- Leader of the Weather Underground, a domestic terrorist group of the 1960s and '70s
- “Kill all the rich people. ... Bring the revolution home. Kill your parents.”
- Participated in the bombings of New York City Police Headquarters in 1970, the Capitol building in 1971, and the Pentagon in 1972
- Worked as a professor of education at the University of Illinois from 1987-2010
See also: Weather Underground Bernardine Dohrn
Students for a Democratic Society Jeff Jones
Chicago Annenberg Challenge Free Gaza
American Educational Research Association
Movement for a Democratic Society
Bill Ayers was born in December 1944 and was raised in a Chicago suburb. In the mid-1960s he taught at a radical alternative school -- part of the "free school movement" -- where students addressed teachers by their first names, and where no grades or report cards were given. By age 21, Ayers had become the director of that school. In 1968 he earned a B.A. in American Studies from the University of Michigan.
In the late Sixties, Ayers became a leader of the Weather Underground (WU), a splinter faction of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Characterizing WU as “an American Red Army,” Ayers summed up the organization's ideology as follows: “Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, Kill your parents.” One of Ayers' fellow WU leaders was Bernardine Dohrn, the woman who would later become his wife.
In a July 29, 1969 speech which he delivered at the University of Oregon, Ayers boasted of SDS's role in the Venceremos Brigades, a project initiated by the Cuban intelligence agency to recruit and train American leftists as “brigadistas” capable of waging guerrilla warfare.
Ayers was an active participant in the 1969 “Days of Rage” riots in Chicago, which were led by WU's antecedent group, Weatherman. In the mayhem, nearly 300 members of the organization engaged in vandalism, arson, and vicious attacks against police and civilians alike. Their immediate objective was to spread their anti-war, anti-American message. Their long-term goal, however, was to cause the collapse of the United States and to create, in its stead, a new communist society over which they themselves would rule. With regard to those Americans who might refuse to embrace communism, Ayers and his comrades -- including Bernardine Dohrn, Mark Rudd, Linda Evans, Jeff Jones, and numerous others -- proposed that such resisters should be sent to reeducation camps and killed. The terrorists estimated that it would be necessary to eliminate some 25 million people in this fashion, so as to advance the revolution.
In his 2001 memoir Fugitive Days, Ayers recounts his life as a Sixties radical and boasts that he “participated in the bombings of New York City Police Headquarters in 1970, of the Capitol building in 1971, and the Pentagon in 1972.” Of the day he bombed the Pentagon, Ayers writes, “Everything was absolutely ideal.... The sky was blue. The birds were singing. And the bastards were finally going to get what was coming to them.” He further recalls his fascination with the fact that "a good bomb" could render even "big buildings and wide streets ... fragile and destructible," leaving behind a "majestic scene" of utter destruction.
All told, Ayers and the Weather Underground were responsible for 30 bombings aimed at destroying the defense and security infrastructures of the U.S. "I don't regret setting bombs," said Ayers in 2001, "I feel we didn't do enough." Contemplating whether or not he might again use bombs against the U.S. sometime in the future, he wrote: “I can’t imagine entirely dismissing the possibility.”
In 1970, Ayers’ then-girlfriend Diana Oughton, along with Weatherman members Terry Robbins and Ted Gold, were killed when a bomb they were constructing exploded unexpectedly. That bomb had been intended for detonation at a dance that was to be attended by hundreds of Army soldiers at Fort Dix, New Jersey. Ayers himself attested that the bomb would have done serious damage, “tearing through windows and walls and, yes, people too.” Notably, Ayers' fingerprints were found at the bomb-making site, along with an assortment of anti-personnel weapons, stabbing implements, C-4 plastic explosive, and dozens of Marxist-Leninist publications.
After the death of his girlfriend, Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn spent the rest of the decade as fugitives running from the FBI.
Years later, Ayers would claim: “We [Weatherman] made a decision while we were willing to engage in extreme tactics, we would not harm human life.... We never hurt or harmed anyone. We destroyed property.” But this claim was contradicted by Larry Grathwohl, a United States Army veteran and an FBI informant during the 1970s, who in 1974 testified before the United States Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security and reported that in 1970:
“Bill [Ayers] was the person who directed the ‘focle’ [a four-person task force, small in size to evade detection] that I was part of to place the bomb at the DPOA [the Detroit Police Officers Association] Building. He designed the bomb and told me that he would get the necessary materials, the dynamite, et cetera, and 4 days later Bill broke that focle that I was part of up ... and we were directed to go to Madison, Wisconsin.”Grathwohl talked about the case again at a 2012 conference sponsored by America’s Survival, where he said: “During the meeting with Bill Ayers [in 1970] we were told that our objective would be to place bombs at the Detroit Police Officers Association ... and at the 13th precinct. Furthermore, Bill instructed us to determine the best time to place these explosive devices that would result in the greatest number of deaths and injuries....” When Grathwohl, at that time, pointed out to Ayers that a Red Barn restaurant next door would most likely be destroyed and the customers killed during the explosion, Ayers replied that “sometimes innocent people have to die in a revolution.”
