CUNY course required students to engage in ‘antifascist’ activism, watchdog finds

The City University of New York’s “Global Antifa” English class, offered this year, required students to engage in antifascist activism, according to a recent watchdog report. 

Two education experts raised concerns about the course’s Marxist worldview in interviews with The College Fix.

Students in the course developed “research projects that contribute to the work of global movements fighting fascism,” according to the course syllabus obtained by Defending Education through a public records request. Defending Education is a nonprofit that aims to combat politicized agendas in schools.

The syllabus states that “authoritarian regimes have taken power in many countries around the world,” including the U.S., and asks how these “repressive regimes can be resisted.” 

Further, the course began “from the premise that racialized and colonized peoples have been at the forefront of theorizing, challenging, and dismantling fascism, white supremacy, and other modes of authoritarian rule over the last century,” according to the syllabus.

The course also explored various “antifascist traditions” and connected them to racial justice efforts, anti-imperialist activism, feminism, and critiques of capitalism.

Further, it employed “militant co-research,” which is the idea that truly understanding a political movement requires direct participation in it.

“Militant Research prioritises political struggle over the academic pursuit of knowledge,” Newcastle University research associate Jess Adams wrote in a manual for conducting activist-academic research. 

She wrote that “most Militant Researchers are anti-capitalist at a minimum,” and the movement “seeks to experiment with and build alternatives in the present day.”

Ian Oxnevad, senior fellow for foreign affairs and security studies at the National Association of Scholars, told The College Fix that “Courses like this reinforce a Marxist narrative that can be used to justify political violence.” 

Offering examples of this kind of violence, he referenced the assassination of Charlie Kirk and leaked text messages from the newly elected Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones. In the messages, Jones fantasized about killing then–House Speaker Todd Gilbert and his children.

Oxnevad also criticized the course for failing to prompt critical inquiry into fascism.

“It doesn’t actually examine fascism as statism as a philosophy. It also doesn’t juxtapose fascism versus the political philosophy of individual liberty,” he said.

What’s more, “it conflates fascism with colonialism, and even leaves out colonialism from the ‘non-West,’” he said.

Oxnevad argued that replacing scholarly critique with activism amounts to an intentional erosion of academic standards.

He said the solution to the increased promotion of violence and ideology in American universities lies in the liberal arts.

“The liberal arts are in fact something that needs to be taken seriously by people who want to reform higher education. Classic English would involve textual criticism which helps students develop critical thinking,” Oxnevad said.

NAS communications director Chase Layton echoed Oxnevad’s concerns in an interview via email with The College Fix.

Layton said courses such as this aim to “enact radical revolution among American society” based on “anti-Americanism, anti-Western theories.” 

The class itself might not be the issue, but requiring students to carry out its activism in exchange for course credit is, he said.

He also told The Fix that it’s been a long-time trend on the left to substitute activism for true education, especially in the “grievance studies” programs. While private institutions should be free to act as “seminaries for the modern left,” taxpayers should not be funding them, Layton said.

Neither the CUNY Graduate Center English Department, the course’s professor, Ashley Dawson, nor the school’s media relations responded to requests for comment. 

The new course comes amid ongoing controversy over Antifa, which President Trump recently labeled a domestic terrorist organization due to its alleged use of violence.