The sudden death of literature — and why we must save it

In this week's featured essay, author Kimberley Tait traces a decade-long transformation in literary publishing, from the rise of sensitivity readers and identity-based gatekeeping to the unchecked infiltration of AI-generated fiction, and argues that both forces are symptoms of the same underlying disease: the displacement of beauty, truth, and the human voice by compliance and ideology. Tait founded Dogstar Press as a direct response, launching a 100% Human seal to authenticate fiction written entirely by people. Her essay is a passionate, personal defense of literature as a sacred and irreducibly human art form.

A lifelong believer that literature is the expression of the human soul — divinely inspired to illuminate the human condition and offer meaning and light in pain and darkness — I wasn’t willing to alter my work to meet external standards. Pitching my new novel, I ran straight into the brick wall of gatekeepers, who told me my writing didn’t honor the current political and social climate, lacking relevance and committing the ultimate crime of insensitivity. Yielding to others’ sensitivities, expectations, or ideologies betrays that enlightenment and puts a stranglehold on the creative process. This leads to more and more homogeneous and theatrical literature, with authors more concerned about offending people and saying the ‘right thing’ than producing beautiful and genuine art.”

Read the Full Article

The Settlement That Admits Antisemitism Is Real

FAIR Board of Advisors member and filmmaker Eli Steele, whose documentary Killing America documented antisemitism at Menlo-Atherton High School in California, responds to a landmark settlement this week between a group of parents and the Sequoia Union High School District. The settlement requires the district to explicitly name antisemitism as a prohibited form of discrimination, adopt a definition that includes denying Jewish self-determination as a form of antisemitism, and designate the Israel-Palestine conflict as a “controversial issue” requiring impartial classroom treatment. For Steele, the settlement is a vindication — but an incomplete one. The ideology that enabled the antisemitism, he argues, remains embedded in the curriculum.

“This settlement is one of the clearest acknowledgments yet that antisemitism in our public schools is real, systemic, and can no longer be brushed aside with slogans about ‘equity’ and ‘inclusion.’ Ethnic studies, as implemented across California, pushes variations of this oppressor-oppressed model grounded in liberation ideology, and it has given antisemitism its intellectual and moral cover. Within that framework, Jewish students are placed in the ‘white’ box. Their history as a persecuted people is erased. Their ancestral identity is flattened into a racial category of convenience. But Jews are far from the only ones harmed by this. The American, the individual, is most harmed. Anytime you see the word ‘studies’ — black studies, chicano studies, ethnic studies — you are looking at the institutionalized study of victimization. The worthy victory of the settlement fixes the district. But the ideology still remains in the classroom and in the minds of many. That is the next fight.”

Read the Full Article

Free Speech and Respect for Student Autonomy

Political science professor Ronald Den Otter argues, drawing on his new book, that the strongest case for protecting student speech is not merely constitutional but philosophical: restricting what students can say is fundamentally incompatible with respect for their autonomy as developing individuals. Den Otter contends that paternalistic censorship — the idea that school authorities know better than students what ideas they should be exposed to — stunts intellectual growth, undermines self-reliance, and treats teenagers as incapable of the very reasoning they are in school to develop. The piece is a timely reminder that free expression in schools is not just a legal question but a moral one.

"Simply put, censorship at a public school is incompatible with respect for the autonomy of each student. When you treat teenage students as children in junior high or high school, including policing their speech, they will act like children. Nobody learns how to become more independent and responsible by being told what to do. Restrictions on speech stunt intellectual growth, self-reflection, and the acquisition of knowledge, thereby undermining the development of the autonomous capacities that help to make us who we are."

Read the Full Article

Greg Lukianoff: ‘The Worst of Both Worlds’ for Campus Free Speech

Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), delivered a sharp diagnosis of the state of free expression at American universities at a Dartmouth Dialogues event this week. Lukianoff argued that higher education is now caught between two illiberal forces: the "2020-style cancel culture" that punishes faculty and students for heterodox views, and the Trump administration's "unprecedented targeting" of universities for political purposes. The result, he said, is a "terrible mess" — the worst of both worlds for anyone who cares about open inquiry. His prescription: genuine viewpoint diversity among faculty, and a commitment to "radical open-mindedness" that treats even deeply offensive ideas as worthy of engagement rather than suppression.

"We're still seeing old school, as in 2020-style, cancel culture campaigns against students and professors who step out of line in some cases. But we're also seeing massive efforts from politicians on the right to go after professors and students who say things they don't like. Higher education absolutely needs reform, but any reform must comply with the First Amendment and academic freedom. This kind of group-think leads to less intellectual honesty and consequently less trust in higher education."

