In a public lecture given on the evening of Tuesday, Oct. 22, Angela Davis reflected on the importance of voting in elections, solidarity and support for Palestine, and her end goal of revolution.
The 445 seats in McCosh Hall 50 were not enough to hold the large turnout, with dozens standing against the walls and lining the stairs to hear Davis in conversation with Professor of African American Studies Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. About 100 people also congregated in an overflow room down the hall to watch the event virtually.
“You don’t have to succumb to the kind of historical amnesia that is encouraged in this country,” Davis told the eager audience. “I’m hoping that we all learn from this period.”
This talk was at least the fifth occasion Davis has spoken at Princeton.
As a political activist, Davis was a member of the Communist Party USA and closely associated with the Black Panther Party, co-founded Critical Resistance, an organization aimed at dismantling the prison-industrial complex, and was the third woman to be placed on the FBI ten most wanted list. Angela Davis is currently the Professor Emerita of History of Consciousness and Feminist Studies at UC Santa Cruz.
After brief introductory remarks from Taylor, Davis was welcomed by a standing ovation.
The conversation began with a reflection on progress. Although Davis maintains that systems of oppression continue to persist, she also pointed out the progress that has been made in terms of “the people who are out front playing the leading roles,” citing Vice President Kamala Harris’s status as a woman of color.
“This is something that’s very new, because we’ve always had to fight for that,” Davis said.
Then, the conversation turned to the issue of political extremism in relation to the upcoming presidential election. Some Democrats, as well as former members of Donald Trump’s administration, have painted him as a fascist. Taylor asked whether elections are truly the answer to halting the rise of political extremism. Davis responded by saying that she reluctantly voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016.
“At that time it was necessary to be really strategic,” she said, to “hold on to our capacity to engage in struggle.”
“I’ve really been very upset during this period,” she continued. “Oftentimes we have to do things that we hate doing, but we do them even though it makes us feel terrible. We do them for the good of larger collectives and the good of what may come afterwards,” she said, loosely suggesting that listeners vote for Vice President Kamala Harris this election.
For Davis, elections are the only way to protect certain rights — she cited Roe v. Wade as an example of a right that was dismantled because of Trump — and to maintain the social conditions under which political activists can then organize for revolution.
“I still want a revolution,” Davis clarified, “I want to overturn the capitalist system.” This line was met with applause from the audience.
Audience members rise to give Davis a standing ovation at the end of the talk.
Calvin Grover / The Daily Princetonian
The latter half of the conversation focused on the issue of free speech, in particular surrounding recent pro-Palestine protests on college campuses. Davis shared an anecdote about growing up during McCarthyism, watching her family and friends be followed by the FBI.
“It’s really important not to find ourselves in another period like that, where we have to use all of our energy to fight to save those who are the targets of repression, as opposed to doing the organizing we should be for revolution,” she reflected.
Academic free expression is an issue that Davis has intimately experienced. In 1969, Davis was fired from her professorship at UCLA for her involvement in the Communist Party. Davis described how even after she was re-hired, she received so many death threats she had to be escorted around campus by campus police and have her car checked for bombs daily.
After acknowledging the support she received from UCLA faculty and students, Davis criticized those who promoted academic freedom without supporting other forms of freedom from repression.
“These issues are structural,” Davis said. “You can’t address one without addressing the other.”
Returning to the issue of pro-Palestine campus protests, Davis was “happy to see for the first time, especially on campuses, this amazing support for solidarity for Palestine.”
She also compared the recent campus pro-Palestine protests to student protests against apartheid South Africa, explaining how the protests against South Africa “had an intellectual impact” and “helped us to think more deeply.”
Davis then criticized how administrators have handled pro-Palestine protests on campus following a question from Taylor describing the criminal proceedings of 15 individuals arrested during the course of Princeton’s own protests in the spring semester.
“Why is it that administrators on college campuses, who might now boast about the fact that there were demonstrations on the campus … at the same time want to suppress those who are standing up against the racist settler-colonial state of Israel?” Davis said, describing Columbia University’s website detailing the 1968 takeover of Hamilton Hall during Vietnam War protests.
Davis added that “to stand up against Israel is not at all to be to engage in an antisemitic act. As a matter of fact, it’s the opposite,” noting her experiences with Jewish organizations opposed to Zionism, like Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow. She described how many Jewish people “feel that in order to be true to the history and the culture of the Jewish struggle for liberation, there have to be alliances with others.”
This segued into Davis’ concluding comments about capitalism, critiquing how individualism has made people “myopic.”
Davis stressed the need to “learn how not to be so myopic that we only think about what is happening at this particular moment.” For Davis, this could be applied to issues ranging from climate change to individual happiness.
The conversation concluded with a second standing ovation.
This event was held as part of the Stafford Little Lecture series and took place on Oct. 22 at 5 p.m. It was co-sponsored by the Department of African-American Studies and Labyrinth Books.
Nikki Han is a News contributor for the ‘Prince.’
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
Correction: A previous version of this story misstated Davis’s relationship to the Black Panther Party. The ‘Prince’ regrets this error.
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