EP. 168: Breaking the DEI binary in American education w/ Dr. Brandy Shufutinsky
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The idea of settler colonialism in education is super widespread, super accepted, super normalized, but only a certain type of settler colonialism. In fact, Zionism should be seen as the most successful decolonization movement in modern times. Hello, and welcome to Think Twice.

This week, we have a very timely and important conversation for you with activist Brandy Schufatinsky of the North American Values Institute and the fight against DEI racism. But before we start today, I want to remind you, as always, to like this video on podcast, subscribe to JNS and click on the bell for notifications. Also, you still don't have to wait a full week for more of our content.

There is a Jonathan Tobin Daily podcast where I share more news and analysis with you about the most significant issues we're facing today. You can find The Daily Show under Jonathan Tobin Daily on the JNS channel, wherever you get your podcasts. Also, JNS's inaugural International Policy Summit will be held this April in Jerusalem. Click the link in the description below to request registration in order to attend. And now to today's program.

We've come a long way from the moment of peak woke when during the Black Lives Matter summer of 2020, after the death of George Floyd, America seemed to be drowning in a moral panic about race. Since then, this seemingly unstoppable tide of radicalism has ebbed. But in the meantime, the entire American educationalist

had been taken over by leftist ideologues intent on instituting not just the woke catechism of diversity, equity, and inclusion, DEI, throughout the country, but in waging war on the entire Western canon. The New York Times' mendacious 1619 project was incorporated into school curricula, and the indoctrination of the country's youth in the idea that America was an irredeemably racist nation was put in place.

The same intolerant spirit of doctrinaire racism also spread into the arts, where it became the new orthodoxy, and even into corporate America. But the backlash from the majority of Americans who knew they were not only being sold a bill of goods, but resented being called racist, as well as the idea of an endless race war that is of the heart of critical race theory intersectionality, was over.

donald trump's victory in the twenty twenty four presidential election was a by-product of this justified anger and as his administration takes up the task of undoing all of this damage the question still remains whether the impact of the left's long march through our institutions can be reversed

One of the most troubling things about the way illiberal and intolerant progressives have assaulted the foundations of American liberal thought and education and sought to overturn its fundamental assumptions about free speech and the values of the West is how American liberalism proved to be incapable of defending itself.

The surrender of liberals to this racialist, neo-Marxist surge that not only fueled anti-Semitism to an unprecedented degree, but undermined faith and liberal values throughout society is particularly discouraging. So even as a conservative administration begins the task of defending the West by defunding institutions that have surrendered to the spirit of a liberal,

It is an open question as to whether Americans who believe in the values of liberal education can take back our schools as well as our society. One person who has been thinking and writing a great deal about this is Brandy Schufatinsky and others involved in the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values that has recently been renamed the North American Values Institute. And we're fortunate to have her with us today to discuss this effort.

Brandy Schufatinsky is a social worker, writer, and researcher committed to building intercultural learning and communication opportunities. She holds a doctorate in international multicultural education, was a 2021 scholar-in-residence at the Institute for Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, and at the Oxford Summer Institute, where she worked to develop curriculum in critical antisemitism studies.

Dr. Schufatinski is currently the Director of Education and Community Engagement with the North American Values Institute, or NAVI. Brandi Schufatinski, welcome to Think Twice. Thanks, Jonathan. It's good to be here. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us today.

I want to start by asking you about what brought about the creation of the North American Values Institute, which used to be known as the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values, which was founded in 2021. And I think in order to fully understand this issue, we need to define our terms. What are North American values or liberal values and why are they under attack?

So we can start with kind of the big one that is confusing, which is liberal values. And when that was part of our name, when we were still known as the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values, it actually stoked a lot of conversation, questions, sometimes a little bit of debate over what liberal values are.

When we speak about liberal values and when we speak about North American values, we're talking about classical liberal values, valuing diversity of thought and opinion, valuing free speech and expression, valuing in education the idea of supporting curiosity and learning. Those all really are foundational to North American values, which are based on classical liberal values. Okay. Well, that's a fair definition. Yeah.

I think some people may assume that the victory of Donald Trump in the 2024 election and the determination of his second administration to sort of roll back the woke tide is by itself a sign that the battle against DEI and the progressives is won. But is that really true?