Read the Full Article

Safetyism Has Made Society Terrified of Disagreement

Writing in Spiked, political analyst Stefano Gujon examines how "safetyism," the doctrine that intellectual discomfort constitutes harm, has spread from university campuses into companies, media, and public life, with measurable and damaging results. Citing FIRE data showing that 42 percent of American university faculty self-censor during classroom discussions, a rate roughly four times higher than during the McCarthy era, Gujon argues that the institutions meant to defend free thought have become breeding grounds for illiberal conformism. The piece draws directly on the work of FAIR Advisors Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff, whose concept of "safetyism" is at the center of his analysis.

“We’re still seeing old school, as in 2020-style, cancel culture campaigns against students and professors who step out of line in some cases. But we’re also seeing massive efforts from politicians on the right to go after professors and students who say things they don’t like. Higher education absolutely needs reform, but any reform must comply with the First Amendment and academic freedom. This kind of group-think leads to less intellectual honesty and consequently less trust in higher education.”

Read the Full Article

Join the FAIR Community

• Join us, and become a member of FAIR.

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

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

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

• View our Many Stories, One Nation curriculum.

Dear Friends of FAIR,

June is Pride Month, and across the country, schools are planning assemblies, classroom activities, and student events tied to LGBTQ+ advocacy and identity politics. For many families, this raises a question that schools rarely address or answer clearly: Does my child have to participate?

The answer is no — and we want to make sure parents know this.

FAIR supports genuine inclusion for every student, including LGBTQ+ students. Every child deserves to be treated with dignity and to feel safe at school. At the same time, we believe that families hold the right to make decisions about values, identity, and belief systems for their own children. Students should never be pressured, penalized, or socially shamed for declining to participate in ideologically driven school activities.

These are principles we hold consistently, whether the activism comes from the left or the right.

This month, many schools will go beyond inclusion and cross into advocacy by asking students to affirm particular beliefs about gender, sexuality, and identity as part of classroom instruction or school-sponsored events. Some of these activities may implicate parental rights, free exercise protections, and students’ First Amendment right not to speak. When schools make participation mandatory or create social pressure that amounts to compelled affirmation, they risk violating the very civil rights principles they claim to uphold.

FAIR’s Pride Month Letter Template gives parents a practical, ready-to-use tool to protect their children’s rights, respectfully and effectively.

The letter helps parents:

• Request that their child be excused from mandatory participation in Pride-related school activities

• Invoke parental rights, student free speech protections, and the First Amendment principle that students cannot be compelled to affirm beliefs they don’t hold

• Open a respectful, documented dialogue with school administrators

The letter is free to download, editable, and grounded in constitutional principles that apply regardless of where your family stands on these issues.

We want to be clear about what we are not doing.

We are not asking schools to ignore or demean LGBTQ+ students. We are not asking anyone to be unkind or disrespectful to their classmates or teachers.

We are asking schools to respect the full range of students and families they serve, including those whose religious beliefs, cultural backgrounds, or family values lead them to approach these issues and questions differently.

Schools should be places where every child can learn and grow, without being required to adopt any particular political or ideological identity. Every family deserves the tools to hold schools to that standard.

True inclusion means protecting every student’s right to be treated with dignity. It also means protecting every family’s right to guide their own children.

Producing and expanding these resources takes real support. Your donation helps us develop toolkits for parents navigating ideologically charged school environments and provide legal support to families whose children face retaliation for opting out of activities and events.

Download the template letter and donate today to help us keep these resources free and accessible.

With gratitude,

Monica Harris
Executive Director, FAIR

The War on Words: A Conversation with Nadine Strossen

From college campuses to corporate boardrooms to the chambers of Congress, the pressure to restrict speech is intensifying, and it’s coming from every direction. Nadine Strossen and Greg Lukianoff have heard every argument for censorship, and they take each one apart in their new book, The War On Words: 10 Arguments Against Free Speech―And Why They Fail.

Join Fair For All’s Executive Director Monica Harris on Thursday June 11th, 4pm PT / 7pm ET, for a conversation with Strossen, a member of FAIR’s Board of Advisors and former ACLU president, as they dissect the case for censorship and what it will take to defend free expression in an era that is increasingly hostile to it.

This webinar will be livestreamed on FAIR’s X, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Zoom.

Register Here

FAIR in Conversation is Back!

FAIR in Conversation has relaunched 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.

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 through September 23rd. We hope you’ll join us!

Register Here

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.
  

