The Controversial Speaker at College of the Canyons: A Look at the Shift Towards Wokeness

How Cultural Marxism Is Infiltrating College of the Canyons and What It Means for Students

Since 1969 the Santa Clarita Valley has supported College of the Canyons. Anyone who has lived in Santa Clarita probably has either attended or has someone in their family that has attended College of the Canyons at some point.

If you are wondering about the direction College of the Canyons is heading. One needs to look no further than the speaking event they just scheduled of Angela Davis, a devoted Marxist, whose résumé includes being a longtime member of the Communist Party USA, a founding member of the Committees of Correspondence of Democracy and Socialism, a supporter of the anti-Semitic BDS movement and a member of the violent wing of the Black Panther Party. She was also a big supporter of Cuba's USSR and Castro regime and condemned people who fought for their freedom in those countries. Because ruthless authoritarians gotta authoritarian, amirite?

College of the Canyons claims Angela Davis is an "Anti-Racism" speaker, which, as we know from years of listening to the authoritative left, means Anti-White and lately has moved toward Anti-Asian, and even Anti-Semitic. But this isn't the first time that the College has invited Angela Davis to speak; back in October 2022, she was invited by the "Equity Minded Practitioners" to speak for their Anti-Racism Speaker Series. 

Davis is controversial not because of these extremist views but because she was on the FBI's most wanted list for her part in supplying guns for a hostage takeover of a Marin County courtroom in 1970 that led to 4 people's murders. A sympathetic jury eventually acquitted her as an accessory to kidnapping and murder. So I guess she is guilty of being an irresponsible gun owner whose weapons led to a mass shooting, probably all oppressive white people, so no harm, no foul.

If this was a parent whose guns were taken to commit a mass shooting, what College would pay to have them speak? This begs the question of how much is College of the Canyons paying Angela Davis and where that money is coming from. According to Keynote.com, where Angeles Davis lists herself as a "Legendary Human Rights Activist," her speaking fee is $25,000–$38,000. That is one expensive communist, especially considering Davis's position: "We can't eradicate racism without eradicating capitalism."

Racism cannot be separated from capitalism.
~Angela Davis

Like most of the extreme changes we have experienced as a country, we can pinpoint the dramatic shift at College of the Canyons to the weeks following the death of George Floyd and the BLM riots when the Santa Clarita Community College District Board of Trustee put forth this board resolution that created something called "Equity Minded Practitioners," which is a group of faculty, staff, and administrators. Unfortunately, much like the city's Human Relations Roundtable, we know very little about how it functions, how it is funded, who are the members who make it up the EMP, how they are selected, and how long their term is. They do a slightly better job of informing the public about their meeting dates and posting minutes from their meeting but still violate the brown act as they don't list their agenda 72 hours before their meeting start times.

Following the creation of the Equity Minded Practitioners, we started seeing terms like "Anti-Racism" appearing on the College's website in October 2020 and then "Critical Race Theory" in October 2021.

An entire section of the website dedicated to Undocumented Immigrants, referred to as "Dreamers," appeared in July 2020. 

In January 2022, the College released an update on all their DEI (DEI stands for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) changes and their call to action, one of the first items being "A System-wide review of law enforcement officers and first responder training and curriculum" essentially hoping to manufacture a bunch of George Gascon clones. If you didn't know, George Gascon was a police officer before he destroyed San Francisco and Los Angeles. They also aimed to make all curricula "anti-racist," another word for cultural Marxist.

In the last year, the College has started requiring people applying for positions at the College to define "equity." Hence, the people that can't define a woman now want the potential janitor, coder, or videographer to pass their dog whistle purity test to ensure that the College staff and faculty have solid groupthink gulag to indoctrinate our kids to hate anything that falls outside the realm of their illiberal woke cult dogmas.

It is time for parents and citizens to stand up and question this cultural revolution we are bombarded with. We have seen over and over again the on-campus hostility that these woke zombies have when there is a teacher or speaker that challenges their viewpoint. Just last month, Stanford University invited a 5th circuit judge only to have the students shout him down, which resulted in US Appeals court judges boycotting hiring from Stanford.

It is not just our law studies suffering; imagine when these people entrench themselves in other disciplines. For example, does anyone want a surgeon that got woke passes although their education, it won't matter if they got a diploma from a top tier medical school? Oh yeah, and let's not forget this person could be brainwashed to hate anyone from a particular demographic or who disagrees. These cultural Marxists are not ethical in the slightest they believe we should have the same results for every person no matter what.

Is Dr. Dianne Van Hook, smiling under the headline "Be a Voice for Progress" on the "Call to Action" page, going to protect other voices? The D in DEI means diversity; that word doesn't just mean the identity markers that people check; it should also include the ideas that those people hold, how are the best idea to rise to the top if they aren't allowed to be challenged without violence, intimidation, or accusations of personal bias (i.e., you are phobic this or phobic that.) Will there be consequences from the College administration for students or mobs of students that disrupt peaceful gatherings of different groups? Or has that ship sailed, and our students are now either for this thing or are you now second-class citizens on campus?