North Cook News

A politically active Northwest University professor who authored a controversial AP course in African American Studies is a noted communist and early BLM supporter who has a number of politically charged comments and writings under her belt.

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor is the Leon Forrest Professor of African American Studies in the Department of African American Studies at Northwestern University where she received her M.A. and Ph.D.

Steve Cortes, who served as senior advisor for strategy in Trump's 2020 campaign and was a campaign spokesman in his 2016 presidential run, pointed out Taylor on Twitter.

“This Northwestern Univ professor is a key author behind the AP African American Studies curriculum that @RonDeSantisFL rejected.

“Good for the Governor!”

“He's right that this program seeks political indoctrination, not fact-based education,” Steve Cortes, who served as senior advisor for strategy in Trump's 2020 campaign and was a campaign spokesman in his 2016 presidential run, said on Twitter.

Cortes embedded a past tweet from Taylor in which she advocated against police.

“There is literally nothing left to write about police abuse and violence. Abolish the police,” Taylor said in the tweet.

Taylor’s AP African American History course has been a political hot button as of late.

The State of Florida disallowed the course from receiving public funding noting the course is not based driven by a political forces rather than accurate history.

"As submitted, the course is a vehicle for a political agenda and leaves large, ambiguous gaps that can be filled with additional ideological material, which we will not allow. As Governor DeSantis has stated, our classrooms will be a place for education, not indoctrination," theGov. Ron DeSantis's press secretary Bryan Griffin said.

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker pulled a play from the Democrat playbook in calling Florida's move to disallow the course "racist."

The two are expected to be presidential candidates in 2024.

“I am extremely troubled by recent news reports that claim Governor DeSantis is pressuring the College Board to change the AP African American Studies course in order to fit Florida’s racist and homophobic laws,” Pritzker said.

In addition to teaching, Taylor is a contributing writer to the New Yorker, has authored several books and served as editor and contributor to compilations of race-based texts.

In 2013, was a noted member of the International Socialist Organization. She notably resigned from the organization after one of its “dear comrades” was involved in an alleged rape and cover up.

“Dear Comrades, It is with great regret and profound sadness that I submit my resignation to the ISO. When I decided to run for the SC at the Convention in February, I did so with the belief that the organization was finally breaking with its isolation over the last two years. I was excited by the commitment to re-tooling and even though it was unclear to me what "struggle organization" meant, I was intrigued by the possibility of the organization reclaiming its position as a dynamic and influential leader among the developing Left in the US,” Taylor said in her resignation letter that was posted on the ISO Leaks Scribd account.

The Princeton Alumni Weekly stated Taylor followed her activism into an academic career.

“Historian Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor did not set out to become an academic: She is a socialist who started as an activist and housing advocate who worked to delay evictions. But her curiosity eventually led her to research Black history, and she has become a prominent voice in the field,” the publication wrote in a profile of Taylor.

In 2021, she was named a MacArthur Fellow.

In naming Taylor a fellow the MacArthur Foundation lauded her for the 2016 book “From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation.”

“Taylor situates BLM within the context of the decades of stagnant economic progress, rising mass incarceration, and disinvestment in Black communities that followed the Civil Rights Movement. She locates its origins not just in police and vigilante violence but also in the growing polarization between Black politicians and ordinary Black people. Taylor argues that Black elected officials are often complicit in perpetuating systemic racism,” the MacArthur Foundation wrote.