User:Tillman/Bill Ayers praise & crit

Praise and Criticism of Ayers

Now that the election is over, we need to add a section on notable criticism and praise of Ayers. The relevant BLP policy is here; specifically, Criticism and praise of the subject should be represented if it is relevant to the subject's notability and can be sourced to reliable secondary sources, and so long as the material is written in a manner that does not overwhelm the article or appear to take sides; it needs to be presented responsibly, conservatively, and in a neutral, encyclopedic tone. . .

Anticipating that this could become controversial, here is a proposed draft for a new section to be added to our article:

Praise for Ayers and his work

In 1997 Chicago awarded him its Citizen of the Year award for his work on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge project.

William C. Ibershof, formerly the lead federal prosecutor for the Weather Underground case, wrote in 2008: "Although I dearly wanted to obtain convictions against all the Weathermen, including Bill Ayers, I am very pleased to learn that he has become a responsible citizen."

Ayers was elected Vice President for Curriculum Studies by the American Educational Research Association in 2008. William H. Schubert, a fellow professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, wrote that his election was "a testimony of [Ayers'] stature and [the] high esteem he holds in the field of education locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally."

Wall Street Journal columnist Thomas Frank praised Ayers as a "model citizen" and a scholar whose "work is esteemed by colleagues of different political viewpoints."

Criticism of Ayers and his work

Radical bomber Jane Alpert criticized Bill Ayers in 1974 "for his callous treatment and abandonment of Diana Oughton before her death, and for his generally fickle and high-handed treatment of women."

In 2001, Ayers published a memoir, Fugitive Days, to mixed but largely negative reviews. For example, Timothy Noah's 2001 Slate Magazine says he can't recall reading "a memoir quite so self-indulgent and morally clueless as Fugitive Days." By contrast, Studs Terkel called the book "a deeply moving elegy to all those young dreamers who tried to live decently in an indecent world."

Neoconservative education reformer Sol Stern is a long-term critic of Ayers; he has "studied Mr. Ayers's work for years and read most of his books." Stern has written critiques of Ayers' career as an education reformer for City Journal and elsewhere. His criticism in summary: "Calling Bill Ayers a school reformer is a bit like calling Joseph Stalin an agricultural reformer." . "The media mainstreaming of a figure like Mr. Ayers could have terrible consequences for the country's politics and public schools."

Feminist critic Katha Pollitt sharply criticized Ayers' December 2008 [1] New York Times opinion piece as a "sentimentalized, self-justifying whitewash of his role in the weirdo violent fringe of the 1960s-70s antiwar left." She castigates Ayers and his Weathermen cohorts for making "the antiwar movement look like the enemy of ordinary people" during the Vietnam War era.

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What do you think?

Hopefully we can work out a consensus version here, and avoid edit wars at the article.