When Tiffany Shelton, 25, a teaching student at the University of Toronto, travelled with some classmates to Chicago last May to interview a professor there to get perspectives on inner-city education outside of Toronto, she didn't entirely realize who she was dealing with.
"The first thing he said was, 'You're definitely not reporters and you're definitely not going to talk to me about Obama,' " she says, looking back on the interview.
It was only later that she realized that Bill Ayers wasn't just a distinguished professor of education, but the man at the eye of a worldwide hurricane of controversy.
Mr. Ayers, former Underground Weatherman, is the 1960s radical who was dragged into the centre of the U.S. presidential election, in an attempt to link Barack Obama - a latter-day acquaintance - to "domestic terrorism."
When U.S. vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin told a Republican crowd that Obama was "palling around with terrorists,' this was the guy. And when someone in the crowd at another Palin rally famously yelled, "kill him!" - well, that was about him, too.
"We just knew he was an amazing teacher-activist who advocated for urban students," Ms. Shelton says.
At the time, Mr. Ayers was in something of a cone of silence, ignoring both the media requests and hate mail that were pouring in. But since the election, he's opened up. Mr. Ayers is a leading advocate of social justice in education, focusing on the needs of at-risk students - and this month he'll be delivering a lecture in Toronto.
The Toronto talk is one of a half-dozen he's given since the election, and not always without controversy; a November lecture at the University of Nebraska was cancelled in the face of conservative protests.
The subject in Toronto, organizers are quick to point out, is the challenges of inner-city education, not palling around with Barack Obama. Nevertheless, organizers say interest is unusually strong for a talk on education. While seating is normally limited to 200 in the library at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education on Bloor Street, attendees must RSVP by Jan. 12. If more than 200 express interest, they will look at booking a bigger venue.
Mr. Ayers, who's a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is soft-spoken and self-deprecating, neither advertising his past or apologizing for it. The unkempt mane and handlebar mustache of his 1968 mug shot have given way to short-clipped hair and a pair of professorial specs, and an earring on each ear.
He says he's game for the inevitable queries.
"I'm open to answering any questions anyone has about anything," said Mr. Ayers this week. "That's the way professors are. They talk about anything, whether they know about it or not."
It won't be Mr. Ayers's first time. He was a repeat visitor in 1968 when his younger brother, Rick, moved here as a draft dodger, working as assistant manager of the Bloor Cinema.
As it happened, Rick Ayers was dating comedian Gilda Radner. At the time, the Bloor was playing The Graduate non-stop. "I must have seen it a dozen times," says Bill Ayers. "Horrible."
The lecture in Toronto comes courtesy of David Mandelzys and Paul Matthews, two community organizers at OISE who admire Mr. Ayers's approach to politics as well as education. "Teaching is a political profession that requires you to take a stand and work for positive social change," said Mr. Matthews, 27, one of the OISE students who invited Mr. Ayers, and who will be moderating the question-and-answer session.
(Ms. Shelton, who's now a first-year teacher at Sir Sandford Fleming Academy in Lawrence Heights - one of the city's high-risk "priority neighbourhoods" - will introduce the lecture.)
Mr. Matthews has his work cut out for him. The outrage that many on the right feel toward Mr. Ayers is only amplified by the fact that, no matter how much he preaches non-violence and practises education, he has never made an out-and-out apology for his actions.
Mr. Ayers was a co-founder of the Weathermen, a group of Vietnam-era radicals who bombed government property - but not people - to protest the war. Nobody was killed in the bombings, though three members of the group died when a bomb they were making - this one, however, intended for a crowded soldiers' mess - went off. "I'm 64 years old. I have thousands, tens of thousands, millions of regrets," said Mr. Ayers, with the air of someone who's had this conversation a great many times. "But what I don't have is a regret for opposing the war in Vietnam, and that's the regret that people want me to have. Or regret for a certain tactic I used."
