Dear Friends of FAIR,

Since FAIR’s founding, we’ve advocated for pro-human values, civil liberties, and viewpoint diversity in courtrooms, in classrooms, and in workplaces. But these values don’t take root through advocacy alone. They take root when people gather in town halls, school board meetings, and local libraries to have honest conversations about the kind of institutions they want.

April is National Volunteer Month, a reminder that the values we advocate live in the communities you’re building every day. FAIR has a strong and growing Chapter network, and Volunteer Month inspires us to invest in making it even more robust by supporting the leaders who carry our mission into their communities. Every dollar donated to FAIR Chapters this month goes directly toward equipping them to do the work that can only be done at the local level:

Bring expert voices to communities. Fund travel and honorariums to bring speakers and thought leaders directly to local audiences.

Organize civil discourse events. Host town halls, coffee chats and other gatherings where community members can learn to respectfully disagree and find common ground.

Print and distribute curriculum materials. Give parents, educators, and school administrators a firsthand look at what a balanced, rigorous alternative to Liberated Ethnic Studies can look like.

None of this happens without your support. A direct gift this month can transform your local Chapter’s vision into reality.

If you want to see an example of FAIR Chapters in action, look no further than the Twin Cities. This month, supporters in Minnesota are hosting a series of community preview events for FAIR’s curriculum, Many Stories, One Nation, in partnership with the Minnesota Partnership for Achievement:

• White Bear Lake — Monday, April 21, 6:30–8:00 PM

• Anoka Hennepin — Monday, April 28, 7:00–8:30 PM

• Elk River — Wednesday, April 30, 5:30–7:30 PM

If you live in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area and are interested in attending any of these sessions, you can register here.

What’s happening in Minnesota is a model, and it’s one we can replicate nationwide. When chapters are resourced and energized, they become the infrastructure that keeps schools and other institutions balanced and creates communities where honest disagreement and shared humanity can coexist.

That’s what we’re building toward in 2026, and your support is what makes it possible.

If you’re ready to give, donate here. If you’re ready to organize, reach out to your local chapter leader or contact us directly. Whatever your capacity, there’s a place for you in this work.

This April, we hope you’ll move beyond conversation and into your community. The future we’re working toward isn’t built in a single courtroom or a single classroom. It’s built by people like you, showing up where it matters most.

With gratitude,
The FAIR Team

Donate Here

Join Us

The Lost Art of Listening: Building Empathy Across Differences

Join FAIR Advisors and for this upcoming webinar, moderated by FAIR Executive Director Monica Harris. We will discuss the need to develop emotional intelligence and perspective-enhancing skills and how deep listening strengthens democratic participation and community bonds. This theme also supports FAIR's commitment to respectful civil discourse, which is a foundational element of our Many Stories, One Nation curriculum.

Register Here

The Body-Mind Connection: Rethinking How Medicine Approaches Adolescent Development

Mood swings, difficulty focusing, disrupted sleep, irregular periods are all hallmarks of adolescence and not necessarily signs of disorder. Yet antidepressant prescriptions for teens have risen 66% in six years, ADHD diagnoses now affect more than 6 million children, and hormonal contraception is routinely prescribed to teenage girls for symptoms that may reflect normal development. Join FAIR and for a candid conversation about what parents are often not told before a prescription is written and what questions they have every right to ask. Drawing on real cases and peer-reviewed research, this webinar will explore the physiological context behind adolescent symptoms and ask what informed consent should really mean before a family agrees to a prescription that could change a developing brain.

Register Here

Read Dr. Kendra Kautz on our Substack this week:

FAIR Educators Alliance 2025-2026

Join the FAIR Educators Alliance for the 2025–2026 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.

Each monthly gathering will open with updates and presentations from FAIR staff, fellows, Chapter Leaders, and occasional guest speakers. Together, we’ll explore strategies to support educators, communities, and local chapters—and to advance positive change at the local, regional, and national levels.

Following the 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.

Meetings: First Thursday of each month at 7 PM ET via Zoom Duration: 1 hour

Join Us!

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.
  

Adolescence has always been one of the most biologically intense periods of human development. The brain is rapidly reorganizing, hormone systems are activating, and emotional processing pathways are maturing. Mood swings, heightened stress sensitivity, and difficulty regulating internal states are not signs of disorder; rather, they are features of a developing mind and body learning to adapt to their environment.

Yet increasingly, these normal developmental experiences are being pathologized. Antidepressant dispensing among adolescents and young adults ages 12–25 increased by 66.3% between 2016 and 2022, driven largely by rising prescriptions among female adolescents. ADHD diagnoses have surged to approximately 11.4% of U.S. children ages 3–17, more than 6 million children. Hormonal contraception is routinely prescribed to teenage girls not for pregnancy prevention but for acne, painful periods, or mood fluctuations. Research from the Guttmacher Institute found that about one-third report using it solely to manage these symptoms while 82% of birth control pill users report taking it for at least one non-contraceptive reason.

Medications can help. The question is whether they are being introduced before other physiological avenues have been explored and whether families are receiving the full picture before they consent.

The Developing Brain Needs Context

One reason adolescent symptoms are so easily mistaken for disorder is neurological timing. The limbic system — which processes emotions and reward — becomes highly active during puberty, while the prefrontal cortex — which governs impulse control and emotional regulation — does not fully mature until the mid-twenties. Adolescents are wired to experience strong emotional signals before the regulation systems to manage them are fully online. This is development, not disease, and it should be the starting point of every clinical conversation about adolescent behavioral and emotional symptoms.

Case One: When Treatment Shifts the Problem

A 12-year-old girl presented with severe anxiety and persistent insomnia. After several months, she was prescribed an SSRI. Her sleep improved; physiologically, this makes sense, as SSRIs increase serotonin availability, and serotonin is a biochemical precursor to melatonin, which regulates the sleep–wake cycle.

About a year later, however, her menstrual cycle stopped.

Serotonin signaling interacts closely with the hypothalamic pathways that regulate reproduction, and SSRIs have been associated with elevated prolactin levels, a hormone that can suppress ovulation. In adolescents, whose hormonal systems are still establishing their long-term rhythms, these interactions carry particular weight: disrupted ovulatory cycles can affect progesterone production and the development of peak bone mass, both critical processes during these years.

This case also opens a broader question about hormonal contraception, which is frequently prescribed to teenage girls presenting with these exact symptoms — irregular cycles, mood changes, acne — as a first-line response. Hormonal contraceptives work by suppressing ovulation and disrupting the brain-ovary signaling axis. Research has shown that women using oral contraceptives often exhibit altered cortisol regulation compared to non-users, reflecting changes in the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis that governs stress response, energy metabolism, and immune function. When ovulation is suppressed, the presenting symptom may improve while the underlying physiological imbalance continues unaddressed, and families are rarely told this is the trade-off.

For this patient, after addressing nutritional gaps — including B vitamins and magnesium, which play documented roles in neurotransmitter synthesis and hormonal regulation — her menstrual cycle eventually returned. But the original question was never fully answered: what physiological factors drove her anxiety and insomnia in the first place? Sleep quality, nutrient status, blood sugar regulation, and stress physiology all influence how the developing brain responds to its environment. These were not part of the initial clinical conversation.

Case Two: When Environment Is Diagnosed as Disorder

A 12-year-old boy was referred for ADHD evaluation after parents and school staff reported difficulty focusing, high physical energy, and an inability to sit still. Stimulant medication was recommended.

A review of his daily routine told a different story: most of his day was spent sitting in class, in front of a computer, or watching television. He had almost no opportunity for sustained physical movement.

Neurologically, this matters. Movement generates sensory input from muscles, joints, and the inner ear that helps regulate the brain’s attention and stress response systems. Physical activity stimulates dopamine production, increases brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), and improves blood flow to prefrontal regions involved in focus and learning. When children spend most of the day sedentary, the brain receives far less of this regulatory input.

Compounding this, the high-intensity digital stimulation this child experienced through video games, and social media, strongly activates dopamine pathways. Over time, the brain adapts by reducing receptor sensitivity through a process called downregulation. Everyday tasks like reading or sitting in a classroom then feel comparatively under-stimulating. This is not necessarily a disorder. It may be a mismatch between environment and neurology.

Stimulant medications address the symptom by increasing dopamine and norepinephrine signaling, but they also activate the sympathetic nervous system and increase cortisol output. For a developing brain that depends on adequate sleep, nutrition, and movement, the downstream effects of appetite suppression, sleep disruption, and altered reward pathway sensitivity can create new challenges even as they resolve the presenting one. Some patients require dosage escalation as the brain adapts, a pattern that warrants honest conversation with families upfront.

Instead of beginning medication, we increased physical activity, introduced regular movement breaks, improved sleep hygiene, reduced screen exposure, and adjusted nutrition. Within weeks, his focus improved significantly.

Informed Consent Means More Than a Doctor’s Signature

Clinicians have an obligation to give families the full picture before a prescription is written. Medicine calls this informed consent. But in adolescent psychiatry and primary care, the standard is too often applied narrowly, covering immediate benefits and common short-term side effects while leaving out the broader physiological context in which these medications operate.

Families deserve to know that SSRIs interact with reproductive hormone pathways. That stimulant medications alter developing reward systems and may require escalation over time. That hormonal contraception changes cortisol regulation and stress physiology in ways not fully reversible on a predictable timeline. These are not fringe concerns. They are documented in the peer-reviewed literature, and they are relevant to any family weighing a prescription for a child whose brain and endocrine systems are still under construction.

Equally important, families deserve to know what has not been evaluated before a prescription is written. Has this child’s sleep been assessed? Their nutrient status? Their physical activity levels? The degree of chronic stress in their environment? When these factors go unexamined, medication may relieve a symptom while leaving the underlying physiology unchanged or introducing new disruptions into systems that are still developing.

The time constraints of modern clinical practice make these conversations difficult. But that difficulty is a systemic problem that should not be resolved at the patient’s expense, especially when the patient is twelve years old.

Rethinking What We Owe Adolescents

None of this argues against medication when it is genuinely warranted. There are situations where pharmaceutical intervention is appropriate and even necessary for suicidal ideation, severe depression, psychosis, or debilitating anxiety that significantly impairs a young person’s ability to function. That threshold exists for good reason.

But many of the symptoms that bring adolescents into medical offices — difficulty focusing, mood fluctuations, sleep disturbances, menstrual discomfort, irritability — are also features of normal neurological and hormonal development. Adolescence is not a disease. Treating it as one, without first exploring the physiological context, does a disservice to patients and families alike.

Before reaching for a prescription, families deserve the opportunity to ask deeper questions:

• Is their child sleeping well?

• Are they moving their body regularly?

• Are they receiving the nutrients their developing brain requires?

• Are underlying stressors being identified and addressed?

Symptoms are not always signs of disorder. Sometimes they are signals from a developing body that needs support and an invitation for clinicians to look more carefully before writing a prescription.

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We invite you join us for a webinar with Dr. Kendra Kautz on Wednesday, May 6th, at 7pm ET, for Part 2 in our series on The Mind-Body Connection: Rethinking How Medicine Approaches Adolescent Development.

Register Here

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Building a Culture of Dialogue: A Conversation with Harvard’s Intellectual Vitality Initiative

Last week, FAIR Executive Director Monica Harris joined the Harvard Alumni for Free Speech for a conversation with key leaders of the Intellectual Vitality Initiative. Co-sponsored by FAIR and the Council on Academic Freedom, the conversation explored ongoing efforts to strengthen intellectual diversity and open inquiry on campus. The conversation also featured Danielle Allen, Edward J. Hall, Ari Kohn, and John Evangelakos.

Monica Harris: Our curriculum [manystoriesonenation.com] teaches students to identify logical fallacies…and, crucially, they learn to spot these errors in arguments in their own thinking, not just in others…And, this is a framework I’m particularly proud of…it’s one of the most powerful in our curriculum, it’s called the “Competing goods framework,” where students learn that most controversies involve legitimate but conflicting values. And I think this understanding transforms how they approach disagreement, because this disconnect often fuels most of the divisive discourse we see. For example, safety vs. freedom, or, individual rights vs. community welfare; they’re both good, but [which is more important] depends on your values…So, once students internalize this framework, it fundamentally changes how they approach these very difficult conversations…[and] helps shift focus from “winning an argument,” to understanding the values that the other side is protecting…

Listen to the Full Conversation

How to Understand the Well-Being Gap between Liberals and Conservatives

For American Affairs, Musa al-Gharbi does a deep dive into the literature on the relationship between political ideology and subjective well-being.

Liberal girls tended to be significantly more depressed than boys, particularly after 2011. However, ideological differences swamped gender differences. Indeed, liberal boys were significantly more likely to report depression than conservatives of either gender. The authors also found that the more educated a teen’s family was, the more likely the young people were to be depressed, and the more dramatic their rise in depression was after 2012.

Why is it that liberal teens are more consistently depressed than conservatives? Why might familial education correlate with heightened depression for liberal youth? Why was there a spike in depression (and a growing ideological divergence in depressive affect) after 2011, corresponding with the onset of the “Great Awokening”?

Read the Full Article

Mark Milke: DEI has made society more racist

For the National Post, Mark Milke, president of The Aristotle Foundation, argues that so-called “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (“DEI”) is an illiberal and divisive ideology which has undone many of the gains made by the civil rights movement.

