A New York City College offers class that teaches students how to steal
Cresa Pugh teaches a course titled, “How to Steal.” (The New School for Social Research)
Manhattan’s New School is a four-year private university; tuition alone is $60,240. This University’s College of Liberal arts offers a course on “How to Steal“, taught by Professor Cresa Pugh. This class is worth four credit hours and includes field trips. It focuses on politics, ethics, and the aesthetics of theft.
From New York Post:
At the New School in Manhattan, a four-year private university where the $60,240 tuition doesn’t cover housing, students at the university’s Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts can learn “How to Steal.”
HOW TO STEAL
This field-based seminar explores the politics, ethics, and aesthetics of theft in a world where accumulation is sacred, dispossession is routine, and the line between private property and public good is drawn in blood. Students will critically examine what it means to steal–from whom, for whom, and why–through site visits and fieldwork in places where capital is hoarded and value is contested: corporate storefronts, grocery chains, museums, libraries, banks, and cultural institutions. We will ask: Is it possible to steal back what was already stolen? What does theft look like under capitalism, colonialism, and in everyday life? When is theft survival, protest, or care–and when is it violence, appropriation, or harm? Readings will span critical theory, political economy, abolitionist thought, and radical histories of expropriation and redistribution. Students will produce field journals, collective mappings, and speculative strategies for redistributing wealth, knowledge, and beauty. This is not a course in petty crime–it is a study in moral ambiguity, radical ethics, and imaginative justice.
Noting the sociology seminar is not about “petty crime,” the course catalog explains it is an exploration of “the politics, ethics, and aesthetics of theft in a world where accumulation is sacred, dispossession is routine, and the line between private property and public good is drawn in blood.”
It includes field trips to “places where capital is hoarded and value is contested” — like museums, banks and even grocery stores.
I guess it’s fitting in New York, where shoplifting loot worth less than $1,000 is a mere misdemeanor. Locals don’t even bat an eye anymore at the sight of someone walking out of CVS with whatever they want.
Additional Reading:
Schlott, R. (2025, September 2). NYC college students learning ‘How to Steal’ — as class teaches ‘line between private property and public good is drawn in blood’. New York Post. Link.
Since the school is stealing from the students, they should at least learn about it…oh the irony
The school in my town has a CFO who is a thief.
He hates Vets but loves the fees that he can get from the attending.
“…politics, ethics, and the aesthetics of theft.”
Really??? Aristotle and other philosophers worth a damn weep.
Philosophers you say?
Ah, but Marx cheers with joy. He practically invented redistribution of wealth through state sanctioned theft.
Marx was a lazy good-for-nothing who thought he was smarter than anyone he came in contact with. When certain “intellectual” liberals claim to me that philosophical thought went into his theorems, I can’t help but laugh:
Are you talking about Karl Marx or Bernie Sanders? We could go either way with what you posted.
Yes.
Or maybe Groucho?
Philosophically, Marx was mostly repackaging Hegel. Hegel was a lot more influential but has slipped between the cracks for most of us in modern times.
Oops, meant to reply to AH, not myself.
That’s ok. I give you like anyway.
Mmm, Hegel. Never heard of him. Research time!
Hegel was a better philosopher than Marx could dream of being.
That could be damning with faint praise, however.
It seems to me like most “Marxists” haven’t even read so much as the title page of ‘Das Kapital’.
I thought “learning to steal” was part of the MBA program.
Does one get additional credit if they attend, pass, and get course credit for the class but manage to stiff the school for the tuition?
Sounds like a question for the VA student loan program.
Would you be given a failing grade if you were caught cheating?
I love the “Readings will span [leftist position to extreme leftist position]” as if it’s providing a balanced perspective.
There is not a single sentence in that course description which doesn’t sound ragingly Red.
The “school” is millions in debt, and had to sell off the president’s townhouse (for $10 million) to try and put a dent in it’s overload of red ink.
NYC’s New School has sold its president’s townhouse for $10.3M
And yes, the on-line catalog and statement of mission ticks off every buzz word known to man:
Yeah, that’s a school who claim to teach students how to thrive in today’s world.
Don’t confuse the current year deficit with the total accumulated debt of the school, currently over $600 million:
$605,000,000 debt? That’s Kamala Harris level financial malfeasance. Maybe the IRS should take a look at their books.
Hack was going to cite Jane Sanders, but she only pissed away $10,000,000 at Burlington College, which had only 70 students. Pretty pathetic that a WNBA game noses out the student enrollment of a college.
Well, Sanders did make it the perfect place for liberals. There were no mandatory classes, tests or even grades either in numbers or letters. Not even sure it was pass/ fail. Basically you have them money and they gave you a diploma. There is a name for that but I can’t recall it at the moment.
I imagine the False Commander “Phony” Phil Monkress (CEO of All-Points Logistics) is a visiting professor.
Looking forward to his lecture on creating and protecting an imaginary biography. Step 1 is review employee records for someone who is hygienically challenged and has anger issues who you can manipulate into to committing career suicide to shield you. And if he has no door on his mailbox, even better.
Time for Professor Pugh’s car to go on blocks… just for extra credit.
And when the students test the “aesthetics” and theories of theft in the real world, they’ll most likely learn that the consequences aren’t as promising as they were taught.
Testing the benefits of theft in some places (like some parts of Texas) won’t bode well.
I hope the brown stained prison outfits these morons will be wearing are aesthetically pleasing.
Well if I were teaching the class, the syllabus would be very short.
“Thou shalt not steal.”
If you have any questions, re-read the previous statement.
Maybe one of the “field trips” can be to Texas…..
After graduating from this class, is there a follow up course on how to avoid/become a better prison bitch? I’m sure that class lasts at least a year.
How to steal from the prison commissary.
Interesting. Would it be ironic if while they were out in of their “field trips”, their dorm room and automobiles would experience some of the wealth redistribution?
Accosted by pavement dwellers perpetrating an act of wealth distribution while they are on the same field trip.
I am reminded of a high school classmate. When we were in high school, it was brought to my attention that his mother said, “It’s okay to steal, just don’t get caught.” I am also reminded of the newspaper clipping a friend sent me detailing my classmate’s long sentence in the state pen.
Like the saying goes, “DON’T STEAL, the Government hates competition.”
If only he has listened to his mother.
Wouldn’t you love to look at the High School yearbook of our ne’er-do-wells and see what their classmates predicted for them?
Phil Monkress: Most Likely To Falsely Claim Valor
Stephen CIO Burrell: Most Likely To Get Hias Ass Kicked By 3rd Most Dangerous Man In The World
Daniel Bernath: Most Likely To Die In A Plane Crash
Psaul of The Ballsack: Most Likely To End Up Living In. A Car On The Off-ramp Of River Road
If she tried a field trip to Texas, that “professor” might find herself receiving a lead pill injection.
Or try that going looting after a hurricane on the Gulf Coast, the Locals are usually in competition to see who can bag the most looters!
Is there a lecture on “FAFO – The Consequences of Taking Someone Else’s Property”? There better be!
Like eating a buckshot sandwich?