Harvard 'Resistance School' plots ways to 'fight Trump's agenda'
Harvard University students have released a series of four videos as part of the “Resistance School” they created to coordinate efforts to “fight [President] Trump’s agenda.”
Campus Reform visited Harvard’s campus in April, shortly after students announced the initiative as a response to the “danger” posed by Trump’s election, to gauge the depth of their disdain for the president, and found that many were actually willing to rate Trump as a greater danger to the country than ISIS.
[RELATED: VIDEO: Harvard students say Trump is more dangerous than ISIS]
Since then, the Resistance School has produced a four-part series of videos outlining strategies to help students “effectively fight Trump’s agenda.”
The first lecture features Professor Tim McCarthy, a member of the History department and Director of Social Justice Initiatives at Harvard, who discusses how to effectively present the progressive agenda to the country while working to “counter” the conservative agenda.
Without actually mentioning Trump by name, McCarthy explains how the current president is a ego-maniac with no discernible values, describing him as “sexist and shameless” as well as “racist and reckless” before going on to quote Hillary Clinton’s assertion during the campaign that “he is temperamentally unfit.”
McCarthy later asserts that the United States has a history of socialist activism, saying Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders should consult U.S. history to find popular justifications for socialism.
[RELATED: Sanders urges grads to ‘fight back’ against ‘oligarchic’ society]
For instance, he compares contemporary issues such as gender reassignment surgery and sanctuary cities to previous national debates over things like the abolition of slavery, the American Revolution, and civil rights, concluding that “This list and what I have been talking about underscores the fact that America would be a far less decent place if not for the work of these radicals and revolutionaries.”
McCarthy concludes with a pessimistic assessment of the current state of American politics, but claims that those very conditions should spur liberals to action.
"We’re not just living in a moment of despair and of fear and of loathing and anger and alienation and prejudice and all of that," he states. "We’re living in a moment where we're alive. We're all woke. More than we were a little while ago."
[RELATED: Libraries providing students with resources to ‘resist’ Trump]
Other Resistance School lectures offer detailed tips on improving the effectiveness of student activism and ensuring the success of the progressive movement in the future.
Grassroots organizer Sara El-Amine, for instance, stresses the need for activist organizations to improve their techniques for mobilizing supporters, rather than simply building ever-larger contact lists.
Other speakers featured in the videos include author Marshall Ganz and Michael Blake, Vice Chair of the Democratic National Committee, each of whom discuss the importance of leadership and the tools that are needed for the movement’s success.
“If you want to have true success, you have to understand that it’s not just about marching one time,” Blake maintains. “You have to keep marching. It’s not about organizing one time. You have to keep organizing.”
The students behind the Resistance School make clear that their efforts are in no way sponsored or supported by the university, and that it is not an official course.
Follow the authors of this article on Twitter: @nikvofficial and @MrDanJackson
