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As part of the Presidential Speaker Series on Diversity, activist and scholar Angela Y. Davis, professor of history of consciousness at University of California-Santa Cruz, will present “Reflecting on our History: How Activism and Diversity Changed Higher Education” 7 p.m. Monday, Nov. 20 in Colton Chapel.
The event is free and open to the public. It is sponsored by the Office of the President, Vice President for Student Affairs, and Office of Intercultural Development. Following the lecture, there will be a book signing and reception in Marquis Hall at 8:30 p.m.
Lafayette’s Presidential Speaker Series on Diversity was initiated in 2000 to encourage intellectual discourse on diversity. Historian Douglas Brinkley, who authored a biography of Rosa Parks, was the inaugural speaker in the program. Other past lecturers have included David Levering Lewis, a Pulitzer Prize winner and recipient of the MacArthur Foundation’s Genius Grant; Oscar Arias Sanchez, former president of Costa Rica and 1987 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate; Trevor Rhone, a Jamaican playwright and screenwriter; and Cristina Garcia, a Cuban-American author.
Davis will address the history of activism and diversity in higher education in relation to what many perceive as apathy and conformity in today’s colleges and universities. She will discuss the need for students and others in the socio-cultural academic community to make connections between the historical struggles of activism and how it is viewed today. Davis also will speak on how academia is addressing the issue of diversity today, the need to foster and promote student interest in social leadership, connecting cultural programming to the academic discourse, and gaining support from faculty and senior administration. She also will present her views on how to create intentional transformation on campus, the dangers of apathy, and relationship between knowledge and experience.
An often controversial public figure, Davis first attracted national attention in 1969 when she was relieved of her position as assistant professor of philosophy at University of California-Los Angeles for declaring affiliation with the Communist party. Davis was an active member of the Che-Lumumba Club and supporter of the Black Panther party.
In August of 1970, she was charged with murder, kidnapping, and criminal conspiracy in connection with a shooting in a Marin County, Calif. courthouse. Davis had been active in the Soledad Brothers Defense Committee that worked to raise defense funds for three black men accused of killing a white prison guard at Soledad State Prison. Authorities alleged that Davis, who was not present at the time of the shooting which left four dead including a Superior Court judge, purchased the guns used in the crime. She was arrested in New York City in October of that year after having been only the third woman to be placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List. Supporters around the world waged an international “Free Angela Davis” campaign on her behalf. In 1972, a jury acquitted Davis of all charges after 13 hours of deliberation.
In 1973, the National Committee to Free Angela Davis and All Political Prisoners, Attica Brothers, American Indian Movement, and other organizations founded the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression. Davis served as co-chair of the organization for a number of years. She has remained active in the prison abolition cause and was among 25 organizers who produced the Critical Resistance: Beyond the Prison Industrial Complex conference in 1998. She has convened research groups under the same name through the University of California Humanities Research Institute.
Davis has lectured in all 50 states, as well as in Africa, Europe, the Caribbean, and former Soviet Union. In addition to publishing numerous articles and essays, she is the author of Abolition Democracy; Are Prisons Obsolete; Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holliday; Women, Culture, and Politics; Women, Race, and Class; and Angela Davis: An Autobiography. Her new book Prisons and Democracy is forthcoming.
Her scholarly interests include feminism, African American studies, critical theory, popular music culture and social consciousness, and philosophy of punishment (women’s jails and prisons).