News Team Boulder

Issue date: 3/5/09 Section: News

Ayers 1969 Mug Shot

Former University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill and University of Illinois at Chicago Professor William Ayers will speak at the University Memorial Center Thursday. Boulder students are familiar with Ward Churchill, and his dismissal for academic dishonesty and plagiarism. But who is William Ayers? He was in the news for being connected to Barack Obama, but why the controversy?

William "Bill" Ayers was an anti-Vietnam war protestor in the late 1960s, and the founder of Weather Underground, a leftist group of college students concerned with the Vietnam war and Civil Rights. The term "weatherman" comes from a Bob Dylan song, "Subterranean Homesick Blues," which includes the lyrics, "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows," in reference to social justice.

Bill Ayers began his radical work with the Weather Underground by setting off a bomb at the Haymarket Police Memorial in Chicago to oppose U.S. foreign and domestic policy. No one was hurt.

Weather Underground members

The goal of the bombings were not to take human life, but to draw attention to injustice. Ayers, as leader of the group, stepped up his efforts by declaring a state of war against the United States, and bombing U.S. government targets such as an officer's dance at Fort Dix in New Jersey, and a New York State Supreme Court Justice's home. Ayers' coup de grace, however, was the bombing of the U.S. Capitol building, the State Department building, and the Pentagon in response to military actions in southeast Asia. In an Interview with the Chicago Tribune in 2001, he said: "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".

The acts of extremism ended in 1970, when an attempted bombing in Greenwich Village, Conn. killed Ayers' close friend and girlfriend while they were assembling a bomb. Ayers' history of not taking lives was over, and he went underground to avoid government charges. The charges were later dropped under allegations of misconduct by the United States government.

Ayers speaking at the University of South Carolina

Years later, Ayers took a teaching position at the University of Illinois at Chicago in the Education department, and today is a distinguished member of the faculty. He was named Chicago's "Man of the Year" in 1997 for his work in public school reform. To see more on his education stance see the video below. Today, he is passionate about changing the education system for the better, however wants to clarify his radical actions. "The Weather Underground went on to take responsibility for placing several small bombs in empty offices," Ayers said in a New York Times interview. "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."

In the 2008 election, controversy about Barack Obama's relationship with Ayers arose during debates and in the press. However both men and further investigations into the matter found that there was no link between the two men.

Watch the Video

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