Education scholar William Ayers will speak in larger venues

April 20, 2010 – 2:34 PM

Dr. William Ayers, a distinguished professor of education and senior university scholar at the University of Illinois, Chicago, will lecture to students at California State University, Fresno at 2 p.m. Friday, April 23, as part of the Cineculture film series.

The venue has changed to the Satellite Student Union (just south of Maple and San Ramon avenues) to be able to accommodate a larger audience.

Ayers’ topic is “Pay Attention and Be Astonished: Ethical Action and the Creation of the Public Square.” After the lecture, he will talk with students and sign copies of his books.

The campus Cineculture program will screen the film “Central Station” (1998) and Ayers will lead a discussion of it in McLane Hall Room 121 from 4:30 to 7 p.m. The screening also will be held in a bigger-than-originally-scheduled space.

His appearance is presented by Cineculture, the College of Arts and Humanities and the Kremen School of Education and Human Development.

All the events are free and open to the public. Parking on campus is $3.

Ayers is a founder of the Small Schools Workshop and the Center for Youth and Society. He teaches courses in interpretive and qualitative research, urban school change, and teaching and the modern predicament. He is vice-president of the curriculum division of the American Educational Research Association and a member of the executive committee of the University of Illinois, Chicago Faculty Senate.

Ayers has written extensively about social justice, democracy and education, the cultural contexts of schooling, and teaching as an essentially intellectual, ethical and political enterprise.

He also is known for 1960s activism as a leader in the Weather Underground movement that opposed U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.

His articles have appeared in the Harvard Educational Review, the Journal of Teacher Education, Teachers College Record, Rethinking Schools, Nation, Educational Leadership, New York Times and Cambridge Journal of Education. Among his books is “To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher,” named Book of the Year in 1993 by Kappa Delta Pi. He won the Witten Award for Distinguished Work in Biography and Autobiography in 1995.

The movie “Central Station” is presented in Portuguese with English subtitles. Director Walter Salles’ film received numerous awards and two Academy Award nominations.

Cineculture is a student organization established in 2005 to promote cultural awareness and address diversity issues through a film series open to the campus and general community. The film series is offered as a three-unit academic course in the Department of Mass Communication and Journalism.

Cineculture is funded through Instructionally Related Activities Fees, which students pay for activities and organizations on campus that enhance the academic mission.

For more information, visit http://cineculture.csufresno.edu/.

Categories: Events

Anonymous

They make a stink about Sarah Palin coming to a California University yet a self professed communist comes to Fresno State and no one says a word ????????
cindyko

They make a stink about Sarah Palin coming to a California University yet a self professed communist comes to Fresno State and no one says a word ????????
Anonymous

Are you Kidding Me!? I can’t believe this. Why in the world would Fresno State Support or pay a known communist? I don’t get it! Is Timothy McVeigh coming soon?

Anonymous

More like DOMESTIC TERRORIST, what a piece of s—. Paid for by the TAX Payers.

shellyjean

Are you Kidding Me!? I can't believe this. Why in the world would Fresno State Support or pay a known communist? I don't get it! Is Timothy McVeigh coming soon?
lorimarina

This evil violent bomber of buildings as part of his protests should never be here. i will NEVER EVER SUPPORT FRESNO STATE.
lorimarina

This evil violent bomber of buildings as part of his protests should never be here. i will NEVER EVER SUPPORT FRESNO STATE.
JadaG

This is an outrage! Bill Ayers is quoted saying things like “These something about a good bomb.” and “Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring home the revolution. Kill your parents” His Weather Underground group BOMBED the Pentagon, NYC Police Headquarters, the US Capitol Building, and the DC National Guard Office and we are inviting him to speak at our school!! I would like to know WHO in our administration allowed this! This is unbelievable!
JadaG

This is an outrage! Bill Ayers is quoted saying things like “These something about a good bomb.” and “Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring home the revolution. Kill your parents” His Weather Underground group BOMBED the Pentagon, NYC Police Headquarters, the US Capitol Building, and the DC National Guard Office and we are inviting him to speak at our school!! I would like to know WHO in our administration allowed this! This is unbelievable!
tonimiller

You have got to be kidding–Domestic Terrorist–paid for by our TAX MONEY? No child of mine will ever attend this disgusting institution.
tonimiller