The twin beliefs — that racism explains much and that we must make up for past discrimination — is what drives the modern DEI movement. It is also why DEI is so anti-merit, illiberal and anti-individual. The “diversity” and “inclusion” movement today is in fact dismissive of intercultural borrowing. It also excludes people in hiring and university admissions if they are the “wrong” skin colour, ethnicity and so forth. DEI is thus anti-diversity and exclusive.

Strip out the social engineering, identity politics and flawed economic analyses from the concept and there’s much that’s right about diversity and acceptance.

Read the Full Article

Why Politics Makes Us Bend Our Own Values

For Psychology Today, Amber Wardell explains how cognitive dissonance can push all of us into uncomfortable contradictions, and how we can learn to recognize those contradictions in ourselves, and seek to resolve them.

Why does hypocrisy—and the dissonance that drives it—feel so pervasive in politics? Three big reasons stand out. First, politics pushes us into a tribal mindset. If our party takes a position that conflicts with our values, we often assimilate rather than risk being cast out (Tajfel & Turner, 1979). Second, politics is emotionally loaded. Because the stakes touch our freedom and quality of life, strong feelings drive quick, inconsistent reactions. We act first and rationalize later, finding post-hoc explanations for behavior that clashes with our principles (Haidt, 2012). Third, social media magnifies both tribalism and emotion. Algorithms prioritize outrage over nuance and partisanship over unity, leaving us feeling more divided than we actually are. Together, these forces make us more likely to act against our values—and more likely to rationalize it after the fact.

Read the Full Article

Social Work is “For Everyone.” Except When It’s Not.

For The Multilevel Mailer, Nathan Gallo and Arnold Cantú write about how tthe CSWE’s definition of "everyone" masks an ideologically exclusive, DEI-driven vision of who belongs in the social work profession. This essay is Part 5 of a five part series uncovering the ideological capture of Council on Social Work Education’s (CSWE).

This pull toward ideological conformity rather than professional neutrality, as Alam describes, comes “in ways that impinge on the equal treatment of clients, client autonomy, and respect for the diversity of clients’ values.” …Certainly, we question whether social work will continue to remain the fastest growing profession in the country if the field merely “become[s] a destination for people who want to get paid to be protesters,” as Schafer Riley says. …Social work in the 2020s is indeed for everyone. For everyone with rightthink and rightspeak.

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The dangers of ‘gender-affirming care’ are now undeniable

For Spiked, Jo Bartosch unpacks a new study from Finland showing that puberty blockers and hormone treatments deepen troubled kids’ distress, rather than helping them.

If this were about macrobiotic diets or juice cleanses, it would be harmless nonsense. But it isn’t. It is about children – distressed, suggestible children who were handed over to an ideology that promised relief and delivered the opposite. To gamble with their bodies for political vanity, and perhaps profit, is not just wrong. It is also contemptible.

Read the Full Article

Note to readers: We have paused the FAIR News podcast. If you prefer listening, rather than reading these Roundups, 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.

Dear Friends of FAIR,

Books are powerful. They invite us to slow down and sit with difficult ideas. They provide a common language for important discussions. Last year FAIR in Conversation gave our community a dedicated forum to explore sensitive issues, engage across differences, and practice respectful civil discourse. And we’re proud of the community we built.

Today, the need for engaged conversation is greater than ever.

From our courts and classrooms to our cultural institutions, the rate of that change has outrun the publication schedule. Legislative battles, viral controversies, and landmark research are reshaping the landscape of civil rights, free expression, and fairness, and our members are hungry to discuss these developments in real time.

That’s why, on April 29th, FAIR in Conversation is relaunching with a new monthly format built for this moment.

We’re leaning away from books and into the issues themselves: the debates, decisions, and developments that are defining what fairness, free speech, and equal dignity mean in America, and beyond, right now. Each session will center on a pressing topic of the day, drawing on a curated mix of articles, book summaries, short essays, podcasts, films, and other multimedia resources to ground the conversation before opening the floor for discussion.

The goal isn’t to reach consensus. The goal is to model the kind of open, honest, good-faith dialogue that is increasingly rare, and to do so across the full range of perspectives that make FAIR’s community so valuable.

What might we discuss? The Supreme Court’s recent wave of First Amendment decisions and their impact on everyday Americans – teachers, students, and doctors. Ethnic studies mandates and the debate over how race and ethnicity are taught in schools. The constitutional rights of parents to direct the upbringing, care, and control of their children. The science of gender medicine and the institutions caught in the middle. Artificial intelligence and what it means for equality, creativity, and human dignity.

There is no shortage of topics that affect all of us, no shortage of FAIR members who want to engage them seriously.

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.

These are exactly the conversations America needs now, and we are committed to modeling them. Sessions will run monthly from April 29th to September 23rd. We hope you’ll join us! Sign up here to join FAIR in Conversation this season.

With gratitude,
The FAIR Team

FAIR in Conversation (FiC) meets virtually from April to September. Registration is free for all FAIR members. Not a member yet? Sign up for FiC and become one here:

Register Here

Culture in Psychotherapy — Without the Corrosion of Identity Politics

Join FAIR in partnership with Dr. Douglas Novotny for this Continuing Education course. Amid today’s culture wars, Identity Politics has corroded the teaching and practice of psychotherapy. Many people on both sides feel distrustful, alienated, and/or demoralized. This course gives a structural model for clinical work that re-enlivens moral depth — without moralism. The goal of this course is to clarify concepts and conflicts that impact both daily life and clinical settings.

Research indicates that ideological diversity — seeing topics from different points of view — improves psychology. This course builds on FAIR Advisor ‘s Moral Foundations Theory, a cultural lens to grasp differences across cultures, within cultures, and the experiences of clients and students encountered by therapists. Specific clinical applications will be explored, and critiques and competing moral models will be considered. This structural model helps to explain interpersonal divisions (and intra-psychic ones) and offers ways to bridge them through deep cultural understanding and relational attunement.

This course is available now: March 18th - April 18th (self-paced Home Study) and TODAY (Wednesday, April 8th). Course fee: $69 (+ $20 if requesting Continuing Ed. Certificate)

Register for TODAY (April 8th)

Register for Home Study

Heterodox Libraries Spring 2026 Symposium: HUMAN AUTHORSHIP

Join FAIR Board Member Heather Blakeslee in conversation with Bret Weinstein at the Heterodox Libraries (HxLibraries) Spring Symposium: HUMAN AUTHORSHIP. This Friday, April 10th, 2026 from 11am - 3pm U.S. CT (convert time zone) via Zoom. Join us for this FREE virtual event to celebrate creativity and the human experience.

Read the full event description and register here.

HxLibraries Spring Symposium

The Lost Art of Listening: Building Empathy Across Differences

Join FAIR Advisors and for this upcoming webinar, moderated by FAIR Executive Director Monica Harris. We will discuss the need to develop emotional intelligence and perspective-enhancing skills and how deep listening strengthens democratic participation and community bonds. This theme also supports FAIR's commitment to respectful civil discourse, which is a foundational element of our Many Stories, One Nation curriculum.

Register Here

FAIR Educator Alliance 2025-2026

FAIR has launched the Educators Alliance for the 2025–2026 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.

Each monthly gathering will open with updates and presentations from FAIR staff, fellows, Chapter Leaders, and occasional guest speakers. Together, we’ll explore strategies to support educators, communities, and local chapters—and to advance positive change at the local, regional, and national levels. Following the 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.

Meetings: First Thursday of each month at 7 PM ET via Zoom
Duration: 1 hour

Join Us!

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.
  

Invasion of the Body Snatchers: Identity Politics and the Soul of Psychotherapy

For FAIR’s Substack, Dr. Doug Novotny examines how identity‑politics frameworks can distort both clinical judgment and everyday understanding. He argues that reducing “culture” to immutable group traits flattens individuality, fuels polarized thinking, and critically impairs psychotherapy. He advocates a return to nuanced engagement with identity, morality, and human complexity.

Intelligent, well-meaning people with common-sense can be misguided by the rigid framework of “us-against-them;” “oppressor vs. oppressed.” This ideology foments dehumanizing trait categorization, flattens identity, and heightens division.

All of us are vulnerable to collapsing our ideas into ideology, and it appears across the political spectrum. It’s deeply concerning when politicians practice such divisiveness. It’s an abdication of authority when “experts” promote activism. It’s sad when it affects personal relationships. But it’s especially damaging when it enters psychotherapy —a field entrusted with expanding, rather than constricting human understanding. Therapists should be working to simultaneously enhance the better angels of our nature and our culture’s nobler aspects, like the sanctity of individual character.

Read the Full Article

Uncanceling the Canceled

For Free Black Thought, FAIR Advisor Erec Smith writes about the wrongful cancellation of former Seattle principal Ed Roos, the long-term impact of “DEI” on educators, and the dangers of ideology overriding evidence. Roos first shared his story publicly on FAIR’s Substack, which you can read here.

One could say the tenet of “innocent until proven guilty” devolved under DEI into “guilty until proven innocent,” but this is worse than that. It is “guilty until proven guilty.” This is a side effect of a narrative that whiteness is inherently racist (a message Roos received frequently) and the concept of positionality: no white person can truly understand a black person, so anything he does is either dismissed or treated with suspicion. We cannot allow such blatant illiberalism to prevail. When one person’s uncorroborated word is all it takes to ruin a man, we are not staying true to the principle of fairness this country is supposed to uphold.

Read the Full Article

Zion Lights: Green movement is “anti-human at its roots and goes back to Malthusian thinking”

For PUBLIC, FAIR Advisor Michael Shellenberger interviews Zion Lights, a former environmental activist and author (Energy is Life: Why Environmentalism Went Nuclear). They discuss how the green movement, by restricting fossil fuels in the Global South, has prioritized ideology over people, leaving millions without reliable energy.

In a small village in the Punjab, a girl of about eight years old crouches over a clay stove, feeding it patties of dried cow dung. Smoke billows into her face. She coughs while feeding the fire. There is no reliable electricity. When the family gets a little extra money, they buy liquified petroleum gas (LPG), which burns cleanly, as natural gas does in stoves in the wealthy West. Unfortunately, that LPG just got priced out of reach for hundreds of millions like her.

The 2026 Iran war and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz were the triggers for the current energy crisis, but the underlying cause is the chronic underinvestment and underdevelopment of oil and gas resources by poor, developing, and rich nations alike over the last ten years. Policymakers diverted that money into green energy, which failed to prevent the crisis.

Listen to the Full Interview

This Post Won’t Save the World

For The Certainty Trap, FAIR Advisor Ilana Redstone reflects on the Iran conflict and the limits of persuasion in a polarized environment. She explores how overconfidence in our own certainty can get in the way of genuine understanding, and why intellectual humility may be a more effective starting point.

Like so many people, I worry that this conflict will escalate to an apocalyptic, existential, World War III event. I fear what the future holds for my teenage kids. What kind of world will they inherit? Could this lead to a draft that affects them? What does real economic destruction look like? I get lost in the sheer number of things I take for granted every single day that could vanish in the blink of an eye. I go to the grocery store and expect that the shelves will be stocked. I flip a light switch and assume the electricity will come on. And if, God forbid, I have to call 911, I assume that someone will answer and someone will come. But what if everything I assume will always be there is actually deeply, heartbreakingly, fragile?

Read the Full Article

Teaching History Without Taking Sides

For Derate the Hate, Wilk Wilkinson sits down with FAIR Executive Director Monica Harris for wide-ranging conversation about FAIR’s Many Stories, One Nation curriculum, the disempowering and discriminatory “oppressor/oppressed” framework, (de)polarization, and much more.

At the center [of the discussion] is Many Stories, One Nation—FAIR’s high school social studies curriculum. What begins as a question about how this differs from traditional ethnic studies quickly opens into something deeper: how we teach history, how we frame identity, and what we’re actually preparing young people to walk into. If the goal is to equip the next generation for a complicated and often divided world, the way we tell these stories matters.

Listen to the Interview

The Psychology of Speech Repression

For The Bedrock Principle, Antoine Marie Ph.D., examines why people across the political spectrum might support restricting speech. He points to perceived social threats, group identity, and the protection of shared narratives, arguing that these dynamics often fuel self-censorship and deepen polarization.

When people underestimate how widespread this self-censorship is, the result can be pluralistic ignorance: a situation in which public discourse becomes grossly misaligned with private beliefs. Everyone hears the same dominant opinions expressed in public, and each person assumes others genuinely believe them. In reality, many individuals privately harbor doubts that no one dares to articulate. Some examples in U.S. contexts: criticism of Trump’s authoritarianism in MAGA bubbles; scepticism towards open border immigration policies or biological sex denialism among strong liberals.

Read the Full Article

Supreme Court sides with therapist in challenge to Colorado’s ban on “conversion therapy”

For SCOTUS Blog Amy Howe reports on last week’s Chiles v. Salazar decision. The Supreme Court ruled 8–1 that the First Amendment prohibits states from using their licensing power to limit the topics therapists and other professionals can discuss with their clients.

The court has also acknowledged, Gorsuch continued, “the even greater dangers associated with regulations that discriminate based on the speaker’s point of view. When the government seeks not just to restrict speech based on its subject matter, but also seeks to dictate what particular ‘opinion or perspective’ individuals may express on that subject, ‘the violation of the First Amendment is all the more blatant,’” Gorsuch stressed. “’Viewpoint discrimination,’” Gorsuch said, “represents ‘an egregious form’ of content regulation, and governments in this country must nearly always ‘abstain’ from it.”

