Amid Riots, Washington and Lee University Offers a Class on 'How to Overthrow the State'

This fall at Washington and Lee University (removal of Lee pending), students will learn reading writing, arithmetic — and “How to Overthrow the State.” As antifa riots have continued in Portland for almost 100 nights, students at the Virginia university named after George Washington and Robert E. Lee* will study Marxist revolutions in the Global South, complete with role-playing regime change.

Writing Seminar 100-18, “How to Overthrow the State,” will award each student three credits toward graduation.

“This course places each student at the head of a popular revolutionary movement aiming to overthrow a sitting government and forge a better society,” a course description explains. “How will you attain power? How will you communicate with the masses? How do you plan on improving the lives of the people? How will you deal with the past?”

“From Frantz Fanon to Che Guevara to Mohandas Ghandi and others, we explore examples of revolutionary thought and action from across the Global South,” the description adds. “Students engage these texts by participating in a variety of writing exercises, such as producing a Manifesto, drafting a white paper that critically analyzes a particular issue, and writing a persuasive essay on rewriting history and confronting memory.”

While there is nothing wrong with studying Marxist revolutionaries like Che Guevara, it does seem a bit unnerving that a university class would encourage students to emulate them and to “overthrow the state” — especially amid violent riots and looting in cities across America.

Conservatives, who are already rightly worried about academia undermining American patriotism and teaching Marxism, naturally condemned the Washington and Lee course.

“Washington and Lee University’s course on ‘how to overthrow the state’ is one further sign of the insanity taking over higher education,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich tweeted. “The alumni should rise up and show how to overthrow a crazy college administration.”

“This is disgraceful,” Turning Point USA Founder Charlie Kirk told Breitbart News. “We must stop brushing aside these egregious examples of campus craziness as isolated incidents.”

“The lessons of the past few months prove that these ideas don’t stay on campus, they spill out onto the streets,” Kirk warned. “This is a prime example of the intellectual rot that has infected the academy in America. The Trump administration should investigate and determine if this is the type of scholarship federal funds should be used to subsidize.”

The next generation of 1619 Project

Washington and Lee students will take a crack at “rewriting history,” just like The New York Times‘ “1619 Project.” That effort in Marxist critical theory preaches that various aspects of American society, such as capitalism, are oppressive and racist. Indeed, the Smithsonian briefly taught that even things like science, the nuclear family, the Judeo-Christian tradition, and politeness itself are oppressive aspects of a “whiteness” culture.

Portland activist Lilith Sinclair showed how Marxist critical theory pushes aimless revolution. “There’s still a lot of work to undo the harm of colonized thought that has been pushed onto Black and indigenous communities,” she said. As examples of “colonized thought,” she mentioned Christianity and the “gender binary.” She said she organizes for “the abolition of … the “United States as we know it.”

When vandals toppled a statue of George Washington in Portland, they spray-painted “1619” on the statue. When Claremont’s Charles Kesler wrote in The New York Post “Call them the 1619 riots,” 1619 Project Founder Nikole Hannah-Jones responded (in a since-deleted tweet) that “it would be an honor” to claim responsibility for the destructive riots. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) called for the “dismantling” of America’s “economy and political system,” in order to root out supposed racist oppression.

Left-leaning journalists and Democrats have insisted, over and over again, that the riots are “mostly peaceful protests.” Yet the riots have destroyed black lives, black livelihoods, and black monuments. At least 22 Americans have died in the riots, most of them black.

PJ Media has reached out to Washington and Lee for comment on the class, and this story will be updated with any response.

*Washington and Lee University faculty voted overwhelmingly in favor of striking Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s name from the university’s name, but only a majority of the institution’s trustees has the power to actually change the name, and the trustees have not voted on it, yet. One faculty member, an associate professor of law, Brandon Hasbrouck, suggested that the university should also consider removing Washington’s name.

