The Weather Underground’s Bill Ayers on a CLASSIC SOUNDS OF FILM with Tom Needham

On the next Classic SOUNDS OF FILM, Tom Needham speaks with Bill Ayers, a former community organizer and education professor whose early notoriety came as a co-founder of the Weather Underground, the radical antiwar group that emerged from the late-1960s student movement and was later labeled a domestic terrorist organization by the FBI. His past has remained a subject of debate, but it marks just one chapter in a long public career devoted to questions of democracy, schooling, and civic life.

Ayers went on to become a prominent voice in progressive education, serving for many years as a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and writing influential books on teaching and social justice. His works include TO TEACH: THE JOURNEY OF A TEACHER, TO BECOME A TEACHER: MAKING A DIFFERENCE IN CHILDREN’S LIVES, TEACHING TOWARD FREEDOM, A SIMPLE JUSTICE, and the memoir FUGITIVE DAYS, which reflects on activism, education, and the turbulent era that shaped his early life.

Sounds of Film is America’s longest running film, music, and ideas show, exploring the creative minds behind the culture that moves us. Past guests include Chuck D, Chris Hedges, Big Daddy Kane, Thora Birch, Whit Stillman, Carter Burwell, Howard Shore, and DA Pennebaker.