"The first condition of freedom is the open act of resitance...In that act of resistance, the rudiments of freedom are already present."-Davis
For the first two weeks of October in 1969, a chain of events beginning that June transpired into UCLA's very own "Red Scare." The University of California Board of Regents, having discovered that an assistant professor in the department of philosophy, ordered Chancellor Charles E. Young to fire admitted Communist Party member Angela Davis. What unfolded was a mess of student demonstration, faculty pressure, and national attention.
U.C.L.A. was by no means a stranger to communist suspicions. . In 1934 UCLA Provost Ernest Moore stated that his own campus was “the worst hotbed of communism in America.” Later that year, Moore dismissed four students, including the student body president, from the university for “communist activity.” The students were all eventually reinstated, however the events placed the campus under the national microscope as a possible “Red Campus.” In 1948, following a supposedly off the record luncheon with UCLA Provost Clarence Dykstra, the L.A. Times called the campus “one of Communism’s prime postwar educational targets.”
The Davis scandal underscored the larger societal tensions of the 1960’s. For a majority of the student body, the actions of the Regents were seen as an attack on their own academic freedom. And stuck in the middle was a Chancellor attempting to appease each side.