In 1974 Ayers co-authored -- along with Dohrn, Jeff Jones, and Celia Sojourn -- a book titled Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-Imperialism. This book contained the following statements:
- "We are a guerrilla organization. We are communist women and men ... deeply affected by the historic events of our time in the struggle against U.S. imperialism."
- "Our intention is to disrupt the empire, to incapacitate it, to put pressure on the cracks, to make it hard to carry out its bloody functioning against the people of the world, to join the world struggle, to attack from the inside."
- "The only path to the final defeat of imperialism and the building of socialism is revolutionary war."
- "Revolutionary war will be complicated and protracted. It includes mass struggle and clandestine struggle, peaceful and violent, political and economic, cultural and military, where all forms are developed in harmony with the armed struggle."
- "Without mass struggle there can be no revolution.
Without armed struggle there can be no victory." - "We need a revolutionary communist party in order to lead the struggle, give coherence and direction to the fight, seize power and build the new society."
- "Our job is to tap the discontent seething in many sectors of the population, to find allies everywhere people are hungry or angry, to mobilize poor and working people against imperialism."
- "Socialism is the total opposite of capitalism/imperialism. It is the rejection of empire and white supremacy. Socialism is the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the eradication of the social system based on profit."
In 1980 Ayers and Dohrn surrendered to law-enforcement authorities, but all charges against them were later dropped due to an “improper surveillance” technicality -- government authorities had failed to get a warrant for some of their surveillance. Said Ayers regarding this stroke of good fortune: “Guilty as sin, free as a bird. America is a great country.”
Next, Ayers embarked on a quest to radicalize America by working within, rather than outside of, the nation's mainstream institutions. In particular, he sought to embed himself in a position of influence within the education establishment. In 1984 Ayers earned a master's degree in Early Childhood Education from Bank Street College. Three years later he received a doctorate in Curriculum and Instruction from Columbia University's Teachers College.
In 1987 Ayers was hired as a professor of education at the University of Illinois, a post he would hold until 2010. As of October 2008, his office door at the university was adorned with photographs of Mumia Abu-Jamal, Che Guevara, and Malcolm X.
In 1994 Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, and Michael Klonsky were among those listed on a "Membership, Subscription and Mailing List" for the Chicago Committees of Correspondence, an offshoot of the Communist Party USA.
In 1995, Ayers and Dohrn hosted a fundraiser at their home to introduce Barack Obama to their neighbors and political allies as Obama prepared to make his first run for the Illinois state senate. (This fundraiser was likely organized by the socialist New Party.) Also present at the meeting were Alice Palmer and Quentin Young.
There is strong evidence suggesting that Ayers wrote Dreams from My Father, Barack Obama's 1995 memoir.
In 1995, Ayers -- whose stated educational objective is to “teach against [the] oppression” allegedly inherent in American society -- founded a “school reform organization” called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), which granted money to far-left groups and causes such as the community organization ACORN. Ayers' teacher-training programs, which were funded by CAC, were designed to serve as “sites of resistance” against an oppressive social system.
Ayers also created, in collaboration with longtime communist Mike Klonsky, the so-called "Small Schools Movement" (SSM), where individual schools committed themselves to the promotion of specific political themes and pushed students to “confront issues of inequity, war, and violence.” A chief goal of SSM is to teach students that American capitalism is a racist, materialistic doctrine that has done incalculable harm to societies all over the world. One of the more infamous students to attend an SSM school (Mountain View High School in Arizona) was Jared Lee Loughner, the gunman who -- on January 8, 2011 in Tucson -- shot Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in the head, leaving her in critical condition. Loughner also sprayed gunfire at others in the vicinity, wounding thirteen and killing six.
In 1999 Ayers joined the Woods Fund of Chicago, where he served as a board member alongside Barack Obama until December 2002, at which time Obama left. Ayers went on to become Woods' board chairman.
Notwithstanding his radical past, Ayers in 2001 rejected the claim that he and his fellow Weather Underground members had ever been terrorists. “Terrorists destroy randomly,” he wrote, “while our actions bore ... the precise stamp of a cut diamond. Terrorists intimidate, while we aimed only to educate.”
