FATTAL | The Importance of Angela Davis in 2025

Speaking to a sold-out audience at Bailey Hall on Monday, Professor Angela Davis reminded us of that Karl Marx aphorism, in so many words: We make our own history, but not as we choose. Rather, we are constantly haunted by those generations that came before us. History, materialized in the form of dead, calcified labor, weighs heavy upon our actions. Yet, Professor Davis, in speaking to a crowd of young and older activists alike, manifested an altogether different vision of history. Rather than the ghost of past labor, Davis arrived at Cornell representing the vivacity of deferred revolution — a figure of history who reminds us not of our constraints, but our infinite paths forward. 

WATCH ME IF YOU CAN | Hollywood and the Blacklist

The 2015 biopic Trumbo depicts the struggle that many screenwriters faced during the Red Scare. Dalton Trumbo (played by Bryan Cranston), along with nine other screenwriters, was tried and charged for contempt of Congress under the accusation of writing films promoting anti-American ideals.  As a consequence, he and many other writers faced blacklisting, forbidding them from writing and getting paid, wasting an enormous amount of talent. After his jail time, he decided to use the loopholes in his court orders to his advantage. Trumbo wrote films under the identity of Robert Rich (another screenwriter who was away on military leave) and even won an Academy Award for Best Original Story for The Brave One.