The taxpayer-funded Borough of Manhattan Community College is hosting a “Radical Assembly” where socialists are set to hold “comradely discussions” about “imperial hubris,” the rise of China and “trans futures.”
The school, part of the City University of New York system, is co-sponsoring the event next spring with a three-day event stocked with anti-capitalist and pro-socialist panels.
“Radical Assembly is an annual conference dedicated to the development of critical Marxist theory and socialist strategy,” says an invitation obtained by The Post.
The red conference is scheduled to take place at the school from April 22-24, according to the e-invite.
BMCC’s Political Science Program is organizing the event along with a group called “Historical Materialism,” which touts itself as an “international intellectual and political project dedicated to advancing critical Marxist theory”. Also co-sponsoring is the Institute for the Radical Imagination, which “works to develop critical analysis and democratic socialist strategy while connecting scholars, organizers, artists, and movements.”
The organizers are accepting papers and panel proposals for the conference, whose theme is “Facing Despair, Fighting Despair.”
“As the forces of capitalism have increased their capacity for coercion and command, as never-ending wars and authoritarian regimes have proliferated, the dominated classes (especially the younger generations) are faced with a future that appears to be brutish and bleak,” the invitation says.
“The conference aims to serve as a space of broad comradely discussion of all issues related to critical Marxist theory and research across the globe and across all disciplines and interests, including philosophy, political economy, sociology, literary and cultural studies, history, political theory, and so on.”
Topics for discussion, according to the invitation, include:
- — Technology and its relation to class struggle
- — Fossil capitalism, climate catastrophe and permanent ecological crisis
- — Authoritarianism and the return of the question of fascism
- — Palestine: resistance and solidarity against genocide
- — Imperialism and anti-imperialism in an era of forever wars and imperial hubris”
- — United States in decline and the rise of China
- — Feminist, queer, and trans futures
- — Racial capitalism, black liberation, and decolonial perspectives today
- — What to do with the ‘opium of the people’: Marxism and religion
- — Abolition and/as socialist strategy
- — The challenge of municipal socialism
Critics slammed the pro-Marxist conference as further evidence of higher education run amok by caving in Marxist ideologues who hate America and want to overthrow it..
“This is an absolute disgrace. It’s downright scary,” said New York State Conservative Party Chairman Gerard Kassar.
“BMCC is a taxpayer-financed institution. They’re forcing taxpayers to pay to promote Marxism, whose goal is the violent overthrow of the US government. It’s a threat to our society,” he said.
BMCC is CUNY’s largest community college with about 21,000 students and an $187 million budget.
The school receives city and state operating and capital funding, and many of its students attend BMCC tuition-free or with substantial tuition subsidies from the state and federal governments.
