Harvard professors backed UNC’s Dixon on armed political activism at 2018 panel | USAEMALL.com

EXCLUSIVE: During a 2018 panel hosted by Harvard’s Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights, three faculty members praised a presenter after he made his case for potential armed left-wing political violence. 

The Ivy League school hosted a panel called “You Don’t Stand Around and Let People Get Hurt: Antifascism After Charlottesville.” The panel’s star guest was Professor Dwayne Dixon of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who was placed on administrative leave Monday after reports of his armed left-wing activism as a member of the far-left gun club Redneck Revolt.

Video of the event was quickly removed from the Carr-Ryan Center’s YouTube page after Dixon was placed on leave by the UNC administration. 

Asian studies professor Dwayne Dixon speaks at an anti-fascism rally on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Feb. 21, 2018.  (Chichi Zhu/The Daily Tar Heel)

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The three Harvard academics who participated in the panel were Education Professor Timothy McCarthy, Professor of American History and African American Studies Vincent Brown and American History Professor Lisa McGirr. 

Brown introduced Dixon.

“Many of you are aware of the ongoing vigorous debate over whether it’s OK to punch a Nazi. I personally happen to believe that the ethical question was settled by WWII and Raiders of the Lost Ark,” he said in his introduction. 

“All four of [the panel members] are committed to study, interpretation and reasoned debate, but are well aware that deliberation might have distinct limits in the face of opponents who would prefer to see us eliminated,” he continued. 

Dixon then spoke for about 30 minutes, portraying Redneck Revolt as heroes fighting back against neo-Nazis, White supremacists and fascists during the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. 

Harvard Professor Vincent Brown speaking at the University of California — Santa Barbara in 2025.  (University of California — Santa Barbara)

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While self-espoused neo-Nazi groups were present in Charlottesville, terms like “Nazi,” “White supremacist” and “fascist” have been hurled at ordinary right-wingers and supporters of President Donald Trump for nearly a decade.

Neither Dixon nor the Harvard faculty members on the panel made an attempt to distinguish real neo-Nazi groups from everyday right-leaning Americans. 

In fact, McCarthy invoked Trump and then-Vice President Mike Pence in the context of “fascism,” saying that LGBTQ people have “a sense, perhaps quite real, that we are indeed at war and that this is a different kind of phase of war that is more specific, more linked to domestic insurgency of White supremacy, the rise of that, a fascist state under the Trump-Pence regime.”

He also referred to the political climate as an “emergent fascist moment with all the signs of that from history that if we’re paying attention.” 

Harvard Professor Timothy McCarthy speaks at the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service in 2018.  (University of Arkansas)

Referencing slave abolitionist Frederick Douglass, Dixon said “he saw no hope that slavery would ever be abolished by moral or political means.”

“We’re given the enemy, the White supremacist capitalist slave farmer and the means to act. Douglass is not victim of some faint-hearted anxiety about the use of force to free slaves, and to dispatch those who would threaten their freedom or their lives. He plainly says the system must be met with its own weapons,” said Dixon.

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McCarthy agreed with at least some of Dixon’s analysis, and later remarked that “this may indeed be a moment that calls for a more robust integration of tactics and strategies that include both violence and nonviolence.”

McGirr said she came into the panel skeptical of Dixon’s position, but gave him a fawning review.

Banners on the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library at the Harvard University campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Tuesday, May 27, 2025. (Sophie Park/Bloomberg)

“This was a beautiful, brilliant, wonderful, very convincing talk. So, you know, I actually came in here relatively skeptical about your use of, you know, coming armed to Charlottesville, and what happened in North Carolina,” she said. “And at the end, I’m kind of convinced, actually, you know, that there is a place for this.”

Redneck Revolt is listed as a “far-left group” by the Counter Extremism Project that “claims to be a community defense group against racism and fascism.” 

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The group was sued by the city of Charlottesville, which accused it of breaking an anti-paramilitary law, in the wake of the 2017 Unite the Right rally. It entered into a consent decree with the city, avoiding a trial. 

According to a message put up on its website midday Wednesday, Redneck Revolt disbanded in 2019. A page highlighting Dixon’s activism under a tab called “Analysis” was also removed, but has been archived. 

Undated file image of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill professor Dwayne Dixon. (WRAL)

UNC condemned political violence in its announcement about placing Dixon on administrative leave Monday. 

Fox News Digital asked Harvard and the three faculty members who participated in the panel whether they condemn political violence. None returned requests for comment. 

Dixon could not be reached for comment.

The Trump administration is battling with the Ivy League school over billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded grants. Trump froze $2.4 billion in grants to Harvard earlier this year amid pro-Palestinian protests and antisemitism on campus. 

But just this week, Trump said a deal with Harvard had been worked out to restore the funding, which includes the university putting $500 million towards trade schools. 

“We’re in the process of getting very close, and [Secretary of Education] Linda [McMahon] is finishing up the final details, and they’d be paying about $500 million,” Trump said. “And they’ll be operating trade schools, and they’ll be teaching people how to do AI and lots of other things. Engines, lots of things.”