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Across US south, a push to change Confederate school names

Trude Lamb is a standout cross country runner at Robert E. Lee High School in Tyler, Texas, but the name on her jersey is a sharp reminder of a man "who didn't believe people like me were 100% human."

The sophomore, originally from Ghana, told the school board this summer that she had seen the horrific conditions of slave dungeons on the African coast and can't support a name that celebrates a Confederate general who fought on the side of slavery. Along with many other students and alumni, she pushed to change the name this year in a campaign organized under the hashtag #wewontwearthename.

The school board approved the change in July after years of resistance.

The new Tyler Independent School District (TISD) campus for Robert E. Lee High School is seen on Wednesday, June 24, 2020, in Tyler, Texas. The new campus was part of a 198 million dollar bond package passed in 2017 to renovate both the Lee campus and John Tyler High School. In Tyler, Texas a petition is collecting signatures to change the name of Robert E. Lee High School.
"That name was not a black supporter. He owned slaves. He did anything he could to get rid of Black people. I'm like, 'No, not wearing this name on my jersey,'" Lamb told The Associated Press.

More than 100 public schools in the U.S. are named for Confederate figures — roughly 90 of those for Lee, Confederate President Jefferson Davis or Gen. Stonewall Jackson — according to a report from the Southern Poverty Law Center. Many were founded during the days of segregation as all-white schools but now also serve African American students. At least a dozen have majority Black student bodies.

A renewed push has emerged to rename many of the schools as ongoing nationwide protests over police misconduct and racial injustice have spurred the removal of Confederate monuments. Multiple school systems in Alabama, Texas and Virginia have voted to change school names in recent months, but local resistance and state laws make that no simple task.

Lamb, who gained national attention for her letter to the Tyler school board, has become a target of social media posts with racist language and even threats of violence, her mother said.

In Montgomery, Alabama, three high schools are named after Lee, Davis and Sidney Lanier, a writer and poet who was a Confederate soldier. The schools have student populations ranging from 82% to 99% Black.

"It's a basic insult to all the African American children who would have to walk past a statue or go to a school that is named after a white supremacist," said Amerika Blair, a 2009 Lee graduate who was among those pushing for change.

The Montgomery County School Board voted in July to change the names of the three schools, but a 2017 state law protects Confederate monuments and other long-standing memorials and names. The school system will have to get a waiver from a committee, which could act in October at the soonest, or pay a $25,000 fine for breaking the law by changing the name without permission.

The new Tyler Independent School District campus for the Robert E. Lee High School is seen on Wednesday, June 24, 2020, in Tyler, Texas. The new campus was part of a 198 million dollar bond package passed in 2017 to renovate both the Lee campus and John Tyler High School. Across the Deep South a multitude of public schools bear the names of Confederate figures - from Jefferson Davis to Robert E. Lee - and serve mostly African-American students. A renewed push is emerging to rename many of the schools, as some cities take down Confederate monuments.
Like many other Confederate-named schools, Lee in Montgomery opened as an all-white school in 1955— a year after the Supreme Court ruled in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education that segregated schools were unconstitutional — as the South was actively fighting integration. But white flight after integration orders and shifting demographics meant many of the schools became heavily African American.

A statue of Lee stood outside the school for decades— facing north to keep an eye on his enemies, according to school legend— but was toppled from in pedestal in June. Four people were arrested for knocking over the statue but the charges were later dropped.

Similar pushes to rename schools are taking place across the country. The Southern Poverty Law Center said about 40 schools have been renamed, or closed, in the past few years.

In Virginia, the removal of Confederate names began in the state's northern region in 2018, when J.E.B. Stuart High in Falls Church changed to Justice High. Washington-Lee High School in Arlington changed its name to Washington-Liberty at the start of the 2019-2020 academic year.

The trend accelerated and expanded beyond the liberal northern Virginia suburbs as the Black Lives Matter protests took hold after the police killing of George Floyd died in Minneapolis in May.

A pedestal that held a statue of Robert E. Lee stands empty outside a high school named for the Confederate general in Montgomery, Ala. on Tuesday, June 2, 2020. Four people were charged with criminal mischief after someone removed the statue amid nationwide protests over the police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota.