No, I mean, maybe in a certain sense, because we actually saw a huge increase across demographics of those who were kind of rejecting wokeism, for lack of a better term. They were rejecting far left progressive policies and kind of gravitating towards the things that Donald Trump ran on when he was running in this election.

And so I think it shows a shift in what American people are valuing and what American people want our government to prioritize. Now, whether that signifies, okay, great, you know, this side won and defeated far left progressive policies that were not working very well across many demographics of American communities, I'm not sure. I wouldn't say that

This is, you know, kind of the battle has been won. I think we're also seeing a lot of folks dig their heels in and double down on things that a vast majority of Americans have rejected. And we saw that, you know, we're seeing it in recent recent votes and conversations coming out of Congress. Yeah, I think the battle is still on.

The situation was created basically by this long march of progressives through our institutions, which took them decades and which came, I think, to a peak in the in 2020 and the sort of the moral panic that followed the death of George Floyd in the Black Lives Matter summer. Clearly, that tide has seemed to ebb a little bit.

But they're still in place in control of all of our educational institutions, seemingly all of them, and as well as much of our arts institutions and even in corporations, even if they're now on the run in government. So there's still a situation where our education system, you know, whatever Donald Trump is saying, whatever the Department of Justice or the Department of Education wants,

The people in place in K-12 schools, as well as higher education, are still very much indoctrinated in these really toxic ideas, aren't they? They are. And I mean, I do want to point out that I think one of the reasons why we're seeing the rejection of those ideas and those policies by a significant portion of the American citizenry is because they simply haven't worked.

So the problems that American citizens want addressed aren't getting fixed through those policies. And that's where the rejection lies. It doesn't mean necessarily that everybody's identifying the same problems or the same issues and prioritizing them in the same manner. And we can see that from, I mean, we saw decades ago with the war on drugs and then the idea, well, maybe we need just safe injection sites and maybe we need, and what we actually saw was those policies in place haven't worked and

They have, in fact, harmed communities across the country. And that's what's been and actively is being rejected. Well, let's talk a little bit about the harm. One question that certainly has come to the fore since October 7th, 2023, is why has the spread of the woke catechism of DEI and critical race theory been an engine of the post-October 7th surge in anti-Semitism?

I mean, many liberal Jews still believe that they can be included in DEI. Why are they wrong or what do you think about that issue? I mean, first, I think we have to kind of define what's meant by DEI or at least identify how DEI is practiced. And my lane is education.

So when I look at how DEI policies are in practice in education, I'm seeing that they're based on an ideology that looks at equity where people have to finish at the same point. Otherwise, the system is indicating that it's bigoted or racist or discriminatory. So if I'm very good at history, but math isn't my subject in school, then when I get a bad grade in math, and that would be indicative of whatever's happening in math class being systemically racist,

And it erases agency. So when we look at what's happened since even, I mean, this has been going on before October 7th, I think a lot more people became aware of how problematic it is after October 7th because kind of the monsters came out from under the shadows.

But what we saw is a specific population, minority population in the United States, the American Jewish community targeted by this ideology because American Jews don't fit into the box that they would have to fit into in order to be considered qualified to be fully human. So an ideology that groups people as individuals

If they hold real or perceived success, well, then they must have achieved that success through the exploitation of others. So they're the oppressor. And an ideology that holds people, that kind of defines them as not having success, must not have it because they were oppressed.

And the ideology depends on that binary, the oppression binary. And many communities don't fit into that. American Jews just kind of being the first one to kind of have the target on us because of the acceptance of this ideology. Yeah, I think, you know, at its core, it's about dividing the human race into two groups.

you know, two different categories who are always going to be at war with each other. The people who are the victims and the people who are the oppressors, you know, are either one or the other. And DEI, true to its Marxist roots,

classifies Jews as white oppressors, whether indeed they are white, you know, either here or in Israel, where the majority of Jews are by the definition of the American left people of color, it invariably, it leads to injustice. But at its core, it's about division, not about unity, not about judging people as individuals or on the basis, you know, of their character rather than the color of their skin.

I think that's true. I also think that the goal is to do just that. The goal isn't to bring people together. The goal is to not just divide people, but keep them in a constant state where they're at odds with one another. And if you look at the Marxist roots of some of this ideology, that whole idea of continuous revolution is built into that framework. And we see that in many of the DEI programs that are operating in schools today.

