Why won't the University of Illinois at Chicago allow inquiring minds--or, rather, inquiring mind (NR's Stanley Kurtz)--to examine its collection of documents deposited in its library relating to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a foundation founded and guided by former Weather Man Bill Ayers where Barack Obama once served as board chairman?

From NRO's The Corner, an exchange between Chicago radio host Jerry Agar and a UI spokesman:

Q: Who’s the donor?

A: I’m not sure I’m at liberty to release that information.

Q: Is the donor Bill Ayers?

A: Not to my knowledge.

Q: Why is this a problem? If they give the material to a library, why would they hold up after giving permission. Your library gave permission to Stanley Kurtz to look at this material. Why was he suddenly shut down?

A: We were only made aware that there was not a formal ownership agreement as recently as he was so informed.

Q: How long can that take?

A: As I said we are aggressively pursuing an agreement with the donor.

Q: Stanley Kurtz I believe points out in his column he finds it hard to believe you would get 132 boxes of material without that agreement being put in place ahead of time?

A: I can’t help what he find hard to believe. But in fact there is no ownership agreement.

Q: Can this be done before the election?

A: I’m sorry.

Q: Can this be done before the election?

A: It can be done very quickly once we have an agreement.

Q: Can the agreement be done before the election?

A: Excuse me, and if it can’t be done we’ll simply return the materials to the owner.

Q: Do you understand that it looks you guys are trying to help someone hide this information from the media?

A: That’s not the case as I just told you.

Q: Thanks for your call.