From my first encounters with literature as a child — Anne of Green Gables and The Secret Garden — I had a sense I was in contact with something sacred and eternal. As a teenager working part-time at my neighborhood bookshop in Toronto, I marked up my novels with passionate highlights, asterisks, and margin notes on sentences that seemed to transcend earthly boundaries. My old copy of Émile Zola’s Germinal contains my favorite margin note in all-caps: HUMANITY PREVALENT. A novel about the plight of coal miners in 1860s France, Germinal is political but its primary concern is something much more profound. This is precisely why it endures — and why a fifteen-year old on her summer vacation in 1990s Canada found it gripping and moving and unforgettable.

In his 1954 introduction to Germinal, Leonard Tancock observed: "A work of art must have some fundamental human truth; it must not merely make a number of puppets dance to a political tune . . . Zola is not merely concerned with demonstrating some theory of his about trade unions or socialism, but with universal human nature." His conclusion: "Humanity, then, is the real hero of Germinal.”

Herein lies the tragedy of the modern literary world. Reaching for the universal, the transcendent, and the eternal in works of fiction is not just de-emphasized, it is actively discouraged by those with the power to publish these books. Over the past ten years, the industry has shifted sharply to focus on topics and criteria that divide us— on parameters that restrict, muddle, and sideline artists and undermine literature as a force that unites, illuminates, and uplifts.

My journey as an author, first published by a Big Five publisher in 2017, coincided with the rise of this new, flattening orthodoxy. Seemingly overnight, literary gatekeepers made inclusivity their responsibility and primary purpose: agents heavily prioritized identity categories in their bios and wish lists; publishers hired sensitivity readers to screen manuscripts and ensure words did not "trigger" readers; and literary estates altered the works of great authors like Roald Dahl and Ian Fleming posthumously to align them with present-day progressive standards. Literary art was now judged by criteria unrelated to its quality or substance. The vision of the writer was subjugated to the anticipated feelings of a subset of readers. "Everyone has a story to tell" became the industry mantra, but only if you tell it the right way — and only if your profile checks the right boxes.

Working on my sophomore novel in this new regime, I second-guessed everything I wrote, my fingers freezing at the keyboard. Instead of focusing on the pursuit of beauty — what had always been my motivation to write — I was preoccupied with whether gatekeepers would find my work "acceptable." As a fiercely independent person who has always charted my own course, resisting labels, tuning out trends, and having no desire to make political statements with my work, I felt immense pressure on all of these fronts. An intrusive ogre loomed over my shoulder, evaluating my sentences against a politically-charged rulebook, filling me with dread, and choking my inspiration.

I wasn’t alone. This was happening to writers the world over. In 2021, Sir Kazuo Ishiguro spoke out about the "climate of fear" and self-censorship spreading among less established writers, calling it "a dangerous state of affairs." Lionel Shriver described the "universal cowardice at the top [of publishing] and complete capitulation to orthodoxy in younger staff who you would think have no power, but…they've started running the place." A mass muting was in progress: artistic expression was being tamped down and distorted to meet a set of non-negotiable requirements. I was dismayed when a young, aspiring novelist wrote to me: "I added a progressive left lean to the ending of my novel . . . I think it's just aligned with my views to not seem too forced but I probably wouldn't have done it if I wasn't afraid of getting it seen otherwise."

As a lifelong believer that literature is the expression of the human soul — divinely inspired to illuminate the human condition and offer meaning and light in pain and darkness — I wasn't willing to alter my work to meet external standards. When pitching my new novel, I ran straight into the brick wall of gatekeepers, who told me my writing didn't honor the current political and social climate, lacking relevance and committing the ultimate crime of insensitivity. One literary agent said my characters’ response to the 9/11 tragedy, written from my Xennial vantage point, would offend Gen Z readers, many of whom were toddlers or not yet born on 9/11, who could not fathom their behavior. Surprised by the intensity of emotion surging inside me, I replied:

"Part of [literature's] purpose is to enlighten people with a point of view about the human condition . . . To offer a porthole out of their own bubble. Yielding to others' sensitivities, expectations, or ideologies not only interferes with that enlightenment, but also puts a stranglehold on the creative process. This leads to more and more homogeneous and theatrical literature, with authors more concerned about offending people and saying the 'right thing' than producing beautiful and genuine art. What a tremendous loss to the world. Wuthering Heights would not exist if Emily Brontë had shaped her story around societal sensibilities or adjusted it to fit other people's expectations."

The world of literature, the domain of my childhood dreams, was turning into a factory spitting out compliant products disconnected from the divine and worshipping at an ideological altar. In this construct, the artist shrivels into a useful cog, only welcome if they are willing to fall in line. There is no expansion and illumination of human nature. There is no pursuit of truth and beauty. There is no true human variety, which is how literary fiction has always enhanced empathy and theory of mind more than any other genre. Humanity, I realized as I remembered my old Germinal margin note, is no longer prevalent. Literature is dying.