Read the Full Article

Anti-Racist Task Force Report in Social Work Confirms Rufo’s CRT Suspicions

For The Multilevel Mailer, Nathan Gallo and Arnold Cantú write about how the CSWE quietly wove critical race theory into national social work standards under the banner of ‘anti-racism.' This essay is Part 4 of a five part series uncovering the ideological capture of Council on Social Work Education’s (CSWE).

“By applying CRT,” the report explains, “social work practice can uncover its White supremacy and ensure the multiple realities of people of color/minoritized groups are centered.” Conveniently, “realities” from minority groups—and individuals—that refused to fit with the pre-built White- and racism-blaming CRT narrative didn’t count.

“To advance anti-racist social work education,” they also reasoned, “the profession must examine the White supremacy and ethnocracy that underscores social work as an applied social science that maintains information structures, paradigms, theories, and practices ensconced in academia.” (Imagine if the authors, instead, sought to examine a “Jewish ethnocracy” or “Black ethnocracy” or “Chinese ethnocracy.”)

Read the Full Article

Note to readers: We have paused the FAIR News podcast. If you prefer listening, rather than reading these Roundups, 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.

Dear Friends of FAIR,

Last month, FAIR attended the California Council for the Social Studies (CCSS) conference in Garden Grove, and what we encountered there reinforced our belief that we have created a solution educators genuinely need.

Dr. Adam Seagrave’s presentation, How to Teach the Declaration of Independence and Ethnic Studies Together, drew a standing-room-only crowd. Educators were invited to explore the Declaration’s meaning across diverse American historical experiences and its global resonances, while engaging directly with primary sources, lesson plans, and other materials from Many Stories, One Nation. The interest was visible in real time. While Dr. Seagrave was still speaking, I watched several attendees visit FAIR’s website to examine the curriculum for themselves.

The energy carried over to our exhibitor booth the next day. Teachers stopped by specifically to say they had attended the session, found it compelling and thought-provoking, and wanted to learn more. Many signed up to receive information about bringing Many Stories, One Nation to their schools.

But what struck us more than the number of teachers who stopped by was what they told us. Teachers expressed the kind of urgency that comes when people feel a need acutely and are relieved to discover that a solution exists.

Again and again, educators told us they were drawn to Many Stories, One Nation for reasons that go to the heart of how FAIR’s curriculum was designed. Rather than treating the experiences of ethnic groups in isolation, our approach is chronological and integrated. Students encounter different communities in historical context as participants in a shared American experience, grappling together with the forces that have shaped the nation across time. Teachers told us this felt both more honest and more teachable than curricula that silo groups into separate, disconnected units. One educator described it as the difference between a mosaic and a collage: the pieces in Many Stories, One Nation actually connect.

The civil discourse component generated its own wave of enthusiasm. Teachers described classrooms that have become genuinely difficult to navigate, where students arrive with strong, often opposing convictions about history, identity, and belonging, and where a single discussion can fracture rather than build community. Several told us they had been looking for structured tools to help students engage across those differences with both rigor and respect. The civil discourse exercises woven throughout Many Stories, One Nation gave them exactly what they had been searching for: a pedagogically grounded way to model disagreement without division.

Perhaps the most surprising conversations were with teachers whose schools have already adopted Ethnic Studies curricula. Several educators approached us specifically because they were looking for a balanced alternative that met California’s Ethnic Studies standards while offering a more unifying frame. They were frank about the limitations they have encountered with existing materials and genuinely curious about whether Many Stories, One Nation could serve as a complement or a replacement. That these conversations happened at all is a measure of how much space exists in the market for what Fair For All has built.

The FAIR team left CCSS with something we did not entirely expect: momentum in a state that has led the national push for Ethnic Studies mandates. We are actively following up with the educators we met and are more confident than ever that we will reach our goal of introducing Many Stories, One Nation in five schools this fall. Our conversations in Garden Grove, and the enthusiasm we encountered at the Minnesota Council for the Social Studies conference in February, tell the same story: educators are ready, and the demand is real. To meet it, we need your help.

If you are a California or Minnesota educator interested in learning more, we would love to hear from you: info@manystoriesonenation.com. If you are a supporter who wants to put this curriculum in front of more teachers, here is what we are working to fund right now:

On-the-ground professional development. A curriculum is only as strong as the teachers who deliver it. We are committed to providing in-person training and ongoing support to every school that adopts our curriculum, and we need resources to make that possible.

Expanding the curriculum from one semester to a full year. A full-year course would deepen student engagement and broaden adoption possibilities in schools planning their fall schedules.

Aligning the curriculum with Minnesota’s Ethnic Studies standards. The enthusiasm we encountered in Minnesota was real, and we intend to honor it. Alignment will require an additional review by the Johns Hopkins School of Education, and we are ready to move forward the moment funding is in place.

Fall is closer than it seems. Schools are making curriculum decisions now, and every week matters. If you believe, as we do, that American students deserve an ethnic studies education that unifies rather than divides, please consider making a gift today.

Every gift helps us grow this curriculum, reach new states, and train more educators to teach an American story that includes all of us.

With gratitude,

Monica Harris
Executive Director, FAIR

Make a Gift to FAIR

Culture in Psychotherapy — Without the Corrosion of Identity Politics

Join FAIR in partnership with Dr. Douglas Novotny for this upcoming course: Amid today’s culture wars, Identity Politics has corroded the teaching and practice of psychotherapy. Many people on both sides feel distrustful, alienated, and/or demoralized. This course gives a structural model for clinical work that re-enlivens moral depth — without moralism. The goal of this course is to clarify concepts and conflicts that impact both daily life and clinical settings.

Research indicates that ideological diversity — seeing topics from different points of view — improves psychology. This course builds on FAIR Advisor ‘s Moral Foundations Theory, a cultural lens to grasp differences across cultures, within cultures, and the experiences of clients and students encountered by therapists. Specific clinical applications will be explored, and critiques and competing moral models will be considered. This structural model helps to explain interpersonal divisions (and intra-psychic ones) and offers ways to bridge them through deep cultural understanding and relational attunement.

This course is available now March 18th - April 18th (self-paced Home Study) and April 8th. Course fee: $69 (+ $20 if requesting Continuing Ed. Certificate)

Register for Home Study

Register for Wednesday, April 8th

P.S. Read Dr. this week on our Substack:

The Lost Art of Listening: Building Empathy Across Differences

Join FAIR Advisors and for this upcoming webinar, moderated by FAIR Executive Director Monica Harris. We will discuss the need to develop emotional intelligence and perspective-enhancing skills and how deep listening strengthens democratic participation and community bonds. This theme also supports FAIR's commitment to respectful civil discourse, which is a foundational element of our Many Stories, One Nation curriculum.

Register Here

The Open Therapy Institute (OTI) is at the forefront of a burgeoning area of mental health care, developing innovative, evidence-based tools to help people, support professionals, and address social issues. Whether you’re a mental health professional, a patient, the leader of an organization, or just a citizen looking for openness and dialogue, OTI is developing solutions to help make things better.

Membership is for professionals in mental health fields including psychologists, counselors, social workers, psychiatrists, psychiatric nurses, pastoral counselors, and researchers. Membership is open to applicants internationally.

Apply

FAIR Educator Alliance 2025-2026

FAIR has launched the Educators Alliance for the 2025–2026 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.

Each monthly gathering will open with updates and presentations from FAIR staff, fellows, Chapter Leaders, and occasional guest speakers. Together, we’ll explore strategies to support educators, communities, and local chapters—and to advance positive change at the local, regional, and national levels. Following the 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.

Meetings: First Thursday of each month at 7 PM ET via Zoom
Duration: 1 hour

Join Us!

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.
  

In Invasion of the Body Snatchers, alien pods overtake people one by one. Each person looks the same but something essential is missing: warmth, individuality, and the emotional presence that makes human connection possible.

Identity politics can captivate minds in a similar manner. Intelligent, well-meaning people with common-sense can be misguided by the rigid framework of “us-against-them;” “oppressor vs. oppressed.” This ideology foments dehumanizing trait categorization, flattens identity, and heightens division.

All of us are vulnerable to collapsing our ideas into ideology, and it appears across the political spectrum. It’s deeply concerning when politicians practice such divisiveness. It’s an abdication of authority when “experts” promote activism. It’s sad when it affects personal relationships. But it’s especially damaging when it enters psychotherapy —a field entrusted with expanding, rather than constricting human understanding. Therapists should be working to simultaneously enhance the better angels of our nature and our culture’s nobler aspects, like the sanctity of individual character.

As I’ve written elsewhere, the confusion begins with the misuse of the word “culture.” Properly understood, culture is a rich tableau through which we grasp and express meaning, and transmit it to the next generation. It includes “high-culture” — art, literature, ritual -– but also involves countless everyday practices that express values just as powerfully: how parents teach children right from wrong, how families resolve conflicts, and how disagreements are handled within communities. Attending to such things carefully is central to good clinical work.

However, “culture” is increasingly becoming equated with identity politics and reduced to immutable identity characteristics such as race. When this happens, culture becomes an over simplified, one-dimensional lens that emphasizes group differences while obscuring individual variation. This is not culture in its full sense, but a diminished version of it.

Many clinicians feel that cultural and political tensions have become pervasive and difficult to navigate. Psychologist Jon Haidt says that, since 2012 or so, we’ve been in a period that’s “Uniquely Structurally Stupid.” I agree and propose that identity politics ideology is a structural part of the problem, (mis)guiding all of society and making it difficult to address ideas intelligently, issue by issue. The ideology is a framework, and as long as the framework remains intact, the individual battles are endless and exhausting.

To address the “Structural Stupidity” problem we must build “Structural Intelligence.” Until we have a structure that is flexible, reciprocal, deep and generative, no efforts will make lasting gains. Psychotherapy once placed greater emphasis on “character structure” — exploring personal psychological patterns with nuance, depth, thoughtfulness, and relational awareness. We must revisit this kind of structural thinking in order to help restore balance in how we approach culture, identity, and meaning in clinical work.

People alienated by identity politics and “the culture wars” often feel demoralized, and the field of psychotherapy, like much in the West, has systematically hollowed out its moral sensibilities. People feel demoralized in the ordinary sense: discouraged, exhausted, and unsure how to respond. But they have also been “de-moralized” in a deeper sense; stripped of the moral language and moral confidence they need to push back. And this is particularly an issue in the field of psychotherapy, where clinicians may find themselves hesitant to engage moral questions at all even when they are central to a patient’s experience.

In contrast, identity politics activists are intensely moralistic. Narratives of critical social justice: white supremacy, colonial oppression, patriarchy, and the like, are delivered with intense moral alarm. If clinicians fail to recognize or accept the moralized terms and tone, then any amount of reason, evidence and civic principles risk being blown away in the moralistic bluster. In fact, a calm tone could be received as dismissive, for implicitly failing to acknowledge the fiery heat of the grievances.

Psychotherapy needs to meet the moral moment. Though our field used to be populated by priests and shamans, the spiritual and moral aspects of our work have been largely stripped away. Some of us are religious believers, but one needn’t be religious to remember that “psyche” actually means “soul.” It’s to our detriment that the values-based, soulful, or spirit-aspects of mental life, identity and relationships have been expelled. This is a major error, and one that must be remedied without sinking into moralism, reactivity, or tribalism. Haidt’s Moral Foundations Theory offers one possible framework for rebuilding “structural intelligence” in a balanced and clinically relevant way.

It becomes clear how urgently we must act when we see how identity politics actually distorts clinical work in practice. When politics overrides clinical reality it’s the patients we seek to heal who suffer most.

In one case, a group of colleagues working with Spanish monolingual immigrant families were (at first) clear eyed about the challenges in this community. They spent years decrying clients’ predatory family members who crossed the southern border, often gang members and repeat criminals. They lamented the pattern of those family members being deported only to return again and again, menacing the community and the families we treated. That ended with the 2016 election, when a 180-degree reversal occurred, and those same colleagues suddenly talked in lockstep about how “horrible” it was to enforce immigration laws. Patients suffered as a result, as did the clinical work and thinking required to help these families in truly dangerous, often vexing situations. The ideology had invaded.

In another case, a treatment team struggled to properly engage with a situation involving a mother who repeatedly attempted to murder her young daughter (and who had herself been abused by her mother as a child). People like this woman need their violent tendencies recognized and dealt with properly. However, due to the identity politics framework which views all women as “oppressed” and men as “oppressors,” care-provider attention remained focused on the child’s absent father whose behavior, while relevant, did not represent the most immediate danger. Instead, pre-existing assumptions about gender roles shaped clinical care in ways that limited responsiveness to the actual circumstances.

These examples are not about assigning blame. They illustrate how pre-formed narratives — of any kind — can narrow perception and interfere with careful clinical judgment. Therapists must remain attentive to clinical patterns of emotion and behavior, without relying on oversimplified identity-based narratives.

Developing more structurally intelligent approaches to culture and morality is both possible and necessary. That’s why I have partnered with FAIR to create a Continuing Education course that invites participants to explore frameworks that support deeper understanding, richer clinical thinking, and greater openness to the moral, cultural, and even soulful dimensions of psychotherapy.

Whether you’re a practicing clinician struggling to navigate cultural issues authentically, a trainer concerned about ideological constraints in professional education, or just someone committed to finding a more humane and effective approach to psychological practice, I invite you to join me and other FAIR-minded mental health workers to explore these ideas live on April 8th, or at your convenience through pre-recorded Home Study available now through April 18th.

