Angela Davis

Friday, October 18, 1996

DAVIS

RETURNS

Former UCLA philosophy professor comes back to alma mater to
fight Proposition 209By Scott P. Stimson

Daily Bruin Contributor

It was Fall Quarter, 1969. The summer of love was over and UCLA
students had returned to a campus locked in turmoil. The Vietnam
War was raging in Southeast Asia, and Martin Luther King Jr. and
Robert Kennedy had been assassinated only one year before at the
height of the Civil Rights movement.

Berkeley had exploded with rioting in People’s Park, and the
Free Speech movement was cruising across California. Down south at
UCLA, students threw themselves into into passionate activism,
either supporting the U.S. war effort or totally committing their
efforts to the ideals of peace and social change. Massive
demonstrations spilled across the campus, headed at the time by
then-rookie Chancellor Charles Young.

Enter Angela Davis, newly-hired UCLA philosophy professor, Black
Panther and Communist Party member. Davis’ presence heaped
international attention upon her political views and revealed the
turbulence that had enveloped UCLA.

Today marks the return of Davis, an outspoken professor and UCLA
legend, who will be speaking in Westwood Plaza at noon today.

It was almost 30 years ago when an undercover FBI agent revealed
Davis’ membership in the Communist Party. The discovery initiated a
storm of controversy which has followed Davis over the years and
now returns with her to where it all began.

In 1969, it was the fear that Davis would "indoctrinate" UCLA
students into communism that prompted the UC Board of Regents to
fire Davis for her political beliefs, even though many held her in
the highest academic regard.

"I think she is a fine lecturer," said former Regent John
Canaday at the time, who first demanded Davis be fired for her
communist affiliations. However, he added, he could not see how
anyone "committed to indoctrination" could teach objectively.

"In an effort by the regents initially to block this one voice,
the subsequent events provided an international platform to express
herself," said current Professor Emeritus Donald Kalish, a
colleague of Davis’ at the time. "(The regent’s attempt to fire
her) was an insult to the students’ intelligence," he added.

Others may have not agreed with Davis’ politics, but believed
that firing her for her political beliefs violated the academic
freedom that the university was founded upon.

Among those who objected to her dismissal were Chancellor Young
and much of the UCLA campus and community.

Articles and editorials condemning the regents’ decision covered
the pages of the Bruin and newspapers nationwide ­ despite
Gov. Ronald Reagan’s agreement with her firing.

"Membership in the Communist Party is a bar to working at the
University of California," Reagan said.

Students on both sides of the issue filled the editorial
sections of the area papers with arguments for and against her
dismissal. "Angela Davis has every right to teach at the University
of California ­ and for credit," wrote former economics
student Robert Attias in the Oct. 16, 1969 edition of the
Bruin.

"However, it seems to me she would have been happier being on
the faculty of some University in the Soviet Union. I guess our
Miss Davis is one of those communists that would rather switch and
fight."

A subsequent lawsuit filed by a UCLA law professor against the
regents on her behalf went before the State Supreme Court with the
decision verifying Davis’ right to teach at UCLA.

Carst vs. Board of Regents went as far as the U.S. Supreme
Court, where justices refused to hear the case.

According to other professors that taught at UCLA at the time,
Davis continued to teach amidst the controversy surrounding her
beliefs, including demonstrations that sometimes made their way
into her classroom.

"She performed exceedingly well," Kalish said. "I kept records
of student reactions to her teaching, and based on these, I gave
the strongest recommendation for her appointment to (the
professorship)," he added.

Bodyguards stood at the doors of her office. A gun accompanied
her on campus for protection from would-be assailants.

"She had a lot of personal threats made on her life, although
within the university, there was complete support for her," Kalish
added.

Davis had taught at UCLA for only one year when she was accused
of being an accessory to murder. The charge stemmed from a
courtroom shootout involving one of the guns she owned. Five people
were killed as a result of the incident.

Davis was a fugitive for six months until she was arrested and
stood trial. The charges against her were subsequently dropped.

Fast forward 27 years to Fall Quarter, 1996. The presidential
elections have once again taken the limelight, and the debate over
Proposition 209 has brought the controversial professor back to
UCLA.

The debate between students supporting Proposition 209 and those
opposed to the initiative will take center stage with Davis’
return. Now a full professor at UC Santa Cruz, Davis continues to
draw fire for her political beliefs.

UC Regent Ward Connerly, author of Proposition 209, responded to
Davis’ receipt of the UC Santa Cruz Professorial Chair award last
March, expressing his concern that she may be using her award money
to fund anti-Proposition 209 activities.

"Your record as a revolutionary is not merely disturbing, but it
may impair your effectiveness as a member of the faculty of one of
this nation’s most highly respected academic institutions,"
Connerly wrote in a letter to Davis, responding to her appointment
to the chair of the philosophy department. "I will be urging all
Californians to view with fear, concern, and anxiety your role in
the effort to defeat (Proposition 209)," he later wrote.

But not everyone agrees with Connerly about Davis. "These
comments are not consistent with the academic record that Angela
Davis established when teaching at UCLA, and certainly not by the
prestigious award she has received at UCSC," Kalish said.

"She is a real character and has real strength," he added.