Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 20:20, 18 April 2008

For the former association football player and manager, see Billy Ayre.

William C. ("Bill") Ayers (born 1944) is a Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He was a 1960s-era radical and former member of the Weather Underground.

Ayers is the son of Thomas Ayers, former Chairman and CEO of Commonwealth Edison. He grew up in Glen Ellyn, a suburb of Chicago, and attended Lake Forest Academy. According to his memoir, he became radicalized at the University of Michigan where he became involved in the New Left and the SDS. He briefly worked as a schoolteacher.

Ayers joined the Weatherman group in 1969, but went underground with several associates after the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion in 1970, in which three members (Ted Gold, Terry Robbins, and Diana Oughton, who was Ayers' girlfriend at the time) were killed while constructing a nail bomb. While underground, he and fellow member Bernardine Dohrn married and had two children, Zayd and Malik. They were purged from the group in the mid-1970s, and turned themselves in to the authorities in 1981. All charges against him were dropped because of prosecutorial misconduct during the long search for the fugitives. They later became legal guardians of Chesa Boudin, the biological son of former Weathermen David Gilbert and Kathy Boudin, after his parents were arrested for their part in the Brinks Robbery of 1981.

In the 1980s Ayers undertook graduate training in education and earned his doctorate in 1987. He has edited and written many books and articles on education theory, policy and practice. He was tapped by Mayor Richard M. Daley to shape Chicago's now nationally-renowned school reform program. He has also served on the board of the Woods Fund of Chicago, a anti-poverty philanthropic foundation, since 1999. United States Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama served on the same board from 1999 to 2002.

In 2001, Ayers published Fugitive Days: A Memoir. Ayers's interview with the New York Times about his book was published on September 11, 2001, and opens with his statement, "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough." The interview also includes his reaction (in his book) to Emile De Antonio's 1976 documentary film about the Weathermen: "He was 'embarrassed by the arrogance, the solipsism, the absolute certainty that we and we alone knew the way. The rigidity and the narcissism." Ayers later explained that by "no regrets" he meant that he didn't regret his efforts to oppose the Vietnam War, and that "we didn't do enough" meant that efforts to stop the war were obviously inadequate as it dragged on for a decade. Ayers has nonetheless repeated the "no regrets" statement in the spring of 2008 without qualification. New Politics reviewer Jesse Lemisch has contrasted Ayers's recollections with those of other Weathermen and alleged serious factual errors.

In the fall of 2006, Ayers was asked not to attend a progressive educators' conference on the basis that the organizers did not want to risk an association with his past.

See also

• Weatherman (organization)
• The Weather Underground, 2002 documentary film featuring Ayers
• 2008 United States presidential election controversies and attacks#Bill Ayers

