Critical Race Theory
April 1, 2025 — Bill Glahn
Whatever that is. The comical Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is running for President in 2028, but as the National Review‘s Stanley Kurtz reports, Walz has some explaining to do back in Minnesota. Kurtz reports that under Walz’s direction, the state is adopting an “ethnic studies” component in the state’s K-12 academic curricula. It sounds benign enough. However, Kurtz quotes my friend Kathy Kersten (also of the Center of the American
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October 30, 2024 — John Hinderaker
We have written about the radicalism of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, as reflected in Walz’s education policies, most recently here. A new ad, playing in North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, hits Walz hard: The ad is sponsored by Restoration PAC. I don’t know how much money is behind it; I believe it is digital-only, not playing on broadcast television. But I hope it will have impact in the campaign’s
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October 21, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Tom Klingenstein thinks it is. It features Brian Lozenski, whom Tim Walz’s Department of Education appointed to guide the development of “Ethnic Studies” curriculum that will revamp all K-12 public education in Minnesota. The problem is that Lozenski, a Minnesota professor who is the national leader on Ethnic Studies, is a far-leftist who has explicitly called for the overthrow of the government of the United States. My organization, Center of
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October 6, 2024 — John Hinderaker
In the wake of his disastrous debate performance, Tim Walz has become a laughingstock. That is appropriate. But the relatively benign view expressed by CNN–Walz is a nice guy, but an incompetent governor–doesn’t tell one-quarter of the story. The reality is far worse. I don’t suppose Walz is actually the Manchurian Candidate, but his admiration for Communist China is both obvious and bizarre. Who, after all, would choose the China
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September 25, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Democrats try to pass Tim Walz off as a small-town moderate, “America’s coach.” The reality is entirely different, as Minnesotans know: he is a hard-core left-winger. Walz is in the midst of a radical overhaul of K-12 education in Minnesota. The curriculum of every class in every grade in every school is now required to include instruction in “Ethnic Studies.” Voters might naively think that Ethnic Studies means learning that
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January 17, 2024 — John Hinderaker
It is slowly dawning on liberals across America that DEI is, in most contexts, illegal. The whole point of DEI is to discriminate against disfavored groups, and in favor of preferred groups. Liberals have a hard time understanding that there is anything wrong with this, but the courts–most notably, recently, in the Harvard and UNC cases–are beginning to set them straight. In many states, legislators aren’t waiting for litigation to
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January 7, 2024 — John Hinderaker
The dogma that American law enforcement is “systemically” racist is one of the chief pillars of what passes for liberal thought. In truth, that theory has been perhaps the most damaging of all leftist shibboleths. A recent meta-study concludes that there is no empirical evidence that our criminal justice system discriminates against blacks, but that academics nevertheless continue to assert that claim–even in studies whose data actually refute it: An
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May 20, 2023 — John Hinderaker
It wouldn’t be if it were imposed by a private party, although there might be other problems with it. But can a government entity require its employees to assent to a series of political propositions, and to take what is effectively a loyalty oath? I don’t think so. That’s why my organization has moved to participate in the case of Henderson v. Springfield R-12 School District, now on appeal in
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April 12, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Everything else is, so why not? This question is prompted by the revelation that the University of Minnesota paid a diversity consultant more than $200,000 to develop an online anti-racism training course for the University’s hospitals and maternity centers. Does anyone seriously think that the University of Minnesota’s hospital system is racist? Of course not. This course is meant to combat “implicit bias,” which means that no one in these
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March 22, 2023 — John Hinderaker
In Minnesota, our legislature is considering a proposal to mandate the teaching of “Ethnic Studies” in all classrooms, starting in kindergarten. “Ethnic Studies” basically means wokeism or critical race theory, telling students that America is a hopelessly racist society, that white kids have it easy and black kids are doomed. (Asian kids don’t fit into this narrative.) This proposal, like so much of what we see coming from the Left,
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August 23, 2022 — John Hinderaker
I don’t know that there has ever been a place and time in American history when only racists were permitted to teach in the public schools. Mississippi in, say, 1935? I don’t know, maybe. But to my knowledge they had no purity test. Contrast that with Minnesota in 2022, where the Minnesota Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board is considering a new standard that would only allow people who profess
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April 22, 2022 — John Hinderaker
In recent years, the attitude of liberals toward Critical Race Theory has been summed up as: “It doesn’t exist. And it’s awesome!” But as the infiltration of CRT into curricula across the country has become impossible to deny, promotion of racism and anti-Americanism has come out of the closet. Thus we see the public schools in St. Paul announcing a new “Critical Ethnic Studies” curriculum: So Critical Ethnic Studies is
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March 27, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Earlier this month, Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves signed legislation intended to ban the precepts of Critical Race Theory from that state’s public schools. According to Campus Reform, Mississippi is the fifteenth state to enact such a ban. The tricky thing, of course, is characterizing the teachings of CRT. The point is not to ban teaching about CRT, but rather to ban the pernicious doctrines that flow from CRT. Mississippi’s approach
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March 12, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Critical Race Theory has been the Holy Grail of the Democratic Party, culminating in the adoption last Summer of a full-throated endorsement of CRT by the National Education Association, which largely runs the public schools. But perhaps the triumph of CRT has been short-lived. Here, Beto O’Rourke, running for Governor of Texas, is asked about CRT and begins with the lie that it is just something they talk about in
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March 11, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Justin Danhof is executive vice president of the National Center for Public Policy Research and a shareholder gadfly. Earlier this week he spoke in favor of his Disney shareholder proposal seeking “to protect Disney from a myriad of legal and reputational risks stemming from its race-based employee training programs.” The center has posted background here. It has also posted the text of Danhof’s statement here. FOX News covers it here.
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February 8, 2022 — John Hinderaker
A better question might be, who is teaching the people who teach our children? But first, this observation–as I have written before, the liberal position on Critical Race Theory is: “It doesn’t exist. And it’s awesome!” The first line of defense is always to claim that CRT is a bogeyman invented by the right; there is no such thing in our schools. But that claim, which usually is easily proved
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January 2, 2022 — Scott Johnson
A look, a book, and a crook (or a crock). What is the question, according to Carnac the Magnificent? I don’t know, but it is the miscellany that I need this morning. Thinking of Carnac makes me laugh. I think I was studying high school physics when I heard him divine the question to the answer: “One fig to a cookie.” The question: “What is Newton’s first law?” It still
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