Also in 2001, Ayers expressed his enduring hatred for the United States: “What a country. It makes me want to puke.”
At a 2007 reunion of former members of the Weather Underground and Students for a Democratic Society, Ayers reemphasized his contempt for the U.S., asserting that the nation's chief hallmarks included "oppression," "authoritarianism," and "a kind of rising incipient American form of fascism." Moreover, he claimed that the U.S. was guilty of pursuing "empire unapologetic[ally]"; waging "war without end" against "an undefined enemy that’s supposed to be a rallying point for a new kind of energized jingoistic patriotism"; engaging in "unprecedented and unapologetic military expansion"; oppressing brown- and black-skinned people with "white supremacy"; perpetrating "violent attacks" against "women and girls"; expanding "surveillance in every sphere of our lives"; and "targeting ... gay and lesbian people as a kind of a scapegoating gesture ..."
In November 2007, Ayers spoke at a Movement for a Democratic Society (MDS) "Convergence" in Chicago. Though not officially listed as a member of MDS, he has referred to the organization's activities as "our work."
In March 2008 Ayers was elected (by a large majority of his peers) as Vice President for Curriculum Studies at the American Educational Research Association (AERA), putting him in a position to exert great influence over what is taught in America's teacher-training colleges and its public schools. Specifically, Ayers seeks to inculcate teachers-in-training with a “social commitment” to the values of “Marx,” and with a desire to become agents of social change in K-12 classrooms. Whereas “capitalism promotes racism and militarism,” Ayers explains, “teaching invites transformations” and is “the motor-force of revolution.” According to a former AERA employee, “Ayers' radical worldview, which depicts America as “the main source of the world's racism and oppression,” thoroughly “permeates” AERA.
Ayers has also contributed money to Teaching for Change and Rethinking Schools, groups dedicated to turning K-12 students into social and political activists.
In a December 2012 speech at New York University, Ayers emphasized the importance of using the education system, among other things, to indoctrinate young people and thereby transform American society. Said Ayers: “If we want change to come, we would do well not to look at the sites of power we have no access to; the White House, the Congress, the Pentagon. We have absolute access to the community, the school, the neighborhood, the street, the classroom, the workplace, the shop, the farm.”
Ayers' influence in education is not limited solely to his work in the United States. Indeed, he currently sits on the board of the Miranda International Center, a Venezuelan government think tank dedicated to bringing Cuba-style education to Venezuelan schools. (Ayers greatly admires Venezuela's Marxist President Hugo Chavez.)
At a May 18, 2009 rally organized by the Committee for a Just Peace in Israel and Palestine, Ayers joined Rev. Jeremiah Wright in addressing a crowd of more than 400 people at the First United Church of Oak Park (a Chicago suburb) just prior to participating in an annual walk designed to call attention to Israel's alleged crimes against the Palestinian people. Today Ayers is an affiliated activist of the anti-Israel organization Free Gaza, along with such luminaries as Bernardine Dohrn, Jodie Evans, Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, and Adam Shapiro. Ayers is also an endorser of the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. To view a list of additional notable endorsers and supporters, click here.
In August 2010, Ayers announced that he was retiring from his teaching post at the University of Illinois. However, he continues his work with AERA and serves also as an editorial-board member of In These Times, a Chicago-based socialist journal.
Beginning in the fall of 2011, Ayers was a strong supporter of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement, which he described as a “North American Spring,” akin to the “Arab Spring.” Said Ayers: “These kinds of movements expand our consciousness of what’s possible.” On October 19, 2011, Ayers led a “teach-in” for members of "Occupy Chicago" (that city's OWS contingent) on the tactics and history of “non-violent direct action.” He lauded the Chicago activists for their “brilliance”; condemned America's “violent culture”; and derided the Tea Party movement as a bastion of “jingoism, nativism, racism.”
In March 2011, Ayers addressed an Occupy Wall Street contingent in New York City and told them: "I get up every morning and think, today I’m going to make a difference. Today I’m going to end capitalism. Today I’m going to make a revolution. I go to bed every night disappointed but I’m back to work tomorrow, and that’s the only way you can do it."
In November 2011, Ayers was a keynote speaker at the National Association for Multicultural Education's (NAME) international conference in Chicago, along with critical race theorist Patricia Williams and several others. In December 2012, Rick Ayers, a teacher-education professor at the University of San Francisco, was elected as NAME's co-president.
