Controversial and distinguished professor of education William Ayers visited the Georgia Southern University campus on Tuesday and Wednesday. His visit was for, according to Ming Fang He, professor in the Education college, serving on a dissertation committee. Ayers said, at the beginning of his lecture on Tuesday night, that he was at GSU to serve on several dissertation committees. He also decided to give a lecture on teaching and research and the relationship between those two fields.

His audience on Tuesday night was made up of mostly undergraduate and doctoral students in various fields of education. Ayers’ lecture touched on styles of teaching.

“You’ve got to get off the idea that you can save people,” said Ayers during his lecture, condemning the common symbol of teachers in movies as helping underprivileged students.

“It’s a deeply dishonest story,” said Ayers. Instead, he said that teachers must know their students “in context of family, culture” and various other socio-economic factors.

Ayers also allowed a question and answer session after his lecture. He was asked about methods and strategies of dissertation writing by doctoral students. Ayers emphasized the importance of “show, don’t tell” in writing a dissertation.

“Facts never exist by themselves. They exist within stories,” said Ayers. He added, ““Why” is one of the most important questions anyone can ask.”

Ayers ended his session  by speaking of the “dogma of common sense”, citing the examples of slavery and the lack of a woman’s right to vote as being ideas that were once common, but were continually challenged until they were destroyed. He then urged students to not just accept the status quo, but to challenge it.

“What are we not seeing? What are we missing?” said Ayers.

According to an email sent by the Office of Marketing and Communications to The George-Anne, “Our office was unaware of his plans to come on campus, and his visit was not a University-sponsored event.”

Michael Russell, chief of Georgia Southern campus police, said he and his department were not informed of it until “late (Tuesday) evening”. He, and one other officer, acted as security for the event.

Russell reported no disturbances, nor did he report any protestors at the event.

“We were asked to be there by the sponsors of the program,” said Russell. The sponsors were the College of Education. Russell added that “people don’t have to through us to clear anything.”

Bill Ayers visit to campus in the spring was cancelled due to the prohibitively high security costs cited by the university.

After the event, Ayers answered questions from reporters to the George-Anne. When asked about his spring visit, Ayers said, “I remember being invited, and I do remember being disinvited.” He said that he’s spoken at Georgia Southern “a dozen times, so it’s not that unusual.” Ayers said he was here for a defense of a dissertation and one proposal of a defense, which he referred as “typical professor’s work”.

“I’ve served on maybe half a dozen, or more (committees) here,” Ayers said.

Ayers also answered the question of why he was disinvited in the spring. “I think what happened at Georgia Southern, is that the administration completely, or at least said publicly, that they didn’t feel they could host me here and have it be a safe event.”

He continued, “I argued then and I’ve argued consistently that that’s disingenuous…you could have president Obama here, or president Bush, or Dick Cheney here, or Rush Limbaugh here. And people who would object, who would not like it…but there’s absolutely no doubt you could protect them.”

Ayers added, “It becomes a way to suppress speech.” He cited the example of radical lawyer William Kunstler, whose speaking costs were also high on college campuses due to security concerns. “To say that the only reason I wasn’t invited was because of a safety concern is nonsense. I’m not afraid. I live openly at my house in Chicago.” He also said he was unaware of any backlash to his scheduled visit in the spring, and that the only people hurt by this were the people who invited him.

“The people who are aggrieved in that situation are the students and the faculty who invited me. They have a right to talk to me. They should be able to talk to me. Not to agree with me, but to talk to me.” He added, “If they are not allowed to talk to me by state officials, or the administration, then that administration is doing a disservice to its students and it’s undermining a very core value about the role of a university in a free society.”