• • •

Then a new ogre swung into the frame like a wrecking ball. My social media feeds began filling with AI hysteria, with people I know “writing” AI-assisted books and chirping shiny talking points about the mass expansion and enhancement of creativity. LLMs and AI writing tools like Sudowrite were praised as “a salvation” by mainstream media including The New Yorker. (Sudowrite’s FAQ reads like sacrilege: “Is this magic? . . . Yes. But so is life, isn’t it?”)

The flattening of art and subversion of artists was only a precursor to the next, devastating chapter: the active overwriting of the human voice and soul by unstoppable technology, once again billed as “progress.” In hot pursuit of profits, mainstream publishing has taken no stand against the infiltration of AI despite the widespread outcries of authors, many of whom ardently support the dogmatic approach that paved the way for it. The system is forcing us into a brave new world where authenticity, variety, nuance, complexity, and strife are replaced by performance, compliance, uniformity, submission, and ease. What will happen if beautiful, heartfelt, human art — produced through struggle and expressed without mandates and machine intervention — disappears? Our civilization will lose its inner life: numbed by the algorithms, unable to think and feel deeply, with nothing to hold onto when the world goes dark. This blow could be as devastating as nuclear war — not to our bodies, but to our souls.

When I discovered FAIR, relief flooded through me. Nothing is more revitalizing than learning you are not alone when the system insists that you are the problem. I found kinship with artists around the world, from all backgrounds and demographics, spanning every medium and tradition, who believe true art — beautiful, excellent, and unapologetically human — is worth fighting for.

A few months later, I founded Dogstar Press as a refuge from ideology and artifice: a literary press uniquely devoted to beauty, sincerity, and fiction as an exclusively human art form. As AI-written and AI-assisted novels slip into the publishing machine without disclosure, Dogstar is defending the human voice and the pursuit of beauty without constraints. Our 100% Human seal — deliberately pro-human, not anti-AI, and backed by a legally binding verification process — is a badge of authenticity for readers who believe literature can only be conceived and crafted by people.

The hyper-political, hyper-digital life that has been forced upon us is a toxic condition, antithetical to our natural, God-given one. As human beings we are part of an ancient lineage, wired to seek meaning and look for silver pinpricks in a pitch-black sky to guide us. This is the role of literature and all forms of art. As the algorithms thrum away, silent and ruthless, artists seeking truth, meaning, and beauty are the last link keeping people’s hearts and senses awake. We must stand together and find patrons to sponsor this life-affirming work. It is the only way humanity will prevail.

Kimberley Tait is a novelist, writer, editor, brand builder, and founder of Dogstar Press—the independent publisher devoted to beauty, sincerity, and 100% human fiction. She is part of a New Romantic movement rising above the age of algorithms.

Share

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

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

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

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

When Diversity Erases the Children It Claims to Include

For FAIR's Substack, FAIR lead curriculum developer Lisa Gilbert draws on her experience raising a multiracial son to examine how race essentialism in schools, and the DEI frameworks that drive it, erase the very children they claim to serve. Tracing the history of monoracialization from the one-drop rule to today's diversity metrics, Gilbert shows how multiracial children are routinely collapsed into a single racial category, their full heritage subtracted from view. She argues that the antidote isn't a better framework for sorting children, but instead an education that honors the whole of who they are, grounded in shared democratic principles and the skills of civil discourse. That conviction, she writes, is what led her to Many Stories, One Nation.

Race essentialism, mandatory affinity groups, and rigid oppressor/oppressed binaries do more than oversimplify the identity of multiracial children; they subtract from them. These children, and all children, deserve an education that does the opposite: one that honors every part of who they are, recognizes both America's failures and its successes, and cultivates the discourse skills needed to live in a diverse democracy.

Read the Full Article

Treasure Your Attention

For his After Babel Substack, FAIR Advisor Jonathan Haidt published the full text of his NYU commencement address, the speech that sparked protests and a student petition calling for his disinvitation. Rather than a polemic, it is an appeal to the graduating class to reclaim their attention from platforms engineered to hijack it and to invest it instead in doing hard things with other people in real life. Invoking Mary Oliver's instruction to “pay attention, be astonished, tell about it,” Haidt argues that treasuring one's attention is the foundation of a flourishing life.

You have the opportunity to become the best, fullest, and truest version of yourself. Here's something else I can tell you: The world needs you to seize that opportunity with everything you've got. It won't be easy. You'll face the universal challenges encountered by all the generations who came before you, and you'll face the unique ones that have arisen for your generation. But if you treasure your attention, and then use it to do hard things, with other people, in real life, then — and trust me on this, as a social psychologist — your life is going to be amazing.

Read the Full Article

Canada’s Newspaper of Record Asks: ‘What If They Ultimately Find Nothing?’