Yeah, I think some, you know, particularly on the left and maybe even many centrists just invariably will dismiss the entire issue as a culture war partisan battle. But what has been the practical impact of these radical ideologies on American education in society in ways that far transcend politics?

So there are three main things that concern me. One is that ideology is replacing scholarship. And we're seeing the results of that when roughly 30% of kids can read or do mathematics at grade level. So having, you know, not even a third proficiency in reading and mathematics, that's the death of future generations. We're going to have a population that is at its core, by definition, uneducated, unqualified to be educated.

The other part that's concerning to me is that there is the erasure of the individual.

So the idea that everything has to be in community or the collective, we've seen that tried and failed in societies around the world many decades over. That has never worked and it won't work here in the United States. And then the third part is this idea that if you achieve, then you're deserving of being attacked. Right.

So if you or because achievement in its in itself is being passed off as like a white supremacy value. So regardless of your color, if you achieve a certain level of success in a certain system, then you're deserving of being attacked because now you're you get moved into this oppressor category. Yeah, I think a lot of us people who follow the news,

maybe not as assiduously as you or I do, assume that this is basically just about higher education, what's going on in colleges and universities, in terms of the anti-Semitism that comes out of it. We know about that. But how widespread is all this radical ideology in K-12 education throughout the country?

Unfortunately, very widespread. And I think people maybe don't understand or realize that the K-12 system has been easier to be corrupted, but just because of the structure of it and also because it doesn't get a lot of attention. But also a lot of people forget that, well, what happens at the university level will easily trickle down into the K-12 level because that's where teachers go to get the qualifications to go into the K-12 classroom and teach kids.

So when we see what's happening in higher ed, of course, we can look at the shift from having a roughly politically balanced professor class to now where a significant portion of professors self-identify as students.

pretty left of center. So you're already losing ideological diversity. Yeah. And conservatives are basically disappearing, if not extinct, within many universities. Exactly. And that's going to lead to a certain type of learning culture, a certain type of pedagogy being excluded from the classroom, which will create a certain type of learner and college graduate. So then what happens when

you know, an aspiring teacher is going to college to learn, you know, attending a department of education and majoring in education to learn to teach social studies in the seventh grade. Well, what is that college student learning to bring into the K-12 classroom? And, you know, some of us have done some research into that, and it's very concerning. It's very troubling what they're being taught to bring into the K-12 classroom, because even the most well-intentioned person

is still only being exposed to something and a lot of other information is being excluded. And we're seeing the results of that. We're seeing the results of that now. Yeah, I think the indoctrination is a huge piece of this. And, you know, it's again, it's sort of the long march of the left or institutions has really come to the fore.

But the institution that is sort of the engine in K-12 education, the problems are the teachers unions, isn't it? You know, that they are the ones who have been taken over by the hard left.

and are enforcing it throughout the country in public school systems and, quite frankly, in some private schools as well, isn't it? It is. I mean, that is very much the case. And that's also an entity that you don't have to deal with when you go into higher education, which makes the K-12 system more easily corrupted because you have teachers unions that have become extremely political. They have a huge amount of political capital and a huge, huge treasure chest to get

what they want put in place, whether through policy or practice or both. Yeah, they are the leading political donors in this country. People talk about big corporations, but the teachers unions are really a political force. And they have become, you know, in many places just untouchable. And

I think in major cities, they're the ones who are promoting this, aren't they? They are. And I think people also maybe miss or are unaware of what that the teachers union isn't there to protect students.

In fact, unfortunately, they're not necessarily there to protect the teacher. They're there to protect this entity's interests, which are to get a certain amount of political power so that they can have a certain level of control over local politics or over endorsing particular political candidates at the state level and getting certain policies mandated at the state level. And it's just this cycle of control.

really a tug of war between the interests of kids and what they should be learning in class and the interest of the teachers unions. Yeah. Now, as you've just explained to us, the impact of the, these ideologies is throughout the, is throughout the school system. It's not just in one subject or another because it's just basically behind everything, but one particular issue,

branch of study that has been imposed, quite frankly, by state mandates in places like California and other states is ethnic studies. Why are they so problematic? And is it the basic problem with the whole concept of ethnic studies, or is it just the liberated or critical versions of it?

