Bernardine Dohrn

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Bernardine Dohrn (b. 1942) is an Associate Professor of Law at Northwestern University School of Law and is the Director of Northwestern's Children and Family Justice Center and is a former leader of the organization known as the Weathermen.

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[edit] Early Life and Career

Dorhn was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1942 and grew up in Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin. She graduated from Whitefish Bay High School where she was a cheerleader [1] and attended the University of Chicago where she graduated with honors with a B.A. in Political Science in 1963, and with a J.D. from the University of Chicago School of Law in 1967. [2]

As a young lawyer, 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. In the summer of 1969, the ninth annual national SDS conference was held. SDS collapsed in a RYM-led upheaval at the end of the convention "The Weathermen" as Dohrn's faction was now called, began a series of direct actions against the American government. As a result of an accident killing several members Dohrn and other members went underground. For half a decade, Dohrn and the Underground carried out clandestine actions, largely bombings, against the U.S. government. She is well-known as the signatory on the Weather Underground's "Declaration of a State of War," which formally declared war on the U.S. Government. Dohrn and others also co-wrote and published the subversive manifesto Prairie Fire, and participated in a covertly filmed propaganda documentary, Underground.[citation needed]

Dohrn later married former Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers, with whom she has two children, Zayd and Malik, whom they raised as fugitives before turning themselves in to authorities in 1980. 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.[3] While some charges relating to their activities with the Weathermen were dropped due to "extreme governmental misconduct"[citation needed], Dohrn plead guilty to charges of aggravated battery and bail jumping, receiving probation. [4] She later served less than a year of jail time, after refusing to testify against ex-Weatherman Susan Rosenberg in an armed robbery case.[citation needed] Shortly after turning themselves in, Dohrn and Ayers adopted Chesa Boudin, when his biological parents and former members of the Weather Underground, Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert, were arrested in connection with the Black Liberation Army.[citation needed]

From 1984 to 1988, Dohrn was an associate at the law firm Sidley Austin In 1991, she became a Clinical Associate Professor of Law at Northwestern University in Chicago. She now serves on the board of numerous human rights committees and teaches comparative law. Since 2002, she has served as a Visiting Law Faculty at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam.

[edit] Articles by Dohrn

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ^ http://omega.cohums.ohio-state.edu/mailing_lists/CLA-L/2003/02/0066.php
  2. ^ http://www.law.northwestern.edu/faculty/clinic/dohrn/dohrn.html
  3. ^ Chicago Home of a Friend was Refuge for Miss Dohrn. Nathaniel Sheppard, Jr. New York Times. Dec 5, 1980. p. A.22
  4. ^ Milwaukee Sentinel, Jan. 14, 1981
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