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Event Date: April 8, 2016

Donors and special guests warmly welcomed the 2016 Dan & Maggie Inouye Distinguished Chair in Democratic Ideals Angela Davis at a reception before her public lecture.

Angela Davis is renowned American political activist, scholar and author. Her rise to the national scene came in 1969, when she was removed from her teaching position in UCLA’s philosophy department due to her social activism and membership in the Communist Party, USA. A year later, she was placed on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List on false charges and was the subject of an intense police search that drove her underground, culminating in one of the most famous trials in recent U.S. history. During her 16-month incarceration, a massive international Free Angela Davis campaign was organized, leading to her acquittal in 1972.

Professor Davis’ long-standing commitment to prisoners’ rights dates back to her involvement in the campaign to free the Soledad Brothers, which led to her own arrest and imprisonment. Today she remains an advocate of prison abolition and has developed a powerful critique of racism in the criminal justice system.

A founding member of Critical Resistance, a national organization dedicated to the dismantling of the prison industrial complex, she urges people to imagine a world without prisons and to help forge a 21st century abolitionist movement. More recently, she has been active in the Black Lives Matter movement.

A prolific writer and lecturer, she is currently a distinguished professor emerita in the History of Consciousness and feminist studies departments at the University of California, Santa Cruz.


UH Mānoa’s Dan & Maggie lnouye Distinguished Chair in Democratic Ideals engages scholars and public figures dedicated to sharing their knowledge and life experiences with an emphasis on democratic processes.