For the past several years, watching a major entertainment awards show meant watching two events at once. First was the celebration of the actual talent - the performances, writing, directing, design, and hundreds of background artists and craftspeople who turn an idea into an event that connects with millions of people.

And then there was the politics.

Awards ceremonies have increasingly become platforms where artists are expected not merely to thank their collaborators and celebrate their work, but also to use their few minutes at the microphone to address the political issues of the moment and give audiences their passionate opinions.

But Monday night’s Emmy Awards was different. For the most part, the evening was about television. Oddly enough, an awards ceremony honoring television was about television, and the relative absence of partisan politics was conspicuous enough to make us wonder if the arts might be at a turning point. Has the principle at the heart of FAIR’s mission finally begun to catch on?

Art Was in The Spotlight !

Before the ceremony began, host Mariska Hargitay talked about television in a speech that could have been lifted from the website for FAIR in the Arts. Hargitay emphasized community, not ideology or activism. She talked about the remarkable ability of stories to bring people together, explaining that actors, directors, costumers, sound designers, and others participate in creating television that “unites us.”

The idea that art is where people with profoundly different lives and beliefs can join with one another through laughter, tears, a shared investment in a story, and ultimately our common humanity, is part of what makes the arts essential to a flourishing society. It seemed that on Monday night, Hollywood agreed. There was humor, gratitude, and nostalgia. Veteran artists were celebrated alongside newer talent. Writers, directors, and craftspeople behind the screen received recognition. In essence, what was finally being said is ‘it’s the work that matters.’

Politics stayed in the wings.

Stephen Colbert’s win for The Late Show was especially revealing. Few television personalities have been more closely associated with political commentary over the past decade. The cancellation of The Late Show became entangled in political controversy, and President Trump publicly celebrated its demise while repeatedly criticizing Colbert.

Clearly, the opportunity for a political broadside from the Emmy stage was great. But it didn’t happen. Instead, Colbert made a different choice: He thanked his staff, his family, the people who had appeared on the program, and the creative community that made the show possible.

Has Hollywood Changed the Script?

On Monday night Colbert showed that the Emmy Awards was not the place to share his political views with people who just want to know who won best actor in a comedy. This is not to say that artists don’t have the freedom to create political art and speak politically. They certainly do. But freedom of expression also means an artist should not have to adopt a political identity in order to belong to an artistic community, a point made by Pluribus creator, Vince Gilligan when he said “We will never agree on everything, but we can treat each other with respect.”

For much of the past decade, artists across disciplines have found that political assumptions were intertwined with artistic participation. Questions of representation and identity increasingly influenced not merely what artists discussed, but how institutions commissioned work, distributed opportunities, and even evaluated artistic achievement. Those sentiments weren’t evident during the ceremony.

While this year’s nominees reflected considerable racial and ethnic diversity, the winners in the major acting categories were predominantly white. In recent years, that outcome might itself have become a central storyline, measured against expectations for representation. This year, however, the emphasis seemed to remain largely on the individual performances and achievements being honored. Diversity in the pool of nominees suggests that artists from a wide range of backgrounds are being recognized for exceptional work. But genuine equality also leaves room for the results to be unpredictable. If identity should neither qualify nor disqualify an artist, excellence cannot be expected to produce a predetermined demographic outcome.

FAIR in the Arts exists to support a genuinely pluralistic artistic culture in which people who disagree, sometimes profoundly, can still make extraordinary things together. The Emmys presented something close to that ideal: an awards ceremony devoted to craft, writing, performance, and the creative magic that occurs when talented people create something exceptional.

Should we take this year’s Emmys as evidence of a larger cultural shift? Did producers recognize that audiences have grown weary of political speeches? Artists celebrating artists doesn’t seem like a remarkable thing, but right now it is. And if Monday night represented even the beginning of a renewed understanding that art can bring us together without first requiring us to agree, that truly is something worth celebrating.

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In keeping with our mission to promote a common culture of fairness, understanding, and humanity, we are committed to including a diverse range of voices and to encouraging compassionate, good-faith discourse.

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The Fall and Rise of Jason Arday

the rise and downfall of Cambridge professor Jason Arday, arguing that his story raises broader questions about merit, accountability, and the institutional culture that helped elevate him. The essay considers what happens when reputation and identity become more important than scrutiny—and the consequences for both individuals and the institutions that champion them.

“There are many still alive who had a hand in this. And they are frantic to re-write his story now: Those who fawned over him. Who deliberately looked away from the many signs and portents signaling that the shaky credentials and the man himself demanded deeper scrutiny. The smug universities that treated him like both an exotic prince and a scalp brought home from the Indian Wars. The Marxists, who cynically turned him from a troubled man into a golden calf.

All of them put this man in the earth.”

Read the Full Article

Merit, Identity, and the Rhetoric of Oppression

FAIR Board of Advisors member Erec Smith examines the relationship between DEI, meritocracy, and the language of oppression. Drawing on his experience testifying before Congress, Smith argues that framing people primarily through narratives of victimhood can limit rather than empower them—and calls for an approach centered on agency, achievement, and open dialogue.

“We can reject the tragic outlook and choose one of triumph, heroism, and empowerment, not as conditions we acquire but as conditions we possess in the first place. There is hope. Scholars like Lindsey Stewart and Badia Ahad-Legardy are doing interesting work that rejects the reduction of black American life to tragedy and trauma.”

Read the Full Article

How Affirmative Action Backfires on Minority Students, and Why Colleges Do It Anyway

Kenny Xu examines the unintended consequences of race-conscious admissions policies, arguing that attempts to increase diversity can ultimately undermine the students those policies are intended to benefit. Xu focuses on the tension between institutional diversity goals and merit-based standards, and asks whether students are truly served when admissions decisions move away from individual achievement.

“When students are admitted to college for reasons other than their own merit, they will soon find themselves struggling to cope with expectations they were not prepared for. The school may score its diversity points, but minority students will often be ill-served.”

Read the Full Article

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• Sign up for a Welcome to FAIR Zoom information session to learn more about our mission.

• Share your reviews and incident reports on our FAIR Transparency website.

• View our Many Stories, One Nation curriculum.

• Help fund our work

Dear Friends of FAIR,

Accreditation is the most powerful lever in American higher education that almost no one outside of it can name. This month FAIR moved to pull it.

On September 21, FAIR filed a formal comment with the U.S. Department of Education on its proposed overhaul of the rules governing accreditation. Two days later, the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity, the federal advisory committee that reviews accreditors, met to consider whether the American Bar Association should keep its authority to accredit the nation’s law schools. FAIR requested time to address the committee and was not among those selected to speak.

Accreditors are private organizations that hold significant public power. A school that loses its accreditation also loses access to federal student aid, which totals more than $100 billion a year. For law schools, the stakes are even higher: nearly every state requires a degree from an ABA-approved school before a graduate may sit for the bar exam. That makes accreditors gatekeepers in the most literal sense, and when a gatekeeper requires institutions to adopt a particular set of beliefs, a function meant to assure educational quality quietly becomes a licensing power over the ideas practitioners must adopt.

It’s worth tracking how this process works, because the power of accreditation is easy to overlook.

First, a requirement is written into an accreditation standard. Schools then rewrite their policies to comply because the alternative is losing their students’ access to financial aid. Those policies in turn shape a school’s hiring, promotion, and curriculum. Eventually students may be compelled to take an ideologically driven course in order to graduate — a requirement set by a governing body they have likely never heard of and to which they have no ability to appeal.

FAIR and its members have seen this process play out again and again, and we seized an opportunity to correct it.

FAIR’s comment letter supports two of the Department’s proposed rules: the first would require accreditors to make decisions that are neutral with respect to viewpoint and ideology, and the second would require them to consider whether the schools they accredit protect academic freedom and intellectual diversity. We also asked the Department to limit its own rule. A requirement that institutions maintain and apply a policy is legitimate. A rule read to require any particular distribution of viewpoints among faculty would be a mandate of exactly the kind this rulemaking is meant to end, pointed in a different direction. FAIR opposes ideological mandates, not merely the ones we happen to disagree with, and we asked the Department to put that limitation in the text of the rule rather than leaving it in the preamble.

Earlier this month, the ABA’s accrediting council repealed Standard 206, which had required law schools to demonstrate “concrete action” toward diversity. While FAIR welcomes this change, we note that council members stated that their vote was aimed at protecting the council’s standing as the nation’s primary law school accreditor. Our concern is that what a council repeals in order to keep its monopoly can be restored once the monopoly is secure.

Had we been given an opportunity to speak before the committee this week, FAIR would have asked it to accept the staff recommendation and deny renewal, or at minimum decline to extend the council’s waiver of the independence requirement. More importantly, we would have urged the Department to recognize additional accreditors of law schools so that schools are not limited to a single accreditor, and students can choose among law schools that genuinely differ. We intend to keep pressing both points.

None of this stops at law schools. The rules FAIR commented on would apply to every recognized accreditor in the country, and the American Psychological Association’s Commission on Accreditation appeared before the same committee this week seeking renewal of its own recognition. Last year, that commission paused, but did not repeal, the diversity requirement in its own standards. Several FAIR members submitted their own comments urging a stricter review of the commission’s recognition.

Federal recognition is a privilege, not a right, and the government should not lend that privilege to a private body doing indirectly what the First Amendment forbids the government to do directly. Viewpoint diversity in all professions begins with structural diversity in those who accredit them.

We will report back on what comes of this. In the meantime, if you are a student, a faculty member, or a clinician who has been required to affirm something you did not believe in order to graduate, to be hired, or to keep your license, we want to hear from you.

But this isn’t work we can do alone. It only happens because people like you make it possible.

Your gift today helps FAIR stay in rooms like this one, where decisions that shape American education are made quietly and with almost no one watching. No matter the size, your donation helps us keep showing up.

Thank you for standing behind this important work!

With gratitude,

Monica Harris
Executive Director, FAIR

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Help us find your chapter

Educators Alliance

FAIR is continuing the Educators Alliance for the 2026-2027 school year to equip PK–12 educators with the knowledge, strategies, and community support they need to foster schools that are more enriching and free from bias for students and educators.

We are at a turning point for education—and with the relaunch of FAIR’s Educators Alliance, we have an opportunity to step beyond polarization and create classrooms rooted in curiosity, dignity, and respect.

Each monthly gathering will open with updates and presentations from FAIR staff, fellows, Chapter Leaders, and occasional guest speakers. Together, we’ll explore strategies for supporting educators, communities, and local chapters—and for advancing positive change at the local, regional, and national levels. Following presentations, participants will have space for open forum discussions to connect, seek advice, and coordinate on pressing issues in their schools. Breakout rooms will be divided into PK-6 and 7-12 grade levels with experienced teachers facilitating those conversations.

Educators will also be invited to contribute to a new FAIR in Education newsletter, showcasing stories, strategies, and resources from across the FAIR network.

Whether you are a teacher, paraprofessional, or administrator, join us as we continue the FAIR Educators Alliance and shape the future of education together.

There are 7 meetings to sign up for down below. Scroll up and down below to see all of the sessions!

Oct 1, 2026 07:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Every month on the First Thu, until Apr 1, 2027, 1 hr sessions, 7 occurrences

Note: Despite Zoom’s notice down below, FAIR maintains strict confidentiality of contact information provided.

OTI Conference on Political Bias and Mental Health

Earlier this year FAIR announced its collaboration with the Open Therapy Institute read here.

FAIR members are invited to join the Open Therapy Institute‘s Conference on Political Bias and Mental Health, October 9–11, in Washington, DC.

The program features a live podcast recording with Rob Henderson and Erica Komisar, a panel with Sally Satel, and more. 9.25 CE credits available.

Use code OTISPECIALRATE2026 for 50% off. Register here.

We hope to see you in DC!

Note to readers: We have paused the FAIR News podcast. If you prefer listening, rather than reading these newsletters, an audio version is available directly on the Substack app. Thank you for tuning in!

Join the FAIR Community

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• View our Many Stories, One Nation curriculum.
  

Something Unusual Happened at the Emmys

Is Hollywood moving away from the expectation that major arts events double as political platforms?

FAIR in the Arts Interim Director looks at this year’s Emmy Awards through the lens of FAIR in the Arts, asking whether Hollywood is rediscovering the power of art to bring people together without requiring them to share the same politics. With the ceremony focused on creativity, craft, and the people who make television, the Emmys offered a glimpse of the pluralistic artistic culture FAIR in the Arts seeks to support—one where artists can disagree profoundly and still create something extraordinary together.

“But freedom of expression also means an artist should not have to adopt a political identity in order to belong to an artistic community, a point made by Pluribus creator, Vince Gilligan when he said ‘We will never agree on everything, but we can treat each other with respect.’”