Bill Ayers has authored a series of books about parenting and educating children, including: A Kind and Just Parent; The Good Preschool Teacher; Zero Tolerance: Resisting the Drive for Punishment in Our Schools; and Teaching Towards Freedom: Moral Commitment and Ethical Action in the Classroom.
Ayers and Bernardine Dorhn raised three children. One is named Malik (the Muslim name of Malcolm X). Another is named Zayd (after Zayd Shakur, a Black Liberation Army revolutionary who was killed while driving the cop-killer JoAnne Chesimard -- a.k.a. Assata Shakur -- to a hideout). The third, a boy named Chesa Boudin, was raised by Ayers and Dohrn after his natural parents, Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert, were sentenced to lengthy prison terms for their roles in the 1981 Brinks murders, a joint Weatherman and Black Liberation Army operation that resulted in the killing of two police officers and an armed guard.
FBI File: Weatherman Underground
August 20, 1976
The Mind of a New Left Terrorist
By Ronald Radosh
November 27, 2001
They're All in This Together
By Alfred S. Regnery
September 2011
Communism in Chicago and the Obama Connection
By Cliff Kincaid
February 2008
Unearthing the Weather Underground
By Joseph Morrison Skelly
October 17, 2008
Barack Obama: A Radical Leftist's Journey from Community Organizing to Politics
By Elias Crim and Matthew Vadum
June 2008
William Ayers, Model Citizen?
By David Freddoso
August 18, 2008
Eyewitness to the Ayers Revolution
By Bob Owens
October 28, 2008
Remembering a Sixties Terrorist
By Donna Ron
January 4, 2006
Bill Ayers in Retirement
By Mary Grabar
March 8, 2013
BOOK:
Destructive Generation
By Peter Collier and David Horowitz
BOOK CO-AUTHORED BY BILL AYERS:
Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-Imperialism
By Billy Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, Celia Sojourn, and Jeff Jones
1974
William Ayers' Forgotten Communist Manifesto: Prairie Fire
By ZombieTime.com
October 22, 2008
AYERS AND EDUCATION
The Extreme Make-Over of William Ayers: How a Communist Terrorist Became a “Distinguished” Professor of Education
By Mary Grabar
2009
Chicago Annenberg Challenge Shutdown?
By Stanley Kurtz
August 18, 2008
The Ed Schools’ Latest—and Worst—Humbug
By Sol Stern
Summer 2006
"Social Justice” and Other High School Indoctrinations
By Sol Stern
April 13, 2006
Ayers Is No Education 'Reformer'
By Sol Stern
October 16, 2008
Bill Ayers' Scary Plans for Public Schools
By Phyllis Schlafly
October 21, 2008
AYERS's ROLE IN HELPING BARACK OBAMA
Who Wrote Dreams From My Father?
By Jack Cashill
October 9, 2008
Evidence Mounts: Ayers Co-Wrote Obama's Dreams
By Jack Cashill
October 17, 2008
Who Wrote Dreams and Why It Matters
By Jack Cashill
May 24, 2009
Breakthrough on the Authorship of Obama's 'Dreams'
By Jack Cashill
June 28, 2009
Who Wrote 'Dreams From My Father'?
By WorldNetDaily
September 23, 2009
Did Ayers Help Obama Get Into Harvard?
By Jack Cashill
September 20, 2009
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Bill Ayers | |
|---|---|
Ayers speaks to audience members following a forum on education reform at Florida State University. Bernardine Dohrn, his wife, is seated to the right.
|
|
| Born | William Charles Ayers December 26, 1944 Glen Ellyn, Illinois, U.S. |
| Residence | Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
| Fields | Education |
| Institutions | University of Illinois at Chicago |
| Alma mater | University of Michigan (B.A.), Bank Street College of Education (M.Ed.), Teachers College, Columbia University (Ed.M., Ed.D.) |
| Known for | Founder / former member of the Weather Underground Urban educational reform |
| Spouse | Bernardine Dohrn |
William Charles "Bill" Ayers (born December 26, 1944)[1] is an American elementary education theorist and a former leader in the movement that opposed U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. He is known for his 1960s radical activism as well as his current work in education reform, curriculum, and instruction. In 1969 he co-founded the Weather Underground, a self-described communist revolutionary group[2] that conducted a campaign of bombing public buildings (including police stations, the U.S. Capitol Building, and the Pentagon) during the 1960s and 1970s in response to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.
He is a retired professor in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, formerly holding the titles of Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar.[3] During the 2008 US presidential campaign, a controversy arose over his contacts with then-candidate Barack Obama. He is married to Bernardine Dohrn, who was also a leader in the Weather organization.
