Karl Marx’s ideology might be alive and well in the White House and the Democratic side of Congress. But the intellectual godfather of communism has been erased from one room at the University of Florida.
The conservative website Campus Reform reported on Tuesday that UF renamed a study room dedicated to the author of “The Communist Manifesto” after it broke the news of the moniker.
A UF spokeswoman attributed the change to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“Given current events in Ukraine and elsewhere in the world, we determined it was appropriate to remove the name of Karl Marx that was placed on a group study room at the University of Florida in 2014,” Hessy Fernandez, director of strategic communications, told Campus Reform.
The Free Press reported on March 9 that Room 229 in UF’s Library West was named for Marx, and identified it as such with a plaque.
The plaque declared Marx a “philosopher, radical economist, and revolutionary critic,” as well as the “founder of scientific socialism.”
The sign further stated that Marx’s “reputation as a radical thinker” in the latter half of the 19th century eventually helped accelerate “socialist and communist movements throughout the world.”
“The unique extent of the influence of Marx’s materialist explanation of the workings of society, economics and history, inevitably saw Marxist theory extend its influence to literary criticism,” it added.
That section of Library West also had rooms dedicated to thinkers and philosophers such as William Shakespeare, Benjamin Franklin, Frederick Douglass, Jane Austen, Mahatma Gandhi, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Martin Luther King Jr.
In its report Tuesday, Campus Reform noted the site is now just Group Study Room 229.
The website added that it seemed UF scrubbed all of those rooms of their respective names, based on the university’s online scheduling tool.
But as of Thursday night the surnames of the honorees were in parentheses beside the room numbers.
Marx’s name, however, was still absent.
Visit Tampafp.com for Politics, Tampa Area Local News, Sports, and National Headlines. Support journalism by clicking here to our GiveSendGo or sign up for our free newsletter by clicking here.
Android Users, Click Here To Download The Free Press App And Never Miss A Story. Follow Us On Facebook Here Or Twitter Here.
Amazing and disturbing that a university doesn’t know Marx was German, not Russian!