For Quillette, FAIR Advisor Jonathan Kay examines how the Globe and Mail — five years after helping ignite a nationwide panic over “unmarked graves” at Indigenous residential school sites — is now quietly hedging its coverage as the physical evidence fails to materialize. Rather than reckon honestly with what went wrong, Kay argues, the paper is floating a new narrative: that the absence of graves may not matter much anyway. He traces this as part of a broader pattern of Canadian media institutions protecting their own credibility at the expense of journalistic honesty — and at the expense of the Indigenous communities whose grief was instrumentalized to drive a story that may never have been true.

The Globe’s approach amounts to a kind of epistemic escape hatch: having promoted the graves narrative for years without adequate skepticism, the paper now suggests that the question of whether the graves actually exist is, in some sense, beside the point. This is not journalism. It is reputation management dressed up as nuance.

Read the Full Article

What Jonathan Haidt actually said at NYU — and what The Coddling of the American Mind actually argued

For his Eternally Radical Idea Substack, FIRE President Greg Lukianoff defends FAIR Advisor Jonathan Haidt after Haidt was booed at NYU's commencement ceremony. Lukianoff rebuts the student petition misrepresenting Haidt's speech — which urged graduates to treasure their attention and do hard things — and defends NYU for not caving to demands to disinvite him. Invoking Frederick Douglass, he argues that preventing others from hearing what you find objectionable is "a double wrong."

You can object to a speaker. You do not get to decide that nobody else may hear him. Kudos to NYU for not caving to that pressure. The graduating class does not have one set of values. No large university does. Conservative students, religious students and, increasingly, Jewish students routinely sit through speakers, trainings, and institutional messaging that do not reflect their values.

Read the Full Article

Texas Tech's New Limits on How Faculty Teach Gender Identity Challenge More Than Free Speech

Writing in The Conversation, law professor Henry Fradella examines Texas Tech's new policy, effective June 2026, barring faculty from teaching gender as a spectrum and prohibiting graduate students from writing theses or dissertations on gender or sexual orientation. Fradella argues this goes further than any other major public university and raises serious questions about academic freedom — a concern FAIR has long applied across the ideological spectrum.

When the state decides which questions may and may not be researched, it is doing more than shaping curriculum. It is regulating the boundaries of knowledge itself by determining what future scholars may study and what universities are permitted to discover. That — more than any single line in a memo — is what should concern anyone who cares about the integrity of higher education.

Read the Full Article

Should It Be a Crime to Mock the Burqa?

Also in Spiked this week: at a 60,000-person "Unite the Kingdom" rally in London, three women took the stage in niqabs, then removed them to reveal themselves as protesters mocking a garment the author describes as a symbol of women's subjugation by Islamist hardliners. The response from politicians and media commentators was immediate: calls for condemnation, police action, and in some quarters, criminal charges. The piece argues that this reaction reveals something troubling about the state of free expression in Britain — that a segment of the left has become so protective of religious identity politics that it is willing to use state power to suppress lawful satire. The author warns that the demand for criminal sanction against political mockery is not a defense of pluralism but rather its undoing.

The response to this public mockery of the burqa — a symbol of women's subjugation by Islamist hardliners, let's not forget — has been depressingly predictable. "No condemnation from our politicians, no action by the police," fulminated Guardian journalist Owen Jones. This is what now passes for progressive politics in Britain: the demand that the state intervene to punish those who mock a religious garment associated with the oppression of women.

Read the Full Article

Join the FAIR Community

• Join us, and become a member of FAIR.

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

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

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

• View our Many Stories, One Nation curriculum.

When FAIR filed its lawsuit last month on behalf of Faith Booher-Smith, an incarcerated woman at the Washington Corrections Center for Women in Gig Harbor, we knew her story deserved to be heard. This week, it was.

On May 19, the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) formally notified Washington Governor Bob Ferguson that the federal government is opening an investigation into whether Washington’s practice of housing male inmates in its women’s prison violates the constitutional rights of female prisoners. The DOJ will examine whether Washington engages in a pattern or practice of Eighth Amendment violations, including its response to allegations of sexual assault, rape, voyeurism, and sexual intimidation at the facility.

Faith’s story is also reaching a national audience. Fox News reported on her lawsuit earlier this month, and the Washington State Standard covered the DOJ investigation this week. When major outlets cover a case like Faith’s, it becomes harder to look away.

This is a significant development, and it begins with one woman's courage.

Faith is a woman serving at the Washington Corrections Center for Women (“WCCW”). She is not a symbol or a political argument. She is a person who, in August 2025, was violently attacked in a common area of the facility where she lives. According to her federal lawsuit, the man who attacked her approached from behind, struck her in the face, grabbed her hair, threw her to the ground, and kicked her repeatedly. She suffered facial bruising, swelling, and a laceration inside her mouth. A corrections officer was present and did not intervene.

