Occupy Wall Street and Earn Credit at Columbia

Are there lessons to be learned from the far-reaching Occupy Wall Street movement? Absolutely.

The folks at Columbia University apparently think so, too. Next semester, the school will offer a new course for upperclassmen and grad students. An Occupy Wall Street class will send students into the field and will be taught by Hannah Appel, a veteran of the Occupy movement, CBS New York reports.

The course begins next semester and will be divided between class work at Columbia’s Morningside Heights campus and fieldwork that will require students to become involved with the Occupy movement outside of the classroom.

The course will be called “Occupy the Field: Global Finance, Inequality, Social Movement” it will be run by the anthropology department.

Appel is a staunch defender of the Occupy movement, in her blog she said that, “it is important to push back against the rhetoric of ‘disorganization’ or ‘a movement without a message’ coming from left, right and center.”

Appel told the New York Post that while her involvement with the movement will color the way she teaches it will not prevent her from being an objective teacher.

The movement which began in September has been met with large amounts of support and resistance.

Dozens of occupiers were arrested shortly before midnight on New Years Eve when police say that they were tearing down barricades surrounding Zuccotti Park.

Indeed, OWS is a global movement that deserves to be studied. But students who join the movement as part of a class will add new shades of meaning to the crusade. We are eager to see how this plays out.

Read more at CBS News.