Contents
Early life
Ayers grew up in Glen Ellyn, a suburb of Chicago, Illinois. He attended public schools there until his second year in high school, when he transferred to Lake Forest Academy, a small prep school.[4] Ayers earned a B.A. from the University of Michigan in American Studies in 1968 (his father, mother and older brother had preceded him there).[4] His parents are Mary (née Andrew) and Thomas G. Ayers, who was later Chairman and CEO of Commonwealth Edison (1973 to 1980),[5] and for whom Northwestern's Thomas G. Ayers College of Commerce and Industry was named.[6][7]Ayers was affected when Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) President Paul Potter, at a 1965 Ann Arbor Teach-In against the Vietnam war, asked his audience, "How will you live your life so that it doesn't make a mockery of your values?" Ayers later wrote in his memoir, Fugitive Days, that his reaction was: "You could not be a moral person with the means to act, and stand still. [...] To stand still was to choose indifference. Indifference was the opposite of moral".[8]
In 1965, Ayers joined a picket line protesting an Ann Arbor, Michigan pizzeria for refusing to seat African Americans. His first arrest came for a sit-in at a local draft board, resulting in 10 days in jail. His first teaching job came shortly afterward at the Children's Community School, a preschool with a very small enrollment operating in a church basement, founded by a group of students in emulation of the Summerhill method of education.[9]
The school was a part of the nationwide "free school movement". Schools in the movement had no grades or report cards; they aimed to encourage cooperation rather than competition, and the teachers had pupils address them by their first names. Within a few months, at age 21, Ayers became director of the school. There also he met Diana Oughton, who would become his girlfriend until her death in 1970 after a bomb exploded while preparing the bombs for Weather Underground activities.[4]
Early activism
Further information: Weather Underground (organization)
Ayers became involved in the New Left and the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).[10]
He rose to national prominence as an SDS leader in 1968 and 1969. As
head of an SDS regional group, the "Jesse James Gang", Ayers made
decisive contributions to the Weatherman orientation toward militancy.The group Ayers headed in Detroit, Michigan became one of the earliest gatherings of what became the Weatherman. Before the June 1969 SDS convention, Ayers became a prominent leader of the group, which arose as a result of a schism in SDS.[8] "During that time his infatuation with street fighting grew and he developed a language of confrontational militancy that became more and more pronounced over the year [1969]", disaffected former Weatherman member Cathy Wilkerson wrote in 2001. Ayers had previously been a roommate of Terry Robbins, a fellow militant who was killed in 1970 along with Ayers' girlfriend Oughton and one other member in the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion, while constructing anti-personnel bombs intended for a non-commissioned officer dance at Fort Dix, New Jersey.[11]
In June 1969, the Weatherman took control of the SDS at its national convention, where Ayers was elected Education Secretary.[8] Later in 1969, Ayers participated in planting a bomb at a statue dedicated to police casualties in the 1886 Haymarket affair confrontation between labor supporters and the Chicago police.[12] The blast broke almost 100 windows and blew pieces of the statue onto the nearby Kennedy Expressway.[13] (The statue was rebuilt and unveiled on May 4, 1970, and blown up again by other Weathermen on October 6, 1970.[13][14] Rebuilding it yet again, the city posted a 24-hour police guard to prevent another blast, and in January 1972 it was moved to Chicago police headquarters).[15]
Ayers participated in the Days of Rage riot in Chicago in October 1969, and in December was at the "War Council" meeting in Flint, Michigan. Two major decisions came out of the "War Council". The first was to immediately begin a violent, armed struggle (e.g., bombings and armed robberies) against the state without attempting to organize or mobilize a broad swath of the public. The second was to create underground collectives in major cities throughout the country.[16] Larry Grathwohl, a Federal Bureau of Investigation informant in the Weatherman group from the fall of 1969 to the spring of 1970, stated that "Ayers, along with Bernardine Dohrn, probably had the most authority within the Weatherman".[17]
Involvement with Weather Underground
Further information: List of Weatherman actions
After the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion in 1970, in which Weatherman member Ted Gold, Ayers' close friend Terry Robbins, and Ayers' girlfriend, Diana Oughton were killed when a nail bomb being assembled in the house exploded, Ayers and several associates evaded pursuit by US law enforcement officials. Kathy Boudin and Cathy Wilkerson survived the blast. Ayers was not facing criminal charges at the time, but the federal government later filed charges against him.[4] Ayers participated in the bombings of New York City Police Department headquarters in 1970, the United States Capitol building in 1971, and the Pentagon in 1972, as he noted in his 2001 book, Fugitive Days. Ayers writes:Although the bomb that rocked the Pentagon was itsy-bitsy - weighing close to two pounds - it caused 'tens of thousands of dollars' of damage. The operation cost under $500, and no one was killed or even hurt.[18]During this time Ayers and fellow member Bernardine Dohrn married, and the two remained fugitives together, changing identities, jobs and locations.