The man who attacked her is a convicted sex offender with a documented history of violence. He had been transferred into the women’s facility under Washington’s gender-identity housing policy, which allows inmates to request placement based on self-identified gender. A corrections official at his prior facility had specifically warned against the transfer. That warning was not heeded.

In the weeks before the attack, Faith had noticed the inmate watching her and had tried to avoid him. She had nowhere to go. She could not leave. The state had placed her there, and the state had placed him there, too.

Faith came forward despite the vulnerabilities that come with being incarcerated and despite the difficulty of bringing a federal lawsuit from behind prison walls. Her courage in doing so has now contributed to a federal investigation that may protect women across Washington’s corrections system.

Faith’s lawsuit, which FAIR brought in partnership with the America First Policy Institute, argues that her attack was not an isolated incident. It alleges that other women at WCCW have been physically assaulted, threatened, intimidated, and sexually harassed by male inmates housed alongside them, and that state officials were on notice about these risks long before Faith was hurt.

FAIR has members currently incarcerated at the Washington Corrections Center for Women. They have come to us directly, describing harm and fear resulting from this policy. Their identities cannot be disclosed for their own protection, but their voices inform everything we do in this case. This is not an abstract legal argument for us. It’s personal.

FAIR is committed to defending equal protection for all under the law, without exception and without regard to which group is affected. That commitment is grounded in a recognition shared by our members across the political spectrum: that biological sex is a meaningful and legally significant category, particularly in settings like incarceration where physical safety depends on it. When women in state custody are exposed to foreseeable harm because of a policy that places ideology above that reality, that is an equal protection issue. It’s also a civil rights issue. The Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. Housing women with male inmates who have histories of violence and sexual offenses, and then failing to protect those women when harm occurs, is not a gray area.

FAIR has been consistent in its respect for the dignity of all people: equal protection means equal protection for everyone. The women inside Washington’s corrections system have the same constitutional rights as everyone else, and a government that cannot guarantee their physical safety has failed its most basic obligation. This case is not about hostility toward any group; it’s about a specific policy that has produced documented harm to incarcerated women, and about the legal and constitutional obligations of the state to prevent that harm.

We do not take cases because they are politically convenient. A prison cell does not diminish anyone's constitutional rights, and when those rights are violated, FAIR pays attention — regardless of who the victim is or where she lives.

The DOJ’s investigation does not guarantee a favorable outcome for Faith, but it’s a meaningful signal that the concerns raised in her lawsuit, and by women at WCCW more broadly, have triggered federal scrutiny. When the DOJ writes a formal letter to a sitting governor saying we are watching what is happening in your women’s prison, that matters.

We will continue to stand with Faith. We will keep you informed as this case develops, and we are grateful to everyone in this community who supports the principle that civil rights are not conditional.

Cases like Faith's are possible because of supporters like you.

Federal civil rights litigation is complex and costly, and FAIR is committed to seeing this through. If you would like to support our litigation, please consider making a donation today. Every contribution helps us stand with people like Faith who have no one else in their corner.

With gratitude,

Monica Harris
Executive Director, FAIR

Donate

The War on Words: A Conversation with Nadine Strossen

From college campuses to corporate boardrooms to the chambers of Congress, the pressure to restrict speech is intensifying, and it’s coming from every direction. Nadine Strossen and Greg Lukianoff have heard every argument for censorship, and they take each one apart in their new book, The War On Words: 10 Arguments Against Free Speech―And Why They Fail.

Join Fair For All’s Executive Director Monica Harris on Thursday June 11th, 4pm PT / 7pm ET, for a conversation with Strossen, a member of FAIR’s Board of Advisors and former ACLU president, as they dissect the case for censorship and what it will take to defend free expression in an era that is increasingly hostile to it.

This webinar will be livestreamed on FAIR’s X, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Zoom.

Register Here

FAIR in Conversation is Back!

This month’s topic: What happens when certain questions become too dangerous to ask? Join FAIR In Conversation on Wednesday, May 27th, 8pm ET, for a discussion on taboo topics, alleged hoaxes, and the role of open inquiry in the search for truth.

FAIR in Conversation has relaunched 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. 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!

Register Here

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.

This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Several years ago I began hearing whispers of something I couldn't quite believe: interracial relationships like mine were now under suspicion. People of color who chose white partners were being labeled "white-adjacent," as if somehow complicit in their own erasure. White partners, in turn, were accused of “exploiting” or “colonizing” the bodies of people they love. As someone who has spent her entire life in interracial and interethnic friendships and relationships, I was mystified and disheartened by this new narrative.