Works

• Education: An American Problem. Bill Ayers, Radical Education Project, 1968, ASIN B0007H31HU
• Hot town : Summer in the City: I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more, Bill Ayers, Students for a Democratic Society, 1969, ASIN B0007I3CMI
• Good Preschool Teachers, William Ayers, Teachers College Press, 1989, ISBN 978-0807729472
• The Good Preschool Teacher: Six Teachers Reflect on Their Lives, William Ayers, Teachers College Press, 1989, ISBN 978-0807729465
• To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher, William Ayers, Teachers College Press, 1993, ISBN 978-0807732625
• To Become a Teacher: Making a Difference in Children's Lives, William Ayers, Teachers College Press, 1995, ISBN 978-0807734551
• City Kids, City Teachers: Reports from the Front Row, William Ayers (Editor) and Patricia Ford (Editor), New Press, 1996, ISBN 978-1565843288
• A Kind and Just Parent, William Ayers, Beacon Press, 1997, ISBN 978-0807044025
• A Light in Dark Times: Maxine Greene and the Unfinished Conversation, Maxine Greene (Editor), William Ayers (Editor), Janet L. Miller (Editor), Teachers College Press, 1998, ISBN 978-0807737217
• Teaching for Social Justice: A Democracy and Education Reader, William Ayers (Editor), Jean Ann Hunt (Editor), Therese Quinn (Editor), 1998, ISBN 978-1565844209
• Teacher Lore: Learning from Our Own Experience, William H. Schubert (Editor) and William C. Ayers (Editor), Educator's International Press, 1999, ISBN 978-1891928031
• Teaching from the Inside Out: The Eight-Fold Path to Creative Teaching and Living, Sue Sommers (Author), William Ayers (Foreword), Authority Press, 2000, ISBN 978-1929059027
• A Simple Justice: The Challenge of Small Schools, William Ayers, Teachers College Press, 2000, ISBN 978-0807739631
• Zero Tolerance: Resisting the Drive for Punishment, William Ayers (Editor), Rick Ayers (Editor), Bernardine Dohrn (Editor), Jesse L. Jackson (Author), New Press, 2001, ISBN 978-1565846661
• A School of Our Own: Parents, Power, and Community at the East Harlem Block Schools, Tom Roderick (Author), William Ayers (Author), Teachers College Press, 2001, ISBN 978-0807741573
• Refusing Racism: White Allies and the Struggle for Civil Rights, Cynthia Stokes Brown (Author), William Ayers (Editor), Therese Quinn (Editor), Teachers College Press, 2002, ISBN 978-0807742044
• On the Side of the Child: Summerhill Revisited, William Ayers, Teachers College Press, 2003, ISBN 978-0807744000
• Fugitive Days: A Memoir, Bill Ayers, Beacon Press, 2001, ISBN 0807071242 (Penguin, 2003, ISBN 978-0142002551)
• Teaching the Personal and the Political: Essays on Hope and Justice, William Ayers, Teachers College Press, 2004, ISBN 978-0807744611
• Teaching Toward Freedom: Moral Commitment and Ethical Action in the Classroom, William Ayers, Beacon Press, 2004, ISBN 978-080703269-5
• Sing a Battle Song: The Revolutionary Poetry, Statements, and Communiqus of the Weather Underground 1970-1974, Bernardine Dohrn, Bill Ayers, and Jeff Jones, Seven Stories Press, 2006, ISBN 978-1583227268
• Handbook of Social Justice in Education, William C. Ayers, Routledge, June 2008, ISBN 978-0805859270
• City Kids, City Schools: More Reports from the Front Row, Ruby Dee (Foreword), Jeff Chang (Afterword), William Ayers (Editor), Billings, Gloria Ladson (Editor), Gregory Michie (Editor), Pedro Noguera (Editor), New Press, August 2008, ISBN 978-1595583383

References

1. ^ Dinitia Smith, "No Regrets for a Love Of Explosives; In a Memoir of Sorts, a War Protester Talks of Life With the Weathermen, The New York Times, September 11, 2001
2. Mike Dorning and Rick Pearson, Daley: Don't tar Obama for Ayers, The Chicago Tribune, April 17, 2008
3. Michael Dobbs, Obama's 'Weatherman' Connection, The Fact Checker, washingtonpost.com, February 19, 2008
4. Bill Ayers, Episodic Notoriety–Fact and Fantasy, Bill Ayers (blog), April 6, 2008
5. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JishkSYhx34
6. Jesse Lemisch, Weather Underground Rises from the Ashes: They're Baack!, New Politics, Summer 2006
7. Ben Smith, Obama Once Visited '60s Radicals, Politico, February 22, 2008

• The Revolution #63, Oct. 2006

External links

• Bill Ayers—official website
  • blog, CV

• Living people
• 1944 births
• University of Illinois at Chicago faculty
• Youth empowerment individuals
• American activists
• Members of Students for a Democratic Society (1960 organization)
• Weather Underground
• Terrorism in the United States
• American terrorists
• COINTELPRO targets
• Lake Forest Academy alumni
• People from Glen Ellyn, Illinois