The task is ambitious and cannot be completed in a single session. But developing a clearer outline and a shared language for these challenges is an important step forward.

Register for Wednesday, April 8th
Register for Home Study

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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 drafts to submissions@fairforall.org.

Courage is Contagious: How I Remembered I was a Theatre Artist

For FAIR’s Substack, Artist Grant winner Mary Poindexter McLaughlin shares her journey from ostracization in the theatre world to finding support and community again, including through FAIR in the Arts. She warns that the greatest threat to the arts may be self-censorship, not disagreement, and shows how courage spreads when people speak their minds.

What I’ve discovered is that bravery is contagious. The playwrights of [Playwright’s Think Tank] do not all agree with one another on much of anything, but they speak their minds freely and send their works out into the world, regardless of the reception. And regularly sharing the company of such people has strengthened my resolve to do the same.

My desire to self-censor is all but gone. Now, when fellow theatre artists make political comments that assume consensus on a multitude of topics, I rarely default into, “Why jeopardize these burgeoning relationships?” Instead, I act from, “I’ll bet we can agree on at least some part of this issue.”

Instinctive, preemptive self-muzzling is what I see as the greatest threat to the arts, specifically within the theatre community. Based on my own experience and that of fellow PTT members and other Substackers who left the theatre, I know I’m not alone.

Read the Full Article

The Democratic Case Against the Term "Far-Right"

For The Certainty Trap, FAIR Advisor Ilana Redstone argues that labeling ideas “far-right” shuts down democratic debate. When political disagreement is recast as moral disqualification, she writes, argument gives way to dismissal, undermining the very premise of pluralism.

In the current context, “that’s far right” does the same work as “that’s racist.” Both convert a position that could be argued with into one that can only be condemned. The argument is over before it begins.

And yet, democracy is built on a specific premise: that reasonable people, weighing real and competing goods, will reach different conclusions. Liberty against security. Individual autonomy against collective welfare. Continuity against change. Cultural cohesion against pluralism. There are genuine losses on every side of these contests. The person who weights them differently than you isn’t necessarily confused or malicious. They may be making a different but recognizable human judgment about what matters most.

Read the Full Article

Rosie Kay on Cancel Culture in the Arts

In a conversation with Eric Kaufmann for the Centre for Heterodox Social Science, choreographer Rosie Kay (FAIR in the Arts) discusses how ideological conformity, funding pressures, and cancel culture are reshaping the arts. She reflects on her own experience of being cancelled, the climate of fear now shaping artistic life, and the evidence gathered in recent Freedom in the Arts reports on censorship, self-censorship, and boycotts. This is a wide-ranging discussion on dance, free expression, cultural power, and the future of the arts.

Listen to the Interview

The Inflating Cost of Artistic Freedom

Writing in White Rose Magazine, FAIR in the Arts 2026 Artist Grant winner Kevin Ray chronicles the full cost of dissent in the theatre world. After refusing to adopt certain ideological frameworks, he saw his career collapse, revealing the steep financial, professional, and personal toll of artistic independence.

I am trained as a teaching artist and a theater director. Before voicing my objection to embedding CSJ concepts into K–12 instruction, I had steady employment as a teaching artist. After refusing to comply, my workload was cut to a fraction of what it once was. Teaching theater and directing plays is not just my profession; it is what gives my life meaning. I am not alone in observing that the price of exclusion from the arts is equal parts financial, psychological, and spiritual.

Read the Full Article

The Impact of Cancel (Revenge) Culture

On his Substack, former Seattle principal Ed Roos recounts the long aftermath of a false accusation that forced him out of a career he loved. Years after being exonerated, he remains effectively blacklisted—an account of how reputational damage can outlast the truth.

In the fall of 2020, I was an award-winning principal with seventeen years of exemplary service in the Seattle School District. I was forced out after a vengeful teacher leaked a story to the media that I had caged a student, when in reality, we were playing ball with him in a play court. Today, I am a skeleton of the man who once existed, serving a life sentence in a world that refuses to look past the headlines that reside forever in a Google search…

Cancel culture impacts every aspect of one’s life. In the immediate aftermath, I discovered that I was essentially unemployable. Rejection letters poured in citing the false media reports as the reason for my disqualification and informing me that I had been blacklisted. I went from providing a comfortable life for my family to scraping by at a part-time, nonprofit job.

Read the Full Article

The End of LGBTQIA?

On Longview’s Reflector podcast, Ben Kawaller has launched a series examining the evolution of the gay rights movement into today’s LGBTQ+ framework. He explores shifting cultural definitions of identity, generational trends, and the tensions shaping this transformation.

Of course, the gay rights movement hasn’t been the gay rights movement since…well, gay rights were secured. At some point along the way, gay and lesbian rights became LGBT rights…and then some time after that, a Q started popping up. (Somehow, this has all coincided with everyone having less actual sex, but I digress.)

I watched these trends with great interest, especially as a new way of thinking about gender started gaining popularity in some circles – while incurring an enormous level of wrath in others. The influx of people, particularly young people, identifying out of their own sex (a trend that evidently peaked around 2023) always seemed to me a social phenomenon worth exploring, whatever its cause.

Listen to Episode 1

A Love Letter to the Sane Women Holding It Down

For Beyond Parody, Bridget Phetasy celebrates women quietly resisting cultural extremes—whether dictated by media or ideological trends—and whom algorithms don’t know what to do with because, as she says, “we don’t fit neatly into a box.”

There are millions and millions of us. We’re at the soccer games and the PTA meetings and the office and the grocery store and the school board meetings we never thought we’d attend because not long ago we were dancing on bars. We’re the women who still read books and have real friendships and know how to talk about politics and sports and give great recommendations for podcasts and skin products and restaurants. We’re the moms who let our kids play outside and the wives who actually adore their husbands and the professionals who earned their positions and don’t need to be on a panel about it.

And a criminal number of you are single women, too. You’re my heroes because you’re the ones navigating this alone, without a husband to vent to at the end of the day or kids to distract you from the relentless insanity. You’re out here building a life on your own terms in a culture that either pities you or tells you you’re a girlboss who doesn’t need anyone, and neither of those is true.

Read the Full Article

Social Work Educators Slide into Ideological Irrelevance at National Conference

For The Multilevel Mailer, Nathan Gallo and Arnold Cantú write about how the CSWE’s 2025 “Disability Justice” conference showcases hyper-progressive ideology, instead of professional social work practice. This essay is Part 3 of a five part series uncovering the ideological capture of Council on Social Work Education’s (CSWE).

“Independence is a myth,” charged a social work scholar at the Council on Social Work Education’s (CSWE) 71^st Annual Conference in Denver, Colorado this last October. “It’s not about fitting disabled people into the capitalist, ableist structures,” she said, “but dismantling these collective structures of oppression so that all of us can...work towards collective liberation.” This same professor referred to her fellow panelists as “comrades” on at least three occasions.

Despite scattered applause and assuming to have the final progressive say, the overwhelming majority of the American public would sharply disagree, according to reports on hidden political tribes, shared ideals, and personal agency by More in Common—a research organization dedicated to helping the country find common ground.

In normal times, a professional educational conference does not warrant public attention. In normal times—with properly earned public trust—an education conference acts as an incubator for faculty and professionals to discuss the latest developments in their discipline…

Read the Full Article

Note to readers: We have paused the FAIR News podcast. If you prefer listening, rather than reading these Roundups, 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.

Dear Friends of FAIR,

The act of peaceful student protest is one of the most deeply embedded traditions in American culture. From the Civil Rights movement with its sit-ins, walkouts, and freedom rides to the Vietnam War protests that reshaped the national conversation on free speech and academic expression, student activism has consistently served to highlight the most important issues of each generation. This year, student walkouts protesting ICE enforcement actions made national headlines and with them came an important reminder about the legal boundaries that govern student protest.

The First Amendment protects public school students’ right to engage in peaceful protest so long as it does not materially and substantially interfere with the operation of the school. In many of the ICE-related walkouts, that line was crossed. Students left campuses without permission, parents were not notified, and in some cases adults organized minors into political action without parental knowledge or consent. Students faced suspension, and in some jurisdictions, adult organizers and participants faced legal liability. The right to protest is real and constitutionally protected. So are the limits.

Friday, April 10, marks the 30th annual Day of Silence, as promoted by Glisten, an organization whose focus is to “advise on, advocate for, and research comprehensive policies designed to protect LGBTQ students as well as students of marginalized identities.” Students who choose to participate remain silent during portions of the school day to show their support of and solidarity with members of the LGBTQ community. Some students may also choose to dress in all-black clothing or wear pins explaining their protest.

The same constitutional principle applies here. The First Amendment protects public school students’ right to participate in the Day of Silence so long as it does not materially and substantially interfere with the operation of the school. And when students choose not to participate, the First Amendment protects them as well.

We at FAIR seek to deliver on our mission by supporting diversity without division. The Day of Silence can be an occasion for students to honor their many differences. On the other hand, we have also seen instances where the Day of Silence leads to unfortunate and unnecessary division among students. In these cases, students feel so ostracized that they withdraw from class participation or avoid attending school altogether.

Whether the issue is immigration enforcement, LGBTQ solidarity, or any other cause students feel moved to speak out about, the constitutional framework is the same, and every parent, student, and school administrator deserves to understand it clearly. That is why we have drafted a template available for all to use. This template discusses the important constitutional protections and limitations at play in student protests of all kinds, including the Day of Silence. If you feel that a thoughtful dialogue with your child’s school on this topic would be valuable, this letter is for you.

You can download the letter here in Word format and amend the highlighted portions to fit your needs. We encourage you to share this helpful resource with your friends and family as well. As always, if your child experiences a violation of their civil or constitutional rights at school, please submit an incident report on FAIR Transparency.

Every day, FAIR works to ensure that our schools and communities remain places where open dialogue, mutual respect, and true equality under the law can thrive. But we can’t do this alone. Your donation today helps us continue to create resources like the student rights letter, respond to incidents of discrimination, and provide guidance to families and educators navigating these complex issues.

Donate here and stand with us in protecting the rights of every student and family.

Together, we can keep fairness at the heart of America’s classrooms and communities.

Warmly,
The FAIR Team

Donate to Support FAIR

Culture in Psychotherapy — Without the Corrosion of Identity Politics

Join FAIR with Dr. Douglas Novotny for this upcoming course: Amid today’s culture wars, Identity Politics has corroded the teaching and practice of psychotherapy. Many people on both sides feel distrustful, alienated, and/or demoralized. This course gives a structural model for clinical work that re-enlivens moral depth — without moralism. The goal of this course is to clarify concepts and conflicts that impact both daily life and clinical settings.

Research indicates that ideological diversity — seeing topics from different points of view — improves psychology. This course builds on FAIR Advisor ‘s Moral Foundations Theory, a cultural lens to grasp differences across cultures, within cultures, and the experiences of clients and students encountered by therapists. Specific clinical applications will be explored, and critiques and competing moral models will be considered. This structural model helps to explain interpersonal divisions (and intra-psychic ones) and offers ways to bridge them through deep cultural understanding and relational attunement.

This course is available now March 18th - April 18th (Home Study) and April 8th. Course fee: $69 (+ $20 if requesting Continuing Ed. Certificate)

Register for Home Study

Register for Wednesday, April 8th

The Open Therapy Institute (OTI) is at the forefront of a burgeoning area of mental health care, developing innovative, evidence-based tools to help people, support professionals, and address social issues. Whether you’re a mental health professional, a patient, the leader of an organization, or just a citizen looking for openness and dialogue, OTI is developing solutions to help make things better.

Membership is for professionals in mental health fields including psychologists, counselors, social workers, psychiatrists, psychiatric nurses, pastoral counselors, and researchers. Membership is open to applicants internationally.

Apply

FAIR Educator Alliance 2025-2026

FAIR has launched the Educators Alliance for the 2025–2026 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.

Each monthly gathering will open with updates and presentations from FAIR staff, fellows, Chapter Leaders, and occasional guest speakers. Together, we’ll explore strategies to support educators, communities, and local chapters—and to advance positive change at the local, regional, and national levels. Following the 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.

Meetings: First Thursday of each month at 7 PM ET via Zoom
Duration: 1 hour

Join Us!

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.
  

At the start of 2025, I followed an intriguing link in a Substack article that sent me tumbling, Alice-like, through cyberspace, eventually depositing me on FAIR’s home page. Two clicks later, I felt my eyes well up in gratitude: I had found FAIR in the Arts.

I didn’t know it yet, but this discovery would lead me to re-imagine a new kind of theatre. Actually, it wasn’t “new,” it was the theatre I’d always known and loved: open, accepting, resilient, playful... and dedicated not to individual differences or political preferences, but to creating plays that help us remember our collective humanity.

It may sound like hyperbole, but when I found FAIR, I cried. Yes, my friends will tell you I cry easily—but these tears were hard-won. I had finally found an organization that recognized the unspoken challenges I had faced as a theatre artist since 2020.

Before the world shut down that year, I was gaining traction within the Buffalo, NY theatre world as a director and playwright. I had been hired to work on projects. I had made friends. I had created a writer’s group.

After the world shut down, I hunkered down like everyone else. I took the opportunity of solitude to write a massive play in Elizabethan prose and iambic pentameter about Aemilia Lanier, a possible author of Shakespeare’s works. Every two weeks I brought a few more scenes to the writer’s group, now on Zoom like every other writer’s group during that time.