Because my mother was an anthropologist, her research endeavors and social functions often immersed me among people from a variety of races, ethnicities and cultures different from my own. I learned to appreciate differences but also to recognize our shared humanity from a young age. In high school, my first boyfriend was Mexican American; the next, Native American and French; another, Puerto Rican.

As a college student traveling the world, I was drawn to people of all ethnicities and origins, eager to learn new perspectives and ways of being. It was during that time that I met and married my former South African husband. The women in my life who came later were equally varied: one Mexican American, another Jewish American; my wife of twenty years is African American. Throughout the years of study, travel, and career, my friendships extended across an even wider range of races, ethnicities and cultures. Cultivating connections across differences is, quite simply, in my nature.

Until 2020, I never gave much thought to the “interracial” nature of my own family beyond ensuring that our multiracial son fostered relationships with both sides of his extended family and had mentors who reflected his unique heritage. Family and friends in California and Montana have always embraced us. But shortly after the death of George Floyd, I started paying attention to the messages our 7th grade son was absorbing from teachers and administrators at his school. I noticed they were categorizing him as "black" to boost their diversity numbers while assigning him to read Stamped for Kids, a book that sorts every child into one of two roles: oppressor or oppressed.

Except our adopted son is neither.

His birth father is African American, and his birth mother is Mexican-Zacatecan. His two mothers are African American and European American. Our son isn’t a fraction of any of these heritages; he is all of them — just like Myles, one of the children in W. Kamau Bell and Melissa Hudson Bell’s HBO documentary 1000% Me, who describes himself as “100% Filipino, 100% African American, and 1000% a person.”

Multiracial kids are 100% of each of their parent’s ancestry, all at once and simultaneously. Yet this reality wasn’t reflected in the “black” box our son’s school had forced him into.

• • •

This experience prompted me to look more deeply into the historical practice of flattening people's identities into a single category. That’s when I learned that the monoracialization and invisibility of multiracial children runs throughout American history and continues today — initially to discriminate against people of color, and now to satisfy diversity, equity and inclusion metrics

In the 1800s, the infamous “one-drop rule” was instituted to exclude any individual with a known black ancestor from White society. Anti-miscegenation laws criminalized interracial marriage and treated the children of those unions as illegitimate. “Mulattoes,” as multiracial people were referred to at the time, were removed from the 1900 census, restored in 1910, then dropped once more in 1930. Each shift was driven by the political interests of the day.

In 2000, the U.S. census model changed once again, permitting Americans to “mark one or more” races to describe themselves. The multiracial population has since climbed to roughly 8.5 million Americans in 2024, growing about 2.7 percent a year and ranking among the fastest-growing of any demographic group. This demographic is also the country’s youngest: the median age of multiracial Americans of black ancestry, like our son, is just 19.5 years old, and nearly half are under 18.

Multiracial children comprise a large share of the next generation, yet many of them aren’t being counted — and even more aren’t being understood.

This dynamic even plays out in descriptions of our most prominent multiracial Americans. Barack Obama, whose mother was white, is almost always described as “the first black president.” On the other hand, Kamala Harris, whose parents are Jamaican American and Indian American, is described as the “first black and Indian American Vice President.” When both heritages are non-white, each is acknowledged; when one is white, however, that heritage quietly disappears. This pattern — so consistent and so unexamined — convinced me that this was a story far bigger than my own family.

• • •

I had seen this same erasure play out closer to home. For two years I served on the DEI committee of our son’s school in Missoula. My wife joined me in proposing the school become a FAIR School, committed to cultivating an environment that honors both unique identities and common humanity, welcomes diverse perspectives, and teaches civil discourse as a skill for democratic life. We presented our proposal to the school, after which the DEI committee dutifully formed a subcommittee to “explore” the idea. Despite our numerous attempts to follow up, we never heard from it again.

Months later, when the committee turned its attention to comparing the diversity of the school’s student body to that of Missoula and Montana more broadly, I volunteered to gather the data. What I found surprised me. The largest non-White group in the city, and in the state as a whole, is multiracial — yet our school provided no category for multiracial or biracial students. These children were instead sorted into a single ethnic minority box chosen by administrators: “African American,” “Asian American,” or “Latin American.” Regardless of which non-white heritage the school elected to assign, the rest of the child — every other heritage they were 100% of — simply disappeared from the data.

Determined to see how widespread this was, I pored over the school’s family directory and discovered that every single “student of color” enrolled had a white parent. They were either adopted by, or born to, a white and non-white parent. In other words, the school's diversity profile consisted almost entirely of children whose white heritage had been erased to meet diversity metrics.

Ironically, school administrators had the diversity they claimed to want. They simply refused to see it.

