Son of radicals, Zayd Ayers Dohrn details a childhood underground and on the run
Son of radicals, Zayd Ayers Dohrn details a childhood underground and on the run May 18, 2026 1:51 PM ET Heard on Fresh Air Terry Gross Audio will be available later today. Zayd Ayers Dohrn walks with his parents Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn outside the Federal Court Building in New York, May 17, 1982. David Handschuh/Associated Press Zayd Ayers Dohrn spent much of his childhood underground and on the run. His mother, Bernardine Dohrn, was a leader of the '60s radical student group Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), which opposed the war in Vietnam and racism. Along with Dohrn's father, Bill Ayers , she helped found the Weather Underground , a group committed to armed resistance against the government. "From my very first memories, I knew that the FBI was chasing us," he says. "My parents tried to explain it in terms [like] we were like Robin Hood or we were like the Rebel Alliance in S tar Wars . So I knew in the way a kid knows that our lives were p...