The Conference On Diverse Excellence (CODE) is an event focused on having educational, thought-provoking and transformational conversations on what a communal effort for the betterment of marginalized communities looks like. Every year we are excited to have people from all over campus, and the state, attend CODE to engage in these conversations and leave our conference with new tools and consciousness on social, cultural and political justice.
This year we are excited to have Dr. Angela Davis speak at our conference. Davis is a legendary civil rights activist who was heavily engaged in the Black power movements throughout the 60s. In 1969 Davis was fired from her job at the University of California for her membership in the Communist Party, urged on by then Governor of California Ronald Reagan, and was later put in prison after being on the FBI most wanted list for her political involvement. This led her to be at the center of the international debate on Black liberation, freedom of political affiliation, and political prisoners. Since then Davis has been one of the leading historical voices on the Black Lives Matter movement, prison abolition and intersectional feminism.