By 2021 I had finished a first draft, and asked one of my newish theatre friends (I’ll call her Sally) to direct a table read. She said yes, and we worked out the details. I suggested we do the reading outdoors at a park to free everyone from masks. I told her I didn’t want to see my play read by a bunch of faceless actors, and she agreed: too much would be lost.

What I didn’t say was that I didn’t want to wear a mask indoors myself.

Two weeks before the date, Sally contacted me. “I checked out the park. I don’t think it’s going to work — there’s just too much ambient noise, and what if it rains?”

Before I could think of a helpful response, she continued: “But I have great news! I contacted a theatre, and they’re happy to let us use their space! I’ve booked it for the same time and date.”

Stunned, all I could do was thank her and hang up. Sure enough, within the hour, there was an email in my inbox to all of us, explaining the venue change and including something like: “Since we will be indoors, please wear a mask if you’re unvaccinated. I’m sure we all have loved ones we want to protect.”

My heart raced. I was stuck. If I wore a mask, I’d be telegraphing to ten theatre people whom I had worked so hard to befriend that I was NOT ONE OF THEM. If I didn’t wear it, I’d be pretending I was vaccinated.

The day loomed. I didn’t know what to do. I was losing sleep every night, trying to figure out the “right” thing to do.

On the day of, I still didn’t know. I decided to trust my instincts to do what felt right. I knew I wasn’t sick, so that was a plus. I drove to the theatre, parked, and carried in a case of water, sweating profusely all the way.

At the door, Sally greeted me warmly and welcomed me in, keeping her distance. And that was that. I didn’t put on a mask. I didn’t say anything about it. As the other actors arrived, I did the same as Sally — a warm hello, from afar.

It felt lousy.

I had never done that before. I had always spoken up — gently, usually — to share my opinion, even when it was not the prevailing ideology. But this time I caved. I disregarded my integrity, choosing to preserve my working relationship with these people by pretending I shared their beliefs, and all I felt… was sheepishness.

In the end, though, that attempt to “preserve my working relationship” didn’t matter. As the year wore on, I was denied access to all theatres due to my personal health choices. Not only could I not work in any theatre, I couldn’t even set foot inside one.

All the communities that had embraced me – the Waldorf School where I had sent all three children and worked three years as the Administrator/Principal, the yoga studio where I taught, and yes, the theatre community – suddenly felt foreign. Feeling strange, separate, and othered, I faded away from all of them, quietly, with no explanation or remonstrance.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I thought it would all blow over. These communities would soon reach back out, surely, with some version of “We kind of went overboard, sorry, that’ll never happen again. Where’ve you been?”

But that mea culpa never came.

My husband and I debated endlessly: stay or go? Eventually, we lost whatever faith we had left that New York State would operate in our best interests. By October of 2022, we knew what we had to do. As difficult as it was to leave both my sister and the home where my husband and I had raised our three children, we packed up the house and moved to Florida.

There, emboldened by living in an entirely new place, I launched The Art of Freedom, a Substack publication dedicated to freedom in all realms: artistic, individual, collective, and divine. I came to think of myself as an unlabeled, open-minded skeptic who follows the truth wherever it leads, and endeavored to mirror that evolution within my ‘stack, creating a place where readers of any ideology would feel welcome. Through it, I slowly forged an online community that became a lifeline.

The one gaping hole in my life? Theatre. I had no idea how to muster up the courage to get involved again.

Fast-forward to 2025, as I was weeping upon the discovery of “FAIR in the Arts.” I scrolled down the page… and there it was: “Playwright’s Think Tank.” (What the ?!?) I guffawed. A group of playwrights dedicated to discussing works “without the influence of social/political/theological trends, group-think, and personal bias”? Was I dreaming?

I fired off an email to the Playwright’s Think Tank (PTT), sharing my story and desire to be part of a writer’s group again. The facilitator kindly invited me to a meeting the following evening… and I’ve been a member of the open-minded group ever since.

Courage is a funny thing. Just as moving to FL emboldened me to speak up via The Art of Freedom, joining the PTT six months ago gave me the fortitude to reach out to theatres here in the Tampa/St. Pete area. I’m happy to report that opportunities have blossomed.

What I’ve discovered is that bravery is contagious. The playwrights of PTT do not all agree with one another on much of anything, but they speak their minds freely and send their works out into the world, regardless of the reception. And regularly sharing the company of such people has strengthened my resolve to do the same.

My desire to self-censor is all but gone. Now, when fellow theatre artists make political comments that assume consensus on a multitude of topics, I rarely default into, “Why jeopardize these burgeoning relationships?” Instead, I act from, “I’ll bet we can agree on at least some part of this issue.”

Instinctive, preemptive self-muzzling is what I see as the greatest threat to the arts, specifically within the theatre community. Based on my own experience and that of fellow PTT members and other Substackers who left the theatre, I know I’m not alone.

And this is why I was driven to create “Dear US: One-Acts to Bridge the Divide.” I wanted to produce an evening of differing viewpoints within the physical theatre itself, to cultivate thought-freedom in the place that believes it’s fighting for those very freedoms – even as it suppresses them through an assumption of monoculture. I wanted to help others in the theatre community develop the courage that slowly takes root when you’re surrounded by those who speak their minds.

Joining PTT gave me the resolve to rejoin the world of theatre, and hearing about FAIR in the Arts’ grant opportunity sparked some serious goosebumps— which I pay close attention to. Sure enough, the idea for “Dear US” soon fell into my heart.

After years of waiting for the theatre to “take me back,” I realized something: it’s up to me to create the kind of theatre I’m yearning for — a place where everyone is welcome, and the free exchange of ideas is a given.

I have always been a bridge-builder, a person who facilitates connection in the midst of conflict, who reaches for consensus rather than majority domination.

I’m still committed to building bridges, even at this time of our human evolution when it seems that almost everyone else is burning them down. My mission has always been to invite black and white to step toward each other into grey, and with FAIR’s help in the form of this grant, I’m doing just that.

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For more information about the Playwright’s Think Tank, please contact karen.howes@fairforall.org

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 drafts to submissions@fairforall.org.

The Silent Prescription: A Neurologist’s Journey from the Hippocratic Oath to the American Classroom

This week on FAIR’s Substack, Diana Blum writes as both a physician and a mother, sharing her concerns about K–12 education—and what led her to advocate for reform at her children’s school.

The turning point in my transformation from medical advocate to education defender occurred during a webinar I hosted for FAIR titled “Health Professionals in the Nazi Era.” Preparing for that presentation was a chilling experience. I saw with terrifying clarity how the most “educated” professionals of the 1930s, doctors and teachers, were the first to succumb to ideological capture. They didn’t wake up one day as monsters; they were slowly conditioned to prioritize activism over their professional oaths.

I looked at our current K-12 landscape and saw the same patterns. As depicted in the documentary Killing America by Eli Steele, the erosion of merit and the introduction of “social justice” frameworks in schools like those in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I grew up and raised my own kids, mirrored the lowering of medical standards I had fought against. Whether it is lowering the bar for a medical degree or removing honors math for eighth graders, the result is the same: the sacrifice of excellence at the altar of ideology. Unnecessary suffering inevitably follows.

Read the Full Article

New York Theater Settles Case That Argued Discounts Were Discriminatory

In The New York Times, Michael Paulson reports on a recent lawsuit brought by FAIR in the Arts member Kevin Lynch (represented by Consovoy McCarthy), who challenged a “BIPOC night” at Playwrights Horizons. The theater has agreed to a settle out of court, and we applaud Lynch for his success.

A prominent nonprofit theater in New York has settled a lawsuit claiming that a discount offered to people of color was racially discriminatory.

Playwrights Horizons, an Off Broadway company…offered an apology to Kevin Lynch, a white musician from New Jersey who sued over last fall’s “BIPOC night”…

“Playwrights Horizons regrets that Mr. Lynch felt excluded because of his race,” the theater said in a six-sentence statement issued jointly by both parties on Tuesday. The statement did not specify whether the theater paid any money to Mr. Lynch, but said, “Playwrights Horizons and Mr. Lynch have agreed to resolve the matter out of court.”

…Lynch, in a statement…said he was pleased with the outcome. "Race-based ticket pricing violates all our civil rights, regardless of which race is on the receiving end of the discrimination…I consider it a victory for civil and human rights.”

Read the Full Article

The quiet radicalization of the American library

In the Washington Examiner, Bethany Mandel argues that the American Library Association has abandoned institutional neutrality. She highlights the rise of the Association of Library Professionals, which promotes a vision of librarianship grounded in neutrality and community trust rather than ideological advocacy—and recommends FAIR’s Library Neutrality Toolkit.

Organizations outside the traditional library establishment have begun offering tools for citizens who want to evaluate whether their local libraries are living up to principles of neutrality and viewpoint diversity. One example comes from [FAIR], which recently released a public tool kit designed to help community members assess library policies and practices. The tool kit encourages citizens to ask straightforward questions about collection development, programming, and institutional policies. Are multiple viewpoints represented in book collections? Are libraries hosting speakers from across the political spectrum? Are policies applied consistently regardless of ideology?

These questions should not be controversial. For much of the 20th century, they would have been understood as basic elements of professional librarianship. The fact that they now provoke debate reflects how far the conversation has shifted.

Read the Full Article

The DEI scourge in K-12 education has only gotten worse since I blew the whistle on my own school

Writing in the New York Post, Dana Stangel-Plowe (former Director of FAIR in Education) reflects on how education has changed since she blew the whistle on her school. In her view, it has become more ideologically rigid, less tolerant, and increasingly focused on activism over academics.

Within my left-leaning profession, I know that most teachers are not radical activists. But their good intentions make them susceptible to the path of least resistance paved by those who are. In a captured system, the politicization of education becomes the air that teachers breathe.

They often perpetuate the ideology without recognizing what it is: political. It may sound like an abstraction to say the ideology fuels hostility toward anyone it casts as an oppressor, but it’s all too real.

In my school, the more radical and often younger educators aggressively insisted on this new approach. They pushed the school to reduce complex issues, such as racial or gender inequities, into moral binaries and treat contested conclusions as settled truth.

Read the Full Article

Harmed by Medical Transition

For Inspecting Gender, Genspect director Stella O’Malley explores the four stages of detransition, describing a process far more complex than commonly understood.

These include psychological detransition, which involves a shift in beliefs and internal self-understanding; social detransition, which involves changes in presentation, roles, and relationships; legal detransition, which involves reversing formal identity markers such as name and sex designation; and medical detransition, which involves reducing, stopping, or managing the physical consequences of medical interventions. These domains are not steps in a sequence, and individuals may experience one, several, or all of them. Many remain within a single stage without ever entering others. Taken together, they provide a framework for understanding detransition as a complex human experience that reaches into the mind, the body, and the structures that govern social and legal recognition. In this sense, detransition is best understood not as a simple reversal, but as a re-engagement with reality, embodiment, and personal agency at a pace and depth unique to each individual…

[The four stages] provide a descriptive framework for understanding the varied realities of detransition. They are not prescriptive, but intended to help individuals, families, and professionals recognize and respond to this experience with greater clarity.

Read the Full Article

The Politics of Linguistic Evasion

In The Overflowings of a Liberal Brain, Helen Pluckrose examines why ideologues often resist labels that accurately describe their beliefs.

Firstly, there is the issue where these terms have been abused and fired at people whether they apply or not as a condemnation by activists of the Critical Social Justice movement. When a descriptive term becomes synonymous with ‘bad person’ this will produce instinctive ‘No, I’m not!” denials from people who are driven more by vibes and feelings than by definitions and reason. It also enables people with a more sophisticated but intellectually dishonest mindset who know very well what words mean to cynically redefine them as ‘terms that identify their speaker as the worst of our political opponents” to dismiss the accusation without addressing it. Wilfred Reilly is correct to note that this functions as the same kind of trap used by activists of the CSJ movement.

Read the Full Article

Is Systemic Racism a Thing of the Past?

For Free Black Thought, Kevin Briggins reflects on his grandfather’s legacy as a prominent figure in the Civil Rights Movement, and how the broader fight against systemic racism has evolved in recent years.

If my great-grandfather were alive today, he would likely marvel at the real racial progress that has been made. Certainly, disparities still exist, but it is overly simplistic to allege “systemic racism” as the unproven boogeyman lurking behind every disparity. We would do better to heed the words of Dr. Lionel Newsom, another prominent man from my great-grandfather’s generation. In the same year the Civil Rights Act was passed (1964), he wisely noted that the freedom that comes with equal opportunity (unsegregated facilities, no formal discrimination in hiring, etc.) does not necessarily lead to equality (the same outcomes as other ethnicities). Rather,

“Equality can come only through individual efforts. In order to achieve equality people must be able to communicate, to understand and appreciate each other, and to give and take. One must strive for excellence in every undertaking in order to build self-esteem and respect from others. These are the things that finally lead to equality. Freedom may be granted but equality must be achieved.”

Read the Full Article

Note to readers: We have paused the FAIR News podcast. If you prefer listening, rather than reading these Roundups, 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.

Dear Friends of FAIR,

We are thrilled to announce the winners of our 2026 Artist Grant!

The FAIR Artist Grant was established as a fund for independent artists seeking support for professional activities that align with FAIR’s mission of advancing fairness, understanding, and humanity in the arts. Our purpose is to further a culture where all artists – regardless of their perceived identity group or belief system – can be judged on the quality of their work and practice their craft freely without fear. With an arts funding ecosystem that is still overwhelmingly driven by divisive DEI policies and groupthink, the FAIR Artist Grant is our effort to shift the tide back and reclaim core values of excellence, integrity, and free thought.

