Radical leftist Bill Ayers and Princeton University professor Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor led an event Friday in Chicago titled “250 Years of Resistance,” held on the eve of America’s 250th birthday.
The event took place at the National Public Housing Museum in Democrat-run Chicago. Ayers, a former leader of the Weather Underground, spoke during the gathering and criticized the Declaration of Independence as a “mixed and contradictory document.”
Ayers reflected on the country’s 200th anniversary in 1976, when the Weather Underground printed a poster that read, “200 Years Is Enough.”
“Now it’s 250 years and I feel similarly,” Ayers told the audience, according to a clip shared by Manhattan Institute investigative analyst Stu Smith. “I feel like there’s nothing more appropriate than having a conversation tonight about 250 years of resistance.”
Ayers helped form the Weather Underground with his wife, Bernardine Dohrn. The group broke away from the anti-war organization Students for a Democratic Society after concluding that SDS was not radical or confrontational enough. The Weather Underground later claimed responsibility for a series of bombings, including attacks connected to the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, a New York City police station, the California Attorney General’s office and an attempted bombing at a military induction center in California.
Ayers turned himself in to police in 1980, but the charges against him were dropped because of the government’s use of illegal wiretaps. After leaving the group behind, Ayers moved into education activism and later became a professor in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
During Friday’s event, Taylor also drew attention for comments she made during a question-and-answer session. Taylor, a professor in Princeton’s Department of African-American Studies, told the audience, “This audience is all like, ‘Fuck the USA,’” which prompted laughter from those in attendance.
Taylor went on to criticize patriotism and the concept of the nation-state.
“We have to reject the idea of loving a nation state, right?” she said. “Which is what patriotism is at the end of the day.”
Taylor described the nation-state as “destructive” and argued that borders are harmful.
“Borders are deadly,” she said, adding that “borders kill people.”
Smith criticized the remarks in a post on X, arguing that the comments reflected a broader hostility toward the United States from activists and academics.
“As you celebrate Independence Day, remember that there is an entire class of activists, including many embedded in higher education, who spend their days trying to dismantle the country,” Smith wrote.
Smith said Taylor’s comments amounted to an argument against American sovereignty. In his view, rejecting the nation-state means rejecting borders, and rejecting borders means weakening the ability of citizens to govern their own country.
“No nation-state means no real borders,” Smith wrote. “No real borders means no meaningful sovereignty. No sovereignty means the people have no country left to govern.”
He described Taylor’s view as an old Marxist idea in which workers are not tied to nations, borders or citizenship. Smith argued that, in practice, such a worldview would dissolve the country from within rather than reform it.
While many Americans marked the anniversary by honoring the country’s founding, the Chicago event framed U.S. history through resistance, criticism and rejection of the traditional idea of patriotism.