FIX EXCLUSIVES
A Seattle University School of Law professor has come under fire for a variety of public comments that appear to advocate for lawlessness.
“People are going to need to break a lot of rules and laws to survive this period,” Professor Dean Spade said in a video interview recently posted on social media.
“… We are going to need to hide people from the police and from immigration enforcement,” Spade said. “… We’re going to need to get each other medicines and procedures that have become illegal under this new administration.”
That and other commentary from Spade was posted by Stuart Smith, an investigative analyst for the Manhattan Institute, who stated in an X thread that Spade’s arguments show “a glimpse into far-left queer abolitionist ideology in practice.”
Discussing his recent book, “Love in a F****ed Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up, and Raise Hell, Together,” Spade said the “situation is dire.”
In January, Spade filmed a TikTok on the Amtrak train, again encouraging lawbreaking: “It’s a time for us . . . to be willing to break laws and rules in order to save each other, and I hope you’ll check out [Vicky] Osterweil’s book for a source of inspiration.”
Osterweil’s book is titled “In Defense of Looting: A Riotous History of Uncivil Action.” Its chapters move progressively from “The Racial Roots of Property” to “All Cops Are B***ards” to “No Such Thing As Nonviolence.”
The book opens with the author’s view of American history: “The United States of America is built on African slavery and Indigenous genocide. This simple fact is the premise from which any honest study of American history must begin.
“Property, state, government, and economy in America rise from these pillars of racialized dispossession and violence.”
Spade said he believes every future lawyer should consider this version of history. In a 2025 lecture titled “No Prisons, No Border, No Cops, No State,” Spade said “if I could make all law students read one book, it would be that.”
Later in the lecture, Spade reiterated Osterweil’s history when critiquing the American jail system: “Looking at U.S. history, why would I think that a genocidal, colonial state built in chattel slavery could become caring?”
Seattle University law professor Dean Spade offers a glimpse into far-left queer abolitionist ideology in practice.
“People who I hated and wanted to destroy 20 years ago in the movement now are like the only other person who still hates gay marriage.”
Spade doesn’t just reject… pic.twitter.com/OPUHzZ1alf
— Stu (@thestustustudio) August 3, 2025
Spade’s comments align with several recent comments from law professors advocating lawbreaking and violence.
“Charity always divides people,” Spade said on his TikTok channel. “Mutual aid is like everything for everyone.”
In an interview with The College Fix, Smith said he sees deeper roots in Spade’s activism.
“These mutual aid networks become replacements for the family,” he said. This “is about subverting our great legal system.”
“This is clearly someone who is a byproduct of an education at Barnard and Columbia,” said Smith. When he originally found Spade’s work, he “didn’t even realize Spade was a college professor; I thought he was just an activist . . . I was horrified to find out [Spade] is not just a professor, but a law professor.”
“Is this legal theory, or is this lawlessness?” he asked.
According to Seattle University’s profile of Spade, the professor teaches classes including “Poverty Law, Gender and Law, Policing and Imprisonment, Professional Responsibility, and Law and Social Movements.”
In a video promoting Spade’s first book, “Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics and the Limits of Law,” Spade said Americans need to “move away from thinking about individual criminals [as] bad people, which is kind of the fiction that justifies this [criminal justice] system” to “a very different way of thinking about what criminality is and what crime is.”
Describing his activism, Spade said he wants his audience to understand that “the messages of this work are: government is f***ed, we can’t rely on it; you are not alone; the system is the problem, not the person being targeted by it; and we’re going to take matters into our own hands.”
Smith said this appears to be crossing a line.
He said he sees a contradiction when Spade “is the law professor but [is] training and organizing people as well, and advocating for illegal activity . . . that could end up getting someone hurt.”
Professor Spade and the University of Seattle did not respond to requests for comment.
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IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT / Professor Dean Spade gives an interview / X screenshot
