Harvard University has a new Dumbledore’s Army and they’re ready to “take back America.”
Students can now officially enroll in the prestigious Ivy school’s new “Resistance School “— a four week program created by progressive students at Harvard’s Kennedy School to learn to counter Trump’s agenda.
The course is open to students across the country and around the world and consists of four in-person and four live streamed sessions.
Through this program, organizers hope to train activists “to strengthen the skills they need to take collective action and effectively resist the Trump agenda.”
“Resistance School is a free four session practical training program to sharpen the tools we need to fight for our values at the federal, state, and local levels” the website reads.
“Our goal is to keep the embers of resistance alive through concrete learning, community engagement, and forward-looking action.”
The program includes such courses as “How to Sustain the Resistance Long-Term” and “How to Communicate our Values in Political Advocacy” and features speakers Sara El-Amine — former director of Obama’s advocacy team — and Michael Blake — former Obama staffer and Vice Chair of the Democratic National Committee.
The Resistance School started “with a couple of students chatting with a couple of professors, having a sense of outrage and despair and beginning to feel overwhelmed and exhausted with the question of ‘What are we going to do after the election?'” Shanoor Seervai, a Harvard student and one of the school’s co-founders told CNN.
Students are encouraged to enroll in groups rather than as individuals. And according to organizers, more than 5,000 groups from 50 states and 6 continents have signed up for their first class.
This program comes in the wake of several months of progressive activism following Trump’s inauguration — from the Women’s March on Washington to the protests against the new administration’s immigration stance and the mushrooming of political salons and gatherings around the country.
Despite having no formal partnerships with Democratic institutions yet, the School is unapologetically partisan.
“Republicans now control the Senate, House, and more state legislatures than they have in almost 200 years,” the “About” section of its Facebook page reads. “Those losses have emboldened the right to launch an all-out attack against our nation’s creed — that all are created equal.”
The first session begins on Wednesday.
