Angela Davis connects past struggles to today’s campus activism

More than five decades after Angela Davis faced efforts to remove her from a university teaching position because of her political beliefs, the activist told a Washington University audience that some of the pressures confronting higher education today feel unsettlingly familiar.

“On the one hand, all of this feels so familiar,” Davis said. “But at the same time, it feels like there’s no precedent for what we are experiencing now.”

Davis spoke Thursday at Graham Chapel at WashU during a seminar examining Black Studies, academic freedom and the future of the American university. The event was presented by the university’s Center for the Humanities and Department of African and African-American Studies.

The longtime activist, philosopher and author used her own experience to examine political expression on college campuses and the role of student movements.

Davis was hired in 1969 to teach philosophy at UCLA, but her membership in the Communist Party became the center of a public controversy. The University of California Board of Regents sought to dismiss her, launching a major academic freedom dispute.

Introduced to the party by her parents, Davis said the experience unfolded during a political climate when people could face consequences because of their political affiliations or presumed beliefs. One of the most consequential effects of the era, she said, was fear.

“The other thing that I think about a lot is that many people who were not affiliated with communist formations were led to be so fearful,” Davis said.

During the question-and-answer portion, a student asked how campus organizers can continue mobilizing when fear of retaliation discourages students from protesting.

In response, Davis warned about allowing fear to discourage collective action. 

“When they react by not doing it because they think that that will make them vulnerable, they are actually accomplishing the opposite of what they set out to do,” Davis said. “They are making themselves more vulnerable.”

“The only way to make yourself less vulnerable is to become larger and larger and larger,” she added.

She encouraged students to build coalitions beyond those directly participating in demonstrations, seeking support from other students, faculty and members of university administrations.

“You not only do the action, but you organize to make sure you have support among those who are not involved in the action,” Davis said.

Jaden Jones-Crawford, a WashU junior who attended with his Black feminist radicalism class, said Davis’ message about collective organizing resonated with him.

“As just a singular student, you don’t really feel like you have much power,” Jones-Crawford said.

But seeing others with similar goals can change that feeling.

“You look around and you see all of these people who have like-minded goals,” Jones-Crawford said. “It just gives you the push to try to make a difference.”

Davis also discussed how social movements have influenced what universities teach.

She traced the emergence of Black Studies to organizing alongside the Black liberation movement, pointing to the 1968 student strike at San Francisco State and the development of one of the country’s earliest Black Studies programs.

“Knowledge is not only generated in places like this,” Davis said, arguing that knowledge is also produced through community organizing and social movements.

Davis also reflected on how her understanding of social change has evolved. In her 20s, she said, activists believed revolution was “right around the corner” and that they could dismantle capitalism and racism. Looking back, she acknowledged that movements of the period did not adequately account for issues including gender and sexuality.

“We really didn’t know enough in order to make the kind of revolution that would have benefited everyone,” Davis said.

She also discussed Palestine, saying it was largely excluded from conversations about racism, academic freedom and social justice on college campuses decades ago despite organizing by Palestinian and Muslim students.

Davis said today’s international solidarity with Palestinians reflects “decades and decades of organizing and struggle.”

Davis maintained that universities remain worth defending because of what the people within them can create.

“The university is not a homogeneous category,” Davis said. “We say ‘the university,’ and oftentimes we’re talking about the administration.”

She described higher education as a place where students have an opportunity to devote time to reading, thinking and “learning how to be critical.”

“We have to fight for these places,” Davis said. “The university has never been, as an institution, a radical institution, but it has been made radical by those who populate it — by the students and the faculty.”

Leslie Hughes, a community member who grew up learning about Davis, said the discussion demonstrated both how much work remains and what previous generations have made possible.

Hughes said she left thinking that “life is repeating itself” and that many of the struggles Davis confronted remain relevant.

But she also left inspired.

“The people before us put in a lot of work to make this world a better place for us,” Hughes said, “and we can do the same.”