Still Pushing: Activist Angela Davis urged black...

Still Pushing: Activist Angela Davis urged black students at Georgia State University to push mostly white universities to create black studies programs as a way fighting on-campus racism. “We fought for the right of African-American students to have access to the educational institutions of this country only to realize that the education . . . was flawed in and of itself,” she said Saturday in Atlanta. Davis teaches women’s and ethnic studies at San Francisco State University.

New News: CBS News anchor Dan Rather chastised the national media for listening to pollsters who say “real people care only about entertainment, sex and cats.” In a speech in Washington, D.C., he asked: “Where are the publishers, editors and reporters of grit, gumption and guts? Television news and newspapers are in danger of sinking into a miasma of mediocrity.”

Good Oates: Joyce Carol Oates was named Tuesday the winner of the $25,000 Rea Award, the largest U.S. prize for short stories. The Dungannon Foundation in New York which issues the award, said Oates 51, a professor at Princeton University, was cited for “her ability to constantly reinvent not only the psychological space she inhabits, but herself as well, as part of her fiction.” Oates is the author of 20 novels and volumes of short stories, poems, essays and plays.

New Start: Romanian defector Nadia Comaneci appeared last week in Reno, Nev., for her first gymnastics performance in six years. Comaneci said: “I’m glad to be in my new homeland. This is very emotional for me . . . . I love America. I love you all.” Her performance with 16 younger gymnasts was taped by ABC for broadcast April 21. She was recently reported to be in a personal relation with a married man who helped her defect in December.