Stu Smith On the Fourth of July, These Radicals Made Plans to Topple America At the Socialism 2025 conference in Chicago, mainstream academics called for revolution.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/socialism-2025-conference-chicago

While the rest of the United States celebrated American independence on July 4, a rogues’ gallery met in Chicago to discuss how to dismantle our constitutional republic. The event, Socialism 2025, was billed as “a four-day conference bringing together thousands of socialists and radical activists from around the country” to discuss “social movements, abolition, Marxism, decolonization, working-class history, and the debates and strategies for organizing today.” Held every Fourth of July weekend, this conference, which meets in person and livestreams to YouTube, is “a place where activists share lessons from their struggles—from Palestine solidarity campaigns to the fight for gender liberation, from striking workers to the struggle to stop the destruction of the planet, the fight against racism, migrant justice, and more.”

As video from the event reveals, this wasn’t just a fringe gathering. The speakers’ roster included dozens of influential figures—Ivy League professors, faculty from top public universities, current and former leaders of the Chicago Teachers Union, Weather Underground co-founder Bill Ayers, and UAW president Shawn Fain. Attendees praised mass rioting, called for dismantling higher education, advocated abolishing the family, and openly called for ending America as we know it.

Multiple professors endorsed using the university as a power base to destabilize the status quo and carry out their political designs. University of Chicago professor Eman Abdelhadi noted that, while the university is “evil” and a “colonial landlord,” she teaches at one because it’s “one of the biggest employers in the city of Chicago . . . a place where I have access to thousands of people that I could potentially organize. . . . This is where I need to build power.” Similarly, Princeton University’s Lorgia García-Peña said scholars should “get the university’s money to do the work you want to do to dismantle the university within”—quickly adding, “hopefully, I won’t end up in court for saying this on the mic.”