Ayers denied entry into Canada
January 19, 2009 1:00 PM
Toronto educators canceled a series of lectures and meetings featuring Williams Ayers today after Canadian border officers Sunday night refused to allow the Chicago resident and professor to leave the airport in Toronto.
Ayers, a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago and former member of the Weather Underground, found his 1960s radical past briefly at the center of the 2008 presidential election.
But he is well-regarded among urban educators and had been scheduled to deliver lectures and interviews today on education initiatives for marginalized students, said Jeffrey Kugler, executive director of the Centre for Urban Schooling at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto.
"We were at the airport waiting to pick Bill up. He just never came out, really," Kugler said.
After Ayers' flight landed at 6 p.m., Kugler said he and an attorney waited until 10:30 p.m. before officials from the Canadian Border Services Agency told them that Ayers had been put back onto a plane to Chicago.
Officials with the Canadian government referred questions on the matter to the Canadian Border Services Agency. Ayers, back in Chicago, did not respond to interview requests.
