Bill Ayers, a former FBI fugitive, will discuss the benefits and disadvantages of persuasion, direct action and terrorism as tools for social change.

Ayers presentation, “Sticks and Stones: When Words Fail,” will begin at 7 p.m. Wednesday in the Coleman Auditorium, Room 1225, Shane Miller, speech communication professor, said.

Miller said Ayers will focus on different strategies for implementing social change, including persuading people to change through traditional, nonviolent speeches or letters, using agitated communication and making bolder statements by marching or holding picket lines and using terrorism.

Because Ayers has practiced all three types of communication throughout his career as an activist, Miller said he can offer special insight into these tools for social change as well as new perspectives on the advantages and disadvantages of each tactic.

Ayers, who is now a professor of education at University of Illinois in Chicago, and his wife spent 10 years running from the FBI in the 1970s and early 1980s after being indicted on conspiracy charges.

The charges were eventually dropped after the couple turned themselves in because of governmental misconduct.

In the 1960s, Ayers was student president of Michigan Chapter of Students for a Democratic Society, which was geared at ending the Vietnam War with marches and conservative tactics.

However, as the war progressed, Ayers split from the Michigan Chapter to lead the Weathermen, which used more radical and violent tactics such as bombing statues and buildings.

One of Ayer’s most highly publicized cases occurred when his organization detonated a bomb inside the bathroom of the Pentagon

“(The speech department) thought that he would offer an interesting perspective of different tactic to change society,” Miller said.