Born in 1951, feminist Oneida J. Meranto is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Metropolitan State College (MSC), Denver. In 2003 she became the self-described “poster child for liberal leaning professors” after she was accused of throwing the College Republicans out of the MSD Political Science Association, a student club she supervised, because she suspected them of plotting to get her fired.

Before Professor Meranto became an academic, she was a potter and an art gallery director in Colorado. She received her B.A. from Metropolitan State College in 1985, her M.A. from the University of Colorado (UC) in 1987, and her Ph.D. in political science from UC in 1991.

Professor Meranto, who is a Navajo, designed a minor in Native American Studies at Metro State. She has served as faculty advisor to Students for Social and Economic Justice, and she currently advises the Metropolitan American Indian Students for Empowerment (originally called “Native American Students for Un-American Values”).

Professor Meranto was married to the late political science professor and anti-capitalist activist Philip J. Meranto, whose books include: School Politics in the Metropolis (1970); The Persistence of Institutional Racism in Higher Education (1981); and Guarding the Ivory Tower: Repression and Rebellion in Higher Education (1985), which, after Philip’s death, Oneida Meranto completed. This was the only book Oneida ever published.

Guarding the Ivory Tower helped form the intellectual foundation of Professor Meranto’s leftist politics, which she herself describes as “very raw.” The book embodies the Merantos’ belief that “progressive” professors are entitled to use the classroom to foment social rebellion against capitalist, Anglo-Saxon America. The book tells the story of radical faculty — including Philip Meranto himself — who were “purged” during the 1970s “due to their political beliefs and activities” (as radical Michael Parenti observed in a review of the book).

Oneida Meranto views the U.S. as a nation in which racism and “sexism” are rampant. In the 1990s, she told the MSC student newspaper (The Metropolitan) that she was fed up with the “white mind-set” of America.

On February 24, 2004 Meranto gave a speech at a protest, on Metro State’s campus, against the sexual assault and rape allegations that had recently been made against a number of players on the University of Colorado football team. In her speech, Meranto claimed that the only reason the allegations had become a scandal was because the victims were white. Her comments included the following:

“Take a look at how we’ve rewarded white women or women in general that claim sexual harassment. They receive sympathy as they well should; they’re accommodated; they’re sometimes given their own talk shows; they receive a TV series; they write books; in essence they become famous. And if they join the reactionary right as Paula Jones did, they even get a makeover . . . Let me give you a few assumptions about race and rape. These two [race and rape] should always be intertwined as long as the parties are mixed race. Now number one, nonwhite women can’t be raped. See, we’ve been socialized at a very young age, even at the age of five, that we can’t be raped since rape is about power and since nonwhite women don’t have power our voices are automatically suppressed. Two, nonwhite men, whether black, brown or red, desire white women. There is a history to sex, power and race in America and I suggest you understand it. Obviously some white men in great power have a nonwhite partner, but overall we as a society still have in our minds an overall sexual connotation of nonwhites. Let me give you an example. Nonwhites are closer to nature. Those that are closer to nature are more animalistic. Thus, animals are less capable of curbing their basic animalistic tendencies. The favorite movie of a white professor here on campus is Black Robe. Why? He said it was because the Christians taught the natives how to have sex in a more loving way.”

In a 2001 article titled “From Buckskin to Calico and Back Again,” Professor Meranto claimed that America has been and always will be racist and sexist because of “Capitalism, Christianization and Civilization.” According to Meranto, American history is all about “sex, power and race.” The only contributions the “Euro-American” Founders brought to the New World, she wrote, were “cultural genocide,” “racial hierarchy,” and “gender politics.”

To judge from her own website, Professor Meranto has almost no published scholarly work to her credit — perhaps one peer-reviewed article in 2001. She also has contributed three or four polemics to obscure leftwing venues.