EDITORS' CORNER
‘Everything is a struggle in this country,’ professor says
Princeton University Professor Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor called the U.S. an “awful place,” condemned borders and patriotism, and called for the country to be dismantled at a Friday event titled “250 Years of Resistance.”
The professor accused the U.S. of “bombing other countries” for “sport,” according to a video of the event posted by Haymarket Books on YouTube.
“At this point its the most powerful nation on earth, and yet, still, is bombing countries we don’t know what. Maybe sport?” the African American studies professor said.
“Borders are deadly” and “borders kill people,” she said.
She also criticised the U.S. for the “barbarity” of what it “does within its own borders to people who come here in search of a better life or for people who live here.”
Taylor said many people are hungry, lack housing, or “work terrible jobs and live terrible lives because everything is a struggle in this country.”
Commenting on inequality in the U.S., the professor called Elon Musk, the world’s first trillionaire, a “demon.”
“This is a hypocritical, despotic, just awful, awful place for those who are at the bottom,” she said.
She also told attendees that people should not “embrace” the nation-state. Rather, it should be “the object of political struggle,” she said.
“We have to reject the idea of loving a nation state, right? Which is what patriotism is at the end of the day… the nation state itself is destructive,” she said.
“I want nothing to do with claiming the United States in some patriotic fashion,” she said.
When attendees started asking the professor questions, she said, “This audience is all like, ‘F**k the USA.’”
Professor Taylor’s email does not appear to be publicly available, but The College Fix reached out to the Department of African American Studies at Princeton to ask if she would like to clarify any of her statements. The department has not responded.
In a post about the event on X, Manhattan Institute Investigative Analyst Stu Smith wrote, “To put this into plainer English, when Taylor says the nation-state should be the ‘object of political struggle,’ she is talking about delegitimizing the nation-state itself and advancing a worldview that would dismantle the United States as a sovereign country.”
“This is the old Marxist fantasy of a world where workers are not bound by nations, borders, or citizenship, but are free to move wherever they want. In practice, it means dissolving the country out from under its own people,” Smith wrote.
The event, sponsored by Haymarket Book, took place at the National Public Housing Museum in Chicago, Illinois, according to the online event description.
“Take a break from the bizarre and depressing spectacle of Donald Trump presiding over celebrations of the U.S. state’s 250th birthday to join Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor and Brian Jones for a conversation about the inspiring history and extraordinary capacity of ordinary people to resist and organize for a better world,” the description reads.
MORE: Princeton professor has ‘great trepidation’ about America’s 250th, blames Trump
