Watchdog Claims CUNY Course Requires Students to Engage in Antifascist Activism
“Courses like this reinforce a Marxist narrative that can be used to justify political violence.”
CUNY deserves to be investigated. There is some element at this school that is driving this culture of radicalism.
The College Fix reports:
CUNY course requires students to engage in antifascist activism, watchdog finds
The City University of New York’s new spring 2026 “Global Antifa” English class requires 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.
CUNY’s “Global Antifa” course requires students to develop “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.
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, it “begins 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.”
The course explores various “antifascist traditions” and connects them to racial justice efforts, anti-imperialist activism, feminism, and critiques capitalism.
It is also oriented towards “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.
In addition, “most Militant Researchers are anti-capitalist at a minimum.” The movement “seeks to experiment with and build alternatives in the present day,” she wrote.
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 a 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.
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Comments
Flammable=inflammable. Fascist=antifascist.
I just want to pick out one portion of one sentence: “The City University of New York’s new spring 2026 “Global Antifa” English class …”
How do the phrases “global antifa” and “english class” even occur in the same sentence? What in the word does antifa have to do with the study of the english language, or even literature?
I don’t think the problem here is the requirement that students engage in activism. It’s that this is even considered a valid class at al!