Washington U. ‘Academic Freedom’ Speakers All Come From the Left, Including Communist Angela Davis

WashU’s ‘Academic Freedom’ series features far-left activists, including communist VP candidate

Washington University in St. Louis (WashU) opened a yearlong series on “academic freedom” on Sept. 10 led exclusively by left-wing activists, prison abolitionists and self-described socialists, headlined by former Communist Party vice-presidential candidate Angela Davis.

Though Washington University promotes the Sawyer Seminar Lecture Series as an exploration of how black studies can “sustain academic freedom and reimagine democratic higher education,” the speaker lineup contains no self-described conservative or classical-liberal viewpoints.

Washington University Professor Shanti Parikh, a core organizer for the series, claimed that this series represents “rigorous research” that “deepens our collective understanding and drives new insights that shape a more just society.”

During her Sept. 10 keynote to kick off the series, Angela Davis, the former Black Panther, claimed that the Marxist ideal of “liberation” has always been “a struggle for education,” according to campus newspaper Student Life.

Davis also said that the university was never “a radical institution” until the students and the faculty made it radical.

Nikole Hannah-Jones, the creator of The 1619 Project, is also scheduled to speak at Washington University in November to discuss “Citizenship and the University.” Jones had argued that “one of the primary reasons” America fought for independence was to “protect the institution of slavery” in her introductory essay to the project.

Many historians have publicly denied this argument and called the project a “displacement of historical understanding by ideology.”

Professor Dylan Rodriguez of the University of California-Riverside is also scheduled to speak at Washington University on immigration. In an interview with the podcast Beyond Prisons, Rodriguez claims to be “somebody who’s followed the obligations and accountabilities of abolitionist struggle for almost 25 years.”