By Emma Dayton | Campus Reform
A West Point graduate who first made headlines for his “Communism will win” message written in his uniform cap is now a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Texas at Austin (UT) studying “Modern Arab intellectual history.”
In 2017, Spenser Rapone displayed various Marxist messages, such as wearing a Che Guevara shirt beneath his official West Point uniform and posting “#VeteransForKaepernick” on social media.
Remember this Communist who disgraced West Point? He’s now a PhD candidate at @UTAustin, specializing in “modern Arab intellectual history” and revolution. https://t.co/SEobfwYypA pic.twitter.com/Qs2Gj5RE0k
— J Michael Waller (@JMichaelWaller) August 28, 2024
According to UT’s website, Rapone entered the Ph.D. program in 2020. His university biography cites his interests as “decolonization, revolution, metaphysics, [and] consciousness,” with his research topics focusing on “question of the self, soul, and spirit in modern Arab thought.”
“Specifically, he engages with the intellectual contributions of the Ba’th Party, the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, and other anticolonial nationalist formations that sought to construct a new order and bring about a liberated life and authentic existence in the Arab World,” his biography reads.
Two investigations were launched after Rapone’s communist sentiments were exposed: one by his unit of assignment, the 10th Mountain Division, and another to examine United States Military Academy policies regarding “his suitability for graduation and commissioning.”
Rapone also made headlines in 2018, when he left the U.S. Army under other-than-honorable discharge after a full investigation. As reported by The Associated Press, Rapone resigned due to “conduct unbecoming of an officer” and admittedly advocated online for a socialist revolution.
“I consider myself a revolutionary socialist,” Rapone told The Associated Press at the time.
“I would encourage all soldiers who have a conscience to lay down their arms and join me and so many others who are willing to stop serving the agents of imperialism and join us in a revolutionary movement.”
In 2018, Rapone also wrote several articles directed towards U.S. servicemen, encouraging active duty soldiers to ignore deployment to the southern border if ordered. In a separate article, he condemned West Point’s “totems of white supremacy” and denounced America’s Founding Fathers as “white, slave-owning, propertied males.”
Rapone was accepted into UT’s graduate program after these sentiments and investigations were revealed to the general public. Admission into the graduate program is highly competitive, with only “exceptionally qualified” students with “considerable academic potential” getting accepted.
According to his curriculum vitae, Rapone served as a teaching assistant for UT classes such as “History of the Black Power Movement” and “A History of Eugenics and Genetics.”
According to Campus Reform’s Higher Education Fellow Nicholas Giordano, Rapone is “a product of a failed education system.”
“It reflects everything that’s wrong with the academic ecosystem where leftists get their graduate degree and then go into the classroom and push their communist ideology on the student body,” Giordano stated.
“I am less concerned about the University of Texas, Austin accepting him into their program, and more concerned about what comes after he successfully completes the Ph.D. program.”
Campus Reform has reached out to Spenser Rapone and the University of Texas at Austin for comment.
First published on Campus Reform
Commie Lieutenant Spenser Rapone Shows the Radical-to-Academic Ratline Is Still in Operation
And Americans wonder!