Controversial Remarks By Ex-Con-Turned-Professor Draw Ire From Retired Nyack Cop
SOUTH NYACK, N.Y. (CBSNewYork) -- There is outrage over the comments from an adjunct professor at Columbia University.
Critics said the ex-con turned teacher is using her position as a soapbox to push for the release of three people jailed for a deadly heist of a Brink's armored car.
Kathy Boudin, a former member of the Weather Underground, was a driver in the bloody Brink's bank heist of 1981 at the Nanuet Mall. Members of the radical Black Liberation Army killed a security guard and two police officers during the heist.
Controversial Remarks By Ex-Con Turned Professor Draw Ire From Retired Nyack Cop
Boudin was paroled five years ago, but it's a video of a speech she made as adjunct professor of social work at Columbia University for an NYU audience that is drawing intense scrutiny.
"We want them here with us and hopefully, someday, they will be," Boudin said.
She was not talking about the two police officers and guard killed during the robbery, but of the killers and her fellow radicals, who remain behind bars, 1010 WINS' Al Jones reported.
"She's using NYU and Columbia as a soapbox, so now I'm on my own soapbox" retired police officer Arthur Keenan said.
He has been silent until now, but Keenan said he had to speak out against what Boudin has been doing since her release from prison.
"She's not rehabilitated. She's always been a radical, she always will be. And the proof is that she's freely speaking about trying to get her husband and other co-defendants out of jail," Keenan told CBS 2's Lou Young.
Keenan was shot in the leg during the attack and said he is angry Columbia University hired what he calls an "unrepentant terrorist."
"It's like people forgiving her even though she has no remorse for her crimes," he said.
Boudin's husband, David Gilbert, and two co-defendants were convicted and sentenced to 75 years back in 1983.
Boudin's educational specialty is parole and adjusting to life after imprisonment. In the past, Columbia University has said she has gotten excellent evaluations at the school, but critics insist her employment as a teacher is inappropriate.
"Her and her group advocated the violent overthrow of the government. They acted on it. Two police officers and a security guard were murdered. To me, it's tantamount to having Osama bin Laden lecture at Columbia University," Goshen Police Chief James Watt said.
Boudin's defenders talk about all the social work she has done in the more than 30 years since the bloody exchange of gunfire, but the people who knew the dead officers said they need more remorse from her before they can begin to move on.
CBS 2's repeated attempts to get a comment from Columbia University were unsuccessful.
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