And is it that they've just fueled anti-Semitism or is the whole concept divisive and bad for everyone despite, you know, the innocuous sounding name and the impulse to be inclusive? Well, how long do you have? We have as much time as you want to take. So,

So I think first off, one of the big problems with ethnic studies is when people, it's in just the name, when people hear it, they assume it's the study of different ethnic groups. And in a pluralistic country like the U.S., most people are like, okay, good, cool. We want our kids to learn about all of the people in communities that make up our country. That's great. That's not what ethnic studies is. Ethnic studies is the study of oppression, the oppression binary. That's it.

It has nothing to do with increasing kids' knowledge of Black history or having kids learn about immigrants that have come to the United States and how they came and why and any obstacles that they overcame and all of that. That's not what the discipline is. The discipline is discipline.

based on the oppression binary. So when we talk about how it fuels anti-Semitism, or maybe we could put some guardrails on it or do this, I mean, I say this is the lipstick on a pig theory. It's not really going to change the foundational pedagogy of ethnic studies. Yes, there are worse versions, but I mean, the choice between that- But liberated ethnic studies or critical ethnic studies, but- Yes.

The problem is just ethnic studies in general as to how it's been applied. Right. And I mean, really, one indicator in this that I think needs a lot more attention is look at a university's ethnic studies department. And I urge somebody, if you find an ethnic studies department that is not based on the oppression binary, please let us know.

Let us know if there's a version that's coming out of the institutions of higher education that isn't based on any type of critical theory and oppressor versus oppressed. Let us know. I haven't been able to find that in all the research I've done. Yeah, I don't think it actually exists because, as you've said, this has been a takeover of the whole education system. And yet...

The impulse throughout, you know, the country, and I would say especially among American Jews who are really, you know, on the, you know, the cutting edge of the problem here because they are the ones who singled out because these, you know, as you say, the oppression binary inevitably focuses on Jews and then turns into an engine of anti-Semitism.

But they keep trying to fix it by saying, oh, but just include us or include this group or that group. That doesn't work, does it? It hasn't so far. And I mean, there's the pretty popular saying about doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Yeah, it is insanity. And yet we keep trying because I guess part of the problem is that as illiberal as these ideas are,

Many of us who identify as liberal think there's something wrong with opposing it. I mean, it's easy to see why, because the name is, I mean, it's a brilliant way to frame something as ethnic studies. Who wants to say, no, no, I'm against teaching people about different ethnic groups? Nobody wants to be on that side of the argument. I think, again, it comes back to the fundamental issue.

issue, which is ethnic studies is not the study of different ethnic groups. If we support kids learning about all of the folks, all of the individuals, all of the communities that make up our country, then all we have to do is really diversify history and social studies. We don't need a separate discipline to do that.

And we know that we don't because we've done it before any of these ethnic studies mandates got put in place. It's not like there was never Black history classes and Chicano history classes and Asian American history classes before this creation of this discipline of ethnic studies. Yeah, it has just sort of metastasized as a divisive force.

As you say, Americans were never opposed to, or at least certainly in the last generation, opposed to studying different groups. But this isn't about studying different groups, and that's the problem. Now, your group is focused, I believe, on reaching out to other ethnic and religious communities rather than just Jews. But let's focus on the Jews for a

How badly have Jewish groups failed to meet this challenge, which is so integral to the problem of anti-Semitism? I think the first failure was the failure to understand the challenge, the failure to understand the problem. And in some instances, unfortunately, an unwillingness to learn.

or to ask questions. And that maybe is not unique to the American Jewish community, but it is impacting us greatly right now, especially after October 7th, where we're seeing what Jewish students and teachers and administrators are facing on campuses across this country.

Yeah, I think, you know, I think also the problem is that many of these groups in particular, I'll mention the ADL, more or less embraced woke ideology. It was fashionable and liberal and enabled them to be in sync with some of their political allies as they were more focused on politics and their sort of Jewish mission.

And, you know, when you're sort of embracing the idea of critical race theory and sort of the whole woke catechism, you're not going to be noticing that this is undermining not just Jewish rights, but the whole society. It is. I think that one of the one of the keys here is focusing on liberalism.

