Bill Ayers is the author, most recently, of When Freedom is the Question, Abolition Is the Answer, is Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago (retired) and 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.