In 1973, new information came to light about FBI operations targeted against Weather Underground and the New Left, all part of a series of covert and often illegal FBI projects called COINTEL.[19] Due to the illegal tactics[clarification needed] of FBI agents involved with the program, government attorneys requested all weapons- and bomb-related charges be dropped against the Weather Underground, including charges against Ayers.[20]
However, state charges against Dohrn remained. Dohrn was still reluctant to turn herself in to authorities. "He was sweet and patient, as he always is, to let me come to my senses on my own", she later said of Ayers.[4] She turned herself in to authorities in 1980. She was fined $1,500 and given three years probation.[21]
In 1973 Ayers co-authored the book Prairie Fire with other members of the Weather Underground which they dedicated to close to 200 people including Harriet Tubman, John Brown, 'All Who Continue to Fight', and 'All Political Prisoners in the U.S.'.[22] The list includes Sirhan Sirhan, convicted assassin of Robert F. Kennedy.[23][24] Ayers himself has denied personally dedicating the book to Sirhan.[25]
Later reflections on underground period
Fugitive Days: A Memoir
In 2001, Ayers published Fugitive Days: A Memoir, which he explained in part as an attempt to answer the questions of Kathy Boudin's son, and his speculation that Diana Oughton died trying to stop the Greenwich Village bomb makers.[26] Some have questioned the truth, accuracy, and tone of the book. Brent Staples wrote for The New York Times Book Review that "Ayers reminds us often that he can't tell everything without endangering people involved in the story.[27] Historian Jesse Lemisch (himself a former member of SDS) contrasted Ayers' recollections with those of other former members of Weatherman and has alleged serious factual errors.[28] Ayers, in the foreword to his book, states that it was written as his personal memories and impressions over time, not a scholarly research project.[29]Statements made in 2001
Chicago Magazine reported that "just before the September 11th attacks," Richard Elrod, a city lawyer injured in the Weathermen's Chicago "Days of Rage," received an apology from Ayers and Dohrn for their part in the violence. "[T]hey were remorseful," Elrod says. "They said, 'We're sorry that things turned out this way.'"[30] In the months before Ayers' memoir was published on September 10, 2001, the author gave numerous interviews with newspaper and magazine writers in which he defended his overall history of radical words and actions. Some of the resulting articles were written before the September 11 attacks and appeared immediately after, including one often-noted article in The New York Times, and another in the Chicago Tribune. Numerous observations were made in the media comparing the statements Ayers was making about his own past just as a dramatic terrorist incident shocked the public.Much of the controversy about Ayers during the decade since 2000 stems from an interview he gave to The New York Times on the occasion of the memoir's publication.[31] 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."[29] Ayers 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."[32] 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."[33] Ayers has maintained that the two statements were not intended to imply a wish they had set more bombs.[33][34]
In a November 2008 interview with The New Yorker, Ayers said that he had not meant to imply that he wished he and the Weathermen had committed further acts of violence. Instead, he said, “I wish I had done more, but it doesn’t mean I wish we’d bombed more shit.” Ayers said that he had never been responsible for violence against other people and was acting to end a war in Vietnam in which “thousands of people were being killed every week.” He also stated, "While we did claim several extreme acts, they were acts of extreme radicalism against property,” and “We killed no one and hurt no one. Three of our people killed themselves.”[35]
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.' "[29] "We weren't terrorists," Ayers told an interviewer for the Chicago Tribune in 2001. "The reason we weren't terrorists is because we did not commit random acts of terror against people. Terrorism was what was being practiced in the countryside of Vietnam by the United States."[4]
In a letter to the editor in the Chicago Tribune, Ayers wrote, "I condemn all forms of terrorism — individual, group and official". He also condemned the September 11 terrorist attacks in that letter. "Today we are witnessing crimes against humanity on our own shores on an unthinkable scale, and I fear that we may soon see more innocent people in other parts of the world dying in response."[36]
Views on his past expressed since 2001
Ayers was asked in a January 2004 interview, "How do you feel about what you did? Would you do it again under similar circumstances?" He replied:[37] "I've thought about this a lot. Being almost 60, it's impossible to not have lots and lots of regrets about lots and lots of things, but the question of did we do something that was horrendous, awful? ... I don't think so. I think what we did was to respond to a situation that was unconscionable." On September 9, 2008, journalist Jake Tapper reported on the comic strip in Ayers' blog explaining the soundbite: "The one thing I don't regret is opposing the war in Vietnam with every ounce of my being.... When I say, 'We didn't do enough,' a lot of people rush to think, 'That must mean, "We didn't bomb enough shit."' But that's not the point at all. It's not a tactical statement, it's an obvious political and ethical statement. In this context, 'we' means 'everyone.'"[38][39]In an op-ed piece in 2008, Ayers gave this assessment of his actions:
The Weather Underground crossed lines of legality, of propriety and perhaps even of common sense. Our effectiveness can be — and still is being — debated.[40]He also reiterated his rebuttal to the charge of terrorism:
The Weather Underground went on to take responsibility for placing several small bombs in empty offices.... We did carry out symbolic acts of extreme vandalism directed at monuments to war and racism, and the attacks on property, never on people, were meant to respect human life and convey outrage and determination to end the Vietnam war.[40]
Academic career
Ayers is a retired 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.[3]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 Teachers College, 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. On August 5, 2010, Ayers officially announced his intent to retire from the University of Illinois at Chicago.[41]
On September 23, 2010 William Ayers was unanimously denied emeritus status by the University of Illinois, after a speech by the university's board chair Christopher G. Kennedy (son of assassinated U.S. Senator Robert Kennedy), containing the quote "I intend to vote against conferring the honorific title of our university to a man whose body of work includes a book dedicated in part to the man who murdered my father, Robert F. Kennedy."[42] He added, "There is nothing more antithetical to the hopes for a university that is lively and yet civil...than to permanently seal off debate with one's opponents by killing them".[43] Kennedy referred to a 1974 book Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-Imperialism, written by Ayers and other Weather Underground members, which includes a dedication to a list of over 200 revolutionary figures, musicians and others, including Sirhan Sirhan, who is currently serving a life sentence for Robert Kennedy's assassination in 1968.[44] Ayers said he has never dedicated any book, including Prairie Fire, the book in question, to assassins.[45]
Civic and political life
Ayers worked with Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley in shaping the city's school reform program,[46] and was one of three co-authors of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge grant proposal that in 1995 won $49.2 million over five years for public school reform.[47] In 1997 Chicago awarded him its Citizen of the Year award for his work on the project.[48] Since 1999 he has served on the board of directors of the Woods Fund of Chicago, an anti-poverty, philanthropic foundation established as the Woods Charitable Fund in 1941.[49]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.[50] On January 18, 2009, on his way to speak about education reform at the Centre for Urban Schooling at the University of Toronto, he was refused admission to Canada when he arrived at the Toronto City Centre Airport although he has travelled to Canada more than a dozen times in the past. According to Ayers, "It seems very arbitrary. The border agent said I had a conviction for a felony from 1969. I have several arrests for misdemeanours, but not for felonies." [51]
Political views
In an interview published in 1995, Ayers characterized his political beliefs at that time and in the 1960s and 1970s: "I am a radical, Leftist, small 'c' communist ... [Laughs] Maybe I'm the last communist who is willing to admit it. [Laughs] We have always been small 'c' communists in the sense that we were never in the Communist party and never Stalinists. The ethics of communism still appeal to me. I don't like Lenin as much as the early Marx. I also like Henry David Thoreau, Mother Jones and Jane Addams [...]".[52]In 1970 Ayers was called "a national leader"[53] of the Weatherman organization and "one of the chief theoreticians of the Weathermen" by The New York Times.[54] The Weathermen were initially part of the Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM) within the SDS, splitting from the RYM's Maoists by claiming there was no time to build a vanguard party and that revolutionary war against the United States government and the capitalist system should begin immediately. Their founding document called for the establishment of a "white fighting force" to be allied with the "Black Liberation Movement" and other "anti-colonial" movements[55] to achieve "the destruction of US imperialism and the achievement of a classless world: world communism."[56]
In June 1974, the Weather Underground released a 151-page volume titled Prairie Fire, which stated: "We are a guerrilla organization [...] We are communist women and men underground in the United States [...]"[57] The Weatherman leadership, including Ayers, pushed for a radical reformulation of sexual relations under the slogan "Smash Monogamy".[58][59]
Larry Grathwohl, an undercover FBI agent who infiltrated The Weather Underground, claims Ayers told him where to plant bombs. He says Ayers was bent on overthrowing the government. In response to Grathwohl's claims, Ayers stated, "Now that's being blown into dishonest narratives about hurting people, killing people, planning to kill people. That's just not true. We destroyed government property," [60]