The winners of our 2026 Artist Grant span a wide range of artistic practices, professional backgrounds, and life experiences. They are filmmakers, theater artists, visual artists, writers, and educators. They are ambassadors, thought leaders, and innovators who represent our mission to change culture by creating new, better culture. We are honored to support their work.

Grand Prize Winners –

Alison Fairweather Murray: Filmmaker, Director.
Project funded: Pitch deck for dramatic television series

Celeste Teal Larkin: Executive Director at St. George Opera
Project funded: Hansel and Gretel at St. George Opera

Mary Poindexter McLaughlin: Playwright, Poet, Essayist
Project funded: Dear US: One Acts to Bridge the Divide

Timothy Naylor: Filmmaker, Professor of Film at LIU
Project funded: Anonymous Film Festival in NYC

Nevline Nnaji: Filmmaker, Dancer
Project funded: She Holds The Line: Black Women Speak on Gender Ideology

Johari Mayfield: Teaching Artist, Choreographer
Project funded: Wildcard: A Satirical Séance

Kimberley Tait: Author, Founder at Dogstar Press
Project funded: Dogstar Press LLC

Runners Up –

Steve Salerno: Journalist, Essayist, Professor
Project funded: Article exposing journalism school biases

Mary McDonald-Lewis: Voice Actor, Director, Writer
Project funded: The Macbeths

Kevin Ray: Theater Artist, Producer, Artistic Director
Project funded: Theatrical adaptation of Hope Mirrlees’ fantasy novel Lud-in-the-Mist

Bob Rahmanian: Visual Artist, Musician
Project funded: Unacceptable, a group exhibition

Learn more about our Artist Grant winners, and read their full bios here.

We are grateful to our donors and supporters who made the FAIR Artist Grant possible, especially the Snider Family Foundation. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation to support FAIR in the Arts. With your help, we look forward to continuing to build a new arts & culture infrastructure.

Warmly,
Brent Morden
FAIR in the Arts

Donate to Support FAIR in the Arts

In different, though related news… This week, FAIR in the Arts member Kevin Lynch scored a major legal victory against Playwrights Horizons, a New York theatre company.

A prominent nonprofit theater in New York has settled a lawsuit claiming that a discount offered to people of color was racially discriminatory. Playwrights Horizons, an Off Broadway company…offered an apology to Kevin Lynch, a white musician from New Jersey who sued over last fall’s “BIPOC night”…[Playwrights Horizons wrote that it] “regrets that Mr. Lynch felt excluded because of his race,” …[and we] have agreed to resolve the matter out of court.” …Lynch, in a statement…said he was pleased with the outcome. "Race-based ticket pricing violates all our civil rights, regardless of which race is on the receiving end of the discrimination…I consider it a victory for civil and human rights.”

With FAIR’s support, Kevin Lynch has been on the front lines challenging discrimination in the arts. We’re thrilled to see the fruits of his success — and equally excited to see this development covered in the New York Times.

Read the Full Article

Beyond Binary Thinking: Developing Nuanced Perspectives in Young Minds

Join FAIR Advisors Wilfred Reilly and Erec Smith for a conversation moderated by FAIR Executive Director Monica Harris. We will discuss the need to move beyond oversimplified oppressor/oppressed narratives to help develop critical thinking skills that honor complexity while maintaining moral clarity. This theme also supports FAIR's commitment to civil discourse, which is a foundational element of our Many Stories, One Nation curriculum.

Register

Culture in Psychotherapy — Without the Corrosion of Identity Politics

Join FAIR with Dr. Douglas Novotny for this upcoming course: Amid today’s culture wars, Identity Politics has corroded the teaching and practice of psychotherapy. Many people on both sides feel distrustful, alienated, and/or demoralized. This course gives a structural model for clinical work that re-enlivens moral depth — without moralism. The goal of this course is to clarify concepts and conflicts that impact both daily life and clinical settings.

Research indicates that ideological diversity — seeing topics from different points of view — improves psychology. This course builds on ‘s Moral Foundations Theory, a cultural lens to grasp differences across cultures, within cultures, and the experiences of clients and students encountered by therapists. Specific clinical applications will be explored, and critiques and competing moral models will be considered. This structural model helps to explain interpersonal divisions (and intra-psychic ones) and offers ways to bridge them through deep cultural understanding and relational attunement.

This course is available now March 18th - April 18th (Home Study), March 28th, and April 8th. Course fee: $69 (+ $20 if requesting Continuing Ed. Certificate)

Register for Home Study

Register for Saturday, March 28th

Register for Wednesday, April 8th

The Open Therapy Institute (OTI) is at the forefront of a burgeoning area of mental health care, developing innovative, evidence-based tools to help people, support professionals, and address social issues. Whether you’re a mental health professional, a patient, the leader of an organization, or just a citizen looking for openness and dialogue, OTI is developing solutions to help make things better.

Membership is for professionals in mental health fields including psychologists, counselors, social workers, psychiatrists, psychiatric nurses, pastoral counselors, and researchers. Membership is open to applicants internationally.

Apply

FAIR Educator Alliance 2025-2026

FAIR has launched the Educators Alliance for the 2025–2026 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.

Each monthly gathering will open with updates and presentations from FAIR staff, fellows, Chapter Leaders, and occasional guest speakers. Together, we’ll explore strategies to support educators, communities, and local chapters—and to advance positive change at the local, regional, and national levels. Following the 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.

Meetings: First Thursday of each month at 7 PM ET via Zoom
Duration: 1 hour

Join Us!

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.
  

As a physician, my world was defined by the sanctity of the individual: the quiet, sacred space between a doctor and a patient where human dignity and the preservation of life reigned supreme. My professional life was governed by a singular, sacred commitment: the Hippocratic Oath. This wasn’t just a formality; it was a prescription for a healthy society, rooted in the primacy of the individual and the objective pursuit of scientific truth. I believed that by defending ethical standards in my beloved profession, I was holding the line for Western civilization.

But then the world changed in 2020. The pandemic didn’t just bring a virus; it brought a mirror. As I watched the medical establishment succumb to a suffocating groupthink and a “mob-like” dismissal of heterodox thought, I realized that the rot wasn’t just in the clinics. It was in the marrow of our society. The same ideological forces destroying the sanctity of medicine were already hard at work destroying the minds of the next generation in our K-12 schools.

I realized I could no longer just be a doctor. As a mom, I had to become an advocate for the very foundation of our future: our children.

The Echoes of a Soviet Past

My perspective is not merely academic; it is ancestral. I am a Soviet Jew. My DNA carries the memory of what happens when a society abandons the individual in favor of the collective, and when “the greater good” becomes a justification for dehumanization and violence.

To me, Jewish values are not separate from Western civilization; they are the pillars of it. The emphasis on questioning, the pursuit of objective truth, and the infinite value of a single human life are what built the modern world. When I see the terrifying rise of Jew-hatred in our streets and our schools today, I don’t see a random flare-up of bigotry. I see a direct, coordinated attack on American values. History has shown us that Jews are the “canary in the coal mine” when a society begins to hunt the Jew, it has already begun to eat itself.

From the Nazi Era to the Modern Classroom

The turning point in my transformation from medical advocate to education defender occurred during a webinar I hosted for FAIR titled “Health Professionals in the Nazi Era.” Preparing for that presentation was a chilling experience. I saw with terrifying clarity how the most “educated” professionals of the 1930s, doctors and teachers, were the first to succumb to ideological capture. They didn’t wake up one day as monsters; they were slowly conditioned to prioritize activism over their professional oaths.

I looked at our current K-12 landscape and saw the same patterns. As depicted in the documentary Killing America by Eli Steele, the erosion of merit and the introduction of “social justice” frameworks in schools like those in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I grew up and raised my own kids, mirrored the lowering of medical standards I had fought against. Whether it is lowering the bar for a medical degree or removing honors math for eighth graders, the result is the same: the sacrifice of excellence at the altar of ideology. Unnecessary suffering inevitably follows.

The Neurology of Hate

When my grandfather, Srul, passed away in 2022, just 4 months shy of 101, something broke and reset within me. He was a man who survived the unimaginable, a living link to a world that tried to erase him. After his death, I knew I couldn’t stay silent. I realized that while I was treating patients for neurological disorders, a different kind of pathology was being wired into the brains of millions of children.

As a neurologist, I understand how the brain learns. I know that the neuroplasticity of a child is a gift that can be easily exploited. When schools replace actual education with social justice activism, they are quite literally wiring tribalism and resentment into the developing mind. They are teaching children to see color before character, and power dynamics before humanity. This isn’t just bad teaching; it is unintentional neurological injury to a generation of humans.

A New Oath

I am often asked why a Parkinson’s Disease doctor is so involved in school board battles and curriculum transparency activism. My answer is simple: I am still practicing medicine.

In medicine, we say Primum non nocere - First, do no harm. By allowing our education system to replace the pursuit of truth with ideological indoctrination, we are doing profound, perhaps irreversible, harm to the individual and, inevitably, to society at large.

I have moved from defending the Hippocratic Oath to defending the classroom because the battle is the same. It is a battle for the soul of the West. It is a battle to ensure that no child is ever taught that their worth is defined by their group identity, and that no doctor is ever forced to choose a narrative over a patient. For my grandfather, for my children, and for the country that gave my family refuge, I will not be silent.

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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 drafts to submissions@fairforall.org.

The Cult of Fragility: Why Stoicism Beats Modern Victimhood

For The Coddling Movie, Edward Campbell makes the case for Stoicism as an antidote to the fragility and self-defeating pessimism of a victimhood mindset.

The ancient world understood what our pampered age forgets: you cannot build happiness on fragility, nor justice on perpetual grievance. The more we define goodness through pain, the more pain we manufacture. The Stoics sought tranquility through truth; modern fragility seeks safety through control. But control of others is a bottomless pursuit—and truth cannot be negotiated by feelings.

The choice before us is not political but psychological: freedom through mastery of the self, or frustration in the futile struggle to control everyone else.

Read the Full Article

The Problem of Right-Wing Art

For State of the Arts, FAIR in the Arts Fellow Clifton Duncan argues that the political right’s difficulty producing influential art is largely self-inflicted, not simply the result of progressive dominance in cultural institutions.

Liberals and progressives have zombified the arts. Given their relentless discrimination against non-leftist creatives, they and they alone control America’s cultural institutions, therefore they and they alone must own the stagnation and unpopularity of said institutions. Meaningful change would require their developing a tolerance toward divergent visions, the capacity to see proponents of those visions as human beings, and the humility to consider that perhaps they have some things wrong.

These things will never happen. But there is also no reason to expect a renaissance of “right wing” art, as some might hope.

Read the Full Article

FAIR in the Arts Fellow Clifton Duncan also recently appeared on The Andrew Klavan Show, to discuss his cancellation from Broadway, the problem of right-wing art, and his new one-man show Becoming Thomas Sowell.

Watch the Interview

Is Free Speech Maximalism Just for Young Men?

For Brownstone Institute, Gabrielle Bauer explains the concept of free speech maximalism and challenges the notion that it is only embraced by “angry young men.” As a 69-year-old woman and organizer with the Free Speech Union of Canada, she defies that stereotype, but laments that more women do not share her view.

And here’s the thing: when you embrace viewpoint diversity as an ideal, you tend to get less offended about things. You may profoundly disagree with a statement, but it won’t cause you to puff up in outrage…It’s a liberating habit of mind.

And if you do get offended? Big whoop. You’ll survive. During a recent bus trip from Whistler to Vancouver, my seatmate, a doctor, took it upon himself to share his candid opinions about women with me…I survived. I wasn’t traumatized.

Truth be told, I quite enjoyed our conversation. He listened as much as he spoke. I even found a few grains of value in his arguments, and perhaps a couple of my retorts gave him pause. And that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Humans of all stripes challenging and learning from each other.

Read the Full Article

We Don’t Need Everyone To Agree. We Need Everyone To Change How They Disagree.

For We The Black Sheep, Salomé Sibonex suggests that the real problem isn’t disagreement itself but how we react to it. Instead of falling into the evolutionary trap of outrage and tribalism, she calls for approaching opposing views with curiosity and epistemic humility.

We can disagree beautifully about ice cream flavors because our identity isn’t tied up in “chocolate ice cream lover” the way it is in labels like “Christian,” “lesbian,” “Zionist,” or “vegan.” When our self-image is challenged, we might as well be in the Colosseum facing a starving lion. But by depending on our opinions and identity labels to define ourselves, we fail to update our ancient brain’s assumption that disagreement = tribal exclusion = death. The resulting ideological rigidity robs us of the freedom we have today, enslaving us to act out a primitive past where logic, curiosity, and honest disagreement offered more risk than reward.

Read the Full Article

Why Traditional Psychotherapy Is Failing Today’s Gender-Confused Teens

For Reality’s Last Stand, Dr. Joseph Burgoo critiques the direction of modern psychotherapy, arguing that rigid ideological frameworks are limiting open inquiry and reshaping therapy into a process of affirmation rather than exploration.

Even solo practitioners today find it challenging to practice as we might once have done because the world around us disputes our authority as experts, undermines family structures that have traditionally supported our work, and replaces long-held understandings of human nature with newly minted and unevidenced theories presented as unassailable truth.

