UC Riverside professor wants to be ‘terrorist,’ praises student who firebombed police car

A University of California, Riverside professor suggested on a recent podcast that a former pro-Palestinian student of his, a convicted arsonist, was a “genius” and praised protesters who disable U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement vehicles.

Dylan Rodriguez also spoke about wanting to be a “terrorist” and praised a former Hunter College art instructor who was caught wrecking a pro-life student table and later chasing a journalist with a machete. 

Rodriguez, a professor of media and cultural studies at UC Riverside, appeared on the Millennials are Killing Capitalism podcast in June to discuss “Lexical Warfare & Counterinsurgency.” In addition to teaching, he has helped to found the groups Cops Off Campus, Scholars for Social Justice, and Abolition Collective, according to his university bio.

During the episode, Rodriguez mentioned wanting to be a “terrorist” when asked a question about “black radicalism.”

He said leaders in the black radicalism tradition include Harriet Tubman and former Black Panther Party member Ashanti Alston. He also mentioned Bronx artist Shellyne Rodriguez, who was fired from Hunter College in 2023 after throwing materials off students’ pro-life display and later chasing a journalist with a machete. 

“You got to be a little crazy” in order to face the “viciousness of white supremacy,” Dylan Rodriguez said on the podcast, adding, “You ain’t going to be free otherwise by doing things so careful and so convenient.”

Later, he also said he wants to be a “terrorist.”

“When we engage with lexical warfare, with the counterinsurgent totality, we need to understand what is actually invincible is the insurgent totality that precedes, accompanies, and f—ing terrorizes civilization,” he said. “I want to be that kind of terrorist.” 

He defined “lexical warfare” as “reorganizing and redirecting entire parameters, entire theaters of conflict through the conquest and colonization of words, definitions, and narratives,” and said it was “different” than “the weaponization of certain words.”

“In the context of lexical warfare, language is no longer just weaponized. The language itself actually forms the conceptual and institutional terrain on which war is waged,” he said.

At another point in the podcast, Rodriguez voiced support for people disabling ICE vehicles, saying he does not personally know “anybody that did that” but would be “happy and proud once I do.”

“The folks who, I want to give a shoutout to, throughout Southern California who are actively disabling ICE vehicles when they find them in the f—ing hotel parking lots,” he said.

The point of their actions is not just to disable government vehicles; it’s also “a denormalization of the prestige of state power,” he said.

The protesters are not interested in “being protected by constitutional rights at this point,” he said. “It’s like the state power is the permanent adversary. It’s a threat to my people, my loved ones’ existence. And at the bare minimum, I need to disrupt that s—.”

Rodriguez appeared on the podcast again earlier this month to discuss the hunger strikes of pro-Palestinian activists, including Casey Goonan, one of his former students.

Goonan pleaded guilty earlier this year to federal charges “in relation to a series of firebombings and arsons at the Oakland federal building and the University of California, Berkeley,” as well as a university police car in 2024, according to a news release from the Northern District of California U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Rodriguez said they met around 2008 when Goonan was an undergraduate at UC Riverside. He referred to Goonan using “they/them” pronouns.

“They immediately took all my classes,” Rodriguez said. He said he encouraged Goonan to “take a PhD class because they were just way too advanced.”

“I hesitate to use the word genius, because it tends to be individualized … So I’m not going to use that word, but what I will say is that Casey in my life is a singular intellectual, just singular,” he said.

“I introduced them as my former student, I don’t consider them a student anymore, I consider them, you know, one of my most precious colleagues.”

Rodriguez did not respond to multiple emails from The College Fix over the past week asking for clarification about what he said on both podcast episodes.

The Fix also emailed UC Riverside media relations multiple times to ask if the university was aware of Rodriguez’s remarks, but received no response.

Rodriguez’s remarks gained attention recently when Stu Smith, investigative analyst for The Manhattan Institute, posted them in a compilation on X.

🚨 UC Riverside Professor Dylan Rodríguez: “F*cking terrorizes civilization. I want to be that kind of terrorist.”

In a recent appearance on Millennials Are Killing Capitalism, Rodríguez — a UC Riverside professor, past president of the American Studies Association, and a… pic.twitter.com/PzVwm0jPCB

— Stu Smith (@thestustustudio) September 10, 2025

Smith called the situation “baffling” in a message to The College Fix on X.

“It is baffling that a professor at a taxpayer funded university, whose duty should be to serve the public by educating the next generation of citizens, can so openly proclaim himself an antagonist to the American project,” he said.

Smith cited Rodriguez’s UCR profile, which concludes with “Dylan believes in the right—in fact, the obligation—of occupied, colonized, and incarcerated peoples to fight for their liberation against external oppressors as well as internal reactionaries, and the parallel responsibility of those who profess solidarity to take all necessary measures to protect, defend, and advance liberation struggle, whatever forms it may take.”

Smith commented: “That is not education. It is a professor at a taxpayer supported institution celebrating confrontation with America itself and encouraging resistance ‘whatever forms it may take.’”

Smith noted that “Rodríguez is not alone,” adding, “Entire academic programs are being built around this ideology.”

“San Francisco State University now offers a BA in Race and Resistance Studies. Ithaca College offers a Race, Power, and Resistance B.A. major. Colorado State University offers an Ethnic Studies major with a Global Race, Power, and Resistance concentration,” he said.

San Francisco State’s Race and Resistance bachelor’s degree “examines both the race-related processes that underlie many social problems and the multiple forms of resistance and struggle aimed at achieving racial social justice.” 

Ithaca College, a private institution in New York, also offers a Race, Power, and Resistance bachelor’s degree, which includes courses such as “Latino/a/x Resistance Movements,” which “Focuses on the historical relationships between Latino/a/x people and other racial/ethnic groups in the US and Latin America with special emphasis on social movements and grassroots efforts for social justice.”

“These programs say out loud that their mission is to normalize hostility to the American project as an academic discipline, subsidized by tuition dollars and often by taxpayers,” Smith said.

He continued, “And this is only the tip of the iceberg. At the K-12 level, Ethnic Studies curricula already draw on the same frameworks and academic canons to shape the worldview of younger students.”

“This is disheartening and it underscores why lawmakers and government officials in California, in other states, and at the federal level must take seriously how public institutions are being used as platforms for hostility toward America itself,” he told The Fix.

Rodriguez’s UCR profile says that he is “devoted to studying and teaching the historical, collective genius of rebellion, survival, and insurgent futurity that radically challenge dominant forms of authority, power, and institutionality.”

It goes on to say that he “has participated as a founding member of organizations like Critical Resistance, Abolition Collective, Critical Ethnic Studies Association, Cops Off Campus, Scholars for Social Justice, and the UCR Department of Black Study.”

The Abolition Collective is “an online collective of people working towards a world without prisons, policing, or surveillance,” according to its Instagram page.

“Dylan’s lifework focuses on liberationist, anticolonial, and abolitionist confrontations with the antiblack, colonial, and white supremacist violences that permeate the ongoing Civilization project,” his bio says.

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