What’s The Obama-Ayers Connection?

Sen. John McCain and his Republican running mate Gov. Sarah Palin have attacked Sen. Barack Obama's link with William Ayers on recent campaign appearances.

Ayers, who teaches at the University of Illinois, is a former leading radical in the 1960s and helped to found the violent Weather Underground group, whose members were blamed for several bombings when Barack Obama was 8 years old. His father, Thomas G. Ayers, was once CEO of Commonwealth Edison, the local power company.

Ayers gained notoriety as a national leader of Students for a Democratic Society, or SDS, in 1968-69. In June 1969, the Weatherman took control of the SDS at its national convention, and Ayers was elected education secretary. Later, he took part in various plots to build bombs and explode bombs, including attacks on the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol. At one point, he was roommates with Terry Robbins, who would later be killed while making a bomb.

Facing federal charges, he went underground with other members of the group including Bernardine Dohrn, whom he married. By 1977, federal charges against them were dropped because of prosecutorial misconduct. Dohrn gave birth to two children, one in 1977 and one in 1980, before they turned themselves in.

In 2001, Ayers published a memoir about his years as a radical. During interviews promoting the book, he told the New York Times that he had no regrets about his actions. The remarks were construed by critics to mean that he had no regrets about planting bombs; Ayers maintains that he had no regrets about opposing the Vietnam War.

"My memoir is from start to finish a condemnation of terrorism, of the indiscriminate murder of human beings, whether driven by fanaticism or official policy," he wrote in a rebuttal to the newspaper.

Since emerging, Ayers has earned a bachelor's, master's and doctorate degree in education and is Distinguished Professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago, College of Education. He has published a wide range of scholarly works, and serves on the board of the philanthropic Woods Foundation.

"He’s done a lot of good in this city and nationally," Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley said in an interview with the New York Times recently.

It was through his philanthropic work that Ayers first met Obama.

Ayers helped author a Chicago Annenberg Challenge grant proposal that in 1995 won $49.2 million over five years for public school reform. Obama was one of six people tapped to oversee the distribution of grants. They attended six board meetings together early in the project.

Later in 1995, Ayers and Dohrn hosted a gathering in their Hyde Park neighborhood for local Democrats to meet Obama. State Sen. Alice J. Palmer wanted Obama to run for her seat as she ran for Congress. The gathering was only a few blocks from Obama's home.

The New York Times reported that Obama and Ayers crossed paths again in 2000-2002 because they both served on the board of the Woods Foundation; the philanthropy had supported Obama's work as a community organizer. Ayers also once made a campaign donation to Obama of $200 when he served in the Illinois State House.

Critics have suggested Obama's association with Ayers means that the Democratic nominee is a secret radical. But Bradford A. Berenson, who worked on the Harvard Law Review with Obama and who served as associate White House counsel under President George W. Bush told the Times, "I saw no evidence of a radical streak, either overt or covert."