Coming clean about my connection to Bill Ayers [Bryan]

There is much talk these days about who was friends with whom, for how long ago, and for what purposes. I guess I should come clean that I, too, have had some friendly encounters with Bill Ayers.

A few years ago (2004 maybe), I was a teaching assistant at the University of Illinois. In our Foundations of Education class, we were using a book by Greg Michie called Holler If You Hear Me, which details the author's experience teaching in inner-city schools. The book advances the thesis that we can learn a lot about education by listening to the kids in our schools. The book had an approving foreword written by Bill Ayers, formerly of the Weather Underground (a group that planted some non-lethal bombs back in the 1960s) and currently an education professor at the UI Chicago campus. Since he was so close, we invited Ayers to come down to Champaign to talk about his ideas about education. He came and gave a fairly boring talk about education -- something about making sure students have an equal shot, treating them with dignity, and so forth. What is interesting is how forgettable it actually was -- standard progressive boilerplate reform rhetoric.

After his talk, we teaching assistants talked with Ayers for about an hour. He was friendly and generous with his time, if at times a bit gloomy. If I remember correctly, he mostly criticized how schools are presented in the media. I think I remember that he hates the movie "Stand and Deliver" because the movie seems to imply that the problem with schools is that teachers aren't willing to work themselves to death. It was an interesting conversation, although none of it would be considered radical. Although I found his lecture a bit boring, I left with a mildly positive impression of the guy, even though I certainly disagree with his choice 40 years ago to oppose the Vietnam War in the way that he did.

It now occurs to me, though, that some people would claim that I "pal around with domestic terrorists." I have never thought that talking to people from various backgrounds and beliefs could be a liability, but I guess that is the way things are in some circles. There go my chances at being elected to anything.