Ransby has also been a community activist. She got her graduate degrees at the University of Michigan. (Ayers attended U of Michigan, too)
In 2002 -- Ransby moderated a panel which included Obama and Ayers
Ransby is Associate Professor, Gender and Women's Studies, African American Studies, and History Director, Gender and Women's Studies Program at Univ. Ill /Chicago
Earlier this year Ransby (and others) wrote a letter to the editors of the Chicago Tribune, defending Ayers
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2098460/posts
We write to voice our support for our colleague, Bill Ayers, who was the target yesterday of Jonah Goldberg’s mean-spirited muckraking journalism.
Goldberg asks why Bill Ayers is allowed to have a job as a college professor, despite his leftist views and political activities from some forty years ago? The answer is simple.
Professor Ayers has degrees from University of Michigan and Columbia University’s Teachers College.
Over the past twenty plus years he has earned the reputation of a cutting edge scholar of education, and made major contributions to our understanding of schools and the institutions impacting children.
Ayers has authored, co-authored or edited 14 books and dozens of scholarly articles and book chapters, some of them award-winning. His books have received praise from the likes of Jonathan Kozol, Studs Turkel and Scott Turow.
He has been invited to lecture around the country and internationally on pedagogy, curriculum, the politics of education, and the small schools strategy for educational excellence. He has served on numerous university and community-based committees.
During the McCarthy era of the 1950s one could be fired simply for the hint of left of center views or association with people who held those views. Perhaps Mr. Goldberg is nostalgic for an earlier time. We are not.
Sincerely,
Barbara Ransby, Associate Professor of African American Studies and History, UIC
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Barbara Ransby is a historian, writer, and longtime political activist. Ransby has published dozens of articles and essays in popular and scholarly venues. She is most notably the author of an award-winning biography of civil rights activist Ella Baker, entitled Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision, (University of North Carolina, 2003). Barbara is currently working on two major research projects: a study of African American feminist organizations in the 1970s, and a political biography of Eslanda Cardozo Goode Robeson. She serves on the editorial board of the London-based journal, Race and Class, and a number of non-profit civic and media organizations.
Professor Ransby received a BA in History from Columbia University and an MA and PhD in History from the University of Michigan.
http://www.uic.edu/depts/wsweb/people/core/ransby_barbara/ransby_barbara.htm