Philosopher, educator, agitator: Angela Davis. For many, her hiring and firing in 1969-70 was a dramatic lesson in academic freedom.
“Education should not mold the mind according to a prefabricated architectural plan. It should rather liberate the mind,” Davis told a cheering campus audience after the firing became public.
Reinstated by a California Superior Court judge, Davis completed teaching the 1969-70 academic year. The Regents then fired her again, based on “inflammatory language.” A stint in prison on a charge of accessory to murder – Davis was exonerated – derailed her return to UCLA and led her to study the causes and effects of incarceration.
Davis traveled widely, finished her Ph.D., and went on to become a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she taught feminist studies and the history of consciousness. Her current work focuses on prisons and the criminalization of communities most affected by poverty and racial discrimination.
In spring 2014, Davis returned to UCLA as a Regents’ Lecturer, teaching a graduate seminar in gender studies — a public lecture that in May put her back on the Royce Hall stage, nearly 45 years after she first took the podium there.