Gov. Dave Heineman on Friday issued a strong statement urging University of Nebraska leaders to cancel William Ayers’ planned visit to NU’s Lincoln campus next month.

“This is an embarrassment to the University of Nebraska and the state of Nebraska,” Heineman said. “Bill Ayers is a well-known radical who should never have been invited to the University of Nebraska.”

Ayers, a founder of a group that claimed responsibility for the bombings of several public buildings in protest of the Vietnam War, is scheduled to deliver a keynote address Nov. 15 during a celebration of the 100th anniversary of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Education and Human Sciences.

He is now a distinguished education professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago who has authored numerous scholarly articles and books.

The UNL college’s dean, Marjorie Kostelnik, has said a faculty committee selected Ayers last spring, before his ties to Sen. Barack Obama became a focus of the presidential campaign.

Ayers was chosen, Kostelnik said, for his expertise in areas like social justice and urban educational reform.

But news of his planned appearance has sparked significant public protest.

University offices have been flooded with angry phone calls, some from people threatening to withhold financial support from NU. Heineman, too, said his office has received a steady stream of calls and that citizens he’s talked to are “angry and outraged.”

That’s why he’s calling for NU President J.B. Milliken and Board of Regents Chairman Chuck Hassebrook of Lyons to step in and rescind UNL’s invitation to Ayers.

“That poor judgment needs to be corrected,” Heineman said.

Regents have said they don’t believe it’s their job to disinvite Ayers. But they, as well as Milliken, have called the decision to bring Ayers to campus “poor judgment.”

“In all honesty, if I were that college, I would disinvite him,” Hassebrook said Thursday. “In general I just don’t think it’s a good thing to go around blowing other people up.”

There were many other experts in the education field, Heineman said, who should have been invited over Ayers.

“The celebration will be in trouble unless they rescind this invitation,” he said.

Reach Melissa Lee at 473-2682 or mlee@journalstar.com.