Read the Full Article

What Ballet Is

In this essay for The New Criterion, ballet director and FAIR Board of Advisors member Lincoln Jones considers what happens when artistic spaces become increasingly shaped by political and ideological expectations. Drawing on his experience directing American Contemporary Ballet, Jones argues for preserving art as a space for beauty, expression, and creative freedom—and asks what happens to art when artists no longer feel free to say what they think.

“Our society needs political thought, we need activism, and we need art. We don’t need them—nor can we have the best of them—in a single experience.”

Read the Full Article

Art as Political Discourse

Philosopher Vid Simoniti explores what art can contribute to political conversations that conventional debate cannot. From satire to television, Simoniti argues that different artistic forms can challenge our assumptions, complicate our perspectives, and help us see people beyond political or social categories. His essay offers a complementary perspective to Howes’s look at the Emmys: rather than asking whether art should be political, it considers how artistic expression can create space for more thoughtful and pluralistic public discourse.

“There is no claim here that some distinct know-how or wisdom is acquired, nor that artworks are substitutes for lived experience. Artworks are simply contributions to a public debate. Those that are best at it will leave their audiences with beliefs better attuned to how the world is, in ways that would not have been possible had those audiences engaged in the objective-style debate alone.”

Read the Full Article

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• Sign up for a Welcome to FAIR Zoom information session to learn more about our mission.

• Share your reviews and incident reports on our FAIR Transparency website.

• View our Many Stories, One Nation curriculum.

• Help fund our work

Dear Friends of FAIR,

Every year, the U.S. Department of Education is required to remind states and school districts of their legal obligations to parents under two federal laws: the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA). This year’s notification, issued August 26, 2026, goes a step beyond a routine reminder. It puts schools on notice about specific practices tied to parental consent and student rights. Here’s what parents, educators, and FAIR members need to know.

FERPA and PPRA are easy to confuse. FERPA governs records and gives parents the right to inspect, review, and seek correction of what a school keeps on file about their child. PPRA, on the other hand, governs data collection and limits what schools can ask students to reveal about themselves, especially on sensitive topics, without parental consent. Both laws have been on the books for decades, but enforcement has historically been uneven.

PPRA requires written parental consent, not just a heads-up, before students are surveyed on sensitive topics like mental health, political or religious beliefs, sexual behavior, or family income. The Department’s letter draws a hard line here: a passive opt-out isn’t sufficient. When an authority figure administers a survey, students rarely feel free to say no, so the responsibility falls on schools to ask parents first, not after the fact.

This matters because a quiet opt-out buried in a handbook is not the same as a parent actively saying yes. Meaningful consent requires transparency up front, not a chance to object later. FAIR has recently updated its opt-out forms to reflect this guidance, giving parents clear and legally grounded tools to understand their rights.

In a notable clarification, the Department states plainly that behavioral and emotional health screeners fall under PPRA’s protected “mental or psychological problems” category. That means schools using these tools, which are increasingly common in classrooms, must secure written parental consent beforehand. This addresses a gray area that has allowed some schools to treat mental health screening as routine, rather than as the sensitive inquiry it is, and provides clear guidelines for parents, educators, and administrators to work together as an educational team for every child.

The notification also addresses a practice FAIR has long been concerned about: schools maintaining separate records and informal files outside a student’s official record, specifically to shield them from parental review. The Department’s position is unambiguous: FERPA does not recognize a distinction between “official” and “unofficial” records. If a school maintains information directly related to a student, it is an education record, and parents have the right to inspect and review it.

Lastly, the Department’s reminder flags continued concern that schools may be limiting parents’ ability to inspect instructional materials, a core PPRA right. Schools are required to make curriculum available for review upon request, and the Department signals this will be an enforcement priority going forward. Districts don’t need a special reason to say yes to a curriculum review request because the right exists regardless of the subject matter or grade level of the student.

It’s easy to assume the Department’s guidance only matters if a parent suspects their school is doing something wrong, but these protections exist for every family, in every district, whether or not anything has gone wrong yet. Knowing what your school can ask your child, what you’re entitled to see, and what “consent” actually has to look like is what makes parents genuine partners in their child’s education. FAIR believes clear consent requirements and open access to records and curriculum benefits families across the political spectrum are a civics and transparency issue, not a partisan one.

This notification is a reminder that the law is already on parents’ side. The challenge has been enforcement and awareness. Knowing what your school is required to disclose only helps if you know the process and have the right tools to use it. FAIR has a template letter you can send to your district requesting written confirmation that it obtains affirmative written consent before any sensitive survey or mental health screener; does not maintain hidden or “unofficial” student records outside your FERPA access rights; and makes curriculum available for parent review on request. Communication with your district now is essential to a productive school year.

Here are a few practical steps every parent can take now:

• Ask for your district’s annual notification. Every district receiving federal funds is required to notify parents of their FERPA and PPRA rights at the start of the school year. If you didn’t receive a notification, ask your school directly where and when it was provided.

• Request a copy of any survey or screener before it’s administered. Confirm whether it touches on any of PPRA’s protected categories.

• Ask how your district defines an “education record.” If the answer is vague, that’s worth following up on.

• Use FAIR’s template letter. Request written confirmation from your district that it obtains affirmative written consent before any sensitive survey or mental health screener is administered, does not maintain hidden or “unofficial” student records outside your FERPA access rights, and makes curricula available for parent review on request.

FAIR will continue to track how states and districts respond to the Department’s guidance via our Chapter Network & FAIR Incident Reporting, support parents seeking to exercise their inspection and consent rights, and advocate for clear and proactive notification policies at the local level.

If your school has denied you access to your child’s records or administered a survey or screening without your written consent, we want to hear from you. Reach out through our Chapter Network or contact us directly at FAIR Incident Reporting.

Work like this — reviewing federal guidance, updating template letters and opt-out forms, and supporting parents through our Chapter Network — depends on FAIR members. If you find this kind of resource useful, please consider making a donation to help us keep producing them.

With gratitude,

Monica Harris
Executive Director, FAIR

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FAIR in Conversation is Back!

Is Woke Dead… or Just on Pause?

Have we actually turned the corner and are now walking away from Woke policies? What about Critical Race Theory – is it already so institutionalized that we don’t recognize it?

DEI offices are closing. Corporations seem to be abandoning once-mandated initiatives. Universities are retreating from some of their most controversial policies.

It’s hard to believe that a sweeping political movement built on strong, activist ideas would simply vanish overnight, and that Woke-ism, CRT and DEI have suddenly lost their popularity and influence. So, is it true that Woke-ism is over? Or is it possible that the Woke agenda has become less visible while quietly building strength and devising new tactics to reshape our institutions and culture?

This month’s FAIR In Conversation will look beyond headlines and political talking points to examine what has actually changed, and what hasn’t.

Join us for a thoughtful, evidence-based discussion as we ask the questions many are wondering, but few have carefully examined.

Sessions will run monthly through September 23rd. We hope you’ll join us!

Register Here

Note to readers: We have paused the FAIR News podcast. If you prefer listening, rather than reading these newsletters, an audio version is available directly on the Substack app. Thank you for tuning in!

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Jason Arday, the Cambridge professor considered a darling of academia and recently exposed for his many lies, plagiarism and fraud, is dead.

With this recent turn of events, we must turn our attention to the system that birthed, incubated and suckled his peculiar psychology to the degree that, in the end, he could not live with the public revelation of his true self. Or at least, of a self that differed too greatly from the mask he presented to the public to be endured.

Much is unknown as to the facts of Arday’s death at this time.

Here, though, are a few things we do know to be true: A man with a desperation for admiration and a propensity for lies was promoted unquestioningly to heights he was incapable of maintaining. An airless elevation that, when all the scrutiny missing from his early days was brought to bear, caused his tragic fall.

But the end of Arday’s story was written in its first paragraphs.

Arday had all the markers of the ideal symbol adored by the white intellectual academic left: He was handsome, charming, articulate, heroic, slightly feminine, and, with those locs, just a little bit dangerous.

He was perfect. Arday fit the Leftists’ bill, and they fit his. Thus a transactional relationship of mutual exploitation was born.

Academia adopted its favorite son. And its culture, specifically as defined by DEI policies, prohibited initial critical assessment, prevented scrutiny over time, and propelled Arday into scenarios where his con, his masquerade, his song-and-dance, had to continue at full speed.

We can ask ourselves who was playing the tune, but if we looked closely, we’d see Cambridge, its hangers-on and Arday at the instruments. This wasn’t a lone fabulist dreaming in an attic; this was a uni don, carried on the shoulders of dozens. Hundreds. A folie à beaucoup, performing hymns and anthems to the man.

The 21st Century tarantella went on, until it didn’t: Once Arday was found out, the music came to a screeching halt, and he was the only one left on the dance floor.

And there in the silence, Arday must have known–despite the university crowd that shot him, with his enthusiastic aid, to the topmost of its ivory towers–that he was now alone, exposed, and would never, ever be the lauded unicorn he had been again.

Nor would his former admirers come to his rescue.

That ballroom was empty, and echoing.

Something about that broke him.

Arday, it seems to me, was a full partner in his demise, just as he co-authored his best-selling life before he committed suicide.

And that’s a damn shame, and as sad as any death on a hot Friday in August can be.

But there is an inevitability to Arday’s end, set as it was from the start by who he was, and what academia and some ideologies are. And in some sense, it may prove to be his beginning.

There are many still alive who had a hand in this. And they are frantic to re-write his story now: Those who fawned over him. Who deliberately looked away from the many signs and portents signaling that the shaky credentials and the man himself demanded deeper scrutiny. The smug universities that treated him like both an exotic prince and a scalp brought home from the Indian Wars. The Marxists, who cynically turned him from a troubled man into a golden calf.

All of them put this man in the earth.

Arday himself, of course, conspired in this folly. But he is no longer his biographer.

As quickly as Brezhnev airbrushed Khrushchev out of the picture, Arday, both real and fake, is being removed from this moment, and replaced with a man fallen to racism, rabid right-wing politics, a ravening press. In this he will come to resemble George Floyd, Alex Pretti, Luigi Mangione.

To an extent, this ploy will work. But it shouldn’t.

Arday, and thousands of others like him, exist in our universities, companies, non-profits, everywhere from airlines to zoology departments, without the internal makeup or external accreditation required of the work. Hired to tick a box that has nothing to do with merit, this is as cruel to them as it is harmful to the businesses and the people they serve.

Downstream from this is a deluge of dangerous decisions, consumer loss of faith, lost profit, fraud, and death. DEI hiring practice is a wolf in feel-good sheep’s clothing, gnawing at America’s foundations. And in the ruin lie the men and women fetishized, pushed past their limits, and ultimately betrayed.

So, no. It wasn’t racism that killed Jason Arday. Not the kind now being offered as an excuse by some politics, anyway.

Now, once again, we will shake our heads, trying to bring the world into focus: We thought we had a reasonable idea of Arday’s story, and now down is up. He hasn’t fallen; he is quickly becoming a risen saint.

We must resist this temptation. The elements of this story are as stark as a Greek myth, and as enduring. A man riddled with hubris and a mental state we will never understand, slathered his wings with waxen lies, and with the aid of those who did not hire Arday on merit, was catapulted skyward.

Then the heat of revelation slowed his arc upwards, and brought him down.

Earth, with its relentless gravity and light, left Arday as naked and lonely and terrified as Adam.

Grounded, he gave up.

We have to leave him there, where he fell. And we have to watch carefully for those slipping away from the gathered crowd into the shadows, there to concoct the alternate fable for the fabulist.

Arday was no saint. But he had help.

We must hew to what is real, we must stand on character and merit. We must wrest this story, and all the stories they are writing now, from the hands of liars, and write a true one.

Telling Arday’s story plainly is where we can begin.

Attention must be paid.

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The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Fair For All or its employees.

In keeping with our mission to promote a common culture of fairness, understanding, and humanity, we are committed to including a diverse range of voices and to encouraging compassionate, good-faith discourse.

We are actively seeking perspectives on this topic and others. If you’d like to join the conversation, please send completed drafts to submissions@fairforall.org.

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What Are Libraries Including in Their “Inclusion” Policies?

examines the competing meanings of “inclusion” within the library profession, asking whether efforts to promote diversity and inclusion can sometimes come at the expense of intellectual freedom. Drawing on library policies and recent controversies involving books, speakers, and public events, Dudley explores the tension between creating welcoming spaces for everyone and adopting ideological approaches that may exclude certain ideas or perspectives. He argues that libraries must carefully consider what they mean by “inclusion” if they are to uphold their commitments to neutrality, equal access, and the freedom to read.

