Sedition U: Marxist Ideology Threatens American Democracy from Campus to Culture

The First Amendment’s free speech protections and “academic freedom” at colleges and universities are pillars of American democracy. But knowledgeable observers long have recognized that subversives, including members of the Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA), use these freedoms to foment revolutionary change in the United States, including the hoped-for creation of a new Marxist United Socialist States of America (USSA).

While sometimes recognizing such seditious activities, most Americans have long believed that American democracy was strong enough to keep subversive ideas at the fringes of society. Many Americans still believe such freedoms cannot be limited without jeopardizing important freedoms generally. But these threats are no longer minor nuisances that society can ignore. Now widespread, campus-based sedition is key for revolutionaries because colleges and universities create new generations of radicals who Marxists hope will help them take power. Academics generate ideas that rationalize the often deceptive subversion characteristic of all Marxism variants. Angela Davis, the black and lesbian activist who twice was the CPUSA’s vice presidential candidate, put the point well, calling Pan-African studies programs at American universities the “intellectual arm of the revolution.”

While many deficiencies of American colleges and universities are widely recognized, awareness of their root causes and consequences, if not stopped, is incomplete. Marxists’ deceptions have been effective. The threat is dire, and major reforms are needed. The Trump administration has a rare opportunity to significantly reform higher education in ways that restore traditional educational standards, not impose other ideologies, and target Marxism-motivated sedition.

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Marxists’ ability to recruit idealists, entrap fellow travelers, and indoctrinate naïve dupes who would be foot soldiers in the Marxian revolution that true believers aspire to foment is well established. Histories of Marxian ambitions, occasional failings, and resilience are in many books, often by former Marxists, such as Louis Budenz, Eugene Lyons, and Benjamin Gitlow, on the subversive techniques of the CPUSA as an instrument of the Soviet Union, Ronald and Allis Radosh on communists’ use of Hollywood films as propaganda tools, and Whittaker Chambers and Elizabeth Bentley on American spies for Moscow. More recently, Roger Kimball, Allan Bloom, and others documented how the detritus of the New Left reorganized and contaminated universities ideologically.

Cultural Marxism, suggested by Antonio Gramsci and Frankfurt School theorists, focuses on subverting societies through integrated attacks on education, the press, religion, law, and the family. Their followers have embedded Marxian perspectives in key American institutions, including, in recent years, the federal government and in colleges and universities. These include the “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) agenda—an implementing technique of critical race theory, an offshoot of the Frankfurt School’s “critical theory, ” which is designed to exacerbate societal divisions. Recently reemergent techniques of cultural Marxism include drag queen story hours designed to confuse young children about sexual realities.

Nowhere are these techniques and their effects more pronounced than on campuses.

As documented in polling data, American colleges and universities are hotbeds of radical political views. Since October 2023, professors have often been at the forefront of frequently violent—but reportedly “mostly peaceful”—demonstrations against Israel’s conduct in its war against Hamas, as described in deceptively sympathetic press accounts. Exuberant campus rhetoric often extends to advocacy of violence against Jews generally.

Revolutionary Marxian ideas, including advocacy of violence against capitalists, are attaining widespread currency, especially among young people. For example, a recent Emerson College poll found that 41 percent of young people believe the murder of United Healthcare chief Brian Thompson on December 4, 2024, is “acceptable.”

Campus leftists rationalize their radicalism on many grounds, including assertions that “academic freedom” permits any political claim or action short of large-scale physical violence. They duplicitously claim they are just “progressives” pursuing “social justice.” Herbert Marcuse’s 1965 goal of “repressive tolerance,” suppressing non-Marxian perspectives while touting radical views, has been achieved on many campuses. Ideology-generated speech codes are common. The original purposes of academic freedom and tenure—to protect creative, unconventional thinking—have been hijacked to suppress non-Marxian thinking and rationalize subversive islands of Marxian orthodoxy and ideology-motivated activism, often at significant financial and political expense.

[RELATED: Identifying and Refuting Marxism on Campus]

Key to crafting an effective reform package is the recognition that the dysfunctions of modern campuses are products of coherent programs driven by ideology, not merely ill-chosen policies or courses. Reforms must address the root causes of revolutionary ambitions, not just their symptoms. Recent rollbacks of some DEI programs, while welcome, are insufficient. School administrators must ensure that all policies, programs, syllabi, and faculty advocacy are not even subjectively ideological in nature, subject to federal penalties, including total funding bans for DEI-related policies that violate civil rights laws.

Congress should enact legislation that incorporates elements of the Sedition Act of 1918—which banned speech deemed harmful to the war effort by the Wilson administration—or aspects of the Alien Registration Act of 1940, commonly known as the Smith Act, which required members of the CPUSA and others who swore allegiance to the Soviet Union to register with the government. A liberal Supreme Court declared the Smith Act unconstitutional in 1957. The CPUSA is weaker now and the USSR no longer exists, but revolutionary Marxian goals live on in radicals who embrace other Marxian sects with religion-like faith.

Such reforms will require clarifying concepts of “free speech” and academic freedom. Liberal dupes still support radicals’ demands for “free speech” rights to sedition. Reforming concepts of acceptable speech is possible. Democratic Germany restricts discussion of aspects of its Nazi and radical leftist past to help prevent the recurrence of past horrors. Indeed, verbal advocacy of violence frequently leads to extremist violence. Like Germany, the U.S. government needs better tools to restrain subversive speech and seditious actions.

Responsible people reasonably resent the ongoing campaign to destroy Western civilization. They, too, need effective, legally permissible defensive and counter-offensive tools. The Trump administration should work hard to restore genuine freedoms and act decisively against existential domestic threats to national security. Educational institutions are a great place to start!

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Image of 2024 Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Brown by Kenneth C. Zirkel on Wikimedia Commons