I have previously written about the “radical chic” in higher education of faculty members who espouse extremist views in departments purged of conservative, libertarian, or moderate voices. While it is virtually impossible to get departments to seriously consider a mainstream conservative or libertarian, schools like Princeton eagerly hire professors such as Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, who recently delighted a Chicago audience with an unhinged rant against the United States and the concept of a nation-state.
Bill Ayers and Princeton’s Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor appeared at a July 4th event and denounced the country and its anniversary.
Taylor thrilled the crowd by recounting her disgust that a woman gave her child an American flag at the airport. She credited herself by not instantly burning it, but went on to denounce the country and credited the audience for its “F**k the U.S.” attitude.
Notably, Taylor suggested that only fools rally behind the flag or the notion of a nation-state. She clearly believes not just in open borders but rejects the very concept of borders. She repeatedly declared that “borders kill” and suggested that patriotic people are simply dupes.
Bill Ayers is a former professor and one of the founders of the domestic terrorist organization, the Weather Underground. His wife, Bernardine Dohrn, was also a member of the group, and both were fugitives for several years. Dohrn is also a professor who has taught at Northwestern University School of Law.
Taylor is a Professor in the Department of African-American Studies at Princeton University. She writes for the New Yorker.
In the Chicago event, Tayler called on others to reject “the idea of loving a nation state, which is what patriotism is.” She repeatedly returned to the theme that borders are “deadly” and “borders kill people.” She explained that we have to erase any borders because they are “a tool of death and destruction.”
Furthermore, she emphasized that the very concept of a nation-state should be the “object of political struggle.”
This reflects the level of intellectual rigor in departments like the one at Princeton. Her writings have been honored by the Marguerite Casey Foundation and Group Health Foundation, the Organization of American Historians, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (which gave her a fellowship).
On one level, the erasure of borders could be viewed as the “withering away of the state” espoused by Friedrich Engels and later by Vladimir Lenin. However, it reads more like the jargonistic narrative common in higher education, where radicals espouse such views without serious challenge from their colleagues.
Even European states that once allowed expanded undocumented migration are now struggling to reverse course due to the high social and security costs. However, academics such as Taylor tell students that we can eradicate any nation-states and live without borders. While most people would expect such views to be espoused by raving lunatics on the subway, Princeton made her a chair professor as the Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies.
Her writings are celebrated for her combination of socialism and identity politics. The gushing articles even include praise for her use of emojis. (“All those cry-laughing yellow orbs betrayed a critic with a sense of humor.”).
Few colleagues or critics feel comfortable noting that views like the eradication of the nation-state or erasure of borders are little more than unsupported, jargon-saturated tripe. There is no effort to push her on what happens to an economy without borders where the country (or whatever will replace the nation-state) is responsible for supporting millions of immigrants.
When you hear young socialists in the Mamdani Administration (including Mamdani himself) speaking of “seizing the means of production,” it is the result of college classes taught by figures like Taylor, who offer little more than shallow sound bites and slogans. They have been told that socialism is a successful economic model despite its utter failure historically. It is a fable told by the uninformed to the unquestioning: unicorn economics, eagerly embraced like a bedtime story.
The alternative is what I have called the “liberty-enhancing economy” that the Framers embraced. The combination of political and economic freedom made this republic the greatest engine of prosperity and human rights in history. That does not mean that we do not have difficult economic and social problems. However, the suggestion that we should embrace socialism and erase borders is properly viewed as perfectly bonkers … outside of higher education.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the New York Times best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
Dear Mr. Turley, I agree with whimsicalmama. It is my hope that this “professor” will be sent packing to North Korea. They would enjoy her so much!!
HEY GOP…end all Federal Aid to colleges!
Stop rewarding democrat who hate America
You know she obtained her position in a pseudo academic discipline based on traits unrelated to any intellectual achievement She is another vacuous indoctrinator at a prestigious university who rose through academia mastering the snake oil of their debased ideology. I just received my alumni magazine from U of Penn extolling the brilliance of a PhD student in Musicology who cannot read music and whose dissertation topic is “Cassette Tapes” That is what passes for research in the the liberal arts academy in elite universities
After Mugabe seized the white farms in Zimbabwe, famine followed. Why do communists think if they seize the means of production everything will be okey dokey? People that sign the back of a paycheck haven’t a clue of what the person that signs the front of the check knows. When people who are not qualified to run a lemonade stand, get elected to public office and have to run things they blame their failures on others. Maybe the comrade needs to spend their holidays picking potatoes?
Unchecked, unpublicized high school and university instructors and the administrators who hire them with no counter balance are responsible.
There is accountability written into the first amendment. It is the free press – which includes all of us – who can report and tell the world what individuals an dorganizations say and do with their sacred freedom of speech.
I can’t believe that Prof Turley can’t think and argue at a higher level than this. He writes like his audience has an IQ of 85, and I bet that is because that is his assessment.
Strangely, the Founding Fathers put few protections for property in the Constitution, and I doubt that was a mistake. We could vote ourselves into socialism with no problem. A hybrid system is probably much better, allowing wealth to accumulate once everyone has a basic level of support. But a democratic change towards socialism will be the inevitable result if the wealthy refuse to share. They use crony capitalism and non-productive financial games to gain a large part of their wealth and that WILL be rolled back. Hopefully they are smart enough to allow that to be done peacefully.
The standards completely change. It is ok to attack countries to secure their wealth, but it is not ok for people to fight for resources within their own country? Violence is wrong unless it serves you? Lawfare is wrong unless it is against YOUR enemies? Extreme speech is only wrong when it is addressed to the powerful? The MAGA movement has lost all intellectual grounding.
So, a radical, lesbian raised by radicalized parents says that she hates the US. Tell me why she lives in the US? If she hates it so much, why not move to some nation that shares her hatred of us. She can hate us at a distance and not be sucking her livelihood from the US taxpayers through the use of taxpayer funding for her university seat.
It’s time to help these Commies decide it’s best for their health to remove themselves out of our country.
I remember when the “F” word was considered so very inappropriate that only the most uneducated and boorish of people would use the word in public–never a lady (especially!) or a gentleman. Now there’s not a day goes by when I don’t see it in print–or hear it. The gasps when encountering that terrible word aren’t heard very often anymore, I’m afraid, but it doesn’t make the “F” word any less uncivilized than it’s always been. The Princeton professor and the crowd she lauded should be ashamed of herself and itself.
Boy you get to the heart of the matter.
Liberals hate everything, but mostly the self.
What a deep analysis! And you hate words? arguments? reasons? thinking in general?
Self loathing on steroids!