UMN offers 'relevance' of Marxism course

The University of Minnesota is offering a course during the spring 2019 semester on Marxism and its “relevance” in today’s world.

UMN Senior Lecturer Meredith Gill is teaching a course this spring titled “Marx for Today.” The course introduces students to Marxist theory and draws heavy “attention to its relevance for the contemporary world.”

Through reading the texts of Karl Marx, the course aims to teach students the “origins of capitalism, exploitation, alienation… and class divisions” so that they can apply those concepts to “student debt, gender inequality, sexual identity, [and] race.”

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The course syllabus cites the “political urgency” of issues including “racial injustice” and “right-wing populism.” The course syllabus also states that current “critical thinkers, political activists, and philosophers” are “resist[ing] under the banner of Marxism.” 

The professor of the course, Meredith Gill, referred Campus Reform to the Department of Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature mission statement when asked for comment. 

Max Ritter, a student at the University of Minnesota who enrolled in the course for a week before dropping it, said that “it’s primarily a course to look at the state of capitalism,” adding that it “doesn’t have much to do with what Marx originally thought and wrote,” when speaking with Campus Reform.

Garrick Spennewyn, a political science and history major at the University of Minnesota, told Campus Reform that courses outside of political science are rarely apolitical. 

The Marx for Today course “is clearly discussing Marx and likely has a bias in favor of it” he continued, adding that “students have the right to sign up for whatever classes they want,” but asserting that it is dangerous when “teachers use their platform to push their agenda on students when it is not warranted.”

[RELATED: NYU hosts Marx birthday bash...during the wrong month]

Young Americans for Freedom featured the course in their 2018-2019 Comedy and Tragedy report highlighting the most egregious college courses in indoctrination around the nation.

Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @megolsonn