William Ayers, Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago (retired), is a graduate of the University of Michigan, the Bank Street College of Education, Bennington College, and Teachers College, Columbia University. He is an engaged scholar and a peace and social justice activist who has written extensively about social justice and freedom, democracy and education, the cultural contexts of schooling, and teaching as an essentially intellectual, ethical, and political enterprise. He is a former vice-president of the curriculum division of the American Educational Research Association, and a former member of the executive committee of the Faculty Senate at UIC.
His books include, When Freedom is the Question Abolition is the Answer: Reflections on Collective Liberation (Beacon Press); Demand the Impossible! A Radical Manifesto (Haymarket Books); Teaching Toward Freedom: Moral Commitment and Ethical Action in the Classroom (Beacon Press); A Kind and Just Parent: The Children of Juvenile Court (Beacon Press); Fugitive Days: A Memoir (Beacon Press); Public Enemy: Confessions of an American Dissident (Beacon Press); On the Side of the Child: Summerhill Revisited (Teachers College Press); About Becoming a Teacher (Teachers College Press); Teaching the Personal and the Political: Essays on Hope and Justice (Teachers College Press); The Good Preschool Teacher: Six Teachers Reflect on Their Lives (Teachers College Press); To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher, (Teachers College Press) which was named Book of the Year by Kappa Delta Pi, and won the Witten Award for Distinguished Work in Biography and Autobiography; with Ryan Alexander-Tanner, To Teach: The Journey, in Comics (Teachers College Press); with Kevin Kumashiro, Erica Meiners, Therese Quinn, and David Stovall, Teaching Toward Democracy: Educators as Agents of Change (Paradigm); with Rick Ayers, Teaching the Taboo: Courage and Commitment in the Classroom (Teachers College Press); with Bernardine Dohrn, Race Course: Against White Supremacy (Third World Press); and with Crustal Laura and Rick Ayers, “You can’t fire the bad ones!” And 18 other myths about teachers, teachers’ unions, and public education (Beacon Press).
He lives in Hyde Park, Chicago with Bernardine Dohrn, his partner, co-conspirator, and comrade for over 50 years.
Bill Ayers 