And woke ideology or far left progressive ideology is just as a liberal as far right ideology. And so we can't counter anti-Semitism if there's any embrace or acceptance of any form of illiberalism. Yeah, I think that's the problem. But unfortunately, because of politics, the leading Jewish groups, I mentioned the ADL because they are the most important one when it comes to fighting anti-Semitism and have been in that sense the greatest failure.

They didn't recognize this, at least not until after October 7th. And even then, they're very loathe to take this on head on, which creates the need for other Jewish groups to arise and more Jewish individuals to do something about this because without the tools that the ADL has.

It does. And I'll be a bit critical here. Part of the problem, I think, is that we're relying on an organization to do something that it actually isn't set up to address. So the ADL has been set up to address the type of anti-Semitism that many American Jews were used to recognizing, which is coming from neo-Nazis. It's coming from the far right. The

The ADL actually, I don't think, was set up to address Islamist anti-Semitism or anti-Semitism that's coming from neo-Marxist ideology. I don't think they were set up to recognize that. And so relying on an organization to function in a manner that it wasn't necessarily set up to function in is also a fault on those of us who were looking towards them to do something that they maybe just don't have the tools to do or didn't.

have the tools to do. Well, you know, listen, the ADL was founded in 1915, you know, in the wake of the, you know, the Leo Frank, you know, lynching.

And, you know, it sort of served a good role. And frankly, unlike many national Jewish organizations that are basically obsolete because they were created to deal with the problems of a century ago, the ADL still has a job if their mission is to fight anti-Semitism. The problem isn't that they weren't set up to fight Islamism, which wasn't on the top of the Jewish agenda in 1915 or 1940 or even 1970.

but they certainly have the resources to adapt to it. And yet they haven't.

Correct. I mean, I agree with you there. There are the resources there. I agree with you 100%. Enormous resources in their case. There are. But I do also want to point out some of the first communities to recognize the threat of anti-Semitism, the anti-Jewish bigotry that was being institutionalized through vehicles like radical DEI and ethnic studies were the Jewish communities who'd immigrated here from the former Soviet Union.

Those folks aren't usually included in these types of conversations in the mainstream organizations. Another group, especially in California, that recognizes the threat of Islamist anti-Semitism is the Persian Jewish community. Those people aren't usually included in these types of conversations that the mainstream organizations put on. So yes, they have the resources available at their fingertips. But if they don't know how to use them or who to speak to about them, then they're going to

keep kind of going after the wrong thing or keep being in this reactionary mode that unfortunately it seems like many of the mainstream organizations are in. It's constant defense, constant defense, constant reacting to something and not enough proactive steps being taken to address what we're all seeing and experiencing today.

Yeah, I think that's entirely correct. They were set up to deal with other issues. They're interested in other issues. That's what drives them. That's why they're there. So, you know, it is, of course, very interesting that, as you say, Jews from the former Soviet Union, Jews from Iran understand it. They recognize that they were not part of sort of the movement.

mid-20th century expansion of liberal American Jewish institutions that dealt with the problems the Jews felt then, and they are much more sensitive and were quick to understand that today's challenges are so different. Let's drill down on one aspect of this woke threat, and that is the whole idea of settler colonialism and the need to reject states, countries, whether the U.S. or Israel, that have been labeled as such.

How widespread is this belief, this toxic idea in American education? And why is it so seductive to those who are involved in education these days?

Unfortunately, it's extremely widespread. One of my colleagues is actually doing, Marcy is doing some really great research on the idea that we're seeing in higher education, something called decolonizing the curriculum. The idea of settler colonialism in education is super widespread, super accepted, super normalized, but only a certain type of settler colonialism. And I think that this is important when we talk about Israel and we talk about Jewish peoplehood.

There are countries that were settler colonies. There are people that were conquered and other people that took over and moved in. I think that we can make an argument that that happened here in the United States. We can't make that argument, though, that that's what Jews did when they went home and reestablished a modern state of Israel. In fact, within decolonial theory, Zionism should be seen as the most successful decolonization movement in modern times.

So there are a couple of issues, I think, that the whole decolonization and settler colonialism bring. One, this idea that colonization and settler colonialism were so unique and only a certain group of people did it.