“These examples illustrate how “inclusive” policies can result, ironically, in a form of exclusion. In applying this social justice lens to library policy, librarians can end up imposing their own world views onto the craft and seeking to champion diversity and inclusion through the removal of ideas they view as harmful. All other things being equal, however, holding unpopular views–even those some find offensive–is not grounds for censorship.”

Read the Full Article

Narratives and Reality with Wilfred Reilly

In this episode of FAIR Perspectives, political scientist and FAIR Advisor Wilfred Reilly examines the gap between popular narratives and objective reality. Reilly discusses how political and cultural narratives can persist despite contradictory evidence, the role of data and expertise in challenging prevailing assumptions, and the consequences of ignoring uncomfortable facts. The conversation also explores censorship, ideological conformity, and the importance of confronting reality—even when doing so challenges deeply held beliefs.

“So the focus of censorship today, and I would actually suspect the focus of censorship throughout history, is not on removing false information, it's on removing true information that powerful people don't like.”

Watch the Full Episode

Misunderstandings of Intellectual Humility

Psychologist Todd B. Kashdan examines intellectual humility and challenges the idea that it is simply an individual trait. Drawing on psychological research, Kashdan argues that humility, curiosity, and openness to new ideas are also shaped by the social environments we create. He explores how groups and institutions can cultivate cultures that encourage questioning, perspective-taking, and a willingness to revise our beliefs in light of new evidence.

“It’s about how we, as a group, create an environment that encourages humility, that values questioning and curiosity, and that isn’t afraid to say, “I am definitely not the smartest person in the room, so where is my thinking off?”

This idea is in line with some of the latest psychological research. There’s a growing recognition that traits we usually think of as individual—like implicit bias or a growth mindset—might be better understood as a product of our social environments than about us as individuals.”

Read the Full Article

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• Sign up for a Welcome to FAIR Zoom information session to learn more about our mission.

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Dear Friends of FAIR,

I am pleased to announce the launch of FAIR’s California Chapter, spearheaded by Bay Area Chapter leader Sunil Wijeyesekera.

California writes much of the country’s education and civil rights policy before any other state does. Legislation that begins in Sacramento often reappears in Denver, Minneapolis and Springfield within a session or two. This makes FAIR’s presence in California critical to our ongoing efforts to promote a common culture of fairness and equality nationwide.

FAIR is not new to California. We’ve had city-based Chapters in the Bay Area and Los Angeles, and they have done good work in their communities. But a Chapter rooted in metropolitan areas can only do so much for members in Fresno, Bakersfield, or Redding. Because many of the challenges our California members face are initiated at the state level, our response should be organized at that level too. FAIR California gives members across the state one place to pool information, share resources, and act together.

Many of you have followed FAIR’s petition opposing the University of California’s proposed admissions mandate, which would have made a high school liberated Ethnic Studies course a prerequisite for entry into the UC system. FAIR joined other organizations in challenging this requirement, and the proposal was stopped.

The UC mandate was, in fact, worse than AB 101, California’s statewide Ethnic Studies requirement, because it would have superseded local control. Districts that had developed their own thoughtful course content would have had to conform to UC’s content standards or watch their graduates lose ground in admissions. Had the mandate passed, FAIR’s Many Stories, One Nation curriculum would have had no realistic path in California.

FAIR’s California Chapter was born out of an event at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, attended by Sunil and other Chapter members. It was there that they met Richard Sander, the UCLA professor who proposed a committee to counter the mandate. FAIR member George Maurer wrote the petition, and two other FAIR members served on the committee that carried it forward. This is precisely why FAIR’s Chapters matter. We put ourselves in the rooms where decisions are made.

Since FAIR’s California Chapter launched last month, the inquiries have not stopped. A radio host in Paso Robles has invited FAIR to discuss Ethnic Studies and what parents should look for in a curriculum. This presents a valuable opportunity to introduce Many Stories, One Nation to listeners on the Central Coast, a part of the state well outside the orbit of FAIR’s Los Angeles and Bay Area Chapters. The California Family Council has invited FAIR to join the statewide parental rights coalition it chairs. We’ve also received outreach from a local branch of Heterodox Academy, a prosecutor concerned about the California Racial Justice Act, a journalist reporting on community-building efforts in Marin County, and the International Foundation for Therapeutic and Counseling Choice.

All of this has happened since the beginning of August, and it highlights the power of our Chapter members to put FAIR on the map for groups that would otherwise have no reason to know we exist.

Our new California Chapter also gives us standing. The state’s legislature frequently introduces bills that run counter to FAIR’s principles and constitutional law. While Sunil has testified against several of them as a private citizen, it will be far more impactful if he and other FAIR members can state: “I represent FAIR, a civil rights organization with approximately 3,500 members in California with members from every corner of the state.”

The California Chapter’s first priority will be its Substack, modeled on FAIR Colorado’s, which has been one of our best examples of building a local presence. The opening articles will cover California legislation, Ethnic Studies, and state-specific parental opt-out templates. The goal is to publish one article per week, and 10 members have already volunteered to write, edit, or review. A monthly chapter Zoom will run alongside the Substack.

The Chapter has added 15 new members and a number of followers in its first weeks, along with its first paid subscribers. If you live in California, we invite you to subscribe to the California Chapter Substack, join the monthly call with members, and consider coming to Sacramento with other FAIR members in the next session. If you’re interested in writing, Sunil would love to hear from you. And if you live elsewhere, you might want to follow along, anyway — because whatever California does, your state may be doing next.

With gratitude,

Monica Harris
Executive Director, FAIR

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Help us find your chapter

How Colorado and Other States Are Testing Parental Authority, Free Speech, Child Welfare, and Clinical Professions

This will be the first in a two part series intended to highlight new laws that breach our Constitutional rights. Colorado has passed a series of laws that many parents, clinicians, and citizens believe undermine parental authority, chill free speech, place children at risk, and degrade the mental health and medical professions. In this first webinar of the Constitutional Rights Series, four leaders on the front lines will examine how these policies are playing out in real time—and what is at stake for families and free expression.

Featured speakers:

• State Representative Brandi Bradley will discuss the steady erosion of parental rights in Colorado and the legislation she has championed to restore them.

• Dr. Travis Morrell, Senior Fellow at Do No Harm, sees first-hand how bad medicine morphs into laws that impinge on civil rights.

• Dr. Eddie Waldrep, clinical psychologist, will address how therapists are increasingly pressured into self-censorship and why the practice of therapy itself is at risk.

• Erin Lee, co-founder of Protect Kids Colorado, will outline three ballot initiatives appearing before Colorado voters this November that offer a direct opportunity to strengthen protections for children’s well-being.

Join us for a clear-eyed look at the legislative landscape and the concrete paths still available to defend the rights of all Coloradans and Americans as we use one state as a case study of what to do when the state and federal laws conflict with each other.

Date: September 15, 2026

Time: 7:00 EST

Register Here

Practical Paths for Citizens Defending their Constitutional Rights

When state statutes clash with the U.S. Constitution and federal law, ordinary citizens are left asking a practical question: What can we actually do? This second webinar in the Constitutional Rights Series moves from diagnosis to action, examining both the legal roots of the problem and the lawful tools available to protect individual rights.

Featured speakers:

• James Kerwin of the Center for Individual Rights will explain how Colorado’s Anti-Discrimination Act has become the legal foundation for recent laws that elevate group identity over individual rights and free speech.

• Leigh Ann O’Neill of America First Policy Institute will walk through concrete, practical steps citizens can take to safeguard their constitutional protections when state policy conflicts with higher law.

• Monica Harris

This session is designed for parents, professionals, and engaged Coloradans and all Americans who want clarity on the legal terrain and realistic next steps for defending their rights.

Date: September 17, 2026

Time: 7:00 EST

Register Here

FAIR in Conversation is Back!

Is Woke Dead… or Just on Pause?

Have we actually turned the corner and are now walking away from Woke policies? What about Critical Race Theory – is it already so institutionalized that we don’t recognize it?

DEI offices are closing. Corporations seem to be abandoning once-mandated initiatives. Universities are retreating from some of their most controversial policies.

It’s hard to believe that a sweeping political movement built on strong, activist ideas would simply vanish overnight, and that Woke-ism, CRT and DEI have suddenly lost their popularity and influence. So, is it true that Woke-ism is over? Or is it possible that the Woke agenda has become less visible while quietly building strength and devising new tactics to reshape our institutions and culture?

This month’s FAIR In Conversation will look beyond headlines and political talking points to examine what has actually changed, and what hasn’t.

Join us for a thoughtful, evidence-based discussion as we ask the questions many are wondering, but few have carefully examined.

Sessions will run monthly through September 23rd. We hope you’ll join us!

Register Here

Note to readers: We have paused the FAIR News podcast. If you prefer listening, rather than reading these newsletters, an audio version is available directly on the Substack app. Thank you for tuning in!

Join the FAIR Community

• Join us, and become a member of FAIR.

• Become a FAIR volunteer, or join a FAIR chapter.

• Sign up for a Welcome to FAIR Zoom information session to learn more about our mission.

• Share your reviews and incident reports on our FAIR Transparency website.

• View our Many Stories, One Nation curriculum.
  

Check out the mission statement or strategic plan of most public or academic libraries, and you will swiftly encounter the near-universal assertion that libraries should strive to “create an inclusive environment.” For example, the Strategic Plan of the Brantford (Ontario) Public Library declares that “[a]n inclusive environment, where diverse backgrounds, identities and perspectives are valued” is essential to its role in the community. Some libraries have gone further and developed entire “inclusion policy statements,” such as the “Diversity and Inclusion Policy” of Hamilton (Ontario) Public Library. The library literature is similarly replete with commitments to inclusion, often in the context of providing equal opportunities for persons experiencing a disability, meeting diverse needs in facility design, welcoming seniors and integrating new immigrants.

These forms of inclusion are very positive and necessary. Most library professionals—and indeed the vast majority of the library-using public—will surely see nothing objectionable in such declarations. After all, who could oppose including all members of the public in publicly-funded libraries? If this is all the term “inclusion” means, then there should be no problem in championing it as a core professional value.

However, what few people understand is that the term inclusion is being used in professional and academic contexts to justify two rather different objectives. James Lindsay, writing at the New Discourses website, articulates the distinction between the two interpretations of inclusion as “not exclud[ing] anybody” on the one hand, and on the other a critical social justice commitment to welcoming marginalized groups by “silencing certain ideas like conservatism, meritocracy, or support for freedom of speech.” The first interpretation is integral to the mission of the public library; the second represents a potential conflict with laws governing free speech and the principle of intellectual freedom.

The first sense—being welcoming to everyone—has long been a core commitment of librarianship, and we see it articulated in the American Library Association’s 1939 Library Bill of Rights. The bill states that “A person’s right to use a library should not be denied or abridged because of origin, age, background, or views.” Over the decades this recognition has expanded to removing barriers to accessibility, and ensuring that libraries are inclusive of persons with disabilities.

This historic view of inclusion contrasts with that espoused over the past couple of decades by critical and radical librarianship—which advocates for broadening the scope of inclusion to encompass matters of race, sexuality and gender identity in pursuit of social justice. This version of inclusion fuels a more activist approach to librarianship. For example, the Inclusion Policy of the Oakville (Ontario) Public Library vows to “actively challenge and break down systemic oppression,” while the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Policy of the London (Ontario) Public Library, commits to “apply[ing] an anti-racism and anti-oppression lens to our purpose, values [and] strategic plan…”

These opposing views constitute what Stephen Macdonald calls a “Values War” in librarianship between neutrality and interventionism. To establish the nature of this “war,” Macdonald cites a 2022 article I co-wrote with John Wright, in which we articulate two distinct definitions of neutrality: a mistaken ontological belief that libraries are neutral, and a normative ethical commitment that the library worker should strive to carry out their duties in a neutral fashion. Furthermore, we specified that neutrality referred to personal and institutional values, the library’s stakeholders, transparent processes, and respect for the goals of the user. It is this latter version that we recommended, arguing that in diverse, multicultural, and multifaith societies such as ours, activism on the part of the library worker to advance their favored socio-political cause or group risks alienating at least some of those diverse constituencies.

This sense of neutrality and universality is reflected in the Canadian Federation of Library Associations’ “Position Statement on Diversity and Inclusion” which asserts that “Libraries act to ensure that people can enjoy services free from any attempt by others to impose values, customs or beliefs.” However, the critical social justice version of inclusion risks excluding books or speakers to which favored groups might object, and adjudicating rights claims unequally.

Such was the case in an incident at the Mary L. Stephens Davis Library in Davis, California (a branch of the Yolo County Library) in August of 2023: A young woman defending women-only sports and sex-based rights (also known as gender-critical feminism) as part of a program entitled “Forum on Fair and Safe Sport for Girls” (a Moms for Liberty event) was ejected from the program room by the library’s regional director for referring to trans-identified athletes as “males” and “biological men.” The incident sparked a lawsuit filed by the Alliance Defending Freedom, resulting in the library agreeing to change their policy and allow Moms for Liberty to hold their event. Additionally, the library paid the claimants $70,000 in damages and legal fees. Earlier that same year, the London (Ontario) Public Library system cancelled an event sponsored by the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship (SAFS) because their speaker Dr. Joanna Williams was to deliver a free public talk entitled “Sex, Gender, and the Limits of Free Speech on Campus.” The Library claimed (with no small irony) that the subject matter would violate their commitment to “anti-oppression” and so the Society was forced to move the event to another venue.

Furthermore, (and as I’ve previously written at Heterodoxy in the Stacks), some librarians have been practicing “shadow banning” of works they find objectionable by refusing to purchase them at all or in sufficient numbers to meet demand. Academic librarians in particular have, in large numbers, publicly disavowed efforts to represent gender-critical perspectives in libraries, whether through adult collections (e.g., purchasing copies of Abigail Shrier’s Irreversible Damage) or public speaking events (e.g., Toronto Public Library hosting Meghan Murphy in 2019). I have therefore argued that

[a]cting with such prejudice towards a particular point of view risks our social license as professionals, the permission granted by the public to act in their interest. For…members of the public, shadow-banning controversial materials concerning gender ideology results in a situation where—as fired Niagara-on-the-Lake Public Library CEO Cathy Simpson argues—the “‘freedom to read’ has come to mean the freedom to read what certain librarians have decided you should have the freedom to read.”

These examples illustrate how “inclusive” policies can result, ironically, in a form of exclusion. In applying this social justice lens to library policy, librarians can end up imposing their own world views onto the craft and seeking to champion diversity and inclusion through the removal of ideas they view as harmful. All other things being equal, however, holding unpopular views–even those some find offensive–is not grounds for censorship.

The public library as an institution has always embraced and trained its workers to expect and accommodate conflicting views. As the Canadian Federation of Library Associations acknowledges, “an acceptance of differences can place individual and collective values in conflict.” For this reason, institutions like public libraries simply cannot embrace a particular political agenda or adopt and champion the grievances of one group, while at the same professing to provide a welcoming environment to diverse, multicultural, multiethnic, and multifaith communities–who will (inevitably) not universally share those priorities.

The problem is not that some public libraries are explicitly positioning their inclusion policies as either “neutral” or “interventionist,” but rather that this distinction isn’t widely recognized. As a result, it’s not difficult to imagine a public library inclusion policy stating both that it strives to be “welcoming to everyone” while also adopting an explicitly “anti-oppression” lens in order to “dismantle systems of oppression,” while not realizing how incompatible these approaches can be in practice.

To be clear, these do not, in policy terms, represent distinctly-articulated and mutually-exclusive approaches, but rather positions existing on a spectrum, whereby an institution leans either in the direction of neutrality or interventionist radicalism. For example, a library espousing neutrality is still capable of recognizing that not all users or user communities come from the same backgrounds, economic capacities, or abilities, and may require extra attention in terms of policies or facilities so that all are afforded equal opportunities to access information. At the other end of the spectrum, political favoritism for one constituency can end up excluding the interests of other groups, resulting in library spaces not only lacking in diversity of ideas but in actually physically removing people from the library for espousing those ideas.

The rights which librarians have always professed to defend, including the freedom to read and the commitment to securing the intellectual freedom of our users, stand jeopardized. If “inclusion” actually means excluding books, ideas, and legal speech that we believe one group may find offensive–or which we personally oppose for ideological reasons–then librarianship as a publicly-trusted profession risks becoming delegitimized in the eyes of the tax-paying public. If public libraries are to promote equal opportunities for users while avoiding being drawn into identitarian conflicts, it matters a great deal what principles libraries choose to include in their definition of “inclusion.” How these centers of knowledge and community understand inclusion can determine which worldviews are allowed to remain, and which are unduly silenced.

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The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Fair For All or its employees.

In keeping with our mission to promote a common culture of fairness, understanding, and humanity, we are committed to including a diverse range of voices and to encouraging compassionate, good-faith discourse.

We are actively seeking perspectives on this topic and others. If you’d like to join the conversation, please send completed drafts to submissions@fairforall.org.

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The Artist’s Obligation is to the Work

By KJP Howes, Interim Director of FAIR in Arts, reflects on what FAIR has come to mean to her as an artist and why spaces that protect artistic freedom are increasingly important. Howes describes FAIR as a community where people can disagree, question, and debate while maintaining civility, mutual respect, and a shared commitment to art for art’s sake. She argues that artists should be free to follow their ideas wherever they lead, explore complexity, and tell the truth as they see it without having to make their work politically useful or conform to prevailing cultural expectations.

“There is enormous pressure today for artists to become activists and for works of art to affirm particular social or political perspectives. But activism is not the artist’s obligation.

The artist’s obligation is to the work. To follow an idea wherever it leads. To tell the truth as the artist sees it. To illuminate contradictions rather than conceal them. To explore the complexity of human beings rather than reduce them to categories. I believe that is the kind of art that needs to be protected and supported.”

Read the Full Article

AGAINST SELF CENSORSHIP IN THE ARTS

Heather Shayne Blakeslee examines how cultural and political pressures can cause artists to censor themselves before their work is even made. Through her conversation with painter Charles Browning, Blakeslee explores how concerns over identity, representation, and who is “allowed” to tell certain stories can leave artists questioning whether they should create at all. She argues that artists need the freedom to follow their creative instincts, take risks, and explore unfamiliar territory without being constrained by the expectations of the moment.

“In the ’90s, Browning felt that he’d become stuck as an artist, and that maybe no one needed his voice, thinking to himself, “White men have had plenty of space to speak,” he told me. Other white male artists I’ve spoken with have also become so absorbed in a certain kind of progressive worldview about whose voice should be lifted and whose we don’t need to hear from that they considered not making art anymore. I find this a troubling phenomenon, not least of which because the amount of art that should be made is not finite, nor is there a finite number of souls who deserve to make it.”

Read the Full Article

THE CASUALTIES OF THE CULTURE WAR

Angel Eduardo explores what happens to art when everything is expected to serve a political purpose. Eduardo argues that artists need the freedom to create work that is strange, challenging, beautiful, or simply human—not art designed to “further the cause.” When ideological conformity becomes the standard by which art is judged, we risk losing the experimentation, complexity, and dissent that make art valuable in the first place.

“We also need institutions that are viewpoint neutral, so that the rebels, nonconformists, oddballs, kooks, and contrarians have the chance to contribute something without having to tick identity boxes or fulfill ideological requirements. We need works that stir something in us, that cause us to stop and think, that get us roaring with laughter and seething with rage. It’s all valuable. It’s all necessary. It’s all human.”

Read the Full Article

Join the FAIR Community

• Join us and become a member of FAIR.

• Become a FAIR volunteer, or join a FAIR chapter.

• Sign up for a Welcome to FAIR Zoom information session to learn more about our mission.

• Share your reviews and incident reports on our FAIR Transparency website.

• View our Many Stories, One Nation curriculum.

• Help fund our work

Dear Friends of FAIR,

FAIR has submitted a comprehensive comment letter to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) supporting its investigation into The Walt Disney Company for potential unlawful employment discrimination practices related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.

In March, the FCC opened a public docket following evidence that Disney has systematically prioritized demographic characteristics over individual merit in hiring, promotion, and content decisions. FAIR argues that Disney’s practices violate both federal civil rights law and the FCC’s public interest standards for broadcast licensees.

FAIR’s letter addresses two interconnected problems. First, Disney’s explicit racial and gender targeting in recruitment, measurable demographic quotas in hiring and promotion, and performance evaluations tied to “diversity metrics” constitute unlawful employment discrimination. The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard made clear that using race as a factor in decision-making, even with good intentions, violates equal protection principles.

The individuals harmed are clear: those denied opportunities because they don’t fit demographic targets, and those hired partly on the basis of race or sex rather than qualifications. But the harm extends beyond individual employees. When advancement is conditioned partly on demographic representation, the workplace message is inescapable: merit is secondary to identity.

Second, and equally important, Disney’s DEI infrastructure threatens editorial independence. The FCC has long recognized that broadcast licenses carry a “public trustee” obligation. Licensees must serve the public interest, which includes ensuring that a broad spectrum of viewpoints is represented in news, entertainment, and children’s programming.

When hiring, promotion, and content decisions are filtered through DEI metrics, an ideological test replaces editorial judgment. Producers, writers, and on-air talent are selected not solely based on talent and vision, but in part on demographic alignment and ideological conformity with the company’s stated commitments. The result is narrower, not broader, viewpoint diversity, particularly around issues of identity, equity, and race.

FAIR’s filing argues that this isn’t simply an internal corporate matter. Disney holds broadcast licenses for ABC and affiliated stations granted by the FCC in trust for the public. Those licenses require compliance with federal civil rights law and service in the public interest.

If the FCC investigation finds violations, the consequences can and should extend beyond Disney. FAIR’s filing calls on the FCC to use this investigation as a clear signal to all broadcasters that employment discrimination and ideological conformity, even when framed as diversity and inclusion, will be subject to enforcement action.

When large corporations condition employment on demographic conformity and use that conformity to shape what millions of Americans see and hear, they narrow the marketplace of ideas and institutionalize orthodoxy while claiming to advance inclusion.

FAIR has always believed that civil rights law protects everyone — not as a function of demographic category, but as a matter of principle. That principle is now being tested in the FCC docket. The Commission’s response will signal whether equal protection means what it says, and whether viewpoint diversity is something the FCC actually intends to protect.

Holding major institutions accountable to equal protection law requires resources — legal expertise, strategic filing, sustained pressure. If you share FAIR’s commitment to equal protection for all, please consider making a gift today to help us sustain this fight.

With gratitude,

Monica Harris
Executive Director, FAIR

Subscribe now to receive FAIR News weekly in your Inbox

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Other Ways to Give

How Colorado and Other States Are Testing Parental Authority, Free Speech, Child Welfare, and Clinical Professions

This will be the first in a two part series intended to highlight new laws that breach our Constitutional rights. Colorado has passed a series of laws that many parents, clinicians, and citizens believe undermine parental authority, chill free speech, place children at risk, and degrade the mental health and medical professions. In this first webinar of the Constitutional Rights Series, four leaders on the front lines will examine how these policies are playing out in real time—and what is at stake for families and free expression.

Featured speakers:

• State Representative Brandi Bradley will discuss the steady erosion of parental rights in Colorado and the legislation she has championed to restore them.

• Dr. Travis Morrell, Senior Fellow at Do No Harm, sees first-hand how bad medicine morphs into laws that impinge on civil rights.

• Dr. Eddie Waldrep, clinical psychologist, will address how therapists are increasingly pressured into self-censorship and why the practice of therapy itself is at risk.

• Erin Lee, co-founder of Protect Kids Colorado, will outline three ballot initiatives appearing before Colorado voters this November that offer a direct opportunity to strengthen protections for children’s well-being.

Join us for a clear-eyed look at the legislative landscape and the concrete paths still available to defend the rights of all Coloradans and Americans as we use one state as a case study of what to do when the state and federal laws conflict with each other.

Date: September 15, 2026

Time: 7:00 EST

Register Here

Practical Paths for Citizens Defending their Constitutional Rights

When state statutes clash with the U.S. Constitution and federal law, ordinary citizens are left asking a practical question: What can we actually do? This second webinar in the Constitutional Rights Series moves from diagnosis to action, examining both the legal roots of the problem and the lawful tools available to protect individual rights.

Featured speakers:

• James Kerwin of the Center for Individual Rights will explain how Colorado’s Anti-Discrimination Act has become the legal foundation for recent laws that elevate group identity over individual rights and free speech.

• Leigh Ann O’Neill of America First Policy Institute will walk through concrete, practical steps citizens can take to safeguard their constitutional protections when state policy conflicts with higher law.

• Monica Harris

This session is designed for parents, professionals, and engaged Coloradans and all Americans who want clarity on the legal terrain and realistic next steps for defending their rights.

Date: September 17, 2026

Time: 7:00 EST

Register Here

FAIR in Conversation is Back!

Is Woke Dead… or Just on Pause?

Have we actually turned the corner and are now walking away from Woke policies? What about Critical Race Theory – is it already so institutionalized that we don’t recognize it?

DEI offices are closing. Corporations seem to be abandoning once-mandated initiatives. Universities are retreating from some of their most controversial policies.

It’s hard to believe that a sweeping political movement built on strong, activist ideas would simply vanish overnight, and that Woke-ism, CRT and DEI have suddenly lost their popularity and influence. So, is it true that Woke-ism is over? Or is it possible that the Woke agenda has become less visible while quietly building strength and devising new tactics to reshape our institutions and culture?

This month’s FAIR In Conversation will look beyond headlines and political talking points to examine what has actually changed, and what hasn’t.

Join us for a thoughtful, evidence-based discussion as we ask the questions many are wondering, but few have carefully examined.

Sessions will run monthly through September 23rd. We hope you’ll join us!

Register Here

Note to readers: We have paused the FAIR News podcast. If you prefer listening, rather than reading these newsletters, an audio version is available directly on the Substack app. Thank you for tuning in!

Join the FAIR Community

• Join us, and become a member of FAIR.

• Become a FAIR volunteer, or join a FAIR chapter.

• Sign up for a Welcome to FAIR Zoom information session to learn more about our mission.

• Share your reviews and incident reports on our FAIR Transparency website.

• View our Many Stories, One Nation curriculum.
  

I first discovered FAIR four years ago when I witnessed the effects of identity politics, bullying, and cancellations across different spaces in education, medicine, and the arts. While volunteering on several initiatives in Los Angeles that aligned with FAIR’s work, I had the privilege of joining projects whose members were thoughtful, intellectually grounded, and genuinely wonderful people, committed to human dignity, freedom of expression, and civil liberties. Again and again, I found that the people who support and contribute to FAIR’s many endeavors represent a pinnacle in generosity and professionalism, and a willingness to stand for pro-human principles.

As I began to focus more on FAIR’s role in both education and the arts, I took on active roles reviewing FAIR’s extraordinary “Many Stories, One Nation” curriculum, co-hosting Fair in Conversation, facilitating FAIR’s Playwright’s Think Tank, its Novel and Poetry Writers Group, and leading one of their many chapters. Throughout, I came to appreciate something increasingly rare: a genuine diversity of thought. For me, especially as an artist, FAIR is a tribe that isn’t tribal. If you were to join one of FAIR’s monthly In-Conversation Zooms or listen to one of the writers’ gatherings, you’d hear disagreement, questioning, arguments, and also appreciation, compassion, and laughter.

In the artist groups, we understand that supporting the art is more important than agreeing on politics, and we are openly able to share our artistic achievements, struggles, disappointments, and convictions. What holds us together is not agreement on every issue, but a commitment to art for arts’ sake, and especially for the principles of civility and mutual respect that allow people who disagree to continue speaking and listening to one another.

This commitment is where FAIR in Arts comes into play and where the organization’s work occupies a particularly important place. The arts are often among the first subjects cut from schools and among the last endeavors supported by public and private institutions. Yet, the arts remain among the most powerful ways a civilization reflects on itself.

After more than thirty years working in theater and publishing, as well as teaching philosophy, writing and literature, I have come to believe that while politics may be downstream from culture, culture is itself downstream from the arts. Depending, of course, on the art.

I’m not talking about the art that imitates whatever ideas happen to be fashionable. Not art created to secure political affirmation or demonstrate conformity. And not art whose expression has been decided before the artist begins the work. I mean art that is deeply human. Art that is introspective, curious, unsettling, original. Art that finds itself in places its creator did not expect to go. Art that asks questions without knowing in advance the acceptable answers.

Today, as throughout history, that kind of art can be discouraged. It can be defunded, censored, ridiculed, and temporarily driven underground.

FAIR in the Arts is where I found the support that I needed to rebuild my own courage to be that kind of artist. It is where I found a community that encouraged me to do what the work itself required without constantly looking over my shoulder for censorship, cancellation, or ideological judgment. And it is also where I discovered that the artists and audiences I hoped were still out there–really are. I have come to think of FAIR in the Arts as a kind of home that is increasingly difficult for an artist to find, which is why I’m committed to supporting it as a space that gives artists the security to think openly and widely, and to make art without first having to demonstrate political usefulness.

There is enormous pressure today for artists to become activists and for works of art to affirm particular social or political perspectives. But activism is not the artist’s obligation.

The artist’s obligation is to the work. To follow an idea wherever it leads. To tell the truth as the artist sees it. To illuminate contradictions rather than conceal them. To explore the complexity of human beings rather than reduce them to categories. I believe that is the kind of art that needs to be protected and supported.

Your contribution, whether monetary or in-kind, helps FAIR create opportunities for artists who still believe in art that reaches us where identity and politics are subordinate to our shared humanity. I hope you will consider supporting FAIR in the Arts to help us preserve a place for artists willing to take the risks that real art has always required. And I hope you’ll subscribe to the FAIR in the Arts newsletter and join us in what comes next.

Warmly,

Karen Howes
Interim Director, Fair in the Arts

karen.howes@fairforall.org

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Donate

We welcome you to share your thoughts on this piece in the comments below. Click here to view our comment section moderation policy.

The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Fair For All or its employees.

In keeping with our mission to promote a common culture of fairness, understanding, and humanity, we are committed to including a diverse range of voices and to encouraging compassionate, good-faith discourse.

We are actively seeking perspectives on this topic and others. If you’d like to join the conversation, please send completed drafts to submissions@fairforall.org.

Civil Discourse, Civic Friendship, and Civil Liberties

This week, we highlighted Robert P. George’s reflections on the role of intellectual humility in preserving meaningful civil discourse and protecting civil liberties. George argues that recognizing our own fallibility is essential to genuine truth-seeking, particularly when engaging with people whose political, moral, or religious convictions differ from our own.

Rather than treating disagreement as a battle to be won, the essay encourages readers to approach opposing viewpoints as opportunities for dialogue, challenge, and deeper understanding. George ultimately warns against both relativism and dogmatism, making the case that a shared commitment to truth can help sustain civic friendship even amid profound disagreement.

“People of goodwill, intellectually and morally serious people of every shade of belief, have in common a desire to know the truth and to live by the truth. We want to avoid falling so deeply in love with our opinions, whatever they happen to be, that we prefer them to the truth. If something we believe, even if it’s a belief we cherish, is in fact false, we want to know that. We want to get ourselves in line with the truth, even if it means abandoning an opinion we had deeply held. Even when the truth is a hard truth, we’d rather know it than continue to embrace a falsehood, even a comfortable and comforting falsehood.”

Read the Full Article

What Yale Law School Taught Me About Free Speech and Friendship

Jonathan Kay reflects on his time at Yale Law School, where political disagreements were often sharp but did not prevent students with very different beliefs from becoming friends. He contrasts that experience with today’s increasingly polarized, digitally mediated political culture, where ideological differences can become barriers to meaningful relationships and conversation. Kay argues that real-world friendships create an important incentive to listen, debate in good faith, and remember that the person on the other side of an argument may also be a colleague, neighbor, or friend. His essay ultimately asks what is lost when political identity becomes so central that it prevents us from engaging with people who see the world differently—and whether genuine friendship across disagreement can help preserve the open dialogue essential to a healthy civic culture.

“By today’s standards, however, these discussions were reasonably civil, in part because they were conducted exclusively in person, not on social media (which didn’t yet exist). YLS is a tiny place (a third the size of Harvard’s law school) and so you had to keep in mind that your debating opponent might also be your friend, law-journal colleague, roommate, softball-team teammate, or racquetball partner (yes, that sweatband-and-Tab sport was still a thing back then). These real-world social and civic connections kept your tongue in check.”

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What Happens When We Stop Trying to Win a Difficult Conversation?

Willow Paul explores how curiosity, empathy, and a willingness to listen can transform difficult conversations. Drawing from her own experience and work in public deliberation, Paul argues that understanding someone’s perspective does not require agreeing with them—it requires looking beyond conclusions to the experiences and values that shaped them. Ultimately, the essay offers a case for choosing curiosity over certainty and seeing disagreement not as a contest to win, but as an opportunity to learn from one another and build stronger communities.

“The goal, I discovered, should never have been agreement. It was understanding, the point where someone’s view makes sense to you as something a person could reasonably arrive at, even when reaching that point is hard. That was exactly what my father and I had never had a way to give each other. It showed me the path I wanted to take in life.

Even beliefs that look irrational on the surface usually trace back to a real concern or value underneath. Understanding that root does not mean every belief holds up equally against facts. Some do not. What it means is that curiosity about the person’s underlying concern is what makes deep value-based conversation possible. You can respect where someone is coming from and still hold the line on what is true.”

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Dear Friends of FAIR,

I’m thrilled to announce Karen Howes as Interim Director of FAIR in the Arts, stepping into the role following Brent Morden’s departure. Brent gave this department its shape and gathered the first community of artists around it, and much of what Karen inherits exists because he built it. We’re grateful for that foundation and energized by her vision for what comes next.

Karen is no stranger to the FAIR in the Arts community. She serves as Co-Leader for FAIR’s Tennessee Chapter, has built and sustained FAIR’s writers’ groups, and has been a driving force behind FAIR in Conversation. Anyone who has joined one of those gatherings knows that Karen brings genuine curiosity about other artists’ work and has a rare talent for making a group of fiercely independent creatives feel like they belong to something bigger and more meaningful.

She has spent more than three decades as a playwright, teacher, and builder of arts institutions. An award-winning writer with more than 30 plays produced across the country, Karen has received the Maxim Mazumdar New Play Award, the Bennett Prize for comedy, and a Susan Smith Blackburn nomination. She has taught more than 50 undergraduate and graduate courses, founded Atlanta’s Young Actors Ensemble and Pierian Springs Academy, and holds an MFA from UC Riverside.

Karen comes to this role with a clear diagnosis of the persistent problem in the arts and years of relationships to draw on in addressing it. Artists who value free expression and viewpoint diversity have spent more than a decade discovering how few doors will open to them. Grant funding, prize committees, and programming decisions are shaped by a narrow set of assumptions about what art is for and who is permitted to make it. As a result, many talented people find themselves working in isolation, each of them convinced they’re the only one who sees, or is impacted by, intolerance and groupthink in the arts.

But they aren’t alone, and Karen is committed to ensuring artists know this.

FAIR in the Arts has consistently emphasized that politics is downstream from culture. If we hope to move this country away from identity politics and toward individual dignity, curiosity, and open inquiry, the arts will be instrumental in making this shift. Our community of artists is one of the features that most distinguishes FAIR from other organizations working in this space, and under Karen’s leadership I believe it can become one of our defining initiatives.

Her first priority will be to strengthen communication among the artists already in FAIR’s orbit so our members know each other’s names and their work. Her second will be outreach to artists who share our values but have never heard of FAIR and aren’t aware that there is a home here for them. Her third will be laying the foundation for the department’s long-term growth, so FAIR in the Arts can do more to serve artists tomorrow than it does today.

Karen described the challenge this way:

“Artists, and writers especially, seem to embody two seemingly opposing instincts: we are fiercely independent, typically working alone, yet we also value and need connection, friendship, and a community of people who understand what we are trying to create. One of my primary goals as we re-infuse FAIR in the Arts with energy and purpose is to find meaningful ways for our artists to support one another, champion one another’s work, and bring more artists into the fold.”

Karen is already weighing a range of ideas, some her own and some proposed by FAIR artists and past artist grant recipients. One example: a regular roundup of our artists’ new books, album releases, exhibitions, performances, and screenings, so members can find and champion one another’s work. If you are an artist — whether a writer, a musician, a painter, a filmmaker, an actor, a dancer, a designer, or a poet — and you have been quietly grateful that FAIR exists without ever raising your hand, this is the moment to raise it. Karen wants to know who you are and what you’re working on. Feel free to introduce yourself to her [<karen.howes@fairforall.org>] and share what you’ve done and what’s coming next. We want our members to know what FAIR artists are making.

Plenty of people lament what has happened to the arts, but Karen has spent years building the relationships that make doing something about it possible. That’s the spirit I want FAIR in the Arts to carry forward, and it’s why I’m confident handing her the reins.

But this isn’t work we can do alone. It only happens because people like you make it possible.

Your gift today helps us transform FAIR in the Arts into a nurturing and invigorating home for artists who believe in free expression, viewpoint diversity, and artistic excellence over ideological conformity. No matter the size, your donation helps us reach the artists who are still working alone.

Thank you for standing behind this work, and please join me in welcoming Karen!

With gratitude,

Monica Harris
Executive Director, FAIR

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How Colorado and Other States Are Testing Parental Authority, Free Speech, Child Welfare, and Clinical Professions

This will be the first in a two part series intended to highlight new laws that breach our Constitutional rights. Colorado has passed a series of laws that many parents, clinicians, and citizens believe undermine parental authority, chill free speech, place children at risk, and degrade the mental health and medical professions. In this first webinar of the Constitutional Rights Series, four leaders on the front lines will examine how these policies are playing out in real time—and what is at stake for families and free expression.

Featured speakers:

• State Representative Brandi Bradley will discuss the steady erosion of parental rights in Colorado and the legislation she has championed to restore them.

• Dr. Travis Morrell, Senior Fellow at Do No Harm, sees first-hand how bad medicine morphs into laws that impinge on civil rights.

• Dr. Eddie Waldrep, clinical psychologist, will address how therapists are increasingly pressured into self-censorship and why the practice of therapy itself is at risk.

• Erin Lee, co-founder of Protect Kids Colorado, will outline three ballot initiatives appearing before Colorado voters this November that offer a direct opportunity to strengthen protections for children’s well-being.

Join us for a clear-eyed look at the legislative landscape and the concrete paths still available to defend the rights of all Coloradans and Americans as we use one state as a case study of what to do when the state and federal laws conflict with each other.

Date: September 15, 2026

Time: 7:00 EST

Register Here

Practical Paths for Citizens Defending their Constitutional Rights

When state statutes clash with the U.S. Constitution and federal law, ordinary citizens are left asking a practical question: What can we actually do? This second webinar in the Constitutional Rights Series moves from diagnosis to action, examining both the legal roots of the problem and the lawful tools available to protect individual rights.

Featured speakers:

• James Kerwin of the Center for Individual Rights will explain how Colorado’s Anti-Discrimination Act has become the legal foundation for recent laws that elevate group identity over individual rights and free speech.

• Leigh Ann O’Neill of America First Policy Institute will walk through concrete, practical steps citizens can take to safeguard their constitutional protections when state policy conflicts with higher law.

• Monica Harris

This session is designed for parents, professionals, and engaged Coloradans and all Americans who want clarity on the legal terrain and realistic next steps for defending their rights.

Date: September 17, 2026

Time: 7:00 EST

Register Here

FAIR in Conversation is Back!

What is the difference between the isms? Socialism, Capitalism, Fascism, Communism…

The United States was founded on a constitutional system that places individual liberty, limited government, and the rule of law at its center. Yet throughout history, competing political philosophies, including socialism and communism, have offered very different answers to fundamental questions about the relationship between the individual, the state, property, equality, and freedom.

How different are these competing visions? Can they coexist within America’s constitutional framework? And what do we actually mean when we use labels like communism, socialism, capitalism, fascism, and democracy?

Whether you believe communism represents a growing influence in American life, think the concern is overstated, or simply want a deeper understanding of the issues, this conversation is designed to encourage thoughtful discussion rather than partisan talking points.

Sessions will be virtual, open to all FAIR members, and designed to be as accessible as they are substantive. You don’t need to have read anything in advance. Just bring your curiosity, your willingness to listen, and your commitment to engage in good faith.

. Sessions will run monthly through September 23rd. We hope you’ll join us!

Register Here

Note to readers: We have paused the FAIR News podcast. If you prefer listening, rather than reading these newsletters, an audio version is available directly on the Substack app. Thank you for tuning in!

Join the FAIR Community

• Join us, and become a member of FAIR.

• Become a FAIR volunteer, or join a FAIR chapter.

• Sign up for a Welcome to FAIR Zoom information session to learn more about our mission.

• Share your reviews and incident reports on our FAIR Transparency website.

• View our Many Stories, One Nation curriculum.
  

A universal and ineradicable feature of the human condition is our fallibility. We can be, and all of us sometimes are, wrong about things. Even when doing our best to be attentive, intelligent, dispassionate, judicious, and honest, we can draw conclusions that are unwarranted and unsound.

Our fallibility extends not only to minor, relatively unimportant matters; we can be wrong about big, profoundly important questions, too—questions of meaning and value; questions of human nature, the human good, human dignity, and human destiny. Even while sincerely regarding and proclaiming ourselves to be on the side of justice and human rights, we can be wrong—deeply, even tragically—about what justice requires or what are, in truth, human rights. And we can be wrong even when we are supremely confident in our convictions.

Consider that each and every one of us, at every conscious moment of our lives, holds in his or her head some beliefs that are false. That’s certainly not because we want to believe things that are untrue. It’s simply a feature of the human condition.

People of goodwill, intellectually and morally serious people of every shade of belief, have in common a desire to know the truth and to live by the truth. We want to avoid falling so deeply in love with our opinions, whatever they happen to be, that we prefer them to the truth. If something we believe, even if it’s a belief we cherish, is in fact false, we want to know that. We want to get ourselves in line with the truth, even if it means abandoning an opinion we had deeply held. Even when the truth is a hard truth, we’d rather know it than continue to embrace a falsehood, even a comfortable and comforting falsehood.

If, however, we are to swap out at least some of the false beliefs we hold for true beliefs, then not only must we respect the right of freedom of speech of people who wish to challenge our opinions, we must also—and this is more difficult—be willing to actually listen to their challenges and criticisms and engage them in an honest, truth-seeking spirit. This is the upshot of what it means to practice intellectual humility—a virtue without which true civil discourse, and therefore true civic friendship, is impossible.

It is important to understand what civil discourse is—and isn’t. Civil discourse is not mere politesse. It does not consist of merely listening politely and patiently while someone makes the case for a view that is contrary to one’s own opinions. In genuine civil discourse, each party to the discussion or debate allows himself genuinely to be challenged by his interlocutor. Why? Because the goal—shared by the partners—is not winning a victory for oneself or one’s party or tribe; rather, it is getting to, or deepening understandings of, the truth. Participants in civil discourse argue, sometimes passionately, but not with the ultimate objective of winning—as in competitive high school or collegiate debate. And so, the conversation partners consider and assess the arguments presented by their ostensible adversaries in their most favorable light. Each sincerely entertains the possibility that the view he or she currently holds is wrong and should be abandoned.

Of course, this can be very hard indeed.

Why? Because of another feature of the human condition. We human beings do tend to fall in love with our opinions. There are beliefs that we deeply hold and, indeed, cherish—especially moral, political, and religious beliefs—that we come to regard as so integral to who we are that we experience challenges to them as personal attacks or assaults on our very selves.

In other words, we human beings tend to wrap our emotions more or less tightly around our convictions.

Now, that’s not necessarily a bad thing; it’s certainly not bad in itself. In a certain respect, it’s a good thing, and indeed a necessary thing. We need some measure of emotional investment in our convictions if we are to get anything done. And this is true not only when it comes to serving big, important causes that may require courage and sacrifices; it’s true of even mundane, but nevertheless important, matters. For example, it would be one thing to have the bare belief that it would be good to get the kids up in the morning, washed, dressed, fed, and sent off to school. But it takes some degree of emotional investment in that belief to actually get oneself to do the work of getting the kids up, washed, dressed, fed, and off to school. Those of you who are parents know what I’m talking about.

So, it’s not wrong—quite the contrary—to wrap our emotions around our convictions. Indeed, we should aspire to be people of conviction who are prepared to act (and sacrifice, and take risks, and bear burdens) for what we believe is good and right and true. And yet, if we wrap our emotions too tightly around our convictions, if we fail to leave at least a little distance between ourselves and our beliefs– enough to consider our fallibility and the possibility that we could be wrong and those who disagree with us and challenge us could be right, or at least partially right)—then we are on the fast track to becoming ideologues, dogmatists, and even fanatics. There are few vices that place freedom of speech and other basic civil liberties in greater jeopardy than ideology, dogmatism, and fanaticism.

What’s more, these vices are the great enemies of the very value that ideologues, dogmatists, and fanatics purport to be upholding, namely truth. They jeopardize truth and undermine the love of truth and the enterprise of truth seeking precisely because they neglect that central truth about the human condition with which I began these reflections, namely, the universal and ineradicable reality of human fallibility.

Truth and truth seeking are under threat today from two opposing impulses. One is the denial, be it formal or merely implicit, of the existence or possibility of objective truth. The spirit of relativism or subjectivism claims that there is no truth to be attained, and therefore none to be sought. Or that there is merely “your truth,” and “my truth,” but no such thing as the truth—at least about questions outside the domain of empirical inquiry—or that “truth,” so called, is simply the rule of the strong, of whoever can force his will upon others.

If there is no truth, then there is no reason to believe in or respect the rights of others, including their right to freedom of speech, or of thought, inquiry, judgment, conscience, and religion. Where there are competing or conflicting desires or perspectives, there is no point in having a conversation or trying to reason with one another, for if there is no truth there is simply nothing to reason about or toward. Contrary to what one hears at cocktail parties or in freshman philosophy classes, relativism—especially moral relativism—is the predicate not of tolerance, but of repression and authoritarianism. Where there is nothing to reason about, because there is no truth, there are no reasons for respecting liberty; there is only power.

At the same time, and now we get to the second great threat to truth, the belief in truth, when severed from an authentic, deep, not merely notional but genuinely existential acknowledgement of one’s own fallibility, poses no less a threat to liberty and to truth itself. Such a belief devolves into dogmatism. Those holding it see no reason to entertain challenges to, or criticisms of, what they deeply believe. They know the truth, or so they suppose, know it more or less completely and perfectly, and therefore have nothing to learn from those with whom they disagree. Their critics, as believers in and promoters of falsehoods, are to be regarded and treated as enemies of truth. They are certainly not to be engaged in the hope of learning from them; rather, they are to be defeated, even destroyed.

By contrast, someone who rejects both relativism, which denies the possibility of objective truth, and absolutism, which refuses to reckon with the reality and universality of human fallibility, will regard reasonable people of goodwill with whom he or she disagrees not as enemies to be conquered but rather as friends who engage each other with the shared goal of getting at the truth of disputed questions or more deeply understanding the truth. In the domain of politics, genuine truth seekers are bound together as civic friends, despite their differences of perspective or belief, by a common goal, a common good, namely the great good of truth. For the sake of this good, they respect and honor freedom of speech, even for those whom they judge to be profoundly mistaken, and engage each other in a truth-seeking spirit—that is, with a view not only to correcting the other’s errors, if, indeed, they are errors, but also learning from them.

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Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University. This is the text of remarks delivered at the 2026 ARC conference in London.

We welcome you to share your thoughts on this piece in the comments below. Click here to view our comment section moderation policy.

The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Fair For All or its employees.

In keeping with our mission to promote a common culture of fairness, understanding, and humanity, we are committed to including a diverse range of voices and to encouraging compassionate, good-faith discourse.

We are actively seeking perspectives on this topic and others. If you’d like to join the conversation, please send completed drafts to submissions@fairforall.org.

I Am Not Your “Black Friend” — An Experience of Race.

This week, we examine race, identity, belonging, and the assumptions that can shape how we see ourselves and one another. In “I Am Not Your ‘Black Friend,’” offers a deeply personal reflection on growing up without rigid racial categories, confronting them later in life, and navigating the expectations placed on her because of her appearance and identity. From experiences with racial bullying and cultural erasure to confronting racism from different communities, Fox considers what it means to be seen as an individual rather than a representative of a particular group. Ultimately, her essay is about the freedom to define yourself beyond the labels others place upon you—and the importance of embracing the complexity of our own stories.

“As an adult, standing up still looks like calling out injustice even when it doesn’t immediately create change, and, more importantly, accepting myself. I used to hold firmly to the identity of multiracial. I would suck in my lips, copy trends in Eurocentric fashion and never wear my hair out. Being multiracial made others more comfortable, and I experienced much better treatment when I was “exotic.” I have since accepted the racial marker Black, partially for convenience, but also because if that is what others already see me as, then fine—I will be Black, but I will be my version of Black.

I will wear my afro. I will have a story that goes against stereotypes. I will see myself and others as human first. I am an artist, an author, Polish, American, Bahamian, French-speaking, human... and yes, I am also proudly Black.”

Read the Full Article

White Guilt Releases on October 6

This week, we look at how ideas about race, identity, and history shape the stories we tell about ourselves and our society. In “White Guilt Releases on October 6,” filmmaker Eli Steele reflects on the long journey behind his new documentary, the ideas that inspired it, and his father’s decades-long examination of what he calls “white guilt.” Steele considers how these questions have increasingly entered public debate—and asks what happens when a society assigns permanent guilt to an entire race. The piece offers a look at the film’s origins, the cultural conversations surrounding it, and the broader questions Steele hopes the documentary will provoke.

“The one thing I admire about my father is that he took the blows for warning about white guilt when there was no reward for it. There was only a cost. This was in the 1990s and the 2000s, which were brutal, isolating times in the culture wars. CNN and the New York Times and the like iced him out completely. Universities stopped inviting him. If the left could not debate his ideas, they would isolate him to the margins. His books were dropped from bookstores and libraries.”

Read the Full Article

Deracialization Now

Deracialization Now explores the possibility of moving beyond race as a defining category of identity and public life. Greg Thomas argues for separating race from culture and heritage, allowing people to embrace their histories without being bound by racial classifications or stereotypes. Drawing on thinkers including Glenn Loury, John McWhorter, Kmele Foster, and Charles Johnson, the essay asks whether a more individualistic, human-centered approach to identity could help Americans move toward greater pluralism and shared civic life.

“By definition and intent, race separates and divides. Conflating race and culture twists and tightens this division. Separating or bracketing culture from race tends toward appreciating human commonalities and differences in a more nuanced manner than judging and stereotyping groups of people based on skin color will allow.”

Read the Full Article

Join the FAIR Community

• Join us and become a member of FAIR.

• Become a FAIR volunteer, or join a FAIR chapter.

• Sign up for a Welcome to FAIR Zoom information session to learn more about our mission.

• Share your reviews and incident reports on our FAIR Transparency website.

• View our Many Stories, One Nation curriculum.

• Help fund our work

Dear Friends of FAIR,

FAIR is delighted to announce that John Wood Jr. has joined FAIR’s Board of Directors.

John is no stranger to this community. He has served on FAIR’s Board of Advisors, lending his counsel, his platform, and his considerable moral clarity to our work. In stepping into a governing role, he deepens a relationship that has already shaped how we think about our mission.

For those meeting John for the first time: he spent years as National Ambassador for Braver Angels, the nation’s largest cross-partisan bridge-building organization. He is a former Vice-Chairman of the Republican Party of Los Angeles County and a former Congressional nominee. He hosts The John Wood Jr. Show, and his writing on race, faith, politics, and civic life has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Quillette, The Washington Examiner, and elsewhere. He advises The American Project and 1776 Unites, and is a member of the Progress Network and the New Pluralists Collaborative.

What connects all of John’s work is a single, stubborn conviction that he has spent his career defending: that Americans who disagree profoundly can still find common ground, and that the work of proving this is the most urgent civic task of our time. John argues this position with passion and rigor to audiences on both sides of the political and cultural divide, where it is often unwelcome. He epitomizes the disposition FAIR wants in its governance.

John’s appointment to FAIR’s Board arrives at a pivotal moment. He recently left his role at Braver Angels to found The OmniAmerican Society.

The OmniAmerican Society begins as a Substack, but John’s ambition for it is considerably larger. Over the next five years, he intends to build a multimedia network — podcasts, video, journalism, even music production — designed to do two things at once.

The first is narrative. Omni exists to drive a new story of American culture, identity, and politics into the mainstream of our national conversation. In John’s words, the goal is to “redefine the mainstream itself.”

The second is engagement. Omni’s network is meant to serve as a front door, bringing Americans from across the political and cultural spectrum into direct contact with the organizations working to repair our country’s frayed relationships on the ground.

John frames the project with an analogy worth sitting with. A student of the Civil Rights Movement, he observes that the movement operated along two dimensions: method and narrative. The marches, the sit-ins, the boycotts, the freedom rides were the methods; the story of an America transformed and carried by Dr. King into the nation’s aroused conscience was the narrative.

That narrative reached Americans through the new media of its era. Television was still in its infancy in the 1960s, young, but it brought the moral drama of Selma and Birmingham into living rooms across the country. Without it, the aroused conscience of the nation might never have been moved.

Today’s new media are online: podcasts, video channels, and social platforms. John’s argument is that the movement for pluralism and civic repair has built a great deal of method but comparatively little narrative. The vehicle has yet to be built.

This is where we see opportunity.

FAIR has created the method through our chapters in communities across the country, legal advocacy, and a growing body of work in education, including our Many Stories, One Nation curriculum. What we have less of is reach: the ability to place our case before Americans who have never heard of FAIR and have no particular reason to come looking for us.

A venture built to drive attention toward civic repair and an organization built to give people something concrete to do with that attention fit together naturally. Omni can carry the story, and FAIR can offer the on-ramp: a chapter to join, a petition to sign, a curriculum to bring to a school board.

The alignment is clear, the relationship is strong, and the conversation about what we might build together has already begun. We will keep you posted as it develops.

We are grateful that a person of John’s experience and caliber has chosen to invest more deeply in FAIR. Please join us in welcoming him. And we encourage you to follow The OmniAmerican Society on Substack. What John is building deserves an audience, and we would like ours to be part of it.

With gratitude,

Monica Harris
Executive Director, FAIR

Subscribe now to receive FAIR News weekly in your Inbox

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How Colorado and Other States Are Testing Parental Authority, Free Speech, Child Welfare, and Clinical Professions

This will be the first in a two part series intended to highlight new laws that breach our Constitutional rights. Colorado has passed a series of laws that many parents, clinicians, and citizens believe undermine parental authority, chill free speech, place children at risk, and degrade the mental health and medical professions. In this first webinar of the Constitutional Rights Series, four leaders on the front lines will examine how these policies are playing out in real time—and what is at stake for families and free expression.

Featured speakers:

• State Representative Brandi Bradley will discuss the steady erosion of parental rights in Colorado and the legislation she has championed to restore them.

• Dr. Travis Morrell, Senior Fellow at Do No Harm, sees first-hand how bad medicine morphs into laws that impinge on civil rights.

• Dr. Eddie Waldrep, clinical psychologist, will address how therapists are increasingly pressured into self-censorship and why the practice of therapy itself is at risk.

• Erin Lee, co-founder of Protect Kids Colorado, will outline three ballot initiatives appearing before Colorado voters this November that offer a direct opportunity to strengthen protections for children’s well-being.

Join us for a clear-eyed look at the legislative landscape and the concrete paths still available to defend the rights of all Coloradans and Americans as we use one state as a case study of what to do when the state and federal laws conflict with each other.

Date: September 15, 2026

Time: 7:00 EST

Register Here

Practical Paths for Citizens Defending their Constitutional Rights

When state statutes clash with the U.S. Constitution and federal law, ordinary citizens are left asking a practical question: What can we actually do? This second webinar in the Constitutional Rights Series moves from diagnosis to action, examining both the legal roots of the problem and the lawful tools available to protect individual rights.

Featured speakers:

• James Kerwin of the Center for Individual Rights will explain how Colorado’s Anti-Discrimination Act has become the legal foundation for recent laws that elevate group identity over individual rights and free speech.

• Leigh Ann O’Neill of America First Policy Institute will walk through concrete, practical steps citizens can take to safeguard their constitutional protections when state policy conflicts with higher law.

• Monica Harris

This session is designed for parents, professionals, and engaged Coloradans and all Americans who want clarity on the legal terrain and realistic next steps for defending their rights.

Date: September 17, 2026

Time: 7:00 EST

Register Here

FAIR in Conversation is Back!

What is the difference between the isms? Socialism, Capitalism, Fascism, Communism…

The United States was founded on a constitutional system that places individual liberty, limited government, and the rule of law at its center. Yet throughout history, competing political philosophies, including socialism and communism, have offered very different answers to fundamental questions about the relationship between the individual, the state, property, equality, and freedom.

How different are these competing visions? Can they coexist within America’s constitutional framework? And what do we actually mean when we use labels like communism, socialism, capitalism, fascism, and democracy?

Whether you believe communism represents a growing influence in American life, think the concern is overstated, or simply want a deeper understanding of the issues, this conversation is designed to encourage thoughtful discussion rather than partisan talking points.

Sessions will be virtual, open to all FAIR members, and designed to be as accessible as they are substantive. You don’t need to have read anything in advance. Just bring your curiosity, your willingness to listen, and your commitment to engage in good faith.

. Sessions will run monthly through September 23rd. We hope you’ll join us!

Register Here

Note to readers: We have paused the FAIR News podcast. If you prefer listening, rather than reading these newsletters, an audio version is available directly on the Substack app. Thank you for tuning in!

Join the FAIR Community

• Join us, and become a member of FAIR.

• Become a FAIR volunteer, or join a FAIR chapter.

• Sign up for a Welcome to FAIR Zoom information session to learn more about our mission.

• Share your reviews and incident reports on our FAIR Transparency website.

• View our Many Stories, One Nation curriculum.
  

Growing up, it never occurred to me that my Polish-European grandmother was White and that, by extension, my mother and her siblings were biracial. Even when I was forced to relocate preschools, suffer a mental breakdown, and eventually enter homeschooling (at my own request) as a result of racial bullying, it did not occur to me. My parents never taught me terms like Black, White, Asian, etc., and when I came home and asked what such terms meant—having heard them from others—my parents always replied, “They don’t matter. We are not a box of crayons; we are all just people.” (Back then ‘skin-colored crayons’ were not as common as they are today.)

I can still recall attending my school’s “International Week.” It was a celebratory week aimed at honoring the range of identities at our school, and yet I was told “you can’t be from more than one place” when I chose to honor my Polish, American, and Bahamian identities. Later in life, I recall a student of mine saying “oh well you’re not really American then” when I told her I had grown up in the Bahamas—I am a US citizen.

As a result of my parents’ attitudes toward race—or lack thereof—I grew up without a concept of race and with a concept of humanity centered on simply seeing others as people. I learned to judge people by their actions and not their race, religion, or identity. When I moved to the U.S. at 16, things changed. My relocation came during the BLM marches. At the time I didn’t know much about the movement and thus I felt great fear for mine and my family’s safety. I worried we would be ‘mislabeled’ as Black and face violence as a result. I also faced the classic immigrant experience: new culture shock and loss of the previous culture. I was told the uninspired jokes of “go back to your country” from White friends, to which I replied, “I am in my country. I am a citizen.” I went to a majority White private school. Even then, many “White” students were diverse ethnically, in language, or in religion. What I noticed was a culture of complete erasure of diverse identities and the perpetual retelling of ‘the single story’ rather than one that reflected the reality of diverse people coming in all shades, shapes and histories.

In hopes of feeling more accepted, I joined my high school’s Black Student Union (BSU) but left after one day. The club felt like a living stereotype, with fried chicken and watermelon served and a movie about the “hood experience” being played. We were in the middle of very wealthy downtown Boca. Rather than connecting to the experience of Blackness in front of them, the school created a narrative they felt the students should—even must—subscribe to. It is silly to honor one story of race while ignoring the one in front of you. It creates the idea that all people of a given demographic must have the same experiences and, therefore, beliefs rather than taking each person as an individual with unique experiences that don’t always have to be associated with their phenotype.

In fact, the only reason I attended the club in the first place was because another student told me, “You should join the BSU.” When I told her I wasn’t Black, she dismissed me and told me, “Well, too bad. You look Black.”

That was one of the first times I had ever considered race and had the sudden and horrifying realization that others saw me as Black first and human second. I became more aware of things said to me, of expectations placed on me, of the deviations from ‘the norm’ that I lived, and how my race seemed to wear me.

When I got to college, I had the unwelcome experience of having the N-word written on my dorm door in all caps. I reported the incident to my school’s counseling center, a place I had been visiting to help with the transition of moving halfway across the country from my family in a nation I was still adjusting to. I was effectively dismissed and told there was nothing to be done. I was livid, not because that word necessarily meant anything to me—another term I did not grow up hearing—but because I knew what it meant to others and that, yet again, my whole identity had been collapsed into just my race.

Most recently, I experienced racism in the workplace. My manager began a joke she called “Racism Fridays.” It entailed her berating me with subtle and not-so-subtle racist comments, criticism, and outright remarks. I was only a month or so into the job when it began, and I put up with it for nearly two months after. When—advised by friends and my boyfriend—I did speak up about it, nothing much was done. Our boss got both sides of the story, apologized, and then arranged for my manager to apologize to me. She did, although the apology was mixed in with excuses and passing the whole thing off as an ill-placed joke.

I would like to note, too, that not all my racist experiences have come from White people or non-Black people of color, but also from other Black people.

When my White Canadian boyfriend and I go out for dinner, we have to brace for heckling and comments implying that our “race mixing” is negative. We were once even yelled at during a concert and ultimately had to relocate to another side of the crowd. “Sista, how do you feel about being with this White man?” I was asked, among other harsher comments.

What did these experiences teach me? First off, that hate can come from anywhere. The idea that racism is always White people toward Black people is false. Anyone can be racist, and anyone can face racism.

I learned, too, that I myself will never identify as Black first and won’t allow anyone else to identify me as such. I am not your Black friend or a Black author. I am a friend and an author. My race already precedes me, but I can work to change that.

Standing up is hard and often fruitless, but not pointless. Standing up for myself as a child, when I was segregated from peers, denied recess, punished for no other reason than my race, and accused of bullying when I, in fact, was being bullied, looked like advocating for homeschooling. As a teen and early college student, it was reporting hate, speaking up, holding to my beliefs in crowds, and walking away when I realized situations weren’t for me. Sometimes things can’t be solved in the moment, but that doesn’t mean one should allow themselves to be subjected to mistreatment.

As an adult, standing up still looks like calling out injustice even when it doesn’t immediately create change, and, more importantly, accepting myself. I used to hold firmly to the identity of multiracial. I would suck in my lips, copy trends in Eurocentric fashion and never wear my hair out. Being multiracial made others more comfortable, and I experienced much better treatment when I was “exotic.” I have since accepted the racial marker Black, partially for convenience, but also because if that is what others already see me as, then fine—I will be Black, but I will be my version of Black.

I will wear my afro. I will have a story that goes against stereotypes. I will see myself and others as human first. I am an artist, an author, Polish, American, Bahamian, French-speaking, human... and yes, I am also proudly Black.

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Challenges in Navigating the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of American History

This week, we highlighted an essay by Matt Marsden examining how conflicting narratives about American history can shape our understanding of the country’s founding, Native American history, and ideals of liberty. Responding to a PBS video that he argues presents an overly simplified account of America’s past, Marsden calls for greater context and nuance when examining the country’s complicated history.

Marsden explores the dangers of replacing one revisionist narrative with another, arguing that difficult chapters of American history should neither be erased nor reduced to simple categories of good and evil. Ultimately, the essay makes the case for greater informational literacy and intellectual humility, encouraging readers to research competing claims, acknowledge historical complexity, and engage in good-faith dialogue about the past.

“Cycles of competition and cooperation are the norm throughout human history—an unfortunate aspect of our shared humanity.”

“But while American history has seen no shortage of bias, it must be maintained that replacing one revisionist history with another isn’t the answer. Such stark representations may instead create misunderstanding, confusion, distrust, or even resentment, while stunting efforts towards progress for all parties.”

Read the Full Article

Ferguson at Twelve: The Lie That Divided a Nation

This week, Eli Steele revisits the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and the competing narratives that emerged in its aftermath. Steele examines how the “Hands up, don’t shoot” account became a powerful cultural narrative despite subsequent investigations challenging key elements of the story, and argues that its legacy continues to shape how Americans understand race, policing, and justice.

Steele explores how the Ferguson narrative moved beyond the original event and into schools, universities, politics, and racial justice organizations, arguing that the reluctance to question an established narrative can have consequences long after the original facts have been established. Ultimately, the essay asks what happens when political and cultural narratives become so entrenched that challenging them is treated as a moral failing rather than an invitation to examine the evidence.

“On August 9, 2014, Michael Brown was eighteen years old when he was shot and killed by Officer Darren Wilson. Within hours of the shooting, Dorian Johnson, who had been with Brown prior to the shooting, told the world that Brown had his hands up in the air and said, don’t shoot. The “Hands up, don’t shoot” slogan spread across the world like wildfire…It became, to use my father’s phrase, a poetic truth, the kind of lie that a nation believes not because the evidence supports it but because it confirms what many Americans suspected of their nation.”

Read the Full Article

Why Knowledge-Rich Curriculum Never Wins

This week, we highlighted an essay by Robert Pondiscio examining why knowledge-rich education remains difficult to implement despite growing evidence that background knowledge is essential to reading comprehension and critical thinking. Pondiscio argues that the barriers are not primarily scientific, but instead stem from competing educational philosophies, institutional structures, teacher autonomy, local control, and an emphasis on skills over shared knowledge.

Pondiscio explores the tension between educational pluralism and a common body of knowledge, as well as the challenges posed by AI, which can make information easier to access while making genuine understanding more important than ever. Ultimately, the essay argues that while the evidence for knowledge-rich education may have won the debate, the deeper cultural and structural obstacles to putting that evidence into practice remain.

“None of these obstacles are disputes about cognitive science. Most analysts and advocates now accept that knowledge matters. There is nearly universal acceptance that reading comprehension depends heavily on what readers already know. Said differently, the obstacles to knowledge-rich education are not scientific; they are ideological, professional, structural, political, cultural, and increasingly technological. That should be sobering for curriculum advocates. It is a profound misunderstanding of the current moment to assume that knowledge-rich education is merely a matter of implementation.”

Read the Full Article

Is the Backlash Against Tech in Schools Going Too Far?

This week, we highlighted an essay by Lina Eroh examining the growing backlash against technology in schools and the need to distinguish between tools that hinder learning and those that genuinely support it. Eroh acknowledges legitimate concerns about excessive screen time, artificial intelligence, and the loss of deep thinking and human connection, but argues that treating all educational technology as equally harmful risks eliminating tools that can provide meaningful academic and accessibility support.

Eroh ultimately calls for a more evidence-based approach to ed-tech, asking whether a tool actually improves student outcomes, strengthens rather than replaces good teaching, and serves a clear educational purpose. Rather than framing the debate as technology versus no technology, she argues that schools should focus on understanding when technology helps students learn—and when it gets in the way.

“The past decade offers plenty of reasons for skepticism. Schools adopted lots of technology rapidly, often without clear evidence that it improved student outcomes. One study of tools built specifically for education purposes found only 1 in 5 showed any evidence of impact. It’s no wonder that teachers experienced firsthand how devices and poorly designed products could interrupt learning rather than support it and that parents watched children struggle with attention, social connection, and mental health in an increasingly digital world.

Those lessons matter. But another lesson matters too: Schools, teachers, and students continue to face real challenges, and technology can help address them.”

Read the Full Article

Join the FAIR Community

• Join us and become a member of FAIR.

• Become a FAIR volunteer, or join a FAIR chapter.

• Sign up for a Welcome to FAIR Zoom information session to learn more about our mission.

• Share your reviews and incident reports on our FAIR Transparency website.

• View our Many Stories, One Nation curriculum.

• Help fund our work

Dear Friends of FAIR,

Every August, parents around the country wrestle with the same question: “I read something in my child’s handbook that doesn’t seem right. What am I supposed to do about it?”

Parents have the instinct that something doesn’t feel right, but they often lack the language that helps them articulate their concerns or the confidence that expressing them is worth the trouble.

FAIR has the language, and it’s yours to use.

As families gear up for the 2026–27 school year, we’ve updated two of our most-requested templates. Both are grounded in current federal law, and both are written to be sent by an ordinary parent, not a lawyer.

The Title IX template

The legal landscape has changed, yet many districts have not kept pace.

In 2024, the Department of Education issued a Title IX Final Rule expanding the statute beyond sex to include gender identity. On January 9, 2025, a federal court vacated that rule in State of Tennessee v. Cardona. As a result, no rule expanding Title IX to gender identity is legally enforceable anywhere in the country today. The Department’s Office for Civil Rights has been explicit that Title IX’s requirements control, regardless of state law or athletic association rules.

The Department has also demonstrated that it will enforce the restored framework directly. Its case against Jefferson County Public Schools, Colorado’s second-largest district, escalated from a finding of violation to a formal warning to enforcement action. In July, the district sued the Department rather than revise its policies.

Our template asks districts to proactively review their policies on restrooms, locker rooms, overnight accommodations, and athletics. Districts with the foresight to adjust their policies now can maintain control over how and when they communicate with families. Districts that wait for a complaint risk facing a ten-day compliance order and public backlash in the middle of a crisis.

You can download the template here.

The Pronoun Policy template

On November 6, 2025, the full Sixth Circuit, sitting en banc, ruled in Defending Education v. Olentangy Local School District that a public school district could not discipline students for declining to use a classmate’s preferred pronouns. The court held the policy amounted to viewpoint discrimination and compelled speech under the First Amendment, finding no evidence the speech would materially disrupt the classroom.

The ruling follows a line running back to West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, where in 1943 the Supreme Court held that schoolchildren could not be forced to salute the flag. As Justice Jackson wrote: “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox.”

Our letter, available for download here, guides a district through the Olentangy ruling and asks it to review any policy that compels pronoun use, whether directly or through the threat of discipline under an anti-harassment rule.

These templates are fully editable and allow you to:

• Raise a specific concern in writing, with the case law already cited for you

• Ask your district to act on its own schedule, rather than under federal pressure

• Create a written record in case you ever need one

All you need to do is add your district’s name, list the policies that concern you, sign the letter, and cc the school board.

To be clear, these templates do not ask schools to be unkind to any student, nor do they demand that any child be excluded, ignored, or made to feel unsafe. Every student deserves dignity, and a school that cannot extend that to all of its students has failed at something more fundamental than policy.

These letters present a straightforward request that should be uncontroversial: public schools must follow federal law and ensure that no student is compelled to affirm a belief they do not hold. Those twin commitments protect every child in the building, including the children whom a given policy was intended to help.

In our experience, a calm, well-sourced letter from a parent who has done their own research is one of the most effective tools a family has.

Maintaining these legal resources requires time and effort. Every FAIR template is researched, drafted, and reviewed before it’s published, then revised each time a court moves the ground underneath it. We provide them because we believe a parent’s ability to advocate for their child should never depend on whether they can afford an attorney, and the families who most need these letters are rarely the families who can hire one.

If these templates are useful to you, please consider making a donation today to help us keep these resources freely available to every family who needs them.

Thank you for standing with us.

With gratitude,

Monica Harris
Executive Director, FAIR

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How Colorado and Other States Are Testing Parental Authority, Free Speech, Child Welfare, and Clinical Professions

This will be the first in a two part series intended to highlight new laws that breach our Constitutional rights. Colorado has passed a series of laws that many parents, clinicians, and citizens believe undermine parental authority, chill free speech, place children at risk, and degrade the mental health and medical professions. In this first webinar of the Constitutional Rights Series, four leaders on the front lines will examine how these policies are playing out in real time—and what is at stake for families and free expression.

Featured speakers:

• State Representative Brandi Bradley will discuss the steady erosion of parental rights in Colorado and the legislation she has championed to restore them.

• Dr. Travis Morrell, Senior Fellow at Do No Harm, sees first-hand how bad medicine morphs into laws that impinge on civil rights.

• Dr. Eddie Waldrep, clinical psychologist, will address how therapists are increasingly pressured into self-censorship and why the practice of therapy itself is at risk.

• Erin Lee, co-founder of Protect Kids Colorado, will outline three ballot initiatives appearing before Colorado voters this November that offer a direct opportunity to strengthen protections for children’s well-being.

Join us for a clear-eyed look at the legislative landscape and the concrete paths still available to defend the rights of all Coloradans and Americans as we use one state as a case study of what to do when the state and federal laws conflict with each other.

Date: September 15, 2026

Time: 7:00 EST

Register Here

Practical Paths for Citizens Defending their Constitutional Rights

When state statutes clash with the U.S. Constitution and federal law, ordinary citizens are left asking a practical question: What can we actually do? This second webinar in the Constitutional Rights Series moves from diagnosis to action, examining both the legal roots of the problem and the lawful tools available to protect individual rights.

Featured speakers:

• James Kerwin of the Center for Individual Rights will explain how Colorado’s Anti-Discrimination Act has become the legal foundation for recent laws that elevate group identity over individual rights and free speech.

• Leigh Ann O’Neill of America First Policy Institute will walk through concrete, practical steps citizens can take to safeguard their constitutional protections when state policy conflicts with higher law.

• Monica Harris

This session is designed for parents, professionals, and engaged Coloradans and all Americans who want clarity on the legal terrain and realistic next steps for defending their rights.

Date: September 17, 2026

Time: 7:00 EST

Register Here

FAIR in Conversation is Back!

What is the difference between the isms? Socialism, Capitalism, Fascism, Communism…

The United States was founded on a constitutional system that places individual liberty, limited government, and the rule of law at its center. Yet throughout history, competing political philosophies, including socialism and communism, have offered very different answers to fundamental questions about the relationship between the individual, the state, property, equality, and freedom.

How different are these competing visions? Can they coexist within America’s constitutional framework? And what do we actually mean when we use labels like communism, socialism, capitalism, fascism, and democracy?

Whether you believe communism represents a growing influence in American life, think the concern is overstated, or simply want a deeper understanding of the issues, this conversation is designed to encourage thoughtful discussion rather than partisan talking points.

Sessions will be virtual, open to all FAIR members, and designed to be as accessible as they are substantive. You don’t need to have read anything in advance. Just bring your curiosity, your willingness to listen, and your commitment to engage in good faith.

. Sessions will run monthly through September 23rd. We hope you’ll join us!

Register Here

Note to readers: We have paused the FAIR News podcast. If you prefer listening, rather than reading these newsletters, an audio version is available directly on the Substack app. Thank you for tuning in!

Join the FAIR Community

• Join us, and become a member of FAIR.

• Become a FAIR volunteer, or join a FAIR chapter.

• Sign up for a Welcome to FAIR Zoom information session to learn more about our mission.

• Share your reviews and incident reports on our FAIR Transparency website.

• View our Many Stories, One Nation curriculum.