Not long before he was gunned down by the Chicago police in 1969, Fred Hampton, deputy chairman of the Black Panther Party and chair of its Illinois chapter, observed, “You can’t build no revolution with no education.”
Recently, the New York City chapter of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) created an Academy for Socialist Education. The academy — which one of us, Steve Fraser, is involved in organizing — is into its second “semester,” offering courses that range from fascism and imperialism to an introduction to political economy and the making of “Trump country.”
Institutions like the academy, as well as less formal undertakings, have featured prominently in the history of many radical…