You have got to be kidding–Domestic Terrorist–paid for by our TAX MONEY? No child of mine will ever attend this disgusting institution.
tonimiller

More like DOMESTIC TERRORIST, what a piece of s—. Paid for by the TAX Payers.
m,artygilb

I will be there but it will not be in support of this anti American! I am also ashamed that CSUF would in any way support any thing to do with this person when they as has been shown will not support a fair balanced point of view that is for pro America. Yes I will be there bill Ayers and I will have my flag with me and I bet you will not dare try to even stomp on it now will you? You only have the guts to do that in a dark rank ally way! I also bet you will not try to stomp on one that is covering a fallen hero also I have to say the kids in service are 100 times the man you could ever even hope to be!
GM

None of the outrage expressed here will matter if people don't hit the University in the one place that matters to them – their pocketbook. Withdraw any donations to the University, write the biggest donors to the campus and pressure them to use their money elsewhere. There are much better uses for our money in support of education than bringing an unrepentent terrorist to campus. I support his right to express his views, just not on my dime.
devin468

Some people need to calm down. Ayers has renounced his formerly violent ways, and has tried to move past his former self.
If someone disagrees with what he has to say on Friday, then so be it, but what does his past have to do with his upcoming presentation?
If God can forgive anyone, then surely God can forgive William Ayers, whose organization's bombs never killed a soul. And if God forgives William, then so should we. Then, maybe we can actually listen to what he has to say and judge him from there.
Curt Ward

If Timothy McVeigh was a “homegrown terrorist” so is William Ayres.
If Fresno State supports this individual then Fresno State supports terrorists and terrorism.
I am ashamed of the Fresno State individuals that have brought this criminal to our campus.
William Ayers should still be in prison.
Josh

from wikipedia:
“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 sh*t.” 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.””

The Weathermen committed “violence” against property in an attempt to end the mass “violence” against people in Vietnam. If Ayers is a terrorist then he is less of a terrorist than soldiers in the U.S.'s constant wars. When the State commits these acts they are assumed justified, when a non-State agent commits them they are considered terrorism, this is hypocrisy to the highest degree.
devin468

Some people need to calm down. Ayers has renounced his formerly violent ways, and has tried to move past his former self.
If someone disagrees with what he has to say on Friday, then so be it, but what does his past have to do with his upcoming presentation?
If God can forgive anyone, then surely God can forgive William Ayers, whose organization's bombs never killed a soul. And if God forgives William, then so should we. Then, maybe we can actually listen to what he has to say and judge him from there.
GM

Devin and Josh need to quit trying to re-write history. Josh, can you think of any reason Ayers would like to clarify his position, nearly 40 years after the violence he perpetrated and advocated? Is there any significance to the date November 2008? Ayers and the Underground were most definately responsible for violence against people, including the murder of a police officer in San Francisco. They openly advocated the violent overthrow of the country and the installation of a dictatorship along Maoist lines. They worked in concert with North Vietnamese and Cuban governments that killed millions, a fact that should lay to rest the fiction that they were simply trying to stop a war and save the Vietnamese people. If you truly believe that they only attacked property and never people, then why was that declared, by them, as a change from their previous approach, a result of the Greenwich Village townhouse bombing in which some of their members accidentally blew themselves up? How can you change to only targeting property if that is all you are doing already? Furthermore, Ayers continued to openly advocate violence (against people and property) and overthrow of the U.S. and expressed his willingness to liquidate 25 million Americans to make it happen. Read what he wrote and said. Hypocrisy, Josh, is to truly believe in those means and ends and to hide behind some created fiction in order to make the useful idiots feel good about themselves.
MJG

So the deaths of the Policemen by the underground weather men is just an oops to you and Ayers? How about the family that some of them escaped harm only by luck including the children were they an oops being the bomb was placed not near but right at there home? How about the police station that was bomb was that only to harm property? Do you believe they thought no one would be inside? If you really believe they only meant to do property damage then you are living in never never land and not reality.
To call what our heroes do in service to this country an act of terrorism makes me sick. And to link them to the likes of Ayers is nothing more then a left wing ploy to try and justify an act that has no justification to start with! How many protested yet did not resort to violence during that time? How many protested with bombing and killing others? Ayers is and always will be a traitor to this country in my Book! Ayers hide in the shadows and back alleys harming and killing people and today lies about it never repents for it! Areys is not in jail because of a technicality not because of being innocent as even Ayers says “Guilty as hell”! Any one that supports him, pays for him to speak or even hires him Think of this what’s it say about YOU and your beliefs and what you support!
GM

