The man Sarah Palin calls a terrorist has a fan club.
In a show of support for William Ayers, about 3,250 people - most of whom are college professors - have signed a statement opposing the "demonization" of Ayers by the campaign of Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, who has questioned the relationship between Ayers and Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama.
About 10 professors from Florida universities have added their names, and four of them are associated with UF.
Considered a domestic terrorist by McCain's campaign, Ayers has been linked with Obama through past connections in Chicago.
Both served on a school reform board and were neighbors in Hyde Park, according to the New York Times.
Ayers is a tenured professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, but in the 1960s and '70s, he was a founding member of Weather Underground.
Weather Underground was a leftist group that protested the Vietnam War, often by bombing key governmental institutions.
But Linda Jones, a UF associate professor in the College of Education, sees him as a leader in her field.
Jones knows of Ayers from his prominence in urban education and his work with the Annenberg Foundation.
"You can't not know of him," she said. Jones said she signed as soon as she learned of the online opportunity.
Jones said calling Ayers a terrorist is an unfounded assassination of his character.
She said she was irked by a clip she saw of Palin on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" where the vice presidential candidate implied that Ayers was a terrorist.
Jones said Ayers' actions during the war were wrong but must be looked at in context.
"Friends of ours were getting drafted and dying," Jones said.
"It was not a pretty time to be at school."
Jones said Palin's act was an example of swiftboating, which she said could lead some uneducated voters to McCain.
"Anyone who's well informed will just blow this off," she said.
Michael Heaney, UF assistant professor of political science, said the issue should not be considered swiftboating because McCain has founded the accusation himself instead of using a third party.
Heaney said the guilt-by-association strategy would have a minimal effect in swaying voters.
"The question really is, to what extent can someone be forgiven for the transgressions of their past?" he said.
UF education professors Nancy Dana and T. Griffith Jones signed the list, along with a retired UF employee who signed as Wm. R. Powell.
However, not all members of academia are rushing to Ayers' defense.
Richard Conley, UF associate professor of political science, wrote in an e-mail that Ayers' educational accomplishments could not overshadow a past of unapologetic domestic terrorism.
"What is most disconcerting is that Ayers is unrepentant," Conley wrote.
"He makes no apologies for his actions, and in a 2001 interview posited that he wished he had bombed more."
Conley referred to a New York Times article that Ayers later said distorted the meaning of his words, according to the Times.
Conley wrote that members of Weather Underground planted bombs on American soil, and while they typically avoided harming civilians, their actions were hostile toward America's system of peaceful democratic change.
"This country is at war with terrorism - both domestic and foreign, whatever the blunders made by George W. Bush and the controversies over Iraq," he wrote.
