Last week, flyers popped up all over Florida Atlantic University’s campus, accusing tenured political science and constitutional law professor Marshall DeRosa of being a white supremacist.
The posters, adorned with Confederate flags, claim DeRosa has “ties to Koch Brothers & Hate Group League of the South.” Still others claim he’s a white nationalist. Via phone, DeRosa denied all such labels, saying “the students [involved] are just useful idiots.” Although not certain who put the posters up, two groups have been protesting lately: FAU Democratic Socialists and FAU Student Power. Black Lives Matter activists have demanded DeRosa dissociate from the Charles Koch Foundation and GEO Group Inc. groups he’s affiliated with and receives funding from “on the grounds that both are racist organizations.”
But the purpose of his funding is presumably something left-wing social justice activists should be somewhat supportive of — DeRosa has been teaching civics classes in South Bay Correctional Facility for the past three years, with no plans to stop soon. Part of the controversy stems from the fact that South Bay is one of Florida-based GEO Group’s private prisons, and the program receives funding from the Charles Koch Foundation (which, full disclosure: I have taken part in the Charles Koch Institute’s academic programs).
“There’s a lot of nonsense that the left spews about private versus public penitentiaries,” says DeRosa. In his classes at the correctional facility, he teaches founding principles and American exceptionalism — during the founding, not where we are today, he clarifies. About 70 percent of the class is black and “coming to the realization that the government has been their enemy” for a long time. DeRosa says his students love their class, and learning about rights, duties, and individual dignity.
To be sure, private prisons are awful, as are public prisons — both are rife with abuse of power, egregious human rights violations, and startling recidivism rates. Last year, GEO Group announced that it won a $110 million federal contract to build a new immigrant detention center north of Houston. Carl Takei, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, told the Associated Press that this deal is a “sign that the Trump administration’s plans are a huge boondoggle for the private prison industry.” The private prison industry, AP noted, already operates the vast majority of immigrant detention facilities.
It’s unclear whether private or public prisons provide worse quality, in general. But would a prison, even a private one, somehow be improved by eliminating civic education programs, or other programs designed to reduce recidivism? Mass incarceration is a problem no matter who is running the facility. You’d think left-leaning campus activists would agree.
Perhaps part of FAU activists’ complaints stem from the fact that DeRosa was also a faculty member at the League of the South Institute, an organization described as white supremacist. The group recently had representatives attend the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va. When asked by the Nation about these affiliations, Derosa said “That was a long time ago. I disengaged early on. They’d invite me to things and I’d go to talk about my scholarship, especially the Confederate Constitution, but I got an inkling as to some of the characters involved. … I didn’t feel comfortable.” It’s fair if these questionable, unsavory affiliations give students pause, but people are also allowed to have evolving beliefs.
Or perhaps activists are angry that several GEO Group executives have served on FAU’s Board of Trustees. The school is deeply linked to the private prison group, to the point where GEO vied for naming rights for the school’s football stadium to the tune of $6 million. After heaps of controversy, the group withdrew their bid.
DeRosa claims he’s been a target for years, and that “UnKoch My Campus seems to be spearheading this. … There’s a small group of leftist activist[s], orchestrated by outside agitators and on-campus faculty attempting to crucify me on the pentagram of political correctness. At first I was amused, then bored and progressively getting angry.”
Perhaps the students leaving posters around FAU’s campus would be better served by engaging in discussion with DeRosa on his personal beliefs, past affiliations, and work in a private prison. Or perhaps they’re angry about GEO Group’s deep ties to their campus, and their time would be better spent bringing more stakeholder attention to the undue influence the private prison group has on the school.
Regardless, whomever is spreading these posters should think more about the best way to influence their campus — is it through generously applying the label “white nationalist” or engaging in substantive dialogue with the people around them?
Liz Wolfe (@lizzywol) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a freelance writer and editor.