And then the idea, and then it needs to be undone. And then this false history that's put on the Jewish people that Jews aren't indigenous to the land of Israel and that Arabs are. And so when Jews reestablished the modern state of Israel, that they were settler colonialists. And those are two different, I mean, related, but different things that need to be, I think, addressed.

Yeah, I think that's very right. Adam Kirsch, who's written a wonderful book on this and who has been a guest on this show, he also pointed out an interesting point. He said settler colonialism, as you say, can be applied to the United States where people came from somewhere else and took over what was a largely empty continent, but certainly dispossessed the people who were already there.

But if you're talking about reversing settler colonialism, nobody really seriously believes that everybody who came from somewhere else is going to leave the United States and turn it back to the less than 1% of the population that are descended from the Native Americans. But Israel, which is a small country with only, you know, less than 10 million people

Its extinction is imaginable. You know, it can be that's a fantasy. It's a dystopian fantasy, a genocidal fantasy. But it's something that can actually be realized, you know, under the right set of circumstances. And that's why it's, you know, the application of settler colonialism to Israel.

seems to be something that is very popular in the educational institutions because you can imagine another Holocaust in a way that you cannot imagine the dismantling of the United States, Australia or Canada. I think that that's true. I think that I would add one thing. There seems to be this desire to force the Jewish people to live as Jews

in the diaspora forever, to force the Jewish people to forever have to bear the burden of demitude, to force Jewish people to never be able to be sovereign but only live under the boot of someone else. And that's the deeper level of anti-Semitism that I think is driving this, what we're seeing in education with this false label of Jews and Israelis as settler colonialists who've come, who are foreigners who overtook a land.

That wasn't theirs that there were already an indigenous people to. And I think the flip side of that is there is a desire to see Arabs, the Palestinian Arabs as indigenous people because only then would they be deserving of the land that their ancestors actually colonized.

If you can falsely label them as indigenous, where that is just not true. We know it's not true. History shows it's not true. Archaeology shows it's not true. But those facts get ignored because that disrupts the narrative of people who want to be able to label Jews as the bad in this circumstance. Yeah, that's a very important point. Let's turn for a moment to something that's related to what we've already discussed.

How has the post-October 7th surge in anti-Semitism impacted the relationships between Blacks and Jews? You have written about how the pro-Palestinian movement, which, as you've also pointed out, is Arab supremacist, has been fundamentally anti-Black.

Yet those who speak for African-Americans seem very much on the side of Hamas, at least in the last year and a half. And its genocidal intentions towards Israel, even adopting the big lie that Tanehese quotes, employed in his latest book about Israel being a rerun of Jim Crow. Why has this happened?

I mean, I think there, one, the Black American community is no less or no more anti-Semitic than any other American community. So when we see anti-Semitism coming from other ethnic groups within the United States, there shouldn't be an expectation that Black Americans would be any different. The same types of

False tropes, the same types of stereotypes, the same types of conspiracy theories run through all communities here. I think the other part is that the people that are propping up the so-called spokespeople for Black people usually aren't other Black people.

So we look at it. They're usually people that come from the progressive far left. So when we think about the Ibram X. Kendi's, we think about the Ta-Nehisi Coates, we think about the Nicole Hannah-Jones, we think all of these people have been propped up by a political segment of the American population, not an ethnic segment of the American population. So, I mean, my position is they don't speak for us because when you talk to people,

Black folks on the street, they're not concerned about what's happening over there. They're concerned, like most Americans, they're concerned about what's happening here. It just so happens that the people that get platformed tend to be the ones that represent a political ideology and they happen to be Black.

Yeah, I think that's very true. And certainly institutions like the New York Times play a big role in this and sort of the whole leftist progressive establishment. And we know the educational establishment is doubling down on DEI rather than discarding it, even in the face of a government effort to end it.

So my question is, is the federal government the only force that can turn back the woke tide that controls education and culture? You know, is this something that a solution, you know, is this a top down solution or is this something that's going to require, you know, something from the bottom up as well? I think it's going to require both.

I think that people are going to have to demand better from their schools, and I'll talk about schools specifically here. The equity policies that have been put in place in K-12 education are harming the most vulnerable students. The students who rely on their public schools to give them access to all the tools necessary to achieve education.