Fairfax County voted for a new name for Robert E. Lee High. Stonewall Jackson High was renamed in Manassas, the place where the Confederate general earned his nickname in the first Battle of Bull Run. Rural Shenandoah County also changed the name of its high school named for Jackson. In Hanover County, a conservative jurisdiction outside Richmond, the school board narrowly voted to change the name of Lee-Davis High.

"Changing names is part of the transition from one era or epoch to another," said historian Wayne Flynt, who has authored multiple books on Southern history.

Flynt said the same views that gave root to the Confederate school names has also gave rise to education funding systems that often leave minority children in underperforming and underfunded schools, problems that will remain after the name changes,

"What does bother me is when you get to the end of all the name changes, nothing has changed in terms the quality of the education or the property tax base in Alabama, which is pathetic," Flynt said.

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University of Pennsylvania professor wants to investigate claim Trump faked admission exam

A University of Pennsylvania professor is asking the school to launch a probe into the allegations that President Trump faked his admission exam.

Six faculty members first asked the school’s provost to investigate the claims in mid-July after the president’s niece, Mary Trump, published a book that claims Trump paid someone to take his SATs.

At the time the provost told Eric Orts, one of the professors asking for the probe, that although they found the allegations concerning, “this situation occurred too far in the past to make a useful or probative factual inquiry possible,” according to the Daily Pennsylvanian, a student-run publication.

The Washington Post last weekend published secretly recorded audio from Trump’s sister Maryanne Trump Barry in which she said “he got into University of Pennsylvania because he had somebody take the exams.”

Mary Trump said it was a man named Joe Shapiro. The widow of a friend of Trump’s named Joe Shapiro at UPenn has said her husband did not take the exams for President Trump, but Mary Trump says it is another man with the same name.

Orts, a professor of legal studies and business ethics at the UPenn's Wharton School, told the Post he recontacted the provost saying the new audio constituted the kind of “new evidence” they asked for.

UPenn did not immediately respond to an inquiry from The Hill. The provost also did not respond to Orts at the time of the Post’s reporting.

The Trump campaign and White House have dismissed the audio from Barry, with one adviser likening their relationship to a "sibling rivalry."

The president has previously questioned the credentials of several Democratic politicians, including former President Obama. While Obama was in office, Trump pledged to make a $5 million donation to a charity if he released his college applications and transcripts.

Trump’s former personal attorney and fixer Michael Cohen said during a congressional testimony that he took legal measures to ensure the president’s academic records were not leaked.

Fordham University, where the president was a student from 1964 to 1966, later confirmed Cohen threatened legal action. Trump graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1968 after transferring from Fordham.

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More than a dozen researchers and professors at U.S. universities have been arrested for ties to the Chinese government

More than a dozen students, researchers, and professors at American universities have been arrested in the last year on charges related to lying about their ties with the Chinese government, often while accepting US-taxpayer-funded grants.

The Justice Department has focused much effort on investigating individuals with ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) who use their positions on American campuses to benefit Beijing, often by recruiting talent or stealing intellectual property. Between 2019 and 2020, at least 14 people were arrested on related charges.

While some suspects were investigated and charged in 2019, escalating tensions with China in 2020 appeared to ramp up efforts to hold these individuals accountable.

In August, a Chinese official accused the U.S. of monitoring and harassing Chinese students and researchers at American campuses. Sanctions placed on Chinese entities —such as the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, a paramilitary group which operates much of the economy in Xinjiang and allegedly orchestrated the persecution of minorities — also inflamed tension.

“For some time, the U.S., with ideological prejudice, keeps monitoring, harassing and willfully detaining Chinese students and researchers, and making presumptions of guilt against Chinese researchers,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said in early August.

These are the individuals who work or study at colleges across the U.S. who’ve had ties to the Chinese government and have been charged with crimes related to their concealed affiliation.

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