’70s lecturer made FBI list

Angela Davis is a political activist, a member of the Communist
Party, a former vice presidential candidate, and the third woman in
history to appear on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s 10
Most Wanted list.

And, for a brief time in 1970, she was a lecturer at UCLA.

Davis, currently a tenured professor at UC Santa Cruz, was fired
from UCLA in 1970 for her political affiliation with the Communist
Party, an event that provoked a storm of controversy over whether a
faculty member’s political preferences have any bearing on
their integrity as an instructor.

Davis already had a stormy history by the time she came to UCLA
in 1969. She was an admitted member of the Communist Party and
reportedly had ties to the Black Panthers.

In between giving philosophy lectures and attending to students,
Davis would tour California to make fiery speeches in which she
lambasted the UC Regents, which included then-California Governor
Ronald Reagan, and called police officers “pigs.”

“She would start out very reasonably, and then the crowd
would incite her and she’d call the regents murderers,”
recalled Benjamin Aaron, a professor emeritus of law at UCLA and a
law professor in the 1970s.

Davis’ public Communist affiliation did not aid matters.
At the time, the UC Regents had a standing policy that no one
affiliated with the Communist Party could work in the University of
California system.

“We had a really reactionary group of regents,”
Aaron said. “The very word “˜communism’ was
terrifying for them. They believed seriously that hiring a
Communist was hacking at the foundation stones of the
university.”

Robert Yost, a former philosophy professor who worked alongside
Davis, said the regents had not known Davis was a Communist when
she was hired.

“Had they known, though, I believe they would not have
hired her,” he said.

The regents, angered by Davis’ speeches and her political
alignment, sought grounds for her firing. A secret committee of
professors was ordered to investigate her teaching methods.

“We concluded after an exhaustive review of her lectures
and her external behavior … there was no reason why she should
not be retained,” said Aaron, chair of the investigative
committee at the time.

“Her lectures were quite well-balanced, and one could
disagree with things she said, but certainly there were no grounds
for firing her for propaganda purposes,” he added.

David Saxon, a former UC president who served as a UCLA vice
chancellor at the time, said the faculty largely agreed with the
committee’s decision to retain Davis.

“Chancellor Young and I decided she should be
reappointed,” he said. “The faculty generally accepted
the committee’s report and supported the
administration’s position.”

At this point, the regents stepped in and fired Davis
anyway.

“There was anger that the regents had intervened in what
was an academic administrative matter,” Saxon said. “I
would say anger and resentment.”

Kenneth Karston, a professor emeritus of law at UCLA and a law
professor at the time, was one of five professors who took the
Davis issue to court on constitutional grounds.

“It was a clear case of an unconstitutional act by the
regents,” he said.

But by the time Davis won the case, she was already embroiled in
a bloody courthouse shootout in northern California. The FBI
alleged she had supplied the murder weapon and she evaded capture
for several weeks before she was apprehended in New York.

Although Davis’ association with UCLA ended after the
lawsuit, her legacy remained fresh in the minds of those who were
involved.

“It was a messy affair,” Yost said.