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Cornell University

Student & Campus Life

Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Lecture 2025

Information about the 2026 lecture will be up soon. Below is information on the 2025 lecture.

The Struggle for Liberation Today: A Conversation with Professor Angela Davis

Monday, February 3, 7 p.m., Bailey Hall
Doors open at 6 p.m.

In person and via livestream. Free and open to the public.

Angela Davis headshot

This year’s Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration will feature activist, writer and lecturer Angela Davis speaking on the intersectional struggle for liberation today.  

Angela Y. Davis is professor emerita of history of consciousness and feminist studies at University of California, Santa Cruz. An activist, writer and lecturer, her work focuses on prisons, police, abolition and the related intersections of race, gender and class. She is the author of many books, from “Angela Davis: An Autobiography” to “Freedom Is a Constant Struggle.” Her most recent books include “Abolition. Feminism. Now.,” written with Gina Dent, Erica Meiners and Beth Richie, and a book of essays entitled “Abolition: Politics, Practices, Promises, Vol. 1.” 

She is a founding member of Critical Resistance, a national organization dedicated to the dismantling of the prison industrial complex. Internationally, she is affiliated with Sisters Inside, an abolitionist organization based in Queensland, Australia, that works in solidarity with people in women’s prisons.

Like many educators, Professor Davis is especially concerned with the general tendency to devote more resources and attention to the prison system than to educational institutions. Having helped to popularize the notion of a “prison industrial complex,” she now urges her audiences to think seriously about the future possibility of a world without prisons and to help forge a 21st century abolitionist movement. 

Davis will also be honored by the LGBT Resource Center at Cornell, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary. 

Want to learn more? Check out the Angela Davis Library Guide

A recording will be made available and sent to registered event attendees.


Event Sponsors: Office of Spirituality and Meaning-Making; Black Student Empowerment; Gender Justice Advocacy Coalition; Office of Academic Diversity Initiatives; Greater Ithaca Activity Center; First Generation and Low-Income Student Support; Department of Inclusion and Belonging; Office of Diversity and Inclusion at the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning; LGBT Resource Center; Asian and Asian American Center; Latinx Student Empowerment; Black Students United; Office of Diversity and Inclusion at the SC Johnson College of Business; John Henrik Clarke Africana Library; Africana Studies and Research Center; Centers for Student Equity, Empowerment, and Belonging; and Frederic C. Wood Lecture Fund.

2025 Commemoration Committee

  • Idey Abdi ’25 – Student Interfaith Coordinator
  • Kofi Acree – Director, John Henrik Clarke Africana Library; Curator, Africana Collections, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections
  • Tina Coyne – Interim Associate Dean of Students and Director of LGBT Resource Center
  • Kristin Dade – Co-Director, Office of Academic Diversity Initiatives
  • Laura Gallup – Communications Lead, Student and Campus Life
  • Joel Harter (co-chair) – Associate Dean of Students and Director of the Office of Spirituality and Meaning Making (OSMM) and Cornell United Religious Work (CURW)
  • Leslyn McBean-Clairborne – Director, Greater Ithaca Activities Center
  • LaTivia McCowan – Residence Hall Director, Ujamaa Residential College
  • Xavier Pickett – Assistant Professor of Africana Studies
  • Drew Aliyah Valentine (they/she) – DEIB Student Support Specialist, Cornell AAP
  • Sam Ross ’25 – Student Interfaith Coordinator
  • Michelle Van-Ess Grant – Senior Associate Dean of Students
  • Sharifa A. Wip (co-chair) – Associate Dean of Students and Director of Black Student Empowerment
  • Victor Younger – Director, Diversity and Inclusion, Nolan School of Hotel Administration

Event History 

The annual Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration at Cornell aspires to be a cross-campus and community partnership that makes accessible the life and legacy of Dr. King for contemporary times. The King commemoration brings together Cornellians, Ithaca College, and the Ithaca community. This annual cross-campus/community partnership to commemorate Dr. King strives to be a local example of collaboration across real and perceived stratification to promote moral values and social justice and to advance beloved community in Ithaca and beyond.
 
Speakers for the King Commemoration have included those who worked directly with or knew Dr. King, as well as scholars, activists, journalists, and religious leaders whose work is a continuation of his legacy. These speakers have highlighted the continuity between past and present, providing critical examination of King's legacy and contemporary issues. The issues with which Dr. King grappled — racism, poverty and income inequality, war and militarism, imperialism, and governmental abuses of power — remain with us today. 
 
To learn more about Dr. King's visit to Cornell in 1961, visit this Cornell Chronicle article. To learn more about his work and legacy, visit this library guide developed by the John Henrik Clarke Africana Library at Cornell.