On June 18, 2013, Ayers gave an interview to RealClearPolitics' Morning Commute in which he stated that every president in this century should be tried for war crimes, including President Obama for his use of drone attacks, which Ayers considers an act of terror. [61]
Obama-Ayers Controversy
Main article: Bill Ayers presidential election controversy
During the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, a controversy arose regarding Ayers' contacts with then-candidate Barack Obama, a matter that had been public knowledge in Chicago for years.[62] After being raised by the American and British press[62][63][64]
the connection was picked up by conservative blogs and newspapers in
the United States. The matter was raised in a campaign debate by
moderator George Stephanopoulos, and later became an issue for the John McCain presidential campaign. Investigations by The New York Times, CNN, and other news organizations concluded that Obama does not have a close relationship with Ayers.[65][66][67]In an op-ed piece after the election, Ayers denied any close association with Obama, and castigated the Republican campaign for its use of guilt by association tactics.[40] In a new edition of his memoirs, Fugitive Days: Memoirs of an Anti-War-Activist, he added a new afterword describing the blogospheric characterization of their relationship as "neighbors and family friends" ("In 2008 there was a lot of chatter on the blogosphere about my relationship with Barack Obama: we had served together on the board of a foundation, knew one another as neighbors and family friends, held an initial fundraiser at my house, where I'd made a small donation to his earliest political campaign."). This was misleadingly characterized as his own claim by some.[68]
Praise and criticism of Ayers
Praise for Ayers and his work
In 1997 Chicago awarded him its Citizen of the Year award for his work on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge project.[48]William C. Ibershof, formerly the lead federal prosecutor in the Weather Underground case, wrote in 2008: "Although I dearly wanted to obtain convictions against all the Weathermen, including Bill Ayers, I am very pleased to learn that he has become a responsible citizen."[69]
Ayers was elected Vice President for Curriculum Studies by the American Educational Research Association in 2008.[70] William H. Schubert, a fellow professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, wrote that his election was "a testimony of [Ayers'] stature and [the] high esteem he holds in the field of education locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally."[71]
Wall Street Journal columnist Thomas Frank praised Ayers as a "model citizen" and a scholar whose "work is esteemed by colleagues of different political viewpoints."[72] Studs Terkel called Ayers' memoir "a deeply moving elegy to all those young dreamers who tried to live decently in an indecent world."[73]
In an October 2010 Chicago Sun Times editorial Attacks on Ayers distort our history, former students of Ayers and UIC Alumni, Daniel Schneider and Adam Kuranishi, responded in opposition to the University of Illinois Board of Trustees' decision to deny Ayers Emeritus status. They write, "We juxtaposed the image of him painted by the media with the teacher we saw in class; and the two could not be more distinct. The Ayers in the media was frozen in time; he never left the 1960s, never aged out of his 20s, and never grew in perspective. As his students, we see through this representation ... Ayers is still committed to movements for peace and justice. His worldview and tactics are evolved and elaborate, thoughtful and wise, making him unrecognizable to the media's caricature. Should we not expect someone to evolve after 40 years? One may disagree with his activism, but it is impossible to ignore his hard work and contributions to urban education, juvenile justice reform, the University of Illinois and Chicago."[74]
Criticism of Ayers and his work
Radical bomber[75] Jane Alpert criticized Ayers in 1974 "for his callous treatment and abandonment of Diana Oughton before her death, and for his generally fickle and high-handed treatment of women."[76]Reviewing Ayers' memoir in Slate Magazine, Timothy Noah said he couldn't recall reading "a memoir quite so self-indulgent and morally clueless as Fugitive Days."[77] Sol Stern, a conservative opponent of liberal education policies, is a longtime critic of Ayers; he has "studied Mr. Ayers's work for years and read most of his books."[78] Stern has written critiques of Ayers's career as an education reformer for City Journal and elsewhere.[79][80] His criticism in summary: "Calling Bill Ayers a school reformer is a bit like calling Joseph Stalin an agricultural reformer.".[81] "The media mainstreaming of a figure like Mr. Ayers could have terrible consequences for the country's politics and public schools."[78]
Feminist critic Katha Pollitt sharply criticized Ayers' December 2008 New York Times opinion piece[82] as a "sentimentalized, self-justifying whitewash of his role in the weirdo violent fringe of the 1960s-70s antiwar left." She castigates Ayers and his Weathermen cohorts for making "the antiwar movement look like the enemy of ordinary people" during the Vietnam War era.[83]
No comments:
Post a Comment