Professor's Appalling Rant to Students: Cops Are 'Piggish,' Conservatives Are 'Schmucks,' America is 'Perverse Place,' Need To Revisit 'Useful' Marxist Concepts

According to The University of Pennsylvania Professor Philippe Bourgois:

• Conservatives "brutalize the poor" and are "mean-spirited schmucks"
• Police are "rough, mean, vicious, nasty and piggish"
• Police will make up charges to incarcerate you
• Karl Marx is "useful" and we need to revisit his concepts
• The prison system in America is "an unjustifiable outrage"
• America is a "perverse place, not the Land of the Free" 
• Doctors "make tons of money" off the poor 

There has been no shortage of partisan teaching in the news lately, but Professor Philippe Bourgois of The University of Pennsylvania may have just brought proselytizing from the lectern to a new low.

Bourgois, a professor of anthropology at Penn, gave a public lecture recently slandering police officers, conservatives, doctors and America itself, all while encouraging and complimenting the teachings of Karl Marx. The rant took place in front of students on the campus of Bryn Mawr College, located west of Philadelphia. The talk was a panel discussion entitled "The Transformation of Poverty Governance" and revolved around how America is handling its welfare state.

The Penn professor began his remarks by noting a study that the greatest welfare discrepancy occurs in "conservative" neighborhoods. Bourgois then accused conservatives of "brutalizing the poor" before labeling all conservatives "mean-spirited schmucks."

Professor Bourgois continued to define a culture of service discrepancy by discussing his neighborhood in Northern Philadelphia.  He encouraged the students to study why police are "rough, mean, vicious, nasty and piggish" in his part of town.  He went on to describe his version of police protocol, "they'll knock you to the ground, handcuff you, kick you" and than accused the officers of criminal injustice "They'll make sure you get that felony no matter what by inventing that you beat them up with a baseball bat."

Bourgois reminded the audience that "The McCarthy years" are over so "we need to dust out the very useful Marxist concepts."  Particularly, the professor mentions the Marxist concept of lumpenproletaria, which according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica describes the "lowest stratum of the industrial working class, including also such undesirables as tramps and criminals" who also "are not only disinclined to participate in revolutionary activities with their 'rightful brethren,' the proletariat, but also tend to act as the 'bribed tools of reactionary intrigue.'"

He believes this term encompasses America's poor.

Karl Marx

The Penn professor goes on to note that no one can make money off the poor "except prison contractors and prison Unions and doctors" who get to make "tons of money off obesity" and other diseases that "we impose on people with poverty."

When the topic shifted to prison incarceration rates, Bourgois took dead aim at American society. Calling our rate of incarceration "an unjustifiable outrage", he concluded that America "is not the Land of the Free" and rather, "a perverse place."

Bourgois was forced to leave the panel early due to his University of Pennsylvania teaching duties, but noted his willingness to cancel on his own students, "It's only because it's the last class, otherwise I would have canceled it."

Bourgois was joined on the panel by socialist CUNY professor Frances Fox Piven and Georgetown policy researcher Michael Lipsky.

Watch the Professor's rant: