The Megyn Kelly Show - A Parent Fights Back: Andrew Gutmann on Critical Race Theory and "Anti-Racism" Indoctrination at His Daughter's School | Ep. 99

Episode Date: May 7, 2021

Megyn Kelly is joined by Andrew Gutmann, the parent of a daughter at the Brearley School in New York City, who recently wrote a letter about the Critical Race Theory and "anti-racism" indoctrination at his daughter's school, that caused him to pull her out. Topics include the anti-racism pledge he was forced to sign, what caused him to write the letter and the response to it, what his daughter thought of the decision, what comes next for him and his daughter's education, COVID insanity in schools, and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms:Twitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShowFind out more information at:https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Today we have got Andrew Gutman. Do you know that name? You might. He made a lot of news recently as a dad at one of these tony new york schools brearley it's an all-girls school uh on the upper east side where people like tina fey drew barrymore and chelsea clinton pardon me have their daughters enrolled um i'm not her fan i just i prefer the mother to her anyway okay i'm off on a tangent. Andrew has a daughter at Brearley and he pulled her, or he's going to, and he went public in a scathing letter to all

650 plus parents at Brearley about why he did it and what they needed to be paying attention to and how bad the critical race theory indoctrination had gotten at that school. And he was promptly attacked and essentially blown off by the head of school. One of the students at that school. And he was promptly attacked and essentially blown off by the head of school. One of the students at the school wrote a piece accusing him of doing things he didn't actually do in the letter. The board has done a collective shoulder shrug. And all these parents who underground support Andrew so far have been deadly silent about it, which is just wrong. And we'll get to that too. Wait until you hear what they're doing to kids at Brearley when it comes to COVID too. It's insane.

We've lost our minds. So Andrew's sort of lifting up the veil on what's going on inside of these schools. And as you know, sadly, it's all too infrequent that a parent is willing to do this because it's, you know, it's your kid. You don't want to do anything that's going to compromise their ability to get into a good school or make their teachers like them or have the administration turn against them. It's a scary thing to do. So I give the guy credit. And we're going to get to Andrew in one second. But first this. I'm thrilled to have you here. you for doing this with me I'm thrilled to be here thank you for having me all right so let me start with your humanity or is it scary is it is it because I know it's not easy to talk about this stuff look I know I don't mind talking about it I think yeah

the first few days after the letter came out was was pretty stressful my wife and I didn't really eat or sleep for about five days and we never expected this to happen what happened that the letter would get this attention. But no, I'm pretty comfortable talking about it right now. Okay. So you sent a letter dated April 13. And just so our audience, they know the general background knows, but Brearley is a top top school in the United States, never mind New York. And it's very competitive and very rigorous. And we know this because our daughter is at a similarly rigorous and competitive girls school right down the road from Brearley. And we looked at Brearley too. And let's just start at the beginning. It's a golden ticket to get into one of these schools.

It's wonderful. They're really competitive. They're really freaking expensive. And it's hard, especially when, because I think your daughter is around our daughter's age, right? She's a fourth grader right now? She's sixth grade. Yeah, she's 12 in sixth grade. Okay, she's 12. So, and we have a fifth grader and we have a fourth grader and a first grader.

My point is, especially back then, right now, I think it's a little less competitive because people have left New York in droves over COVID. But back then, I mean, when you get an acceptance from Brearley or, you know, where we go, Spence or Collegiate, where my boys were, it's like, yes, right? Because it's just like, you know, your kid is so lucky. They're going to get this amazing education. And I think most parents are cognizant of how lucky that is and what a 1% situation that is. And the schools do a good job of trying to bring in underprivileged kids as well. So it's not all 1%ers in there, but I'm just talking about not every kid in America gets to go to a school like Brearley. Right. So no, I will tell you, I mean, the admission process and for the people that like

yourself that have gone through this in New York know this. This was the most stressful fall of my wife's and I's lives ever. We actually had applied to 12 schools because we were not super wealthy. We were not well connected. Our preschool that we were at a small preschool that was not really a traditional feeder preschool. And so the advice we were given was apply broadly and did that. And, you know, you're sort of having three events at all those schools over a period of two months, three months. It was incredibly stressful. And yes, when we were very lucky, my daughter did well in the process. We had a bunch of choices. We chose Freerly because we thought it was absolutely the best education that she could get. And there's some other terrific schools like the ones that I know your kids go to be there and just thrilled. I mean, I went to public school, so it's like, I can't believe, right, that my kids are going to get

this education. I'm like following along with their homework so I can finally learn all the damn things I was never taught. I have no idea how you multiply fractions, honey. Hold on, let me look at this YouTube video and I'll get back to you. Well, the math, I don't know if you got, if your schools use the Singapore math, which is very different than the way we learned it back in the day. We don't. Our schools do not use Singapore math. But I love that scene in the latest Incredibles movie where Mr. Incredible, voiced by Craig T. Nelson, is like, they changed math? Why did they change math? Those of us who barely hung on to it the first time are like, oh, now I'm really lost. Exactly. No, I know that scene.

So anyway, okay. So she's in Brearley. Life's going along great. You're living your life. Is she your only daughter? Do you have other children? She isn't only. Yeah, she is. For better or for worse. Okay. And she starts off in kindergarten. So she's at the point you wrote this letter had been a lifer at Brearley. Yeah. Yeah. All seven years. And then had you been enjoying Brearley prior to this? Yeah. Look, I think it, look, there's still aspects of it that are very, very good. I think it was very, very good school. You can always nitpick. I mean, there's no perfect school out there. You know, I have some pretty strong views on education and curriculums. I'm a little bit, you know, not mainstream. So you can always nitpick a few things. The math was one thing. But yeah,

we were happy. I mean, it's a nice community. We made nice friends there. She made nice friends there. I think the teachers are terrific. We never really had any issues with the administration until, you know, very recently. And we, and I'll tell you, we're not the administration until, you know, very recently. And we, and I'll tell you, we're not the sort of, you know, the PETA pain in the ass families. We are not. I mean, we, in the seven years until, you know, this last year, there was, we had one meeting with the school, the head of the lower school about something. So, you know, there are parents I know that call weekly about stuff and

that's not our family at all. So yeah, we were, we were happy. Some of the anti-racism and diversity stuff started creeping in a little bit and, you know, we were very cognizant of that. My daughter was cognizant of that, but we were happy at the school. I, I, a year ago or so, you know, pre this and pre COVID there was every assumption that she goes K through 12, that she would stay here for the full 13 years. Totally. Mike and Andrew, I totally relate to this. This is how I felt about my kids. So loved our schools, loved our communities. Still, you know, my closest friends in New York are all from my daughter's school. And we, we had communities in these schools that we really loved. And I still love I still

have very close friends at both schools and love the administrators to and the teachers, the teachers were amazing. And I really felt like as this started to emerge, this shit was being forced on them. It was being that it was coming from above. Yes, some of the teachers as we saw in that Dalton letter with all the you know, 110 signatories are completely committed to radicalism in some of these pockets, but a lot of them aren't and just want to teach normal subjects without seeing everything through a racial lens. Okay. So, so you're there. I can totally relate. I was ideologically, I think at the same place you were like, love it. Great. Lucky. Things are good. Move on. And what was, do you remember the

first thing that caught your attention of? Well, that's that's not just annoying. That's actually potentially dangerous and deeply problematic. And now suddenly I got to start paying attention in a way I kind of wasn't before. Yeah, look, I think again, I think some of these things were creeping in a little bit and and not just on on the anti-racism on other issues. You know, really, and, and I know, you know, you've experienced that also, you know, single sex schools really very, very much about empowering women and feminism. And, you know, there were discussions about, I had with my daughter about some of the history and social studies curriculum are, you know, are you learning about any, you know, males? Are you learning about any white males? So this goes

back for years. So I think, you know, the antenna was, you know, the antenna was up a little bit because they did do in fifth grade, for example, with American history. They changed this now a lot in the last year, but the, you know, colonial period in the American Revolution and the Constitution. So some of this stuff was sort of getting the antenna up. But this was a night and day change in the last year since George Floyd and Black Lives Matter. It just feels like a complete switch. And I know you had, you know, I listened to your podcast a week or two ago with Paul Rossi, the Grace Church math teacher. And he, you know, it was interesting to hear him talk where he said that this was really in the works at his school for years.

Yeah. I didn't appreciate that for us. And I think you had the same reaction when, you know, about a year ago with, again, George Floyd and BLM, this is when this orders of magnitude got ramped up. And that's where it said, wait a minute, what is going on here? Well, I would say certainly at Collegiate, it started earlier than that, because about a year prior to George Floyd, a group of black students had written an open letter to Collegiate raising what I thought were some legitimate issues. I was like, I get this. I see where they're coming from. They're like, there aren't enough black students here. There aren't enough black faculty. And can we work harder to improve some of that and improve some of the awareness of the issues that those of us who are here and

are very clearly in the minority are feeling? It was, it was fine. I mean, I think most people, I don't know of a single person who wasn't legitimately like, I like it and I'm into it and let's help. And Khalid started to do more things to sort of like take that into account. And our then fourth grader was learning about the American Revolution. And he came home and he was like, he could name 12 black people who had helped in the American Revolution, which we were fine with. But then I asked him, I'm like, did they mention George Washington? And the answer was no. Thomas Jefferson.

I know. Same reaction. Same exact reaction. That's the one, if you ask me, where were you critical of really curriculum-wise more than anything else? And I didn't really articulate this to the school, but it's sort of the history and civics curriculum which i think personally is the most important thing that

kids should learn in school and it's probably the academic subject at all schools that gets the least amount of attention but for us uh it was also you know yes they're learning not about uh washington thomas jefferson. Really, it was also women. And again, it's absolutely worth learning about. I agree with what you said. I don't think there's anybody in any of these schools that say, don't appreciate diversity and don't learn about more than just the dead white males. No one disagrees with that. But I've said this a lot.

Look, you want to teach civil rights. But, you know, I've said this a lot is, look, you know, you want to teach civil rights. Okay, you want to teach Martin Luther King. Absolutely. But you can't understand Martin Luther King unless you understand Abraham Lincoln. You can't understand Abraham Lincoln unless you understand Thomas Jefferson. You can't really understand Thomas Jefferson unless you really, you know, look at the, you know, ancient Greeks and Romans. There has to be context. And I think these schools, you know, at the you know ancient greeks and romans um there has to be context and i think these schools uh you know have completely lost and this is the i agree with you this predates blm and george floyd um they've completely lost the context in in teaching history and and civics or we don't teach civics at all so i agree with you well and now and now joe biden's got a push

to add civics like there's a there's a bill actually making its way through congress to push So I agree with you. it's like the push by the biden administration the democrats right now in congress is not to push civics they want to push this far left agenda uh or i don't even know where there's far left it's far woke it's it's dishonest woke agenda it is and to the point you just made um just to tell the audience howard university okay howard university which is it's the greatest i think the greatest black university in the country right right? It's traditionally black, it's a black institution, and it is now going to ban the study of the classics. piece on this in the Washington Post saying about Howard University dissolving its classics department, saying how alarming this was and talking about how MLK, that he was reading Socrates. He mentioned Socrates three times in his 1963 letter for Birmingham jail, that to dissolve the light of the wisdom that preceded us just because these guys weren't exactly enlightened on issues like gender and race is absurd. And it's damaging to our young

people, but they won't listen. But anyway, so if it's happening at Howard at the university level, it's, you know, it's not particularly surprising that these younger institutions, you know, dealing with K through 12 are doing it too. Yeah, so I might be jumping ahead, and I apologize for that. But so a really senior wrote a rebuttal to my letter, which was sort of publicly talked about. And it was very nice. And she wrote very well.

And I commended her for that. And she stood up for her school. But the main point she was really making, and I think she sort of missed the point of my letter, which was, we still teach Latin. What is he talking about? We still teach Latin in high school. I am very well aware that they still teach Latin in high school. The question is, will they still teach Latin in high school next year? Or when my daughter's in the upper school? And I actually commented on something she wrote and said, listen, if you're really interested in this topic, you got to look at what's going on in the lower middle school. You can't just look at what's going on in the upper school where,

you know, there's more limit to what they can do to the curriculum because you've got your AP classes and things you have to do for college. But the broader point, yeah, we're in danger, and this is a much bigger point of, you know, extinguishing the enlightenment here if we stop teaching the classics, if we stop teaching history. This is a much broader point, but this is incredibly dangerous, what is going on. And that, yes, that the Biden administration is putting this at the forefront. One of the things on their policy about education is terrifying, to be frank. Yeah. Oh, well, I mean, on the AP education is terrifying to be frank. Yeah. Oh, well, I mean, on the AP classes, they're teaching them for now, but there was, I just tweeted out an article the other day, I think it was Virginia and a school district there

abolished AP classes. And we're seeing a push for this in more and more schools. That was one of the things that the Dalton students were demanding. The school either gets complete parity between black and white students on AP classes or the AP classes get eliminated. Now I will full disclosure at my public school, I never took an AP class. I don't even know what that was. I don't think I could have done it. But my point is, I see a lot of smart kids who can do it. And that includes a lot of smart black kids and equal parity among everyone. I mean, are you kidding me? Can you imagine if we did that for all groups? Like, what about the Irish? My people,

we had discrimination against us, horrible discrimination back a hundred plus years ago. Let me tell you, I never would have parity with some of the black and white students that I see now in my kids' schools. It's just people are different, right? But so they're going to get rid of AP classes in the name of, quote, equity. And the classics have to go because, you know, Socrates and Plato weren't evolved enough. They weren't woke. And we don't mention George Washington, you know, general then general George Washington when we're talking about the American Revolution. So you decide finally after this explosion in the woke karate inside Brearley to write this letter. What had you been doing prior to that? Because had you been talking with other parents or how was it growing? Yeah. So, so I thought about writing the letter at the beginning of the school year or writing something like this. Um, cause I could see the writing on the wall here. Yep. I decided, look, I know, and I said this in my letter and I believe this even more given the

reaction, more than half the parents were very unhappy with the direction of the school. And I still, and I believe very strongly that's the case, more than half. Okay. Based on what? Why do you believe that? Just talking to people, just talking to people about this. We were forced, although we refused to sign a community agreement, a pledge about this anti-racism, among other things uh that we would not only teach this is the beginning of the school year actually before the school year even started uh and they didn't want to let my daughter in unless we signed it and we can talk about that if you want yeah i don't know did you guys have some kind of pledge like that no they did not require i mean i saw when brieley

made it mandatory that parents applying their children had to affirm something about aligning with Brearley's ideology on on all this stuff but I didn't know the existing parents had to sign a pledge yeah yeah so so prior to the school year starting around labor I think this might have started a little bit late because of COVID I forget uh we were supposed to sign a community agreement one of the parts was about anti-racism, not only, and I don't have the exact wording, but not only are we going to support this in the school, but we will help teach and support this in the home. So this is full on indoctrination. Wow. We pushed back on that. And, uh, and, and, and so I, I sent an email to the head of the middle school because they kept reminding us,

you have to sign this, you have to sign this before the first day of school. And finally, I sent an email saying, well, are you not going to let my daughter in school if you don't sign it? So finally, we got on the phone and he was, you know, he really wasn't in the power to make a decision. He had to run it up the food chain. And they came back and said, well, we need her to sign it. And I said, well, this is, you know, I pushed back and said, look, this is, this is blackmail. This is exactly cancel culture. You know, are you really serious? This violates every principle that a school like really is supposed to stand for. Um, and they backed off and said, okay, you don't have to sign it this year. Uh, as long as you do the two required, every family has to do two required anti-racism training sessions.

So we said, okay, fine. Now I know a lot of people signed it under protest and made that point, but I, as far as I know, everybody, you know, most people said, well, probably everybody signed it. We didn't. Then they incorporated that language into the re-enrollment contract. So it's not just for incoming kindergarten students and families. They put that language. And I saw that. And we didn't re-enroll, obviously. We were pulling her out after the end of the year.

But we, you know, I very carefully compared the language in the enrollment contract this year versus last year. And there are two new sections. One was about vaccination policy. And one was about anti-racism. And again, not just supporting it in the school, supporting it and teaching it in the home. And I think how dare they, how dare they tell you what you knowing, of course, that this is very controversial. There is not uniformity of thought on this. No, despite their best efforts and the schools like them, how dare they try to immerse themselves

in between you and your daughter in your home? Yes. And I've had people reach out to me in the last few weeks and say, hey, you know, maybe there's a legal angle to, you know, to try to fight that. You know, we did. We're not re-enrolling her. But to go back to your question, you know, we're not re-enrolling her.

But to go back to your question, so we started talking to parents. And again, I know, I had a sense for what, there's a few constituents that were very unhappy. And I know a few other people did speak up, but very few. And the message was, oh, this is ridiculous, especially after these anti-racism sessions we had to do over Zoom in the evening.

But everyone said, look, yeah, I should write a letter. I should send an email. I should call the school. And then they never do. And this is, look, there's this pervasive fear, this cancel culture, fear of doing two things, right? Fear of pissing off the school so they don't help you with admissions to either either boarding school, you know, for high school or for college admissions. Nobody wants to piss off the school or the fear of losing your job. Because if you work at a, you know, at a Goldman Sachs or a big law firm, you cannot speak out on this. And so we tried to talk to people all through the school year and could not try to

organize. And look, organization during COVID times was virtually impossible. No one was getting together. Normally you talk about this stuff over dinner, over drinks, whatever. Normally you'd have parents barge into the head of school's office while parents aren't allowed in the school, right? And haven't been for the last year. So again, I think a lot of this doesn't happen absent COVID, but that's a separate issue, but it was just impossible to organize families. And it was virtually impossible to get people to speak up because of the overriding cancel culture. So when we decided not to re-enroll her, and unfortunately, it was an easy decision.

As much as the brilliant education is great, and in a lot of ways, it's still good. It's a status symbol, which for a lot of parents, that's the primary reason that they're sending their kids to these schools. And as much as it's the feeder to Harvard and Princeton and Yale, in the end of the day, it was an easy decision not to send her back because I care deeply about education. I care deeply about this history and civics education that's being changed or eradicated or some combination of both the most. And so that's when we decided not to re-enroll her back for next year is when I said, you know what, let me write this letter. And, you know, the goal of the letter was not

to change anybody's mind on this anti-racism initiatives. You know, it was not to educate anybody on what is going on. Parents are very well aware. Most parents are very well aware of what's going on. It was simply to encourage other parents to speak up. I said, look, I'm not personally, professionally cancelable. We've already decided to not enroll her for next year and I can do this. And someone has to do this was, was my, why are you not, why are you not cancelable? How is that possible? So I've done a number of things in my background. I've been described in many different ways in the press in the last few weeks. I got involved with my family's business.

So hopefully they won't fire me. I've actually been canceled. One thing I do do, I got an email yesterday. I have been and I have not been very involved in the last couple of years, but for 10 or 12 years, I've been an advisor to MBA students at Columbia Business School where I'm an alum, a career coach. They started the program 10 or 12 years ago. I was one of the original coaches. I've been doing it. I've not been very active in the last year or two, but I got an email yesterday around five o'clock saying my services are no longer required, which was sort of expected. So yeah, I got canceled in a very,

very small way. And they just said it was because I haven't been active, but that's okay. But professionally, I'm not cancelable. I don't work at a big firm. And again, I know, I can know the truth, but that's OK. But professionally, I'm not cancelable. I don't work at a big firm. And, you know, again, I know a lot of people have said and I appreciate it and I get it. You know, you're courageous and brave, but, you know, because I'm not cancelable. And again, I know, you know, with Paul Rossi, who you had on the show, I think what he did is is much more courageous because he was cancelable. And in fact, you know, was canceled. Um, you know, he was risking his livelihood and his career and I think he'll wind up. Okay. It sounds like he will. Um, but I wasn't so, you know, I just did what I thought. Here's the question. Did you, did you, do you know where you're sending your daughter

next year? No, no, we're gonna we're gonna try out some some variation of homeschool. No, so so like, let me just stop you there that then then this is extremely brave, too. I mean, it was even without that, but like, not having her place not knowing where she'd go. Like that is scary. I've been there, you know, where it's like, all I know is I'm not sending them here. Yeah, my wife's a little stressed about it. Yeah, it's scary because you go from like this gold standard of education to, we're going to figure it out. We're going to figure it out.

I know it's stressful a little bit, but, you know, I have this dream. I will talk about this. I'm sure later is, you know, what we'll do next. But, you know, starting a school is a possibility. So one of the reasons you might not want to speak out if you're a parent in Andrew's situation is you're worried about how it's going to affect your child, right? Like what's going to happen to him or her? We get into that next and you might be surprised at what Andrew's daughter said to him. Don't go away.

I've had a number of schools reach out to me and said, hey, we'd love to have your daughter. What? That's awesome. Yeah, we'll be okay. She'll be okay. My daughter will be okay. Well, and she's learning. The most important thing is she's learning. She's seeing you stand up for what you believe in,

for what you think is right. And even though you're getting considerable blowback for it, it's hard for her, I'm sure, because she's still in the community. You know, it's complicated, but I think the overall lesson to her is definitely a positive one. In the end, I think it is. And she's very supportive. Look, I'll tell you two things. One, when at the end of the day, this was her decision. If she had wanted to stay, we absolutely would have let her stay. We would have tried to fight this more quietly, you know, within the school.

But she was supportive of this. Did not make this decision for her. This was a family decision, the three of us, my wife, myself, and my daughter. Now I'll tell you a little story, which is, again, the teachers have been terrific at the school since this has happened. The administration, you know, I can say different things, but one of the things that the administration did, which was a little bit nasty, was to try to in a letter that the head of school sent me. And I've been excommunicated from the school, actually. In what way? I'm off all emails.

I'm not supposed to contact anybody at the school. I actually tried to send the head of school right when this happened, an email saying, look, you know, as I know, it's difficult as a human being. I know this is difficult for you. She was criticized in the press, really was criticized in the press. So I tried to send that email and it bounced back. So they don't even send emails. Can you drop her off? Are you what happens if you show up? She's actually remote. So and I don't know. Look, I think they wanted to kick her out. And I think they couldn't because they get bad press. I don't know what would have happened if she had been in person. You know, really has had the remote option this year. I don't know what would have happened.

But but being her remote, it's been fine. You don't really know issues, but so, so, so my daughter of her own volition, when this happened, after we got that letter from head of school in her own words, sent an email to the head of the school and the head of the middle school. And it was very strong. And we actually had to tone it down because it was too strong for a 12 year old. Did she, did she, did she crib off of your letter? Like this is bullshit. This is a pain in the ass. Can I say bullshit? She said, I used the term, I used the term in my letter and it was about it was a minor part of the letter about the this consulting group pollyanna that uh that i criticized because i think i called them rent-seeking charlatans which they are but i said something in content and

delivery they they failed the letter that the head of school sent them, which became public to the entire community, took those words in content and delivery. Andrew's letter failed. My daughter used those same words. I thought it was funny. We told her, you've got to tone it down. It's a little inappropriate from a 12 year old. But her message was, I agree with my dad. I support what he did. And I'm really proud for that he stood up for what he believed in. And my daughter got a, I think it was like a four word response. Glad you're okay. That was it.

Oh, that's, that's, I mean, for them, that's brave. But she's fine. We can criticize the administration. Right, exactly. You know, you're, you know, you're good. All right. So let's get into the letter. So it's addressed to fellow Brearley parents, which is interesting. And you sent it to all helped a little bit. My daughter refused. She was too busy. But yeah, you know, there was a rumor.

Someone called me up that first day or two. There was a rumor that was floating around that I only sent it to the white parents, which was absurd. I sent it, I will be very frank. I sent it to every single family, save three that happened to have overseas addresses in the system. And I just didn't want to deal with the post for overseas. So 656 letters went out to every single family address to both parents. That, that in and of itself, trying to everybody,

but I mean, people have asked, how did you get the list? Everybody had access to it. Oh yeah. I mean, we all have a school directory and, and I assume to the administration as well.

Yes. I did not send it to the administration. Oh, I only sent it to the, we have access to the administration. Yes. And teachers, but did not send it to the administration. Oh, I only sent it to the we have access to the administration. Yes. And teachers, but I only sent it to the parents, not to the kids, to the parents addressed to both parents. And I, you know, I, you know, people have asked why didn't you know why to email it? I look, I thought, I thought this was appropriate as a letter. Um, and then, uh, you know, the reaction came really reacted, but yeah, just to bring it,

uh, into view for the audience. Um, I'm just going to read a little bit of it here and there. Dear fellow Brearley parents. Um, we're not re-enrolling our daughter. She's been at Brearley for seven years, beginning in kindergarten. You're more articulate than my short form there, but bear with me. Um, in short, we no longer believe that Brearley's administration and board of trustees have any of our children's best interests at heart. Moreover, we no longer have confidence that our daughter will receive the quality of education necessary to further

her development into a critically thinking, responsible, enlightened, and civic-minded adult. Yeah, I write to you as a parent to share our reasons for going, and I urge you to act. Paragraph. It cannot be stated strongly enough that Brearley's obsession with race must stop. It should be abundantly clear to any thinking parent that Brearley has completely lost its way. The administration and the board have displayed a cowardly and appalling lack of leadership by appeasing an anti-intellectual, illiberal mob and then allowing the school to be captured by that same mob what follows are my personal views i know other parents have expressed them to paragraph i object to the view that i should be judged by the color of my skin i cannot tolerate a school that not only judges my daughter by the color of her skin but encourages and instructs her to prejudge others

by theirs by viewing every element of education every aspect of history and every facet of society through the lens of skin color and race. We are desecrating the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and utterly violating the movement for which such civil rights leaders believed, fought and died. I mean, that is like it's strong and it's true. And I think a lot of us who have been dealing with this for a long time were cheering when we read that, Andrew. I mean, can you just talk about how it manifested when you talk about their obsession with race? We know about the contracts you just mentioned, but why use the word obsession with race? It seemed like again, I can't speak to what what is going on in the school.

I hear what's going on. You see these Zoom sessions. You know they're having all these diversity, equity, inclusion assemblies and stuff for parents. There was a Zoom at the very beginning of the school year talking about their new initiatives where they basically said, we're going to incorporate this anti-racism training into every aspect of the school, every class. It's not just history, right? It's not just a classical literature curriculum. It's integrating it into every aspect of the school.

And, you know, I hear stories from my daughter. Again, I'm not observing, even though she's remote, I don't observe what she's learning. I've never done that. But, you know, she tells the stories all the time. I mean, everything they're talking about is race related. And again, I you know, it has to stop. It's it's not we're not saying we shouldn't talk about diversity. We're not saying we shouldn't talk about racism. We're not saying we shouldn't highlight, you know, civil rights leaders. But this this is absolutely an obsession, really. And a lot of other schools.

Now, you go on to say a lot of really smart and indisputable things in here. The part that I think got you in trouble, if there was trouble. Yeah. Systemic racism. The next part. Yeah. Systemic racism, where you say, reading again, I object to the charge of systemic racism in the country and at our school.

Systemic racism, properly understood, is segregated schools and separate lunch counters. It is the interning of Japanese and the extermination of Jews. Systemic racism is unequivocally not a small number of isolated incidents over a period of decades. Ask any girl of any race if they have ever experienced insults from friends, have ever felt slighted by teachers, or suffered the occasional injustice from a school at which they've spent up to 13 years of their life, and you're bound to hear grievances and some petty, some not. I'm just going to continue shortly.

We've not had systemic racism against blacks in this country since the civil rights reforms of the 60s, a period of more than 50 years. To state otherwise is a flat out misrepresentation of our country's history and adds no understanding to any of today's societal issues. If anything, long-standing and widespread policies such as affirmative action point in precisely the opposite direction. I object to a definition of systemic racism, apparently supported by Brearley, that any educational, professional, or societal outcome where blacks are underrepresented is prima facie evidence of the aforementioned systemic racism or of white supremacy and oppression. So let me just tell you a story. I know a dad, a burly dad, who is, I think,

with us on being anti-woke, reasonable guy, very successful guy here in Manhattan. And he got your letter and he's on your team. But this was the part that made him say, I'm not going to publicly come out and support this in any way because I don't want to sign on to that. That pissed too many people off and was too diminishing of like the country's history to the point where I just I can't give him a thumbs up on this. I can't do something to say I support the letter. Did you did you hear much of that response? And do you have any regrets about what you wrote there? Look, I've heard that, obviously, and I'm aware that's the part that that's been criticized the most. I stand by what I said. And, you know, we all address that. And I actually wrote a follow up. It hasn't been made public I, where I address that a little bit more. Yeah, look, if, if, if that is what, and that's news to me that people have, I know people have said, you know, they don't necessarily agree with that. If that's a reason that a lot of people didn't

stand up for that, then, you know, maybe I could say I regret that in the, in, in the sense that I agree with what I wrote, but if it was less effective, I've had a lot of people at Brearley and elsewhere say, you know, we may not agree with everything. And this is why I wanted to go strong on a lot of these issues. It's okay to say we don't agree with everything. My letter was not about race, in my opinion. It was about the inability to have discussions about race and more broadly about the indoctrination. So I don't view this as about race, but superficially people thought it was about race. Well, it's an example of like, this is your opinion.

And a lot of people share your opinion. I think if I had Glenn Lowry on this show, he might say a lot of the same things that you're saying. And I've had him on the show. Not perhaps exactly, but but close. Yeah, I had just read I had recently read Shelby Steele. I was just gonna say Shelby Steele, White Guilt, all of that. I had read that recently and that I was very impressed with that. But like to your point, you're entitled to this opinion. This is your opinion. And this, this is the opinion you're not allowed to share.

It's, it's so controversial and hot button and toxic to put it in there because no one's hearing that because you can't put Shelby Steele on TV. You can't talk about Glenn Lowry. Paul Ross, he got, he got told when he said, let's bring Glenn Lowry to the school and have him talk to, you know, our students, the head of school was like, can't you find a white person who's going to say all this? Because to have a black man saying this, you know, could be a particular problem, meaning he's going to be too effective. Yeah. Well, so let me say a few things about the systemic racism. One is I think people who read it superficially were assuming I'm saying there's no racism in this country. That's absurd. I mean, I thought that was so obvious in a point that I didn't need to address that. Of course, it's racism in the

country. What I was trying to get at is the way, and that's the next paragraph that you read, the way that this critical race theory movement is describing systemic racism, their definition, and they're masters, by the way, at redefining and co-opting these words. If you're not anti-racist, you're racist. The systemic racism, which even Biden has talked about lately. I vehemently disagree that, again, what I wrote, any outcome where there's not equality of outcome, which you addressed a little bit earlier, is racism. No, that is not systemic racism or institutional racism. So I vehemently disagree with that definition. I'm not saying there's no racism in this country. That would be absurd. But I was arguing the principle that, no, what we are,

we have been fed in the last few years, you know, in the media with the assumption now that people have just, you know, taken in that, that we live in this society with systemic racism. I disagree with, um, but again, let me ask you about the sentence. Systemic racism is not a small number of isolated incidents over a period of decades. What's that a reference to? Okay. So, so we're, we're a lot, you talked about this, I think at collegiate, um, there was a black at Brearley Instagram group that, uh, that, and then they, yeah, they, they, they, um, then, uh, wrote a letter to the head of school. And that was a lot of the impetus for a lot of these changes at Brearley, or apparently

it was, I don't know. And so I went through that and there's, I don't know how many there are, uh, less than 100, I think, but somewhere of people who wrote it mostly anonymously about their experiences. They didn't say when most of them they were in school. Some of them were close decades. Some of them were more recent. And so I read through them all before I wrote the letter. And look, I am not saying there haven't been instances of race. You're not talking about the United States there. You're talking about the public complaints made about Brearley. Right. So so one of them was and I'll pick a few.

One of them was, well, in kindergarten, everyone wanted to play with my hair. Now, I had I had a mom of a first grader call me the day the letter became they should receive the letter and said and she brought it up to me. I didn't bring it up. She had also gone through that that black black and brown Instagram page and said, in kindergarten, that's all the girls did is play with each other's hair. Didn't nothing to do with it. It was another, there was, there was two other I'll pick out just, you know, to be brief. There were two comments, uh, on the black and brown. One saying, I got into like 11 Ivy League and equivalent type of schools, you know, something like that. But people said, you know, I only got in because of my skin

color and affirmative action. Somebody else said, well, because I was Black, the guidance counselors or the career counselors told me not to apply to any Ivy League schools. Okay, well, how can they both together? They're completely opposites, right? How can they both together be evidence of systemic racism? They can't. By the way, there's zero chance anybody ever told a black girl that that really zero. He said, that's a lie. I'm just gonna call bullshit on that right now. Yeah. And that's the problem. I don't want to go that far. Yeah, no, but that's the problem with these black, really? Yeah, no, but that's the problem with these black, really black,

it's black wherever, because in the law, the lawyer in me would say, we wouldn't allow these claims into court in any way, shape or form. Not, not certainly not as a claim because they're untimely, but, um,

not even as evidence, you wouldn't even be allowed to tell that story on the, on the stand and anybody's trial as, as like evidence of a pattern because they are so out of time and so unsupported, there is no way of understanding whether they are reliable. Anybody can get on there and post something. I mean, who knows whether these are real accounts or not? Who knows whether race was really behind this stuff or not? There's no way with the passage of time for us to have any way of following up and figuring it out. So, but instead, the schools take these

and the people and proponents of critical race theory, take them as gospel. They said it, and so it must happen. And even now, I mean, one of the ones that was listed in one of the rebuttals to your letter was an example of, and some of them are obviously racist. I mean, no one's going to dispute that some of the stuff that was put on there, if it happened, in fact, was 100% racist. But here's just an example that's so like, wait, what? A black student's mother was called into a private meeting for which she had to take a day off of work to be told that her daughter was speaking too much in class. That's racism because we're supposed to believe that black people, black children are not capable of controlling the amount they speak. And so they should be allowed

to dominate the class, to talk over the teacher, to talk over others. And if you object to that, that's your white supremacy. This is actually a strain I'm seeing in a lot of the critical race theory reporting right now at the K through 12 and the college education levels. This is how nuts it is that for the school to say, can you try to get her to dial it back? And there's no way that teachers hadn't tried to handle this first with her. You don't go to the administration and call on the parent until it's become an ongoing issue. It's out of the teacher's control.

So anyway, these black at whatever school Instagram accounts are in some ways illuminating, but in other ways, totally useless because there's no way of testing any of the assertions. That's correct. I agree. And like you said, look, some of them are racism, but that is not systemic racism. And that was the point I was trying to make. There is no evidence of systemic racism in a really zero, in my opinion. Now you want to disagree, fine. I don't believe there's systemic racism in this country. If you use the correct definition or institutional racism, if you use the correct definition or institutional racism, if you use the correct definition. But you can argue that and you can disagree with that.

That is fine. The bigger point here is in this country, on a bunch of issues, race, certainly, we are not able to have discussions of this. Someone immediately puts their finger in their ears and cries racist, right? Democracy doesn't work fundamentally if we can't have discussions of these kind of important issues. It just doesn't work. And that's where we are on race, you know, the third rail, right? And on a whole lot of other topics. So yeah, look, I know I was criticized for the systemic racism. I stand by what I wrote, properly understood. Again, not saying there isn't racism, but saying, look, I think the definition of systemic racism that is used by these critical race theories that has now become adopted by the media and the president and, you know, and everyone thinks it's the case. I disagree.

Okay, let's discuss it. Well, you so and right. And you and you can't write exactly. You can't. So so you go on to say, and I thought this was actually a very interesting and good point. You say I object to mandatory anti-racism training for parents and this that you called it, especially when presented by the rent seeking charlatans of Pollyanna. Pollyanna is deeply problematic. Whatever the words you used, it's deeply problematic.

And if it's at your kid's school, you better do some Googling ASAP. I object to Brearley's vacuous, inappropriate, and fanatical use of words such as equity, diversity, and inclusiveness. And then you say this, if Brearley's administration was truly concerned about so-called equity, it would be discussing the cessation of admissions preferences for legacies, siblings, and those families with especially deep pockets. You said the thing out loud, Andrew. You said the thing out loud that you're not allowed to say that thing out loud. You know, what Brearley, I forget if I wrote this, but you know what? Yeah, I did write this. This is where I call the bullshit. They keep saying over and over, we get these daily, you know, weekly or month or whatever they are, you know, emails from the DEI committee, diversity,

equity, inclusion committee. They used to be one page emails. Now they're 15 page emails about all the events that they're doing and everything you should do at home and what books you should read. And they always say over and over, we want you to have and we want to have these difficult and challenging discussions. Courageous conversations. Bullshit. Right. Complete. Sorry.

Complete bullshit. You know, they don't want to. They're playing lip service. They see this black and really. What can we do? Let's bring in Pollyanna. We don't have to do the hard work. Right.

We'll bring in Pollyanna. We don't have to do the hard work, right? We'll bring in Pollyanna. We'll, you know, we'll have some mandatory training for teachers and for parents, and we'll put this in the curriculum. They're not asking the hard questions. Why? Let's talk about why are there racial discrepancies, you know, socioeconomically? Why did I think I read this week only eight Blacks get into Skybus and, you know, very, very difficult to get into test-based admissions, you know, in high school for New York City? into test-based admissions, uh, you know, in, in high school for New York city. Let's talk about the real issue, right? They don't want to do that. They do not want to do that at all. Um, they, you know, they, they, they're not taking

the search. If they didn't give such a preference for the little sisters of the existing students, uh, of the legacies, meaning like the children of Brearley, you know, alums, they'd have more spots for the underprivileged, for children of color who might not otherwise get into Brearley. Do it.

Let's see you do it. Can't wait. And the thing is, they won't. Because that's where the money starts to dry up. That's like, they want money.

They want alums. They want to take both of your girls instead of just one of your girls because that's more tuition and that's more loyalty to Brearley money starts to dry up. That's like, they want money. They want alums. They want to take both of your girls instead of just one of your girls, because that's more tuition and that's more loyalty to Brearley and more donations. Because let me tell you, I mean, I can speak to this, and I'm sure you can too. As a parent in the New York City private school system, they don't just want your $54,000, $57,000 tuition a year. They want extra. And as soon as you get in, they hit you up for additional donations. And they might even put a number on it.

They might even say, may we suggest a donation of X? And let me tell you, X is big. It's a big number. It can be way more than the tuition. So there's pressure for you to donate. And the way they work the pressure is by suggesting that there's loyalty between you school. Right. So they're not going to say no to the siblings. They're not going to say no to the legacies, like the little kids who are the, you know, the children of alums. And until they start doing that, they should really stop lecturing the rest of us. I couldn't agree more. I couldn't

really went through a whole building campaign. They built a new building that opened about a year ago. So there was an, and we're not, not we're not that high net worth that we were asked to donate a whole lot of money. But, yeah, I mean, this is these are fundraising organizations. And one thing I've realized, this is a broader point, was that, you know, these institutions and you see how they what, you know, after the after the press of my letter, you know how they come together. They were all about protecting the institution. This is not about the children. This is not about education. This is about protecting the institution. That's what these schools are about. Up next, we're going to talk about how other parents at Brearley reacted to Andrew's very public letter and also the COVID restrictions going on there and also just recommended by the CDC for your child if he or

she is planning on going to camp this summer. Have you seen these? I'm on a tear. I can't believe what they want us to do. And no, I'm not doing it. I'm not. And if you haven't heard of it, you're going to hear it next. So stay tuned for that. But first, we're going to bring you a feature we have here on the show called Real Talk, which is just a chance to talk about anything I want to talk about. I mean, it's my show. I guess I can do that even without labeling it Real Talk. But that's what we're going to do here. I just want to take a moment and say a word about the vaccines. Doug and I both got vaccinated this past weekend, the first half.

So we originally were going to go and you got to understand because I know I posted this on Twitter. I did not pose one of the what I call the dumbass pictures of myself getting vaccinated. It's such a virtue signaling thing to do. I don't need to see you get the damn shot in your arm. I did not post that, but it did happen. And Doug and I originally were going to get the Johnson and Johnson vaccine. And I did ask my doctor, I said, is that cool? Especially for women who are of childbearing age. I don't think that includes a 50-year-old, but technically, I guess, you know, before the change comes,

I'm still able. Anyway, he says, fine, no problem. You can get it. And you should talk to your own doctor, right? Because if you've got blood clotting issues and so on, maybe you get a recommendation but our doc said go for it so we show up abby of course who runs my life gives me a printed out piece of paper from cvs right she's so she's upset still it says megan kelly doug brunt cvs our address of our cvs right around the corner johnson and Johnson, 11 o'clock. So we go.

I go to the pharmacist, like the little counter. And I'm like, yeah, we're here for the vaccine. And the guy's looking at me like, what? I'm like, here, we have this paper saying that we're supposed to be here for the vaccine. And the guy looks at it. He goes, I don't understand this. I'm like, why not? He said, not only do we not offer the vaccine here, we've never offered the vaccine here

ever. And so I didn't Johnson and Johnson or any other. And I'm thinking, he must not be a fan. Is there like some secret vaccine counter for the liberals? Anyway, it turns out it was true. And so I'm like, oh, great. So now I got to scramble because we really just want to get it over with. I want the vaccine.

I'm sure vaccine passports are coming. And I definitely want to be able to travel to places like Europe and inside the United States that won't let me in without a damn vaccine passport, which I'm opposed to. But I also want the vaccine. I will tell you honestly, even if they weren't going to require that, I'm pro-vax. I was going to get the vaccine all along. And I never really wavered in that. And my doctor has been very pro-vaccine. I trust him. So that's my decision. I don't judge anybody who doesn't do it. You do you. But I want it. So we got an appointment at the CVS in Midtown and we went in and we got the first half of the Pfizer vaccine and for whatever it's worth. And it may be worth nothing to you. It was a nothing. Now that some of the side effects

are supposed to come after the second dose. So we'll see my arm hurt for like a day, mildly same for Doug was fine. I felt better after getting it. I had nice small talk with the guy who gave me the shot. And with the people who were also getting the shot. There's a guy from Israel who was bitching that he got it. He didn't want to get it, but his wife made him. But ultimately he did it. You gotta remember New York is just, New York got leveled by this damn thing. Leveled. And so people here are still masked up everywhere you go. And I guess I sort of also feel a responsibility living in New York to do it. I will say for the record, I have zero concerns about what's going to happen to me long term. My feeling on it is if there's some long term awful thing that comes from these vaccines,

then the same damn scientists at Pfizer and Moderna and elsewhere who came up with these great vaccines are going to come up with a fix because American science is still the greatest science in the world. Like there's a reason we are bathing in all these vaccines and nobody else's. Nobody else has what we have. We got it first. We got it. We got it fast. We got it right. And if we didn't, if it turns out long term, there's a problem, they're going to fix it. Right now, we need the vaccine. We need it to get back to life. People are dying, even young people, even though the risk is minuscule that you will die from COVID if you

were under the age of 80. People have died from it. You just never know, even young people. So why not, right? If you're really afraid of the vaccines, talk to your doctor. Don't go on fucking YouTube. Go talk to your doctor. That's a person you've entrusted with your life, your well-being. Same thing for your kids. Ask your pediatrician what they think. Don't listen to cable news or any other pundits tell you whether to get it or not to get it. Okay. Um, that's it. That's all I got. Just want to tell you that I got the first dose. So to Doug, I've already lost my little damn card. Of course. What's the story with that? Like now you just said it you just said it well can't can i won't they give me talking to my neighbor like of course oh i texted doug saying did you do you have my card you never texted me back because he called me he was like we can't we have no card

they shouldn't have entrusted me with that i should have said could you mail that directly to abigail finan i should have gone with you well now what, can I get the second shot? I don't have a TBD. Well, don't be like me. I think you already know that in life. Keep your card or give it to somebody reliable. I didn't even take a screenshot of it. Oh, I'm in the system. They're going to figure it out. I have faith. I have faith in the vaccine and my doctor and in CVS, not the one right around the corner from me, which is putting out misinformation on its appointments and vaccine availability, but the one in Midtown Manhattan I trust. All right. Long-winded, but there you go

for whatever it's worth. And now after this break, back to Andrew. The discussion that we're having reminds me of the nba in china they're they're wonderful about virtue signaling when it comes to black lives matter and then messages on the court and on the players jerseys and so on but when it comes to money like cold hard cash that they're getting from china they won't say a word they don't want to talk about it you just go back and listen to my podcast with mark cuban if you don't believe They don't want to talk about it. You just go back and listen to my podcast with Mark Cuban, if you don't believe me, didn't want to talk about it at all because that's cash out of the pocket. And now what they're starting to learn as people revolt against all this nonsense and wokeness in the NBA and all these other sports, it's costing them money.

Even Coke, there was a, you know, they've gone non-woke now. They went out in the woke train and there's a great piece on National Review about how they've gone non-woke not long after they put themselves on that train because they're losing business. And they fired their general counsel who'd been pushing a lot of it. And anyway, and the new general counsel's like, we'll see whether we're going to do any of that in the future. So there's a commercial cost if parents like you, if people who object to what the NBA did, to what Koch did, stand up. And that's why they just try to get out of bounds by pushing it back on you as saying, racist, racist, we're not, you are, bye. Okay, let me shift gears and talk about the reaction now. So you send this out and you get, like you said, you get a reaction from among others.

Well, first, let's talk about the head of school, Jane Freed, says your letter was deeply offensive and harmful. And I quote, this afternoon, I and others who work closely with upper school students met with more than 100 of them, many of whom told us that they felt frightened and intimidated by the letter and the fact that it was sent directly to our homes. And I should mention in your letter, there was a, there was an objection to, is it, I don't know if I, I don't want to mischaracterize it, but to the, like affirmative action policies and letting students in, you said, who basically their academics wouldn't justify admission. No, that, that point was, if this can, if we don't stop this, this continues, it's very obvious to writing on the wall. Okay.

About you're going to lower standards, you know, that was that point. So what did you make of her response? Well, I think the same that most people did, both in the Brearley community and in the broader community, since this was picked up by the press, it was an appalling response for a number of reasons. And the thing that what you just read, what people picked up,

and the first thing I picked up on and everybody did was that comment on the frightening the high schoolers, the upper schoolers. And I've said this a number of times, but really it's been around 140 years. It is one of, if not the most, the preeminent all-girls school in New York, maybe in the country. If there's one single thing that Brearley has prided itself on, and we've heard this in the seven years my daughter's been in this school, is producing intellectually courageous girls, intellectually brave girls. And to say that our upper schoolers are frightened by a piece of paper, not to them, even to their parents or the words on that piece of paper is absurd. And it's one of two things, either they're lying about it, which I don't really believe, or frankly,

they've done an appalling job doing what they're supposed to be doing, which is creating intellectually courageous girls. And look, a lot of these girls are in sort of indoctrinated into this wokeness, which is a bigger issue. But that's the line that I think an awful lot of people criticize. Yeah, right. Right. It's like if that's your goal, courageous conversations and intellectual curiosity fail, fail, brutally fail. And by the way, I mean, this is what they always say, right? Like the people who are woke, anything that you say that's not consistent with their messaging is dangerous. It's downright dangerous. You're a threat. And I will say, now you were very kind.

You were very kind in speaking about the young girl's message who, who posted publicly in response to you, I will do her the courtesy of treating her like the grownup she's purporting to be in this public letter and say, this was not a fact-based piece. It was not. Because her, this young woman who wrote publicly about your letter said, and I quote, that she called you,

your position on systemic racism, ignorant at best. Okay. She doesn't agree with you. That's fine. Uh, but then she says as evidence that there's no system, that there is systemic racism, quote, Shirley Gutman has read the news lately. People of color are being shot and killed quote, accidentally on the regular, on the regular, she says, right. And, and then she goes on to say, I am so tired of hearing that my existence takes up too much space. I am tired of hearing debates about whether my voice belongs in the classroom. No one's no one's doing that. No one is doing that. Your mind has been so corrupted by these race hustlers that you've been led to believe that there that there is an epidemic of police shooting, shooting people in the street.

Black people. There isn't. And that somebody saying your existence takes up to who. What did you make of that? Well, let me address this. Let me address the police shootings issue, if you don't mind. I wrote a I wrote a follow up and it has not been published and I don't think it was going to say, I didn't see that. Where is it? No, no, it hasn't. But, um, but I, I, cause I wanted to address the systemic racism issue. Um, and, uh, so I, I did some digging cause I knew this cause I've read about this, but I did some digging and, you know, department of justice 2018 about, and I have this in front of me, but 20% of offenders of violent crime incidents were identified as Black, 29%. FBI data says about 27% of people arrested in this country were identified as Black. And according to a website, Statista, in that same year, 23% of the number of

people shot to death by police were identified as Black. So there is no evidence that Blacks are being killed by police, by white police officers, out of proportion to the crimes they commit. There is simply no evidence of this systemic racism. But we have been drilled in our heads by the media over the last few years, and certainly since George Floyd, that these high-prof profile police shootings of white killings of black men and women, which are tragic and maybe instances of racist cops, they certainly may be. But data says these are not there is not evidence of systemic racism. And people don't know that. Of course not.

No, they think exactly the opposite. And the problem is everything for her is anecdotal, right? I'm sure if you went back to her and asked her for stats, she wouldn't give them to you. It's, you know, her lived experience and watching George Floyd played over and over and over and watching, you know, people like, oh God, what's his name in Wisconsin who got shot? Jacob Blake and the Breonna Taylor. And because the media picks these cases and tries to play them over and over and over and misleads people, same thing that's happening with COVID. By the way, when you say that you had

a vaccine clause in your Brearley contract, do you think they're trying to set you up to agree to a mandatory COVID vaccine for your kids? What's that about? Oh, yeah, I think so. The reason my daughter was remote. So a number of families kept their kids mostly because of fear of COVID. We kept we had every intent. I haven't talked about this publicly, by the way. But we have we had every intention in September of sending We had every intention. I haven't talked about this publicly, by the way. But we had every intention in September of sending her back in person. I'm not a fan of real school.

I think it's not real school. I mean, they really have done a great job, but it still sucks. It's not real school. We had every intention of sending her back. And there was a Zoom to talk about right before school started, all the restrictions.

And I said to myself, and my wife said, and my daughter said, these are abusive to children, these restrictions. And I believe they are, this is child abuse, what they are, the restrictions in schools and as bad to mental health is as remote school and not being with your friends and in person, I think these restrictions are worse for the mental health of children. I think they are terrorizing children. And this is not going to go away in a year. This is going to be with them for a long time, if not forever. And that's the reason why we kept it remote. So I have some, again, non-mainstream views on COVID policy. But to your point, that's right. I don't know what you're saying, non-mainstream.

If you're against some of these crazy restrictions, you're 100% mainstream. You're just on the right half of the country. The country is very divided on this. It's hysterical. There was a long piece of the Atlantic just this week. No, of course, New York went 87% for Joe Biden. But in the country, I mean, even some of my lefty friends in New York are starting to come over to this sort of place of reason and logic in between where they're they're rejecting this partisan jersey now because they're like,

they can see the hysterics over the COVID lockdowns and what it's doing to children. And we would like there was an article in The Atlantic this week that was amazing talking about how liberals are now starting to reject the crazy sort of fear porn covid liberals who are triple masking with the face shield and never want to go back into the classroom or any place else public because they refuse, even though they've been double vaxxed to resume normal American life. And if you challenge them, you know, they, they bust out their fake little coffin and say, you want them in it. It's like,

yeah, you know, really has double masks mandatory for the kids. Yep. Yep. Oh my God. Yeah. Double masks.

That's insane. At our old school, they, they were having the kids like the upper schoolers, like they had their own little plexiglass shield to walk around with. So a lot of the, so, you know, one of the things that we, and I communicated, in addition to the anti-racism, I communicated this to the school, that I thought the policies were abusive. And, you know, so they have the six feet

distancing. Now, not every classroom, they can do that. So they have a separate annex for a lot of these kids where they're watching the teacher on TV anyway. So, you know, we said, okay, if he's going to watch on TV, half the kids are or whatever the percentage is possible, do it sounds like it might be. The CDC just released guidance for summer camps. Oh my God, yes. Okay, we can talk about it. Oh my God. So our kids go to a day camp. We go to New Jersey for the summers where we have a little house on the shore, down the shore as they say. My husband grew up going down there, so we go there. Okay, so we'll see you there.

And we did all the stuff last year. Thank God our camp was open. We were grateful for it. The kids had to wear the masks all day, even though they were running around. Like the kids were practicing like sailing where you're out on a little tiny boat. It's not really a sailboat. It's like a baby sailboat, um, by yourself. And you had to have your freaking mask on, but we know what we were grateful that they did it.

And so we all went along, everybody, you know, they canceled all the social events and all that. The kids basically, you know, just saw each other from afar. Now, here we are, your leader, where everybody's getting vaccinated. The kids have never been proven to be effective communicators of the virus and so on. Here are some of the restrictions I'm quoting from Reason magazine, Reason.com right now. Everyone at the camp, everyone at the camp, including staff and every child over the age of two must wear masks at all times unless eating or swimming. Oh, that's nice. They let you take it off when you're swimming. They should wear two, two layers of masks, especially when social

distancing is difficult, regardless of whether they're indoors or outdoors. Even if you're outdoors, two layers of masks. They have to be in cohorts. This is how it was last summer. We're a year later where their interaction with people outside of the cohort must be limited. They have to always be at least three feet away from each other, six feet between campers in a different cohort. Staff has to stay six feet away from the campers at all times, whether inside or outside. Distance maintained while eating, napping, or riding the bus. Use of physical objects that might be shared among kids, toys, art supplies, electronics should be limited wherever possible.

Hello, you just admitted that it can't be transmitted via surfaces, that there's almost zero chance of it. Why are you doing that? Camps should not permit close contact. So sports, so no flag football, forget it, that's out. And should wear masks regardless. So no, no, you know, flag football, forget it. That's out and should wear masks regardless. So again, the outdoor masking while playing sports, which is not safe. And they say, if anyone, this is reason, if anyone's curious, there are separate restrictions for outdoor gardening, gardening, the CDC wants to govern how you garden. It's, I mean, Andrew, we've lost our ever loving minds. We have, we have. Okay, I've been talking, I've said this for a year

and our COVID reaction, lockdowns, masks are the stupidest thing human beings have ever done purposely, ever. You know, there's been other bad things in human history. This is, we've destroyed the world for this. It's incredible. And we've destroyed children for this. And it's the saddest absolute thing. We've destroyed's normally seven weeks. It was four. It wasn't too bad on the masks, actually. Everyone had to be tested. This year, I think it's going to be worse. And it makes no sense.

Last year, we were closer to where COVID was actually raging. Now, in New York City, it stopped a year ago. April 1st last year, we were done, frankly. Now, there's a lag on when people die, obviously. So you saw the deaths. But when we came back from spring break last year, we were done. I think mostly it's not to say it's zero, but it's a sleepaway camp in particular. That's like you're leaving. You're in a little you're encamped.

They're in the middle of nowhere in Maine. They don't even have electricity in the bunk. She's at this kind of rustic camp and she has to sleep with a double mask. It's absurd. And I'm very hopeful that it's not as bad as the CDC. I read that with terrifying what I read, which you just read. I think it's going to be worse than last year, which makes absolutely no sense. I think, look, people are starting to push back. I even felt she has gotten criticism for saying kids should wear masks outside. You know, and finally people are pushing back. It's nuts.

And let me tell you something else. Double masking your child and telling him to run around in 90 degree weather is not safe. I would not do that. I didn't do it last summer and I'm not going to do it this summer. And if our camp thinks that it's going to impose these restrictions, and I don't think it is because they're actually reasonable people, I'll fight. I will 100% fight that's not safe. Talk to your pediatrician about whether it's safe to have your kid do running or any physical activity that's strenuous outside in that kind of weather with a double mask on. It's just insane. What risk are we preventing again against other than weird COVID fear porn mongers feeling unsafe?

I've I no longer care about them. I know I care more about my children and your children than I care about those grown adults who refuse to, as they tell us, listen to science. Well, you know, I don't know if you know, I don't know. I wrote a paper on masks about a year ago. Um, so, you know, I, I, I have been following this issue for, since the beginning. Um, it's on my little blog where I actually, there was a, there was an initial, the first, the first sort of report where, where people said masks work, uh, was, was found funded by the WHO and within the Lancet, you know, prestigious medical journal. And it was this meta study and it got picked up in all the press.

It was written about all over. And this was the justification for that. This really started it off. And I read it and I said it. So they looked at twenty nine studies. They looked at social distancing and eye goggles, too, I think. But but I just focused on the mask piece and twenty nine studies of a meta study. Right. And they concluded mask work. So I said, you know, I don't I don't I'm skeptical here. So I actually went through all 29 studies. I got all the only one I could. One one of them was in Chinese. I couldn't get just the overview. So I went through and I spent a week or two, read them all like three times.

And this study was the meta study was absolute garbage. Mistakes, I think in like eight, I'm doing it from memory, eight of them complete, 11 of them shouldn't have been in there because they weren't actually studies of masks or not masks. It was absolute garbage. And I'd sent it to a few scientists and nothing ever happened and no one ever picked it up. But you know, the science wasn't there. And I have read and then people say, well, how can you have these views? Because I have read probably just about every single paper on masks that have come out in the last 50 years. And the science pre-COVID was very, very clear. Masks are not effective in stopping the

transmission of respiratory viruses. Well, and of course, it's what Dr. Fauci told us to Dr. Fauci originally told us not to wear them. And now he's like, oh, I was just lying because I didn't want you to buy up all the PPE that the medical providers. It's like, oh, well, well, weirdly, I no longer believe you. It's so strange how that works. You've sacrificed your credibility now. And then they look at us like, why? How to trust the authorities? Like, well, I don't trust the WHO. Oh, the one that's covering for China, trying to keep the story about this coming out of a Chinese lab appears to have been accidental, though the military was working with the lab. I don't know what happened, but listen to my last COVID podcast, because we had Josh Rogan from the

Washington Post, who's done extensive reporting on this, talking about how this thing looks like it came out of a Wuhan lab, where they were studying, coincidentally, back coronaviruses and how to make them more dangerous to humans in an effort, supposedly, to fight back against them. Well, good luck. That didn't work out so well. Anyway, my point is, I don't trust the WHO and I don't trust Fauci and I don't trust the CDC to give it to me straight. And that's just the way I feel after now a year of listening to these people reverse their positions on virtually everything. Yeah, I agree. I think it's despicable what's happened. It's this tyranny of the experts that aren't really experts. The real scientists, which are not the ones that go on TV and that speak publicly, have been silenced. And they're

the ones saying, we don't know much. And here's what we know, which is, no, the masks aren't going to stop respiratory viruses. Well, I'll tell you that. I will say this. Because there's no outside transmission. There's very little. Outside is ridiculous. Kids are at less risk of, you know, COVID, significantly less risk than seasonal flu.

Kids. Now, this is a bigger fight to get masks out of schools because they're going to be in schools a lot. I know. I'm worried about next fall. I'm really worried about next fall. I'm sick and tired of this. I'm like, littles. I'll tell you something about Brealey. We were informed, actually, because we talked about this with them,

not only to expect these restrictions, including masks, to continue into next school year, but to expect them in the years to come. What? Not a change, but that is a sort of direct quote from a Brealey administrator. No, hard pass. Yeah.

Hard pass. I mean, that's how long are parents going to let this happen? I mean, my friends who almost all my friends here in New York are liberal. They went their kids haven't been in school all year. Their middle schooler has been going to school. What as of recently, one day a week for four hours a day. And they last weekend went to a open the schools rally. OK, it's May.

It's May. It's May. And guess what they ran into? Counter protesters calling them white supremacists. Oh my God. I'm like, but you know what my, I mean, I've said this before, but my only comfort here is that like overreactions like that tend to bring people who are farther out on the ideological scale close to where I am in the center, where I think it's reasonable. And I'm center right, but I love center left too. I don't care. I just, I feel like that's going to send everybody over here to the place of reason and off of these ideological teams because ideologues are not trustworthy. We shouldn't be listening to them. I do want to say one thing for the record though. Sure.

I haven't read those studies, so I'm not in a position to challenge what was in them. I do, however, trust my doctor when it comes to my vaccines, when it comes to anything. I trust my kid's doctor and I trust my doctor. My doctor, who happens to be an infectious disease doctor, he did say masks work. He did say get a vaccine. He said get whatever vaccine you can get. Doesn't matter what it is, just get one. And he did say that he thinks the long-term effects of COVID are more of something to worry about than the long-term effects of a vaccine. So I do do, I wear the mask. Here in New York City, you still have to, outside you can either mask outside or do six feet away.

So I do six feet away unless it's like a jammed up crowd because I'm just sick of people's angry faces. And I know Tucker wants you to get in their face. I'm not like that. And I wouldn't do that. But it needs to end because I think a lot of people here, a lot of people are rule followers by nature. I understand that too. I kind of, I kind of am not as much as the average Joe, but I, I get it. And they need permission before they're going to take off these masks when there's a mask mandate. And we, and so we need to lift it. It like, we need to be realistic if, if not, if not for us, then for our kids. Yeah. I mean, I, I've only done the research on masks. So I'm not knowledgeable to speak about any other issues. Yeah.

You're absolutely right. I mean, people are going to follow the rules for the most part. I've seen in New York City the last week or so, people, there's fewer outside for sure. This pandemic, the New York Times did, it's done horrific on this issue, but there was one piece they did at the beginning of this, which I thought was really good,

which is how do pandemics end? And they got historians to talk about this. Pandemics don't end when the virus goes away. Pandemics end when people get over their fear and learn to live with it. Look, COVID is going to be with us forever. I mean, the 1918, you know, H1N1 flu, I think, you know, variants still circulate of it. And I think that a lot of, you know, infectious disease people and doctors will tell you, look, this will become endemic. It becomes a common cold over time. We just have to learn to live with it.

And that's what we have to do now. We have to get on with our lives. We have destroyed the world. We've destroyed New York City. And the masks, whether they work or not, and again, I have a strong view on that, having done research. So you can disagree, but you can't say I'm uninformed. But these are signs of fear. They're absolutely signs of fear. We have to get over the fear. We have to in New York City. We've literally destroyed the

city and we're destroying the country and we're destroying the world over this. Again, we can argue about it, whether it was worth it or not. I don't think that was worth it, given how deadly this was and the demographic of who COVID really affected. If this was killing children in a way, or young people, in the way that 1918 Spanish flu did, it's a different story. This is most similar to the Asian and Hong Kong flus in the late 50s and 60s, you know, the second of which you had Woodstock raging during it. There was no social distancing at Woodstock. Again, I'm not a doctor. I'm not an infectious disease. I have done a hell of a lot of research on masks. I can speak to that. But we got to get we we got to go back to life. We have to or we're destroying the world here. That's my well. And

well, in a way, we're on topic because fear is what's also motivating these parents who support you behind the scenes to not speak out. There's the things that's pissing me off about your situation is, where's the cavalry? Where are they? Come on. You're twisting in the wind. And none of those Brearley parents, even anonymously, they need to come out with an anonymous letter that can just sort of be family X, family Y, family Z. They're letting you twist in the wind just the same way Paul Rossi's twisting in the wind. Yes. You know, people like my, you know, the organization fair foundation against intolerant racism that I'm on the board of. Yes, we are, we are supportive, but the other parents in the, in the student body, even anonymously need to come out because otherwise this, you know,

Jane's response to you, I'm trying to make you just look like you're this insensitive, scary guy who's terrified the Brearley student body, wind up being kind of the last word. So I don't know what happens to Brearley. They're so far gone down this path. I know people have written to the school and in support. Again, they don't have to agree with everything I said. You know, the key point is about we can have a discussion and there's no indoctrination. And that's what I heard. You know, we talk about the response and Paul Rossi got a similar response. I've gotten somewhere close to a thousand people email and message me on this. About 10 of them have been negative. Overwhelmingly positive support from around the country. Now, the scary part of that is I had no idea how entrenched this CRT, this critical race theory was in schools and how many parents are dealing with it. That's the scary part, but overwhelmingly support. And I had somebody who is on the board of his

kid's school outside of New York City. And he said to me, you have no idea how good, how much, how much good your letter has done in these private schools. Your letter is being discussed in board of trustees meetings at every single private school in the country, because they're starting to realize the boards are that people will speak up, that people are feeling this way and no school wants to be the next really in terms of being, you know, in the news about this. OK, I don't know that that's true, but the person that said it is quite well respected. And in fact, look, whatever happens to Brearley, I hope they fix it. It's a phenomenal institution over 140 years.

I hope it goes back to being a phenomenal educational institution. If it continues down this path, it won't be. They'll destroy it. But I hope that reverses. And I don't think you can reverse it unless you have a change of administration. But maybe this letter is doing some good, you know, in other schools. And look, in the last few weeks, and I'm not going to take credit for it. But in the last few weeks, there's been an awful lot of media attention on this issue, on critical race theory in schools, on critical race theory more broadly,

on cancel culture, you know, a lot of a lot of media attention on it so i look let me ask you this let me ask you this because i mean i think certainly this is gonna this is where it really is right now but it's where a lot of these schools that across the country are right now um this was a response posted to your letter by somebody named claire potten at seminar.org. And she said, let me just quote in part, claims that children are being harmed by critical race theory are a thin cover for returning to a world where white people don't have to feel bad about racism. She says, the tribalism and division that the Brearley dad, you claim critical race theory is causing already exists, as does the harm Paul Rossi fears it is causing.

Prestigious private schools offer real opportunities to black students, but it can come at a very, very high emotional and intellectual cost to them and their parents. Basically, what she's saying is, and this is the end quote, that white people, including you and Paul, make it all about themselves. That is what white people often do. But in this case, it also shows that these men also understand what's at stake in anti-racism work,

their own power and the position of their white children as uniquely authoritative and special in a multiracial society. Your thoughts on that? Okay. Sure. You can, you know, what do you want? So what do you, okay, I would ask this person and ask this person, okay, what do you want?

What do you want to do? Okay, you want me to admit I'm, because I'm white, I'm guilty, right? I mean, my family, you know, a lot of them perished in the Holocaust. We weren't, you know, we didn't have slaves. We weren't in this country. We weren't in this, you know, in the Jim Crow era. I mean, all right. So what do you want to do?

You want us all white people to admit what? Where does that get you? You know, at the end of the day, this is, you know, the Marxist argument for equality of outcome, not equality of opportunity, which, you know, will destroy, you know, will Marxist argument for equality of outcome, not equality of opportunity, which, you know, will destroy every, you know, will destroy us, I think. But, you know, you want to, you're trying to teach a kindergarten kid that they should feel guilty for the color of the skin. And this stuff is in kindergarten, right? I mean, I heard, I heard of this. Oh, I know. A mom told me, you know, they, so when my daughter was in kindergarten, they had to do a project.

They all given a silhouette of their head, you know, blank head. Draw whatever you want. Draw, you know, however you look. Draw your freckles. Draw your hair. Whatever you want to draw. Well, this exercise, apparently in kindergarten this year, they were only given skin color crayons. And it was, look, we don't care about anything.

The only thing that we want you to focus on is getting your skin tone right. So this is kindergarten. Oh, good God. This is kindergarten. I'd be like, I don't need a crayon. Just leave the paper as pasty as it came. I'm just going to do an outline of a face. Just as pasty as you think, even pastier. We have to fight. We're not saying there's no racism. We're not saying we shouldn't teach the stains in our history, we have terrible stains in American history of slavery and Jim Crow, what we did to Native Americans. No question. Right. I maintain I wrote in this follow up, which, again, hasn't been published. I think we're the least racist country. I think we're the most diverse country in the world. I think we're the least racist. We're the only country or one of the very, very few that has even attempted to address these issues? What other countries even attempted, right? What other country is diverse? Like we are, are there issues? Of course, are there, you know, other racist cops

out there? Of course there are. But what benefit is there of telling a kindergarten kid to feel guilty for his or her color of her skin? Where does that get? What does that do for you? That's my response. They're incapable of paying for the sins of those of somebody else's fathers. I want to I want to read this piece just a bit. Forgive me a lot of reading today, but there's been some great stuff I've I've been reading lately. This is from Ross Kaminsky at the American Spectator. And his piece is called The Cancer of Critical Race Theory. And he says this. He says he does say that he thinks America is awakening to, quote, the cancer that is critical race theory. And he says it should infuriate you that schools across the nation. Keep that in mind. Our audience knows it's not just really these sort of Tony New York schools. It's public schools across the nation, telling some kids that other kids are evil or that they themselves are evil for things over which they have and never had and never will have control, such as the melanin content of one's skin or the particular shape of one's eyes. And for the distinctly un-American practice of teaching that free speech, critical thinking, and questioning authority are simply indications of one's own irredeemable privilege. And he ends by saying, the problem is that even this initial national awakening is very, very late. We are in the midst of a stage four societal cancer.

Critical race theory has metastasized from Harvard outward through other universities, and from there into almost every other internal organ of our nation, from businesses to governments, to schools, to everywhere you look. So that brings me to the question that you mentioned when we started, what's next? What do we do? You did, you did the parents at Brearley and everyone else a favor by not staying quiet about it, by going public. So what is next in fighting the stage four societal cancer? Well, let me say first, I 100% agree with what you just read. This is terrifying what is happening. I've had a lot of people reach out to me that grew up in, you know, Soviet Union or communist Eastern Europe that had

saying, but, you know, we left there to come to America. We seen this movie being played before. This is terrifying what's going on. And we never thought this could happen here. And it is. And it's not just critical race theory in schools. It's beyond schools. It's the cancel culture.

It's the whole, you know, woke religion. It is incredibly scary. I think if we don't fix it, we go down a very, very dark and scary path. I mean, you know, we end the enlightenment. I think the country cracks up eventually. I don't know when. What do we do? You know, I'm trying to, I'm trying to figure out, look, I've been, I promised a lot of people who reach out to me, I would continue to speak out on this because I believe in it and I will. I'm going to join FAIR and get involved in FAIR, which you mentioned. Seriously, I've had people, people, you know, encourage me to start a school in New York City. And that's something I'm seriously thinking about. But, you know, the bigger issue is this. We don't solve, in my view, we do not solve the school issue until we solve the cancel culture issue.

