Angela Davis, on returning to UCLA 45 years after being fired by the Board of Regents for her ties to the Communist Party, had this to say to a campus magazine:

"I never in my wildest imagination would have thought accepting the position here at UCLA would have led to that kind of notoriety," said Davis, 70, who was a professor in the history of consciousness and feminist studies from 1991 to 2008 at UC Santa Cruz and is now retired. "At that time, my sense was: ‘Why did I do this?’

"I wasn’t seeking fame," she added. "I wasn’t seeking notoriety. I just wanted to be a teacher and an activist."

Davis is a Distinguished Professor Emerita and will be teaching a graduate seminar in gender studies this Spring. Read more over at UCLA’s website.

For folks who are eager to take a trip down memory lane, here’s Davis’ speaking about her firing in 1969. She says that "those involved in the conspiracy seem to be either ignorant or outright distainful of the very process of education." Davis taught her first class at UCLA on October 6, 1969. Two days later, she was fired.