“We are sick unto death of collectivism, socialism, statism and the other utopianisms which have poisoned the minds, weakened the wills and smothered the spirits of Americans for three decades,” said Lee Edwards, warning of the dangers of socialist ideology in 1961 when it remained largely on the political fringe.
More than six decades later, that quote reads less as a warning and more like a diagnosis of what we are experiencing now.
Socialism is no longer confined to the margins of American political thought. It is gaining ground, especially among young people, and one of the clearest reasons why can be found on college campuses. In lecture halls, activist circles and student coalitions across the country, the ideas of collectivism and anti-capitalism are no longer simply studied. They are promoted, organized around and increasingly embraced as a moral alternative to the free-market system that built modern America.
A 2025 Cato Institute survey found that 62 percent of Americans ages 18 – 29 view socialism favorably. That number would have been unthinkable a generation ago. Rising costs, student debt and economic frustration explain part of that shift. But there is another factor that cannot be ignored: The current higher education system.
On campuses across the country, students are being taught to view capitalism not as the system that created unprecedented prosperity, but as a force of oppression, inequality and exploitation. In classrooms, free markets are increasingly cast as the enemy.
Look no further than Columbia University, one of America’s most prestigious academic institutions
In recent years, Columbia has become ground zero for some of the most radical anti-Western activism in higher education. At the center of it is Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a coalition founded in 2016 in part by Darializa Avila Chevalier.
The coalition has repeatedly pushed anti-capitalist and anti-Western rhetoric, framing America and Western civilization as oppressive systems that need to be dismantled.
CUAD’s mission statement claims that they are, “Fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization […] we seek community and instruction from militants in the global south.”
On December 1, 2023, a. coalition of 89 student organizations joined CUAD in demanding that Colombia University divest all investments in relation to the Israeli government following the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7, 2023.
CUAD, in 2024, also hosted speakers from designated terrorist organizations, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Samidoun, for their Resistance 101 event. That kind of activism doesn’t appear out of nowhere. It often begins in the classroom.
Columbia’s Fall 2026 course offerings paint a telling picture.
One course, “Marxism and Cultural Theory” (ENGL UN2122), teaches students how Marxist ideas shape culture and how those ideas can be used to critique global capitalism and financial crises. Another, “Capitalism and Its Critics” (POLS BC3048), asks students to examine capitalism as a political system and consider whether it produces domination, violence and inequality rather than freedom and prosperity.
Then there’s “Justice Now” (CPLS UN3800), a course built around modern social justice movements, tying activism to ideas like democratic socialism, environmentalism and Black Lives Matter. Students study activist movements, hear from organizers and even participate in class outings connected to those causes.
What’s often missing from these classrooms is an honest reckoning with socialism’s failures. From economic collapse to government repression to mass suffering in countries that embraced it. The abandoning of free market and promotion of socialism have become protests. Encampments. Demands for divestment. Calls to abolish police. Rejection of American institutions altogether.
Columbia is not alone. Similar movements have taken root at Harvard University, New York University, and University of California Berkeley, where anti-capitalist activism has become a major force on campus.
The 20th century was defined by the fight against socialist and communist ideologies that promised equality but delivered oppression, poverty and death. From the Cold War to the ideological battles at home, generations of Americans understood that freedom, free enterprise and individual responsibility were worth defending. And they won.
But history has a way of repeating itself when its lessons are forgotten.
Today, socialism is being repackaged for a new generation, not as the failed system it has proven to be, but as a moral answer to inequality and injustice. On college campuses, that repackaging is happening in real time, shaping how young Americans view their country, their economy and their future.
The danger is not just in socialism itself, but in how easily it gains traction when young people hear about its promises without understanding its history of failure.
America has defeated this ideology before. It can be defeated again. And it will be defeated again, but first, we must recognize where the battle is being fought. And increasingly, that battle begins in our academic institutions.
