Communism at Harvard

By Michael J. New
March 14, 2003

Although Communism has been widely discredited throughout the world, it still thrives at Harvard and other pockets of academia.

This was quite evident last week as Angela Y. Davis, a former black panther, and a two-time Vice Presidential nominee of the U.S. Communist Party delivered a lecture entitled: "Abolitionism and Human Rights Agendas in the United States" to a capacity crowd at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

Though her lecture was primarily about the abolition of prisons, Davis began her remarks by talking about the prospect of war with Iraq. She told the students and faculty that Colin Powell had spent the day pressuring the UN Security Council to authorize the use of force against Iraq. Davis criticized the war effort and told students, "President Bush has difficulty thinking through serious issues."

She then turned to her main topic which was that of the abolition of prisons. "Prisons are an obsolete institution in society," she said.

Davis started by providing some background about previous abolitionist movements. For instance, the movement to abolish slavery achieved some success in the 19th century. "Furthermore, the current movement to abolish the death penalty has momentum," said Davis. She remarked that, "111 countries have abolished the death penalty in either law or practice." Furthermore, she noted that the United States is the only country in the industrialized world that still uses the death penalty.

"Similarly, prison abolition has had a long history," according to Davis. It grew out of response to corporal punishment that went on within prisons. Some activists tried to improve conditions within the prison, while others tried to abolish the institution of prisons altogether.

Davis went on to cite a number of statistics on expansion of prisons and said that 2 million Americans are currently in prison. She told the students that many young people have a better chance of going to prison than getting a good education.

"This mass incarceration is the most widely implemented government program in our time and it has happened without debate," she said. "Additionally, prisons do not produce reformed citizens. Some studies show that there are more people with psychological disorders in prison than in larger society." Furthermore, Davis argued that prison construction brings little in the way of economic benefits.

Davis said that prisons are not a mechanism to reform people, but are instead "a convenient solution to deal with problems that are actually created by racism and global capitalism." Davis went on to argue that prisons are isolated to "minimize the bonds that people in free society have with individuals in prison."

Toward the end of her talk Davis proposed some solutions to the problem of prison expansion. "Instead of building more prisons, society should put prisoners back into free society, decriminalize sex and drugs and focus on restorative justice rather than punitive justice," Davis concluded her talk by saying that prison abolition is the "abolitionist movement of the 21st century."

During the course of her talk, Davis never directly talked about how society should handle rapists, murderers and other violent criminals. However, in response to a question on this topic she said that she did not have an all-encompassing answer. However, she conceded that "some people would need to be sequestered, but it needs to be a last resort, not a first resort."

Perhaps Davis' most telling comment of the afternoon came during the next question. When asked if prisons were appropriate for war criminals like President Bush, Vice-President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Davis proceeded to laugh and said, she would "try to be principled, but would reserve the possibility of imagining how people like that should be dealt with."

Davis received a standing ovation at the conclusion of the question and answer session.