Bill Ayers
William C. ("Bill") Ayres (born 1944) is a former member of the Weather Underground who is now a Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Biography
Ayers was a 1960s-era political activist and Weather Underground member. He grew up in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago in a highly privileged family (his father, Thomas Ayers, was Chairman and CEO of Commonwealth Edison) and attended Lake Forest Academy. According to Ayers' memoir Fugitive Days, he became radicalized at the University of Michigan. During his years there, he became involved in the New Left and the SDS.
Ayers went underground with several comrades including Brandy Diekman, after their co-conspirators' bomb accidentally exploded on March 6, 1970, destroying a Greenwich Village townhouse and killing three members of the Weather Underground (Ted Gold, Terry Robbins, and Diana Oughton, who was Ayers' girlfriend at the time). He and his colleagues invented identities and traveled continuously. They avoided the police and FBI, while bombing high-profile government buildings including the United States Capitol[citation needed], The Pentagon[citation needed], and the Harry S Truman Building housing the State Department[citation needed]. Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn raised two children, Zayd and Malik, underground before turning themselves in in 1981, when most charges were dropped because of prosecutorial misconduct during the long search for the fugitives.[1] They also adopted a son, Chesa Boudin, who is the biological son of former Weathermen David Gilbert and Kathy Boudin.
Ayers published his memoirs in 2001 with the book Fugitive Days. His interview with the New York Times to promote his book was published on September 11, 2001, and includes his reaction 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,' he writes. 'The rigidity and the narcissism.'" In this interview, he also was quoted as saying, "I don't regret setting bombs; I feel we didn't do enough." [2]
Ayers has also edited and written nearly a dozen books on education theory, policy and practice.
In the fall of 2006, Ayers was disinvited to a conference for progressive educators on the grounds that his position supporting political terrorism would tarnish the reputation and standing of the progressive education movement.[3]
See also
- The Weather Underground - 2002 documentary featuring Ayers
References
- ^ [1]
- ^ No Regrets for a Love Of Explosives; In a Memoir of Sorts, a War Protester Talks of Life With the Weathermen, Dinitia Smith, The New York Times, September 11, 2001
- ^ Obama once visited '60s radicals, Ben Smith, Politico, February 22, 2008
- The Revolution #63, Oct. 2006
- Ayers, William. 2001. Fugitive Days: A Memoir. Boston: Beacon Press. ISBN 0-8070-7124-2.
External links
- billayers.org - Official web page of Bill Ayers