University Hits Roadblock in Release of Records on Obama’s Nonprofit Ties

The University of Illinois says it cannot release records related to the presidential candidate Barack Obama’s service with a nonprofit organization affiliated with a former 1960s radical activist, reports the Associated Press.

Mr. Obama was board chairman from 1995 to 1998 of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a charity that was given $49.2-million to help overhaul Chicago schools. The charity received considerable assistance from William Ayers, a co-founder of the Weather Underground organization, a radical group that promoted violence as conducive to political change, the newspaper says. My. Ayers is now a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

The university previously had said it would release the records but then said it could not because it does not own them. The donor of the records notified the school about the lack of an ownership agreement.

Bill Burton, a university spokesman, said, “The donor’s only concerns regarding the collection are due to personnel information that could include names, confidential salary information, and even Social Security numbers.”

The Obama campaign says of the documents, “We are pleased the university is pursuing an agreement that would make these records publicly available.”