Free Republic

The Church of England has sparked backlash after posting a job for an anti-racism official who will be tasked with the mission of “deconstructing whiteness”. This week, the Church of England Dioceses in the West Midlands announced that it is looking for an “anti-racism practice officer” who will be paid £36,000 per year. The posting stated that the position would entail identifying “internal and external resistance to addressing issues of anti-racism in a way that develops understandings of equality and positions everyone to take an equal role”.

Among the many destructive ideas that “progressive” thinking has unleashed on education in America is that it’s unfair to hold students from “underrepresented groups” to the same standards as others. Schools and colleges should “help” minority students succeed by lowering expectations for them—somehow atoning for wrongs done to their ancestors in the distant past. That is how Claudine Gay wound up as president of Harvard. The notion that academic standards should be lower for minority students has swept through our educational institutions, but there are some dissenters who argue that this doesn’t help but hurts. One of them is Professor...

Entrepreneurs Saira Rao and Regina Jackson were in-demand after the murder of George Floyd with projects like 'Deconstructing Karen.' Now they say their comments in support of Palestinians since Oct. 7 have lost them their representation. CAA has dropped a pair of female BIPOC entrepreneurs who’ve gained notoriety in recent years for holding “anti-racist” dinner parties for an affluent white women audience, according to one of the founders who says they offended their agent with their vocal support for Palestine following Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre and Israel’s subsequent invasion of Gaza. On Nov. 13 Saira Rao told her followers on...

Boston University Professor Ibram Kendi’s Center for Antiracist Research appears to have fired mostly racial minorities as part of its recent restructuring, according to a College Fix analysis of the layoffs. The review found there are likely four black employees, four Hispanics, two Indians, one Asian, and one Middle Eastern employee who are no longer employed by the antiracist center due to layoffs. One reason may be that the center was more inclined to hire non-white staff from the beginning. But according to Kendi, any policy that results in racial disparities flows from and is proof of racism. “A racist...

Ancient and medieval astronomers could not explain the apparent movements of the heavenly bodies while shackled to a Ptolemaic paradigm of an Earth-centered universe. Thus they spun out ad hoc rescue hypotheses in the form of “epicycle” theory to explain away the anomalies. Their primary concern was the rescue of the theory rather than a reconsideration of it, which forced reality into a Procrustean bed—producing conformity by arbitrary means. Likewise, today’s project known as “anti-racism” exhibits the same pre-Enlightenment mindset of mystical thinking that locked medieval humanity into an endless cycle of fear, superstition, and what we know today as...

For the first time: Netanyahu is expected to publish a joint photo with Ben Gvir @DaphnaLiel

The educational bureaucracies from the state level down to local school boards, including community college boards of trustees, are rushing to implement administrative regulations and board policies, as well as approve curricular changes, that will normalize antiracist and gender identity politics in our education systems for years and perhaps generations to come. The sudden rush to augment and cement these ideas in ways that will be practically impossible to dislodge from our institutions should give us pause to ask: “Why now and why so intensely? As “flyover country”—as it is disparagingly referred to by the coastal progressive elites—begins to wake...

The UNC School of Medicine just released an “update” to its lengthy Task Force to Integrate Social Justice into the Curriculum Report. According to the school’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion web page, “the UNC School of Medicine appreciates the Task Force’s work, its feedback, and recommendations,” and this status report “includes important context relative to those recommendations.” Ironically, the document is notable for both how little it says and how much it reveals about DEI at the UNC School of Medicine (SOM). Some background. In November, the Martin Center published my article titled UNC School of Medicine’s Quiet “Diversity, Equity,...

The notion of antiracism now dominates at all levels of education, from infant to university. In a previous piece, I described how the 2017 President of American Educational Research Association (AERA) gave speeches to teachers instructing them that teaching math to kids poses a racist threat, playing a set of video clips to underline her theme that no matter what improvements in rigor, classroom debate, etc. may come about “We are still at incredibly high risk for the perpetuation of racism and marginalization as it seeps into our classrooms.” Many will be surprised to learn that math education has anything...

The attempted denigration of Jane Austen reveals how upscale, white elites view caring about anti-racism as a marker of status.The woke may regret going after Jane Austen. Last month it was reported that exhibits at the Jane Austen Museum were being revamped as staff are“re-evaluating Jane Austen’s place in ‘Regency-era colonialism’ in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests.” This attempt to evaluate Austen according to the American upper class’s current racial obsessions mostly reveals the blind spots those obsessions encourage. Many of Austen’s fans were furious at this attempted denigration of the great authoress. This anger was intensified by...

Far-left “Squad” member Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) on Monday suggested it is not possible for an individual to be “anti-racist” if they are against canceling student loan debt. “You can’t be anti-racist if you’re anti student debt cancellation,” she said in a social media post: Radical Democrats have pressed the Biden administration to cancel $50,000 in student loan debt — a figure Biden has failed to embrace, consistently signifying a willingness to cancel $10,000 in student loan debt. In February, Pressley encouraged Democrats to go big on the coronavirus relief measure, calling for $2,000 monthly checks for Americans and non-citizens,...