Devin and Josh need to quit trying to re-write history. Josh, can you think of any reason Ayers would like to clarify his position, nearly 40 years after the violence he perpetrated and advocated? Is there any significance to the date November 2008? Ayers and the Underground were most definately responsible for violence against people, including the murder of a police officer in San Francisco. They openly advocated the violent overthrow of the country and the installation of a dictatorship along Maoist lines. They worked in concert with North Vietnamese and Cuban governments that killed millions, a fact that should lay to rest the fiction that they were simply trying to stop a war and save the Vietnamese people. If you truly believe that they only attacked property and never people, then why was that declared, by them, as a change from their previous approach, a result of the Greenwich Village townhouse bombing in which some of their members accidentally blew themselves up? How can you change to only targeting property if that is all you are doing already? Furthermore, Ayers continued to openly advocate violence (against people and property) and overthrow of the U.S. and expressed his willingness to liquidate 25 million Americans to make it happen. Read what he wrote and said. Hypocrisy, Josh, is to truly believe in those means and ends and to hide behind some created fiction in order to make the useful idiots feel good about themselves.
GM

Devin and Josh need to quit trying to re-write history. Josh, can you think of any reason Ayers would like to clarify his position, nearly 40 years after the violence he perpetrated and advocated? Is there any significance to the date November 2008? Ayers and the Underground were most definately responsible for violence against people, including the murder of a police officer in San Francisco. They openly advocated the violent overthrow of the country and the installation of a dictatorship along Maoist lines. They worked in concert with North Vietnamese and Cuban governments that killed millions, a fact that should lay to rest the fiction that they were simply trying to stop a war and save the Vietnamese people. If you truly believe that they only attacked property and never people, then why was that declared, by them, as a change from their previous approach, a result of the Greenwich Village townhouse bombing in which some of their members accidentally blew themselves up? How can you change to only targeting property if that is all you are doing already? Furthermore, Ayers continued to openly advocate violence (against people and property) and overthrow of the U.S. and expressed his willingness to liquidate 25 million Americans to make it happen. Read what he wrote and said. Hypocrisy, Josh, is to truly believe in those means and ends and to hide behind some created fiction in order to make the useful idiots feel good about themselves.
MJG

So the deaths of the Policemen by the underground weather men is just an oops to you and Ayers? How about the family that some of them escaped harm only by luck including the children were they an oops being the bomb was placed not near but right at there home? How about the police station that was bomb was that only to harm property? Do you believe they thought no one would be inside? If you really believe they only meant to do property damage then you are living in never never land and not reality.
To call what our heroes do in service to this country an act of terrorism makes me sick. And to link them to the likes of Ayers is nothing more then a left wing ploy to try and justify an act that has no justification to start with! How many protested yet did not resort to violence during that time? How many protested with bombing and killing others? Ayers is and always will be a traitor to this country in my Book! Ayers hide in the shadows and back alleys harming and killing people and today lies about it never repents for it! Areys is not in jail because of a technicality not because of being innocent as even Ayers says “Guilty as hell”! Any one that supports him, pays for him to speak or even hires him Think of this what’s it say about YOU and your beliefs and what you support!
MJG

So the deaths of the Policemen by the underground weather men is just an oops to you and Ayers? How about the family that some of them escaped harm only by luck including the children were they an oops being the bomb was placed not near but right at there home? How about the police station that was bomb was that only to harm property? Do you believe they thought no one would be inside? If you really believe they only meant to do property damage then you are living in never never land and not reality.
To call what our heroes do in service to this country an act of terrorism makes me sick. And to link them to the likes of Ayers is nothing more then a left wing ploy to try and justify an act that has no justification to start with! How many protested yet did not resort to violence during that time? How many protested with bombing and killing others? Ayers is and always will be a traitor to this country in my Book! Ayers hide in the shadows and back alleys harming and killing people and today lies about it never repents for it! Areys is not in jail because of a technicality not because of being innocent as even Ayers says “Guilty as hell”! Any one that supports him, pays for him to speak or even hires him Think of this what’s it say about YOU and your beliefs and what you support!