "Weather Bureau" (name later changed to "Central Committee"). Larry Grathwohl, an FBI informant who was with the Weatherman from autumn 1969 through spring 1970, considered her one of the two top leaders of the organization, along with Bill Ayers.

During this period, the group organized the October 1969 Days of Rage riot in Chicago, which Dohrn led. During the 1970s, the Weathermen bombed federal buildings and police stations. Prior to the March 6, 1970 Greenwich Village townhouse explosion, in which three members of the group were killed as a bomb was being constructed, all members of Weatherman went underground. The group then changed its name to Weather Underground.

Dohrn went underground in early 1970, engaging in bombing activities. In a 1994 interview, Dohrn said that while the group carried out some bombings of buildings, it did not target people, and the group's actions were justified as a proper response to violent government actions: "We only did a couple, and they were carefully done. They involved property and were not meant to harm anybody. They were symbolic and done so that everyone would instantly recognize what was being said. It was 'armed propaganda'. Sure, it was violent, and it's hard to justify twenty years later, but it was extremely restrained and a highly appropriate response to the level of violence being rained nationally and internationally".

Role in policymaking, ideology and public statements for Weather Underground

Dohrn was a principal signatory on the group's "Declaration of a State of War" in 1970 that formally declared "war" on the U.S. Government, and completed the group's transformation from political advocacy to violent action. Dohrn also co-wrote and published the subversive manifesto Prairie Fire in 1974, and participated in the covertly filmed Underground in 1976.

In late 1975, the Weather Underground put out an issue of a magazine, Osawatamie, which carried an article by Dohrn, "Our Class Struggle", described as a speech given to the organization's cadres on September 2 of that year. In the article, Dohrn clearly stated support for Communist ideology:

We are building a communist organization to be part of the forces which build a revolutionary communist party to lead the working class to seize power and build socialism. [...] We must further the study of Marxism-Leninism within the WUO [Weather Underground Organization]. The struggle for Marxism-Leninism is the most significant development in our recent history. [...] We discovered thru [sic] our own experiences what revolutionaries all over the world have found — that Marxism-Leninism is the science of revolution, the revolutionary ideology of the working class, our guide to the struggle [...]"

According to a 1974 FBI study of the group, Dohrn's article signaled a developing commitment to Marxism-Leninism that had not been clear in the groups previous statements, despite trips to Cuba by some members of the group before and after Weather Underground was formed, and contact with Vietnamese communists there.

Sgt. Brian McDonnell

On February 24, 2009, leaders of the San Francisco Police Officers Association stated that there is “irrefutable and compelling reasons” that establish how Bill Ayers and his wife, Bernadine Dohrn, are responsible for the bombing of a San Francisco police station in 1970 that killed Sgt. Brian McDonnell, a 20-year veteran of the department. The San Francisco Police Department’s Park Station was bombed Feb. 16, 1970, killing Sgt. Brian McDonnell. Eight other officers were injured. McDonnell died two days after the bombing. The case has yet to be solved.

Leaving the underground

While on the run from police, Dohrn married another Weatherman leader, Bill Ayers, with whom she has two children. During the last years of their underground life, Dohrn and Ayers resided in the Logan Square neighborhood of Chicago, where they used the aliases Christine Louise Douglas and Anthony J. Lee.

In the late 1970s, the Weatherman group split into two factions — the "May 19 Coalition" and the "Prairie Fire Collective" — with Dohrn and Ayers in the latter. The Prairie Fire Collective favored coming out of hiding, with members facing the criminal charges against them, while the May 19 Coalition continued in hiding. A decisive factor in Dohrn's coming out of hiding were her concerns about her children.

The couple turned themselves in to authorities in 1980. While some charges relating to their activities with the Weathermen were dropped due to prosecutorial misconduct (see COINTELPRO), Dohrn pled guilty to charges of aggravated battery and bail jumping, receiving probation. She later served less than a year of jail time, after refusing to testify against ex-Weatherman Susan Rosenberg in an armed robbery case. Shortly after turning themselves in, Dohrn and Ayers became legal guardians of Chesa Boudin, the son of former members of the Weather Underground, Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert, after they were convicted of murder for their roles in a 1981 armored car robbery..

Later life and career

Bernardine Dohrn speaking at a Michigan State University SDS reunion. November 30, 2007
Photo by Thomas Good / NLN

From 1984 to 1988, Dohrn was employed by the prestigious Chicago law firm Sidley Austin. She was hired by Howard Trienens, the head of the firm at that time, who knew Thomas G. Ayers, the father of Dohrn's husband. "We often hire friends," Trienens told a reporter for the Chicago Tribune. However, Dohrn had not been admitted to the New York or Illinois bar. She passed the New York bar exam but had not submitted an application to the New York Supreme Court's Committee on Character and Fitness. She also passed the Illinois bar, but was turned down by the Illinois ethics committee because of her criminal record. Trienen said of the Illinois rejection, "Dohrn didn't get a [law] license because she's stubborn. She wouldn't say she's sorry."

In 1991, she was hired by Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago, as an adjunct professor of law, with the title "Clinical Associate Professor of Law". Trienens said he did not get her that job, although he sat on the board of trustees of Northwestern, as did Dohrn's father-in-law, who was chairman of the board until 1986, when Trienens succeeded him in that position. Robert Bennett, dean of the law school, had hired Dohrn, according to Trienens. Because Dohrn was hired as an "adjunct", her appointment did not need to be approved by the faculty, and no vote on it was ever taken. When law school officials were asked whether or not the dean hired Dohrn or the board of trustees approved the hiring, the school issued a statement in response stating "While many would take issue with views Ms. Dohrn espoused during the 1960s, her career at the law school is an example of a person's ability to make a difference in the legal system."

In 1994, Dohrn said of her political beliefs: "I still see myself as a radical."

Dohrn now serves on the board of numerous human rights committees and teaches comparative law. Since 2002, she has served as Visiting Law Faculty at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. Her legal work has focused on reforming the much criticized juvenile court system in Chicago and on advocating for human rights at the international level. Dohrn is director and founder of the Children and Family Justice Center, which supports the legal needs of adolescents and their families.

Dohrn and Ayers recently resurfaced into news headlines as presidential candidate John McCain and his running mate Sarah Palin publicly denounced ties between Ayers and presidential candidate Barack Obama.

External links

• Her biography at the Northwestern Law site, with a link to her CV
• Transcript of interview in 1996 with Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers
• PBS Article "The Weathermen Today"
• Mugshot From Chicago PD Files
• Interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now