The left fears elementary students loving the United States and believing in the principles of life and liberty established by the founding fathers and endowed by God himself.Prager University’s short and informative video content used to focus on college-aged students. Now they are also providing materials to kids in high school, middle, and elementary schools.The nonprofit organization recently announced PragerU Resources for Educators and Parents (PREP) to help children “think critically and combat the leftist lessons on gender fluidity, identity politics and defunding the police—among others—that students are forced to learn in many American public and private schools.”In the wake...

During the last year, many universities throughout North America have declared “anti-racism” to be their official policy. Consider this sample of quotations. “We must ask how Princeton can address systemic racism in the world, and we must also ask how to address it within our own community.” —Christopher L. Eisgruber, president, Princeton University. “The University [of Toronto] is strongly committed to equity, diversity and inclusion and to confronting and eradicating anti-Black racism. Anti-Black racism impacts everyone, and it is our collective responsibility to foster and promote Black inclusion.” —Cheryl Regehr and Kelly Hannah-Moffat, vice presidents, University of Toronto. “The University...

Heralded as a serious effort at 'equity' and 'inclusion,' Madison’s Police Civilian Oversight Board openly states that white people need not apply and are not welcome.When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. took to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 to deliver his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, he offered Americans, of all races, a compelling vision of a society no longer prejudiced by race. He envisioned a country where citizens are judged “by the content of their character” and not “the color of their skin.” But to listen to today’s most prominent “antiracists,” King’s dream is what...

Excellence is falling prey to activists who prefer to believe that social justice means making outcomes equal for every race at any expense.Excellence is falling prey to activists who prefer to believe that social justice means making outcomes equal for every race at any expense. [Advocates for standardized tests] will claim white and Asian kids on average score higher on tests because they are smarter or work harder. Meaning Black and Latinx kids are not as smart or not as hard-working. Meaning white and Asian kids are superior.Board member Allison Collins was one of the school authorities taking her cues...

Every citizen fatality in the custody of a government official—like George Floyd’s excruciating death in Minneapolis—deserves a solemn response and ultimate accounting, including both criminal investigation and broader assessment. The fear and fury flowing from recent law-enforcement casualties, however, have been inflamed and manipulated by opportunists to produce something much more sweeping. Hard facts and data about our systems of law and policing are being ignored. Emotional hysteria is increasingly substituted for reasoned problem-solving. There is enormous pressure to conform to approved ideological assertions, and people expressing alternate views are often railroaded. Broad attacks on social order, widespread destruction of...

The Legal Insurrection Foundation, of which I am the president, has launched a website, criticalrace.org, to provide resources to parents and students regarding Critical Race Training in higher education. The main feature of the website is a database of how Critical Race Theory is put into action on campuses, presented in the form of an interactive map that permits searching by state and school. Our main concern is not with the study or teaching of the subject, but how campuses implicitly and explicitly force students to adopt this ideology through mandated coursework, activism, other requirements, and the campus culture. As...

One can divide antiracism into three waves. First Wave Antiracism battled slavery and segregation. Second Wave Antiracism, in the 1970s and 1980s, battled racist attitudes and taught America that being racist was a flaw. Third Wave Antiracism, becoming mainstream in the 2010s, teaches that racism is baked into the structure of society, so whites’ “complicity” in living within it constitutes racism itself, while for black people, grappling with the racism surrounding them is the totality of experience and must condition exquisite sensitivity toward them, including a suspension of standards of achievement and conduct. Third Wave Antiracist tenets, stated clearly and...

Much of what passes for anti-racist education is a poisonous exercise in caricature and bigotry, with troubling consequences for prosaic educational activities like teacher training, grading, and research. Take, for instance, the anti-racist materials that schools are using to train K-12 teachers. The materials used by the Denver Public Schools teach educators that “the belief that there is such a thing as being objective,” distinguishing between “good/bad” and “right/wrong,” and valuing an “emphasis on being polite” are all distinctive characteristics of white culture. The same is true of the “individualist” mindset that “if something is going to get done right,...

Maryland's Montgomery County plans to spend more than $450,000 on an "anti-racist audit" intended to create "equitable outcomes for every student's academic and social-emotional well-being." According to a Tuesday memo from the county's superintendent of schools, Montgomery County Public Schools will award a one-year "anti-racist" consulting contract to the Mid-Atlantic Equity Consortium for $454,680. The consulting firm will investigate the district's culture, hiring practices, and pre-K-12 curriculum, which Montgomery County says should be tailored so that it "strengthens students' sense of racial, ethnic, and tribal identities, helps students understand and resist systems of oppression, and empowers students to see themselves...