Angela Davis to Speak at Marquette

It came as a bit of a surprise, but should not have: an e-mail from the Marquette Provost that Angela Davis is coming to Marquette to speak as a part of a series of Marquette Forum events called Freedom Dreams Now.

Angela Davis is a Communist. It’s not that she has opinions that other people call communist, it’s that she had loudly proclaimed “I have always been a communist.” In 2014 she sent “greetings” to the National Convention of the Communist Party USA (although Wikipedia says she left the party in 1991).

In 1970, Davis was a party to a murderous plot to allow some of her Black Panther cohorts to escape from custody in California. According to Wikipedia:

Davis was a supporter of the Soledad Brothers, three inmates accused of killing a prison guard at Soledad Prison.

On August 7, 1970, Jonathan Jackson, a heavily armed, 17-year-old African-American high-school student, gained control over a courtroom in Marin County, California. Once in the courtroom, Jackson armed the black defendants and took Judge Harold Haley, the prosecutor, and three female jurors as hostages. As Jackson transported the hostages and two black convicts away from the courtroom, the police began shooting at the vehicle. The judge and the three black men were killed in the melee; one of the jurors and the prosecutor were injured. The firearms which Jackson used in the attack, including the shotgun used to kill Judge Haley, had been purchased by Davis two days prior and the barrel of the shotgun had been sawn off. Davis was found to have been corresponding with one of the inmates involved.

As California considers “all persons concerned in the commission of a crime, whether they directly commit the act constituting the offense ... principals in any crime so committed,” Marin County Superior Judge Peter Allen Smith charged Davis with “aggravated kidnapping and first degree murder in the death of Judge Harold Haley” and issued a warrant for her arrest.

Is There Anything Wrong With This?

We have long said that there is nothing wrong with a Klansman speaking on a college campus. So why not a communist?

In the first place, Marquette has put Davis on a program that claims to be a serious discussion of racial issues in America. Given that Marquette has not lined up a group of speakers with competing views, inviting her looks like an endorsement. Indeed, unwilling to tell the truth about Davis, Marquette puts a highly-sanitized blurb on its website:

Dr. Angela Davis, a living witness to history and important struggles of our contemporary era, will deliver a distinguished lecture. Davis is a scholar, activist, and sought-after speaker, presenting at dozens of universities including Dartmouth, Stanford, University of Northern Iowa, Lawrence College and Seattle University, a sister Catholic, Jesuit university. She has written eight books; taught at UCLA, UCSC, Vassar and Stanford; and focuses on social justice issues like racism, oppression and prison abolition. Davis has spoken in every state in America. Additional details and registration coming soon.

In the second place, we can’t imagine any university inviting a Klansman who had been involved in a criminal plot that got civil rights workers killed.

Finally, one agency lists her “Minimum Fee - U.S. Dates” as $25,000-$39,999. Yes, parents of Marquette students, this is where the tuition you pay is going.

A Program of Propaganda

Having an extreme leftist speak as part of a program of competing views would be fine, but the Marquette Forum is essentially nothing but leftist propaganda. It is described as follows:

Marquette University is launching a yearlong series of inclusive conversations, bringing experts of national renown together with those from the Marquette and Milwaukee communities.

Inspired by visions of inclusion and a better world emerging from Black freedom struggles, we hope to look with new eyes at the challenges that inequality presents at the national level and within Milwaukee. As a Catholic, Jesuit university committed to social justice, we seek to energize our campus and engage all Milwaukee’s communities by asking, “What is your freedom dream now?”

The only other listed forthcoming program is described as follows:

Join us for an open screening of the documentary Milwaukee 53206, which explores issues of incarceration and racial justice in a neighborhood on the north side of Milwaukee and the ripple effects of incarceration of men of color on their families and the greater community.

That’s right. This is a program about how it’s bad to lock up black criminals. But in the rarefied world of the politically correct, blacks don’t commit crime at a greater rate than whites. Rather, a racist criminal justice system locks up blacks at a greater rate just because it hates blacks.

It’s ironic that what is described as an “inclusive conversation” excludes any views other than the politically correct. There is no discussion of the fact that 72% of black kids are born out of wedlock, and the disastrous effects of that. Catholic teaching about sexual morality might be relevant there. But you are not going to see that mentioned at Marquette (except perhaps among this or that small group of conservatives.)

There is no discussion of black on black crime, and the fact that over 90% of homicides of blacks are committed by other blacks.

While Angela Davis is invited to campus (and paid a huge fee) we can’t imagine black intellectuals like Thomas Sowell or Walter Williams being invited by Marquette. If they ever come, it will be because some conservative student organization invites them.

Marquette, instead of a free market of ideas, is committed to politically correct indoctrination.