Read the Full Article

Twitter, Tourette’s, and Tribalism

For Proof in Progress, Kirra Watkins weighs in on the recent “BBC BAFTA scandal,” in which John Davidson — Scottish BAFTA nominee and Tourette Syndrome advocate — ticced a racial slur at Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo, who were presenting him the award. She shares her perspective as a black woman with Tourette Syndrome.

My lived experience does give me perspective. However, there’s been a bad habit in the last few years of using purely the identities of various individuals to elevate specific convenient talking points but look “morally pure” while doing so. The actual validity of the takes is then relegated to the back burner. This has created a ladder of identities to climb until one nears a platonic ideal of “wokeness” and is handed a microphone.

Read the Full Article

Report Card From Hell

For Abstract Truth, the anonymous author writes about how and why the education system in America is failing, and what can be done to save it.

Our educational programs have focused on theory over subject matter expertise and smooshy ideas of social justice, rather than to actually study the philosophers and great thinkers — or even heroic people who tried to achieve it. Today’s teachers seem to have lost sight of the fact that things like brilliance in math, science, reading and writing itself is a form of liberation. Math, far from being racist was the kind of thing that the abolitionists taught to runaway slaves by candlelight.

Read the Full Article

Note to readers: We have paused the FAIR News podcast. If you prefer listening, rather than reading these Roundups, 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.

Dear Friends of FAIR,

We’re thrilled to share exciting news: FAIR is partnering with the Alliance for Constructive Ethnic Studies (ACES) to accelerate adoption of FAIR’s groundbreaking new curriculum.

ACES has been at the forefront of advocating for thoughtful, balanced ethnic studies curricula that build mutual respect, fight racism, and celebrate ethnic groups’ accomplishments without imposing narrow ideological agendas. Their mission aligns perfectly with FAIR’s approach: we believe students deserve to engage with America’s complex history through primary sources, competing perspectives, and civil discourse instead of predetermined conclusions.

ACES’s diverse, nonpartisan coalition model also complements FAIR’s commitment to serving educators and families across the political spectrum. Together, we’re demonstrating that it’s possible to teach ethnic studies that inspires mutual respect, celebrates achievement, and equips students with the analytical tools they need without the divisiveness that has made this field so contentious.

This partnership marks a pivotal moment in FAIR’s evolution from problem identification to solution delivery. ACES brings deep expertise in California’s Ethnic Studies landscape and shares our commitment to teaching America’s story with intellectual honesty, multiple perspectives, and rigorous academic standards.

This partnership enables two grassroots organizations, with different histories and constituencies, to unite around shared principles. We will work together to provide programs which inspire students not only to better understand our nation’s complex history and ongoing struggles, but also to take an active and informed role in shaping our aspirational future.

We’re grateful to ACES for their partnership and to all of you who continue supporting our mission. Together, we’re positioned to reach new school districts that have been searching for exactly what FAIR offers: a path that honors diversity and confronts difficult truths while building bridges rather than deepening divisions. We’ve also given our curriculum a name that better reflects its spirit: Many Stories, One Nation (formerly The American Experience). We believe this partnership and our new name will help us reach the thousands of educators and students across the country who are looking for an ethnic studies curriculum that is honest, academically rigorous, and unifying.

This week, our team will attend the California Council for the Social Studies conference in Garden Grove, California, where we will showcase Many Stories, One Nation to educators from across the state. Stay tuned for updates from the conference and beyond. FAIR’s work of creating thoughtful, rigorous, bridge-building alternatives continues with powerful new partners!

With gratitude,

Monica Harris
Executive Director, FAIR

P.S. As we celebrate five years of success this March, we’re asking supporters to consider special anniversary gifts that will help us capitalize on the momentum we’ve built. Stay tuned for more opportunities to invest in FAIR’s next chapter!

Make an Anniversary Donation

Beyond Binary Thinking: Developing Nuanced Perspectives in Young Minds

Join FAIR Advisors Wilfred Reilly and Erec Smith for a conversation moderated by FAIR Executive Director Monica Harris. We will discuss the need to move beyond oversimplified oppressor/oppressed narratives to help develop critical thinking skills that honor complexity while maintaining moral clarity. This theme also supports FAIR's commitment to civil discourse, which is a foundational element of our Many Stories, One Nation curriculum.

Register

Culture in Psychotherapy — Without the Corrosion of Identity Politics

Join FAIR with Dr. Douglas Novotny for this upcoming course: Amid today’s culture wars, Identity Politics corrodes the teaching and practice of psychotherapy, especially in the widely-misunderstood realm of “culture” and “diversity.” Many people on both sides feel distrustful, alienated, and/or demoralized. This course gives a structural model for clinical work that re-enlivens moral depth — without moralism. The goal is to clarify concepts and conflicts that impact daily life and clinical settings. It aims to facilitate engagement with patients and colleagues, and within ourselves, even as we grapple with vital and controversial issues.

Research indicates that ideological diversity — seeing topics from different points of view — improves psychology. This course builds on that with ‘s Moral Foundations Theory, a cultural lens to grasp differences across cultures, within cultures, and the daily experiences of clients and students encountered by therapists. Specific clinical applications will be explored, and critiques and competing moral models will be considered. This structural model helps explain interpersonal divisions (and intra-psychic ones) and offers ways to bridge them through deep cultural understanding and relational attunement.

This course is available March 18th - April 18th (Home Study), March 28th, and April 8th. Course fee: $69 (+ $20 if requesting Continuing Education Certificate)

Register for Home Study

Register for Saturday, March 28th

Register for Wednesday, April 8th

The Open Therapy Institute (OTI) is at the forefront of a burgeoning area of mental health care, developing innovative, evidence-based tools to help people, support professionals, and address social issues. Whether you’re a mental health professional, a patient, the leader of an organization, or just a citizen looking for openness and dialogue, OTI is developing solutions to help make things better.

Membership is for professionals in mental health fields including psychologists, counselors, social workers, psychiatrists, psychiatric nurses, pastoral counselors, and researchers. Membership is open to applicants internationally.

Apply

FAIR Educator Alliance 2025-2026

FAIR has launched the Educators Alliance for the 2025–2026 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.

Each monthly gathering will open with updates and presentations from FAIR staff, fellows, Chapter Leaders, and occasional guest speakers. Together, we’ll explore strategies to support educators, communities, and local chapters—and to advance positive change at the local, regional, and national levels. Following the 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.

Meetings: First Thursday of each month at 7 PM ET via Zoom
Duration: 1 hour

Join Us!

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.
  

The Damage Done by Accreditors

For Heterodox STEM, FAIR Tennessee Chapter Co-Leader Suzannah Alexander writes about her experience with the intolerant orthodoxy and lack of viewpoint diversity in her counselling program, and how this undermines the legitimacy of the profession.

Though I knew beforehand that psychology-based professional circles leaned progressive, I could not wrap my head around the idea that a therapist training program would be instructing students to look at the world in a racist and bigoted way. In my view, such a dogma was an anathema to creating the conditions that would make good therapy possible. I simply couldn’t believe they were serious. So whenever there seemed to be a surprisingly negative response to my comments, I thought I wasn’t making myself clear.

It wasn’t until much later, when I did an in-depth study of the textbooks used for the dreaded Multicultural Counseling Class I would have taken the following semester, that I realized just how diabolical the ideology and indoctrination program really is. Or how this is all orchestrated through accreditation.

Read the Full Article

The Privilege of the Experiment

For his Substack, Friendly Fire, Hector Herrera reflects on his perspective of America as a new immigrant and explains why he chose this country to be his home.

I am especially in awe of the wisdom embedded in the First and Second Amendments. They are so exceptional, so audacious, that I increasingly suspect much of America’s success is rooted in them. Many nations have constitutions. Many have courts, elections, declarations of rights. But the robust protection of freedom of conscience—and the explicit recognition of the people’s right to defend that freedom, along with their property, from tyrannical government—remains a profound outlier.

Read the Full Article

Part 1: Donald Trump Told the Truth About Sage Blair

For her Substack BROADview, Lisa Selin Davis details the story of Sage Blair, a teen who was socially transitioned at school, became a victim of sex trafficking, and was separated from her family by courts over their perceived lack of “affirmation.” Blair recently attended Trump’s State of the Union with her grandmother.

This is not just a story of how the school secretly facilitated Sage’s social transition, hiding it from her parents. It’s the story of how school personnel came to believe that to do so was their duty. It’s about how the justice system learned the same talking points about gender identity and came to see un-affirming—or, in this case, unaware—parents as so harmful that their kids were better off without them. It is the story of how a few poorly executed papers in the early 2000s about the importance of family acceptance were misinterpreted—and used to hurt families instead.

Read Part 1 of the Series

Erasing the Word “Woman”

For Quillette, Karleen Gribble investigates the desexing of language in women’s healthcare. She finds that replacing sex-specific terms like “woman” and “mother” is driven by gender-identity ideology and institutional pressure rather than evidence-based, scientific research.

In the absence of research, we are left in a place of unknowing regarding the impact of desexed language. Anecdotal evidence of misunderstanding, aversion, and miscommunication supports adverse consequences. It is likely, for example, that cervical cancer screening promotions describing those eligible for screening as “anyone with a cervix” are not understood by some women. But which and how many women? What are the morbidity and mortality costs resulting from missed screening for women who do not understand these health communications or reject the message? How might misunderstanding or rejection be mitigated? Who benefits from desexed language, and under what circumstances? We do not know the answers to any of these questions. And yet journals, publishers, university ethics committees, health organisations, and others are moving full steam ahead using, promoting, and sometimes enforcing desexed language. This is a completely unacceptable situation. Desexing the language of women’s health is a major intervention, one that should not be made without a strong evidence base.

Read the Full Article

Taking back the schools: How to reverse the decline in local education democracy

For the Aristotle Foundation, Paul W. Bennett shares his research on the Canadian education system, and calls for a more grassroots, community-focused approach.

Across Canada, the school system is groaning under the weight of its own bureaucracy. Centralized control, layered administration, and top-down governance have hollowed out the very institutions meant to serve students, families, and communities.³ For decades, provincial ministries and regional boards have been building an ever-expanding education “apparatus” that too often stifles innovation and isolates decision-makers from the classroom. The wisest choice has never been clearer: If we want schools that truly serve communities, we must flip the system—replacing top-down governance with bottom-up accountability rooted in the schoolhouse.

Read the Full Article

In Defense of Effeminate Boys

For The Atlantic, Ben Appel writes about how feminine or gender-nonconforming boys—especially those who may grow up to be gay—are increasingly being interpreted as transgender, and in many cases encouraged toward unnecessary and irreversible medical interventions.

As an adult, I vowed to help create a world where sissy boys like me could find space in society to be themselves, without any pressure to change—a goal that still feels urgent today. What I know now is that gender nonconformity didn’t disqualify me from being male. Effeminate boys, however atypical, are a natural variation of their own sex. The notion that they are really girls is anything but progressive.

Read the Full Article

FAIR News Podcast

For audio versions of our FAIR News and FAIR Weekly Roundup newsletters, subscribe and listen to FAIR News Weekly on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or via RSS feed.

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.

Dear Friends of FAIR,

Five years ago, FAIR began with a simple but urgent belief: that a free society depends on open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and equal dignity for all people. This March, we’re celebrating how far we’ve come and inviting you to help us build what comes next.

In just five years, your support has created extraordinary impact in communities around the country:

FAIR has developed an academically rigorous and non-politicized alternative to liberated Ethnic Studies. Our curriculum, which has been assessed by the Johns Hopkins School of Education, is ready for adoption in California and Oregon – and Minnesota is next! Across the country, educators are reaching out to us to find out how they can bring this groundbreaking course into their classrooms.

We’re championing artists who are building the authentic culture we want to see:

Our 2025 Artist Grants supported 14 creators across theatre, film, visual arts, and comedy. We’ve created Playwrights Think Tanks, Artist Meetups, and Writers Groups, cultivating a community where excellence matters more than ideology.

Our legal advocacy is winning major victories:

In 2022, FAIR sent the California Department of Education detailed legal guidance explaining why their policy of concealing students’ gender transitions from parents violated constitutional law. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 7-2 vindicating our arguments, protecting parental rights in California.

In August 2025, a federal court rejected West Virginia State Bar’s attempt to dismiss FAIR’s challenge to their racially discriminatory election practices, which means our case will proceed to trial on the merits.

We’ve renewed our legal challenge to Washington’s discriminatory housing policy with Pacific Legal Foundation, demanding equal access to housing assistance regardless of race.

We’ve filed OCR complaints that opened federal investigations within days. And we’re preparing litigation on behalf of female inmates at Washington Corrections Center for Women who are forced to share cells with men.

We’re equipping parents and communities with practical tools:

Our 2026 Black Lives Matter Toolkit empowers parents to navigate activist messaging in schools, while our FAIR in Libraries Neutrality & Viewpoint Diversity Toolkit helps communities counter ideological gatekeeping and restore intellectual freedom in libraries.

We’re advancing better, patient-informed healthcare:

Through our partnership with the Open Therapy Institute, FAIR in Medicine is promoting evidence-based mental health care and medical treatment that’s free from ideological capture, ensuring patients receive care grounded in science, not politics.

The challenges and opportunities aren’t shrinking; they’re growing.

Educators need our curriculum. Artists need platforms and protection. Students need defenders. Parents need advocates. Libraries need champions of neutrality. Patients need evidence-based care.

Throughout March, we’ll be sharing stories of FAIR’s impact across all our programs and asking for your partnership in building the next five years.

Watch your inbox for more detailed updates on:

• How our curriculum is reaching classrooms nationwide

• The artists we’re supporting and community we’re building

• Legal victories protecting constitutional principles

• How you can maximize your impact through strategic giving

Five years ago, FAIR was just an idea. Today, it’s a movement spanning classrooms, libraries, arts communities, and the Supreme Court. Our most important work is still ahead. With your support, we’re positioned to make the next five years even more impactful than the first.

Thank you for believing in what we’re building together.

With gratitude and determination,

Monica Harris
Executive Director, FAIR

P.S. As we celebrate five years of success, we’re asking supporters to consider special anniversary gifts that will help us capitalize on the momentum we’ve built. Stay tuned for opportunities to invest in FAIR’s next chapter!

Make an Anniversary Donation

Beyond Binary Thinking: Developing Nuanced Perspectives in Young Minds

Join FAIR Advisors Wilfred Reilly and Erec Smith for a conversation moderated by FAIR Executive Director Monica Harris. We will discuss the need to move beyond oversimplified oppressor/oppressed narratives to help develop critical thinking skills that honor complexity while maintaining moral clarity. This theme also supports FAIR's commitment to civil discourse, which is a foundational element of our Many Stories, One Nation curriculum.

Register

The Open Therapy Institute (OTI) is at the forefront of a burgeoning area of mental health care, developing innovative, evidence-based tools to help people, support professionals, and address social issues. Whether you’re a mental health professional, a patient, the leader of an organization, or just a citizen looking for openness and dialogue, OTI is developing solutions to help make things better.

Membership is for professionals in mental health fields including psychologists, counselors, social workers, psychiatrists, psychiatric nurses, pastoral counselors, and researchers. Membership is open to applicants internationally.

Apply

FAIR Educator Alliance 2025-2026

FAIR is launching the Educators Alliance for the 2025–2026 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.

Each monthly gathering will open with updates and presentations from FAIR staff, fellows, Chapter Leaders, and occasional guest speakers. Together, we’ll explore strategies to support educators, communities, and local chapters—and to advance positive change at the local, regional, and national levels. Following the 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.

Meetings: First Thursday of each month at 7 PM ET via Zoom
Duration: 1 hour

Join Us!

FAIR News Podcast

For audio versions of our FAIR News and FAIR Weekly Roundup newsletters, subscribe and listen to FAIR News Weekly on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or via RSS feed.

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.
  

Rethinking Representation This Black History Month

For FAIR’s Substack, Erec Smith writes about how resilient figures in black history have been, and how resilient black Americans can be right now.

I am of the mind that the best way to honor black Americans who came before us, who certainly did not have the representation many black people feel they need to move ahead, is to thwart the need to see ourselves in particular professional spaces. What did those black heroes fight for? What is the point of putting all that time and energy into opening doors of opportunity if no one is willing to walk through them? For what did they endure physical, mental, and emotional pain if we’re just going to act like we have it as bad as they did? The need for representation is a sacrilege for two reasons: it downplays the triumphs of black history and shows that black resilience may have weakened when the whole point was to strengthen it.

Read the Full Article

Lisa Bildy: Human rights rules on gender ideology are just blasphemy laws

For the National Post, FAIR Advisor Lisa Bidly writes about the case of Barry Neufeld, who was fined $750,000 for criticizing curriculum for young children that embedded gender ideology.

This case expands limits on freedom of expression in two significant ways. First, disparaging gender ideology — even when targeting ideas, not people — was found to be discriminatory. B.C.’s human rights commissioner argued that’s the way it should be. Excluding opinions on matters of “legitimate public interest” from the tribunal’s authority, she argued, created a loophole that should be closed. Mark Steyn avoided punishment for his commentary on Islam, also litigated in B.C., because it was considered political commentary within the bounds of free expression. Today’s human rights functionaries won’t abide such limits on their power.

Second, the expanded interpretation was applied to an elected trustee, whose role is to challenge policies and raise concerns about educational changes. Bureaucrats now dictate what elected officials can say on public policy matters.

Read the Full Article

Stop Pretending the Tumbler Ridge Killer Was Female

For Quillette, FAIR Advisor Jonathan Kay writes about Canadian police and journalists extending fraudulent courtesies to a trans-identified mass murderer.

This kind of institutionally mandated misuse of language is dishonest at the best of times. But it is especially offensive when it serves to misrepresent reality on behalf of a murderer (posthumously or otherwise). While Jesse Van Rootselaar’s criminal motive is unknown, he left a trove of digital clues about his identity—all of which paint a picture of a deeply disturbed young man with a stereotypically male fixation on firearms and violence.

Read the Full Article

Unmasking Academic Lies with Wilfred Reilly

FAIR Advisor Wilfred Riley joins the Center for Christian Virtue to discuss how mid-level bureaucrats are rebranding the poison of DEI as "belonging" or "togetherness" to stay entrenched.

Listen to the Full Conversation

What $1 Million of Anti-Racist Leadership Training Buys You

For The Atlantic, Tyler Austin Harper writes about his disagreement with Wesleyan University's president and the inefficacy of DEI initiatives.

It is precisely because I respect Roth that I was surprised to read his response to my recent article about the Mellon Foundation, the billion-dollar nonprofit that has been using its de facto monopoly on humanities grant-making to push a “scholar-activist” agenda—one that seems to measure the worth of knowledge by its real-world impact on liberal causes. Roth’s letter, which appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education, accuses me of peddling “fantasies” about Mellon’s undue influence. He also compares my critiques to the views of the segregationist Senator Jesse Helms, a man who is known primarily not for his views on higher education but for being one of the most openly racist American politicians to have held office this side of the moon landing. Roth’s letter is vaporous, obfuscatory, and symptomatic of the very problems I highlight in the Mellon article that he objects to.

Read the Full Article

FAIR News Podcast

For audio versions of our FAIR News and FAIR Weekly Roundup newsletters, subscribe and listen to FAIR News Weekly on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or via RSS feed.

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 FAIRstory Learning Standards.

Dear Friends of FAIR,

Last week, FAIR’s team attended the Minnesota Council for the Social Studies (MCSS) conference at Macalester College in St. Paul, and I am truly excited by what we experienced.

I’ll admit that I had real concerns heading into this trip. With immigration enforcement dominating the headlines, I was uncertain how a curriculum rooted in shared American values and constitutional principles would land with educators navigating a turbulent moment. What I found instead was something I didn’t expect: hope.

Prior to the conference, I had the honor of presenting an overview of FAIR’s curriculum at an event hosted by the Minnesota Partnership for Achievement. The attendees were educators, administrators, parents, and community supporters from across the state.

We moved through the course framework together, and I invited participants to try a sample exercise from a lesson on Identity and Belonging, a small-group discussion exploring whether their own American experience is best represented by the Melting Pot, the Mosaic, or the Salad Bowl metaphor. And that’s when the room came alive. People leaned in. The conversations were personal, candid, and remarkably thoughtful. When I called time, participants were reluctant to stop, and that reluctance is exactly the point. Because FAIR’s curriculum doesn’t tell students what to think, it creates conditions that make them want to think.

That evening also highlighted one of my biggest takeaways from the trip: Minnesota is so much more than Minneapolis and St. Paul. Whether they’re from suburbs, small towns, or rural communities, Minnesotans are grappling with the issues FAIR’s curriculum was designed to address: classrooms fractured by polarization, students who lack the tools for civil discourse, and a growing sense that American civic identity is fraying at the seams.

But the real surprise came on Saturday.

At our exhibitor table at the MCSS conference, we were approached by far more educators than we anticipated. They didn’t just pause to glance at our materials; they asked substantive questions, expressed genuine interest in exploring adoption at their schools, and, most importantly, left their contact information. I also attended a session I didn’t expect to find at this conference: a workshop devoted to teaching students about the importance of the Constitution in American society. It was a powerful reminder that there are still educators, even in the most politically charged landscapes, who still believe in the founding promise of democratic self-governance and are actively working to pass it on.

I want to be clear: the Twin Cities remain a challenging landscape for FAIR’s curriculum. But I’m optimistic because we found promising pockets and real opportunities last week.

The interest we discovered in Minnesota deserves a response that matches the moment, and that’s why we need your help. In order to bring FAIR’s curriculum to Minnesota classrooms, we will need to align it with the state’s Ethnic Studies standards, the same rigorous process that we engaged Johns Hopkins School for Education Policy to complete for California and Oregon. This isn’t a heavy lift, but it will require resources.

We’re asking for your support to help us raise $60,000 by June 1 to commission that review and engage our curriculum team to implement the necessary revisions.

This is targeted work with a clear deadline and a direct payoff: a curriculum that Minnesota educators can adopt with confidence, knowing it meets their state’s standards and serves all students.

If you believe that every young American deserves a rigorous, balanced civic education that strengthens democratic participation without demanding ideological conformity, please consider making a gift today.

Minnesotans are ready for change. Donate now to help them make it happen!

With gratitude,

Monica Harris
Executive Director
FAIR

Donate

Beyond Binary Thinking: Developing Nuanced Perspectives in Young Minds

We will discuss the need to move beyond oversimplified oppressor/oppressed narratives to help develop critical thinking skills that honor complexity while maintaining moral clarity. This theme also supports FAIR's commitment to civil discourse, which is a foundational element of our American Experience curriculum.

Register

Apply

FAIR Educator Alliance 2025-2026

FAIR is launching the Educators Alliance for the 2025–2026 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.

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.

Meetings: First Thursday of each month at 7 PM ET via Zoom
Duration: 1 hour

Join Us!

FAIR News Podcast

For audio versions of our FAIR News and FAIR Weekly Roundup newsletters, subscribe and listen to FAIR News Weekly on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or via RSS feed.

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 FAIRstory Learning Standards.

One of the reasons I like Black History Month is its showcase and celebration of the triumphs of black people in the United States from slavery, through Jim Crow, to recent history. These triumphs not only show how resilient figures in black history have been, but also how resilient black Americans can be right now. These historical figures represent the potential of contemporary figures. That said, both black and non-black Americans insist that sufficient representation of black American success is still somehow lacking. For me, that has not been the case. Though Mary Wright Edelman’s claim that “You can’t be what you can’t see” has been widely embraced, I think that embrace is both misguided and a slap in the face of those black leaders who came before us.

When people try to convince me of the importance of demographic representation in professional spaces, I always reply similarly. “Yes,” I say, “ I always make sure another black person is in a restaurant before I walk in.” When they nod in approval, I add, “Before I order the prime rib at a restaurant, I have to make sure I see another black person eating it first.” After they realize my facetiousness, I add, “If I don’t see a black man eating the prime rib, I just point to another black person in the restaurant and say to the waiter‘I’ll have what he’s having.” Clearly, this is a roundabout way of saying the concept of representation is overstated. Yes, I know the need for representation is a real thing for people. My question is, “Should it be?” Is the need for racial representation something to be satisfied, or is it something to be overcome?

I understand the appeal of representation to an extent, especially when it comes to shaping young minds during formative years. For such young minds, racial representation in professional spaces expands their perceived possibilities for future livelihood, reduces what identity-based uncertainty that may have been instilled in them, and effectively signals viable pursuits and belonging. I get that. It’s why I say representation is “overrated” and not just useless.

However, I believe the importance and efficacy of racial representation loses its usefulness after a while, the way training wheels lose their usefulness when a child learns to ride a bike without them. As far as I see it, after a certain age, representation is more of a crutch than anything else. One detriment of this crutch is the demand to see black people in particular fields because they themselves are interested in pursuing that field. But this is a flawed take.

When I was a child, I didn’t need to see black people succeed in a particular field. I needed to see black people succeed, period. When I saw a successful black professional, I knew that I could be a successful black professional as well, not successful in a particular field, just successful. I didn’t need to see a black professor before entering graduate school to earn my Ph.D. In my mind, “successful black professor” was a subcategory of “successful black professional.” All I needed was to see success, and I saw enough to make me think I could be successful too.

What’s more, the need for representation is a self-defeating concept. Somebody has to be the first minority in a field to serve as the initial representation. If every black person needed to see representation in a certain field, they would never get representatives in that field. Someone has to take the first step. Why can’t it be you?

In The Content of Our Character, Shelby Steele coined the term “integration shock,” which is the reluctance of black people to enter white spaces after the Civil Rights Movement, a reluctance born of both fear and unfamiliarity. I think this was understandable in the years following the end of the movement, but I believe the perpetuation of a victim narrative—which provided many rhetorical and political benefits—has kept this concept alive. The need for representation is a symptom of integration shock, which is a byproduct of victimhood.

I am of the mind that the best way to honor black Americans who came before us, who certainly did not have the representation many black people feel they need to move ahead, is to thwart the need to see ourselves in particular professional spaces. What did those black heroes fight for? What is the point of putting all that time and energy into opening doors of opportunity if no one is willing to walk through them? For what did they endure physical, mental, and emotional pain if we’re just going to act like we have it as bad as they did? The need for representation is a sacrilege for two reasons: it downplays the triumphs of black history and shows that black resilience may have weakened when the whole point was to strengthen it.

I plan on honoring the black intellectuals, heroes, and leaders of American history by walking through whatever doors I want, aspiring to whichever goals I want, and focusing on the present and future they fought so hard to give me. Anything else makes a celebration of black history into a mockery of black history.

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