Bill Ayers

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

William C. Ayers
Born	1944 (age 79–80) Glen Ellyn, Illinois
Nationality	United States
Citizenship	United States
Known for	urban educational reform
Academic background
Alma mater	University of Michigan Bank Street College Teachers College, Columbia University Columbia University
Academic work
Institutions	University of Illinois at Chicago

William C. ("Bill") Ayers (born 1944) is a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, known for his work in school reform. He was a 1960s-era activist and radical, and a founder of the Weatherman group, which later became the Weather Underground.

Early life

Ayers grew up in Glen Ellyn, a suburb of Chicago, attended Lake Forest Academy and earned a B.A. from the University of Michigan in American Studies in 1968. He is the son of Thomas G. Ayers, former Chairman and CEO of Commonwealth Edison (1973 to 1980), Chicago philanthropist and the namesake of the Thomas G. Ayers College of Commerce and Industry.

Radical history

Bill Ayers' 1970 era photo is at left with Bernardine Dohrn at center in this poster The Weather Underground

According to his memoir, Ayers became radicalized at the University of Michigan where he became involved in the New Left and the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). In 1969, Ayers joined the Weatherman, a radical group which arose as a result of a schism in SDS. The following year he "went underground" with several associates after the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion, in which three Weatherman members (Ted Gold, Terry Robbins, and Diana Oughton, who was Ayers' girlfriend at the time) were killed while constructing a nail bomb. He was not facing criminal charges at the time, but the federal government later filed charges against him. While underground, he and fellow member Bernardine Dohrn married and had two children. 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 due to prosecutorial misconduct during the long search for the fugitives. Ayers and Dohrn later became legal guardians to the son of former Weathermen David Gilbert and Kathy Boudin after his parents were arrested for their part in the Brinks Robbery of 1981.

In 2001, Ayers published Fugitive Days: A Memoir. Much of the controversy about Ayers during the decade since the year 2000 stems from an interview he gave to the New York Times on the occasion of the memoir's publication. The reporter quoted him as saying "I don't regret setting bombs" and "I feel we didn't do enough", and, when asked if he would "do it all again" as saying "I don't want to discount the possibility." Ayers has not denied the quotes, but he protested the interviewer's characterizations in a Letter to the Editor published September 15, 2001: "This is not a question of being misunderstood or 'taken out of context', but of deliberate distortion." In the ensuing years, Ayers has repeatedly avowed that when he said he had "no regrets" and that "we didn't do enough" he was speaking only in reference to his efforts to stop the United States from waging the Vietnam War, efforts which he has described as ". . . inadequate [as] the war dragged on for a decade." Ayers has maintained that the two statements were not intended to imply a wish they had set more bombs. The interviewer also quoted some of Ayers' own criticism of Weatherman in the foreword to the memoir, whereby Ayers reacts to having watched Emile de Antonio's 1976 documentary film about Weatherman, Underground: "[Ayers] was 'embarrassed by the arrogance, the solipsism, the absolute certainty that we and we alone knew the way. The rigidity and the narcissism.' "

An August 2001 interview about his book in Chicago Magazine highlighted other points, including his reason for writing the memoir was partly to answer the questions of Kathy Boudin's son, and his speculation that Diana Oughton died trying to stop the Greenwich Village bomb makers.

Historian Jesse Lemisch (himself a former member of SDS) has contrasted Ayers' recollections with those of other former members of Weatherman and has alleged serious factual errors. Ayers, in the foreword to his book, states that the book was written as his personal memories and impressions over time, not a scholarly research project.

According to Ayers, his radical past occasionally affects him, as when, by his account, he was asked not to attend a progressive educators' conference in the fall of 2006 on the basis that the organizers did not want to risk an association with his past.

Academic career

Ayers is currently a Distinguished Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, College of Education. His interests include teaching for social justice, urban educational reform, narrative and interpretive research, children in trouble with the law, and related issues.

He began his career in primary education while an undergraduate, teaching at the Children’s Community School (CCS), a project founded by a group of students and based on the Summerhill method of education. After leaving the underground, he earned an M.Ed from Bank Street College in Early Childhood Education (1984), an M.Ed from Teachers College, Columbia University in Early Childhood Education (1987) and an Ed.D from Columbia University in Curriculum and Instruction (1987).

He has edited and written many books and articles on education theory, policy and practice, and has appeared on many panels and symposia.

Civic involvements

Ayers was tapped by Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley to shape that city's now nationally-renowned school reform program. Since 1999 he has served on the board of directors of the Woods Fund of Chicago, an anti-poverty, philanthropic foundation established in 1941. This became controversial in the 2008 United States presidential election, as Barack Obama had served on the board until 2002, with overlapping times of service with Ayers.

Personal life

Ayers is married to Bernardine Dohrn, with whom he has two adult children. They earlier shared legal guardianship of a third child, now also an adult. They currently live in Chicago.

He is one of the first persons to whom Barack Obama was introduced by State Senator Alice Palmer as her self-appointed successor. Since then, he has fulfilled a mentoring position for the Senator.

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 Communiques 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

See also

• Bill Ayers election controversy

External links

• Bill Ayers—official website
  • blog, CV
• Transcript of interview in 1996 with Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, PBS