Cori Bush pocketed thousands to teach graduate-level reparations course at George Mason, disclosures show

Democratic Rep. Cori Bush pocketed thousands of dollars to teach a graduate-level reparations course at a Washington, D.C.-area university last year, filings show.

The Missouri congresswoman, perhaps the most outspoken federal lawmaker pushing for reparations over what she calls a “moral and legal obligation” for the “enslavement of Africans” to atone for the harm it caused, reported earning a $15,000 salary from George Mason University in 2022 on her financial disclosure report.

Bush received the compensation to co-teach a summer class at the university titled “The Public Pedagogy of Truth and Reparations,” according to a May 2022 press release from the school.

“This course will look at the creation of interrelated mechanisms: truth telling processes, participatory critical pedagogy and reparations as political and moral practices that can help address state sponsored violence against African Americans and other targeted groups while opening space for to imagine possibilities for greater racial justice in the United States and abroad,” the university wrote of Bush’s course.

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“Students will meet other practitioners working on these issues from across the country and learn about cutting-edge practices being employed to address long running issues of structural violence and systemic racism,” the press release continued. “As a result, students will gain insight into the challenges and opportunities of building grassroots initiatives that support communities directly impacted by violence and gain greater fluency and competence in engaging larger policy debates and legislation at the Federal level.”

The contentious ‘Squad’ member has been a leading advocate for reparations in Washington. In May, she introduced an astronomical $14 trillion reparations proposal to compensate for what she believes are racist government policies that created a wealth gap between White and Black people. 

“Black people in our country cannot wait any longer for our government to begin addressing… all of the harm it has caused since the founding, that it continues to perpetuate each and every day all across our communities, all across this country,” Bush said at a press conference.

“Let us speak this truth, uncomfortable as it may be: Our country was not founded on the principle that all people are created equal,” she continued. “It was founded at the expense of the lives, freedom and well-being of Black people, African folks who they stole.”

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When a Fox News Digital reporter questioned where the federal money would come from for the proposal, Bush said they were still hashing out the details. She added that if the country can finance costly wars, it can generate money for reparations.

“We’re still having those kinds of conversations,” Bush said. “We’re working with this administration, we’re talking with other members of Congress… but I’ll say this, if we can continue to fund these endless wars, or we can continue to put trillions of dollars into forever wars… we’re talking about things that are happening now.” 

Bush’s proposal, however, would carry a price tag equivalent to almost seven times that of the Afghanistan war. The 20-year war is estimated to have cost the U.S. around $2.3 trillion, according to Brown University’s Costs of War Project. 

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Bush’s proposal came on the heels of a growing push for reparations in several cities, most notably in San Francisco. In 2021, a coalition of progressive city leaders formed a group called Mayors Organized for Reparations and Equity (MORE) to provide the federal government with a blueprint for implementing a national program, Fox News Digital previously reported. 

MORE has included several Democratic mayors who have put into motion or implemented reparations pilot programs in their cities, such as former Providence, Rhode Island, Mayor Jorge Elorza; St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones; Sacramento, California, Mayor Darrell Steinberg; and former Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti. 

George Mason and Bush’s congressional office did not respond to Fox News Digital’s inquiries on her reparations course.

Fox News Digital’s Aubrie Spady contributed to this report.