Those are the ones that are harmed by the equity policies that take away honors, that take away the gifted and talented education programs, that instead of bringing in reading specialists to assist kids who have any type of learning challenge, they're sending teachers to DEI conferences that don't really give them the tools necessary to help kids learn how to read.

Those kids are being harmed the most. Those parents need more tools and need a platform, need a louder voice to demand better from the public school system that we all pay for.

And policymakers also, they're responsible for creating the policies that are allowing this, our schools to fail. Our public school system is failing, not just American children, but them first. They're failing America because our future generations aren't going to be able to function if they can't read and do mathematics. So I think it's going to require both. Yeah. Let's go back to sort of where we started.

I'd like to talk a bit why we're at this point in terms of fighting illiberal values. Is it because traditional liberalism and, you know, that's as you said, that's a hot button term in 21st century America. But, you know, sort of to be a liberal in the 19th century sense of the term sort of is to be a 21st century conservative in some ways.

But why has traditional liberalism proved itself unable to defend itself and its values? I think back to a few years ago, there was a sort of minor controversy among conservatives when, you know, Sara Bamari and David French engaged in this debate about whether drag queen story hours should be opposed. And I think, you know, from the perspective of five years later, both those people have gone on to sort of different causes.

But, you know, we're still back with the idea of how can we defend our values and against the whole DEI structure when if we don't even believe in sort of the fundamental values, whether we call them liberal or North American or Western, where are we if we don't do that?

I mean, it's easy to fall into the trap of not valuing liberal values or Western values when you're living in the comfort of a liberal Western society.

So what do we call, you know, they're called champagne socialists. It's easy to think, oh, no, it's better over there where they have A, B and C. It's also easy to have to to fall into the trap of of going along with that type of thinking if you don't know the foundations of Western liberal history.

So the undercutting of civics, the undercutting of history and replacing it with different studies programs. Well, that's taken away the knowledge that children who didn't grow into adults need to understand how wonderful democracy is, the benefits of capitalism, what it means to be a liberal Western country and to live in that type of society. So, yeah.

you have to learn and you have to make sure that you're staying, you're, you're remaining up to date. And as far as your knowledge level on what it means, what Marxism means, what capitalism means, what democracy means, what liberalism means and what diversity means.

All of these terms have been corrupted to be kind of interpreted as something else. And, you know, we see no one here is really having to live under those systems. They're able to say things that don't make sense and they feel like they're sitting in the morally good position because they don't know any better.

So ignorance is a big part of it. I think another part of it is there are a lot of nefarious actors that are in influential positions to kind of guide people down this path of, you know, yeah, let's put an encampment up at the lawn of our $70,000 a year university because we're going to make a difference in a place that we can't even pick on a map. Yeah. Yeah, that's very well said.

In the time we have left, can you tell us how parents can fight back? Because as you said, this is, you know, can be found throughout American education, school systems in cities and suburbs, private as well as public. What can individual parents who can often feel very powerless in the face of, you know, institutions, what can they do? One of the things is parents feel powerless often because they think they're the only ones. You're not. Right.

There are other parents that are seeing and experiencing the same thing you are. So you need to find those ones. There's power in numbers. You need to find who those other parents are, who those other students are, and talk to each other and come up with a plan with what works specifically in your school system. The other part is you have to know what's going on. What are your kids learning? What's happening in their classroom? What material are they being assigned? What books are they being told to read? Who are their teachers?

Who is their school district bringing in to do teacher training? Is it one of these activist groups that we know, you know, want kids to walk out of school in support of Hamas? Know what's happening in your kid's school and then get involved. Parents can run for school board.

Parents can support another good candidate for school board. They can reach out to organizations like ours, like Navi, to get more information on what we're doing and where we're working and even just ask any question about maybe some talking points at a school board meeting. But it's working together, identifying other parents that are addressing the same issues. It's being aware of what's happening in your kids' schools and it's getting involved. Those are three pretty concrete steps that parents can take.

Well, that is very concise and very helpful. Brandy, thanks so much for sharing your insights with us on these important issues today. You can follow her on X at at 76 Brandy 76. And you can find out more about Navi at Navi values dot org. We also want to thank our audience. Please.

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