Too many parents are too fearful to speak up. And you mentioned, you know, Coca-Cola may be reversing themselves a little bit on this after, you know, the Georgia and baseball all-star game incident. Such cowardice generally in the corporate boardrooms, in these school boardrooms and administrations, but just such cowardice in these corporate boardrooms to cower to the woke Twitter mob here. That has to stop. We need some courageous CEOs and business leaders to say, look, we recognize that our employees are going to have some different opinions on things.

Some of them might be controversial. We acknowledge that some of those opinions in the day and age we live in are going to wind up on Twitter and social media. And we will not terminate them for their views. We will not penalize them for their views because they are preventing parents. I've heard this so many times in the last few weeks in these hundreds of emails. They are preventing parents from speaking out on behalf of their children and on behalf of their children's education. So that has to stop. I think

we have to solve the cancel culture issue. This is a huge issue. This is not just schools. This is not just critical race theory. This is this anti you know, anti-intellectual illiberalism. Marxism. We're going down that path in so many different scary ways. I don't have the solutions, all of them. I don't know most of them. But we need to talk about this. You know, again, I said this earlier, you know, democracy. We we've been led to believe in the media lately that, you know, what is democracy? Democracy is all about how many people vote. Right. And that's why there's such issues over who can vote and voting, you know, registration and restrictions and stuff like that. That's not what democracy is. That's not what democracy works if people vote. I think it's two things. And I wrote this in the letter. You have

to have wise and virtuous leaders. And I think of both political parties, we have very few wise and virtuous leaders. And I wrote that in the context of really being the training ground for these leaders. If they don't learn the education, they're not going to be that scary. And the other thing, you know, for democracy to work, you have to be willing to have discussions of these issues. Again, race, COVID, guns, immigration, you know, all these issues, climate change, that we're not allowed to discuss. You have to be able to discuss them. So somehow, media polarization is a lot of this, which I don't know how to solve. But if you're not willing to discuss these important issues, democracy doesn't work. And I'm really scared. I mean, I'm hopeful that we have, you know, made a little dent. I don't think the dam is broken here on critical race theory, but I think we're starting finally to get people to speak up. And I'm hopeful we make a dent there and this movement continues. But these are bigger issues that we are completely

forgetting, losing, destroying, you know, toppling statues of the foundations and principles of this country. And again, that's not to say there aren't stains on this. You know, Thomas Jefferson's controversial, and he should be, and he should be taught it that way. But that doesn't mean you ignore the Declaration of Independence. That is the founding principle of this country. And we should strive to meet it. And maybe we failed in a lot of ways in our history, but to not teach it and to lose those founding principles. Sorry, I'm preaching here, but to lose those founding principles, that's what's happening. And that's really, really scary. The path we're headed down, I think.

Yeah, it certainly is. No, I agree. As it's Mitch McConnell, he was out there just saying, and it was great. I was happy to see him object to the 1619 Project, which has been totally discredited being taught in schools. Now, Nicole Hannah-Jones has been given a journalism professorship at UNC. a bunch of scholars, black and white, have demanded be pulled back, be revoked because the 1619 project is so non-factual. It is so counterfactual. And she's totally gotten away with it. Now, instead of having the prize taken away, they're elevating her to a journalism professor at UNC. Anyway, McConnell came out and and said voters didn't ask for this. There is no mandate to teach our children that America is inherently evil. That seems like something that should have been run by us before we innocently sent them back. I wrote this in the letter and I'll say it here.

This country will not survive teaching our children to hate our own country and to hate its history, right? No other country in the world does that. And that is what we are doing. We will simply not survive as a country. I don't know what happens. We break up, civil war, you know, I don't know, right? I don't think anyone can predict that. But I'm unfortunately confident in saying if we teach our children to hate our own country and its history, we will not survive. Or this way of life, you know, the foundation of freedom and liberty and prosperity and equal opportunity, not equal outcome, equal opportunity, which has been the beacon for the rest of the world for 250 years, right? And yes, we haven't always lived up to it, but we have been the beacon

of these principles for 250 years. If we teach our children to hate our own country and hate its history, we won't survive. And our way of life will not survive. And that's terrifying to me. I do want to say to people, go to fairforall.org, fairforall.org. And you will see a lot of faces there that you know and love, like Barry Weiss, like Glenn Lowry, like Coleman Hughes, like Eli Steele, John McWhorter, who's coming on the show this week, and so on. Daryl Davis, all there together, me, I'm there, trying to fight back against this and try to make it easier for you to connect with other parents in your schools or businesses or elsewhere who are silently objecting, but don't know how to

come, come out with it publicly, you know, for fear of being canceled or punished. So that is one of our core missions. Go just check it out. I'm not, I don't make any money off of this. This is not a money-making organization. We're just trying to, it's a, it's a group of people trying to, you know, fight for reason and, and wellness in the country. Uh, so I, I've become a,

you know, a preacher for them. I, I want to proselytize about them and we're just getting our act together too, or it's going to grow and it's going to get better organized and all that, but it's a place to start. And I think you'd be amazing. We need just,

we need millions more just like you. So I, yeah. So the founder of my, I've, I've met a bunch of times now online and in person. And we're talking about how I can get involved because I absolutely want to get involved. Good. And people at home can do it, too. I will say just one other thought.

When I was still at our boys school and I don't know, I tend to think that the schools are not necessarily honestly searching for parent feedback. I don't know. I think they're like, my experience has been the schools are totally devoted to this ideology and are going to lean into it because they think it's what's quote right. But if you think your school is genuinely curious about, or maybe fearful about losing a significant portion of its parent body, one of the things I think could work potentially is to get an outside person to come in, sort of like an auditor, to have private meetings with parents

who shall go nameless in the ultimate report about how they actually feel. I really would love to see honest schools do this. I thought of it because of what my former employer, Fox News, did in the wake of the Roger Ailes allegations. You know, they brought in Paul Weiss, an outside law firm, doesn't have to be a law firm, but women who would never go in and speak to Roger Ailes' human resources department, right? Never, because they knew what was going to happen, did go to Paul Weiss once they realized

and were reassured that it truly was an independent lane where they could say how they actually felt what actually happened to them. I think this could work at the school level for and it would give school boards cover because a lot of school boards don't actually want to do this crap but they feel pressured you bring somebody in you take the temperature of the parents without a name attached to it it's just somebody you know like you only get invited if you actually are a parent at the school so they know it's legit uh and you say how you actually feel, and then they'll get a real temperature of how their parent body feels about what they're doing.

And if you do that, and you get a negative result on this indoctrination, and you proceed with it, you reap what you sow. You see what happens to your parent body within the next three years. And I'll add something, if you don't mind. I had someone reach out to a friend that's on the board of a prominent West Coast Bay Area school, private school. And he is in the process, and he's very confident, of getting the board to agree to have a school-wide Zoom on this topic. And he would like myself and Paul Rossi to participate. So these conversations are starting, I think.

Who the hell is going to stand up and say what you and Paul Rossi say? They're all going to be scared shitless in San Francisco, in the Bay Area? You know, I think, look, this issue is a broader issue, right? Obviously, it gets a lot of attention on the right way on conservatives and Republicans. We cannot win this issue unless it crosses over and education crosses over. You have to get the centrists. You have to get the moderate left. Look, we've lost the woke to religion. It's gone. Whatever that percent, 10%, whatever it is, right? New York, San Francisco is higher. But this is an issue that can really cross the divide here. And I think so because

everybody cares about their kids' education. And I have, I think you said the same thing. I have heard from a lot of parents at Brearley privately that you would consider very, very liberal. And again, they may not agree with my definition of systemic racism, but they agree with a lot. And for sure, they agree with that we need to talk about this and they are against indoctrination and they are for free speech. And so I think, you know, there's a much bigger audience for this. And I'm going to say audience, I mean, there's a much bigger movement potentially than, than just, you know, just conservatives here. And it has to be because we don't win. I don't think we win with just conservatives here. It has to cross over. And I'll be very honest. I mean, I'm politically homeless

in this. So I really think that, that the are starting to realize I think they've seen what's going on. I think a lot of schools aren't as far gone as the New York City schools, but they're seeing this now and saying this has to stop. And we're the canary. We're the canary in the coal mine. What happens here is coming. It's it's already there, but it's going to come full force. There's a recognition of that. And so, look, if a fancy West Coast school is willing to, and again, I don't know if this is happening, but he seemed pretty confident that they could get the board behind this and at least having the discussion about this. That is a first step. But again, if we don't solve the cancel

culture issue that too many people are afraid to speak up, it doesn't get solved. And I think we have to solve that. But schools are willing, maybe now, to have these conversations. That's a good sign. That's a good sign. Andrew Gutman, good luck. And good luck to your sweet daughter.

Sounds like she doesn't need it. But she's OK. Yeah, she's OK. Our country needs it. Our schools need it. She's okay. Yeah, she's okay. Our country needs it. Our schools need it. But thank you very much. Don't miss Monday's show. Go right now.

Subscribe to this show. Download. Give me a rating. Five stars if you feel generous. And a review, please. I'm still reading them all. I've read every single one. Yes, I have.

And I read all the ones that start now with, you say you read every review, so I'm writing this one. I see you. I see you all. But don't miss Monday's show because we've got one of my heroes on John McWhorter. He's a professor at Columbia. He's totally brilliant. He's fearless. He's Glenn Lowry's pal. They talk about race a lot on The Glenn Show and other programs. And he's been debating it for a super long time. Very smart, but easy to understand ways. And we're going to get into all of this stuff with him. You will not be sorry. You will not be sorry you gave this time over to John McWhorter. This is an hour and 15 minutes of your life that is going. It's basically you want to be doing this rather

than cleaning the house. You could do both rather than going online shopping. Don't do that. Just listen to John. Okay. You're welcome. And have a great weekend. Thanks for listening to the Megyn Kelly show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear. The Megyn Kelly show is a Devil May Care media production in collaboration with Red Seat Ventures.