Charles Barron Lecturing CUNY About Self-Determination Made Me Finally Understand “Irony”

The question this morning is what the most salient aspect of Councilmember Charles Barron’s role in this controversy — the notion that Barron celebrates fugitive cop killers, the apparent micromanaging of CUNY administration decisions (was this an official act?) or the idea that there’s any constituency at all for 1960s militants in 2007:

City Councilman Charles Barron considers Thomas Jefferson a “slave-owning pedophile.”

So perhaps it shouldn’t be any surprise that the former Black Panther restored a controversial City College sign honoring two fugitives, most notably Assata Shakur, a fellow Black Panther convicted of killing a cop and making terrorist bombs.

“We are here to say to the City University that we have a right to self-determination, that we have a right to free speech, that we have a right to freedom of expression,” Barron said. “We are saying that you can’t determine who our heroines and heroes are going to be.”

The sign, which was first put up in 1990, was removed Dec. 13 after causing outrage for celebrating the lives of two fugitives: Shakur and bomber Guillermo Morales.

Morales built bombs for a Puerto Rican terrorist group and now lives in Cuba. Shakur, known then as Joanne Chesimard, also fled to Cuba after she was wounded in a shooting that killed a New Jersey state trooper in 1973.

School officials ordered the sign removed saying trustees never approved it. Students hit back by suing over the decision.