My old dorm at the University of Michigan had an “Angela Davis Lounge” (it still does — scroll down), complete with an ugly mural.

Her long march through higher ed continues apace at UC Santa Cruz:

Call for Papers:ANGELA DAVIS: LEGACIES IN THE MAKING
October 31 – November 1, 2009
UC Santa Cruz
For almost four decades, Angela Y. Davis’s scholarship and activism has defined the meaning and practice of being a public intellectual and has radically transformed many sites of knowledge production, including the positioning of the U.S. academy as a site of intervention and social transformation. Few professors have had such a broad impact in their fields of expertise or on the world in their lifetimes. This gathering of her former students, in conversation with scholars nationally, maps the impact of her vision on issues such as democratic theory, philosophy, Marxism, cultural studies/popular culture, social policy, race, class, and feminisms. Professor Davis has also trained students as activist scholars for almost four decades in both university systems in California. We thus convene this conference to examine the poetics and politics of Professor Davis’s pedagogy in California over the past forty years (1969-2009) and to consider how her role as an activist scholar/teacher bridges the academy/community divide and dismantles the false dichotomy of theory/praxis.