Liberal WaPo columnist to teach anti-Trump course at Harvard
Liberal Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne is slated to teach a course at Harvard University this fall called "Donald Trump and the Challenge to Liberal Democracy.”
Dionne, who literally (co-)wrote the book on bashing Trump, will even attempt to draw a parallel between contemporary politics and the rise of "far-right parties" during the years leading up to World War II.
A well-known liberal pundit will be teaching a course at Harvard University this fall titled “Donald Trump and the Challenge to Liberal Democracy.”
The class will be taught by liberal Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne, who is also the co-author of the book One Nation Under Trump: A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Desperate, and the Not-Yet Deported.
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Dionne has long been a columnist for the Post, where he regularly expounds on his opposition to President Trump. Nine of his 10 most recent pieces, in fact, are definitively anti-Trump, with titles such as “We know a lot about Trump’s misdeeds. But most of all we know there’s more to come,” and “The steep price of the Trumpian circus.”
In another op-ed, however, Dionne insists that “Democrats aren’t so obsessed with Trump as you think.”
Dionne’s latest post, titled “No one is an ‘animal’,” bashes Trump for calling members of the MS-13 gang “animals.”
“What’s not fake news is Trump’s refusal to take responsibility for using words quite deliberately to enrage, degrade, and divide,” Dionne writes. “In doing so, he debases and dehumanizes all of us.”
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”Is liberal democracy in crisis? Has it always been in crisis?” the course description begins, asserting that while “liberal democracy was largely taken for granted in the West, and many saw it as the wave of the future around the globe” in the recent past, “it has come under challenge in unanticipated ways” over the last decade.
Students will learn about how “far-right parties gained ground in many countries, although recent elections in Europe suggest that they have plateaued and might even be in retreat,” as well as how “Donald Trump’s election brought this conversation directly to American shores.”
The class will attempt to draw parallels between contemporary politics and the years leading up to World War II, comparing the United States to France, Britain, the Netherlands, and Germany not only from a contemporary perspective, but also with respect to “the similarities and differences between our time and the 1930s.”
“We will discuss the economic, sociological, and cultural challenges to liberal democracy, and the obligations that fall upon those who would defend it,” the description concludes.
Campus Reform reached out to Dionne for comment, but did not receive response in time for publication.
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