Holding a BS degree from the College of William & Mary and a Ph.D. from UC Santa Barbara, Theo Majka has been a sociology professor in the University of Dayton’s International Studies program since 1983. He and his wife, fellow professor Linda Majka, were instrumental in creating the Human Rights Studies program at Dayton in 1998. They also co-founded and became directors of the campus Diversity Caucus, a partnership whereby the University of Dayton and local “social justice” organizations seek  to “facilitate the efforts of our community to dismantle the institutional structures and practices that perpetuate racial discrimination.”

Majka and his wife contributed a chapter to the 2000 book Hungry for Profit: The Agribusiness Threat to Farmers, Food, and the Environment. A highly laudatory book review that appeared in the socialist periodical Monthly Review – citing the large profits of corporations practicing “capitalist agriculture” with “new technologies and strategies [that are] potentially harmful to the environment” – stated: “Hungry for Profit demystifies the reasons why hunger proliferates in the midst of plenty and points the way toward … [creating] a just and environmentally sound food system which, its editors argue, cannot be separated from a just and environmentally sound society.”

During his years at the University of Dayton, Majka, whose scholarship examines and extolls “Marxist class theories,” has taught such courses as “Racial and Ethnic Minorities,” “Communities,” “Social Movements,” “Immigration and Immigrants,” “Urban Sociology,” and “Political Sociology.” In the latter course, Majka relies heavily on the studies of Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, creators of the so-called “Cloward-Piven Strategy” that aimed to bankrupt the American welfare system by overloading it with more applicants than it could handle, and to thereby trigger an economic collapse that would hopefully pave the way toward a socialist America. Emphasizing Cloward and Piven’s writings on political elections, Majka requires his students to read Piven’s 2000 book Why Americans Still Don’t Vote, and Why Politicians Want It That Way. A key topic of discussion in the class is the “voting rights movement” that Cloward and Piven helped launch in the early 1980s, an initiative that eventually brought about the 1993 Motor-Voter law responsible for inundating the electoral system with invalid voter registrations and thereby opening the door to high levels of voter fraud.

During the early part of the Iraq War, Majka was a signatory to an anti-war statement written jointly by Dayton Peace Action and the September 11 Coalition. The latter was a Dayton-based entity whose mission was to “seek global peace through social and economic justice”; its sponsors were the American Friends Service Committee and the Southwest Ohio chapter of the American Muslim Council. The statement said, in part: “War with Iraq is the real threat to our nation.”

Beginning in 2011, Theo and Linda Majka conducted a series of research projects aimed at developing “evidence-based strategies to respond to the needs of immigrant and refugee populations in [Ohio’s] Miami Valley.” Their research helped persuade the Dayton City Council to adopt a “Dayton Immigrant Friendly” initiative in 2012. Also called “Welcome Dayton,” this program is devoted to “changing perceptions of immigrants through positive media coverage, and building awareness of existing immigrant-friendly services offered throughout the private and public sectors.” (Notably, Dayton is a self-identified sanctuary city that protects its illegal-alien residents from the penalties that normally result from violations of federal immigration law.)

On March 5, 2016 in Dayton, Theo Majka took part in a “Creating Inclusive Community Conference” sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee to promote public awareness about the need for greater cultural diversity and racial justice. At this event, Majka spoke out against “exclusionary immigration law and policies” in the United States.

Further Reading: “Theo Majka” (LinkedIn.com); Book Review of Hungry for Profit: The Agribusiness Threat to Farmers, Food, and the Environment (Monthly Review, 2000); “[Theo Majka] Channeling Churchill at the University of Dayton” (by Thomas Ryan, Front Page Magazine, 4-19-2005).