The New School offers $10,000 course on 'How to Steal'
The New School is offering a four-credit sociology seminar titled 'How to Steal,' which costs more than $10,000 and examines theft through the lens of capitalism, colonialism, and morality.
The course includes fieldwork at places like grocery stores and banks, framing theft as survival, protest, or 'radical ethics.'
At The New School in Manhattan, students can enroll in a four-credit sociology seminar titled “How to Steal,” reflecting broader trends on college campuses where theft is reframed as protest or survival.
The New School charges more than $60,000 in annual tuition, as noted by The New York Post. At its per-credit rate, students will pay over $10,000 to enroll in the seminar.
The course is framed as an academic exploration of morality, politics, power, and what it calls the “aesthetics of theft.”
“This field-based seminar explores the politics, ethics, and aesthetics of theft in a world where accumulation is sacred, dispossession is routine, and the line between private property and public good is drawn in blood,” the catalogue states. Students analyze how theft is viewed under “capitalism” and “colonialism,” asking when it can be seen as survival, protest, or care—and when it becomes violence.
Fieldwork requires students to visit grocery stores, banks, libraries, and museums, which the course identifies as places where “capital is hoarded and value is contested.” The listing emphasizes, “This is not a course in petty crime—it is a study in moral ambiguity, radical ethics, and imaginative justice.”
A similar theme surfaced at Yale University where a student editorial defended shoplifting from the “Bow Wow,” a student convenience store.
After the Yale Daily News reported students exploiting security flaws at the store, a student-run publication responded by publishing an opinion piece titled “Keep Stealing from the Bow Wow.” The piece claimed Yale’s $40 billion endowment and large tax breaks made theft a symbolic act against “extractive” financial practices.
“So, are quick-fingered students really ‘taking advantage’ of The Bow Wow’s security flaws? In all fairness, I would entertain someone who argues yes, but I think that such a debate only distracts from the larger issue at hand. Indeed, if anyone is ‘taking advantage’ of anything, it is Yale taking advantage of its student body and of New Haven,” the editorial stated. It concluded that minor thefts of food and necessities were acts of survival, given Yale’s fees for printing, laundry, and schedule changes.
A March Cato Institute/YouGov survey found that 62 percent of Americans under 30 expressed favorable views of socialism, compared to 38 percent unfavorable. Thirty-four percent of young adults also said they view communism favorably, while only 14 percent of all respondents shared that view. Previous polls, including a 2019 Gallup survey, recorded lower levels of support.
The New School’s seminar joins a growing number of higher education programs promoting anti-capitalist perspectives. Earlier this year, Iowa State University announced an “Anti-Capitalist Personal Finance” lecture, while Fordham University’s Young Democratic Socialists of America distributed free Plan B in defiance of school policy.
Last fall, Marxist scholar Angela Davis told students at Princeton University that she seeks to “overturn the capitalist system.”
Campus Reform has reached out to The New School for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
