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.

Over the last two years, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what it must be like to be Angela Davis. As she reminded us, she’s been in the fight for Palestine since her undergraduate years at Brandeis University. In all that time, the issue has existed in only the remotest margins of even the struggle for social justice. At........

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