Watching our son navigate these frameworks made one thing clear: they weren't built for him. Race essentialism, mandatory affinity groups, and rigid oppressor/oppressed binaries do more than oversimplify the identity of multiracial children; they subtract from them. These children, and all children, deserve an education that does the opposite: one that honors every part of who they are, recognizes both America's failures and its successes, and cultivates the discourse skills needed to live in a diverse democracy.

My family’s experience, it turns out, wasn’t unusual. While listening to FAIR Advisors Eli Steele and Greg Thomas discuss multiracial identity and how to navigate belonging when society demands we choose, something clicked. That’s when I realized that arguing against existing frameworks wasn't enough. Someone needed to build a better one, starting with the children these frameworks were leaving behind.

• • •

That conviction ultimately led me to FAIR’s curriculum work. I served as the lead curriculum developer for Many Stories, One Nation, a high school Ethnic Studies course that tells the American story through the lived experiences of diverse and historically underrepresented communities, all within the framework of our shared founding principles. The curriculum has been independently assessed by the Johns Hopkins School of Education, meets ethnic studies standards in California and Oregon, and is adoption-ready for Fall 2026.

The second lesson in the curriculum’s first unit — “Identity Beyond Boundaries: Understanding Multiracialism in America” — puts students in direct conversation with the questions our family has been navigating for years. Through Toni Morrison’s short story Recitatif and contemporary case studies, students examine how racial categories are socially constructed, how multiracial experiences illuminate identity complexity for everyone, and how navigating multiple heritages can build resilience rather than fracture identity. Across nine units, the curriculum centers Indigenous, black, Latino, Asian, multiracial, religious, and immigrant voices alongside the founding ideals their experiences have tested and expanded. Civil discourse — the ability to engage across difference with honesty and respect — is woven throughout the course.

FAIR built Many Stories, One Nation for students like our son and for all students navigating a country that’s more complex than any single category can capture. If you’re an educator, administrator, or parent who wants to learn more or bring this curriculum to your school, please visit manystoriesonenation.com.

This is the course I truly hope my son has an opportunity to take before he finishes high school.

Lisa Gilbert, MPH, MA, is founder of Convergence Educational Consultancy. She lives in Montana with her wife and son.

Share

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

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

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

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

The Neutrality Lodestar: Reclaiming the Library from Ideological Capture

For FAIR’s Substack, academic librarian Kyle Breneman argues that major library organizations like the American Library Association (ALA) have abandoned traditional neutrality and intellectual freedom in favor of ideological activism. He highlights the ALA’s 2021 resolution condemning “neutrality rhetoric” as complicit in “white supremacy and fascism,” along with its updated Code of Ethics that commits librarians to advancing social justice, DEI, and critical theory-inspired approaches. Breneman points to the Association of Library Professionals (ALP), as a counter-movement to reclaim neutrality as the “lodestar” of the profession, defending libraries as institutions serving all patrons through open inquiry rather than partisan advocacy.

Many librarians are recognizing that our profession has become heavily invested in one creedal idea: that social justice activism is the only way to be a librarian. Our professional associations issue resolutions inveighing against neutrality and calling on librarians to commit themselves to political and cultural activism in the service of social justice.

A steady stream of charged rhetoric (“book banning!”), and politically oriented professional development opportunities make it clear that librarians who disagree with the illiberal progressive political agenda (or who simply believe that libraries and librarians ought to be neutral instead of political), are either expected to either adopt these activist roles or remain silent. More and more librarians who are alarmed by these developments are making their way to organizations like ALP, which seek to return the profession to its first principles.

Read the Full Article

The B.C. Human Rights Tribunal Just Declared Classical Liberalism Incoherent

For Culture War Musings FAIR Advisor Lisa Bildy writes about the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal’s dismissal of a complaint by political science professor Dr. Joshua Gordon against Simon Fraser University. Gordon alleged he was denied a tenure-track position due to his classical liberal beliefs, which clashed with the university’s activist DEI demands. The Tribunal ruled (without a hearing) that these views lacked the “cohesion and cogency” to qualify as a protected political belief, while treating DEI ideology as the default neutral position.

Classical liberalism emerged during the Enlightenment as a political philosophy centred on individual rights, freedom of conscience and expression, equality before the law, and limits on state power…It is the only political philosophy that treats the right to free speech as inviolable. These principles became foundational to modern Western institutions and offered a way to restrain our tribal impulses by grounding political order in universal legal equality rather than in the claims of groups or castes.

But group rights are all the rage today, and along with them an intolerance for any expression to the contrary. Despite Dr. Gordon’s strong teaching evaluations, his “responses with respect to EDI” were deemed insufficient by the activist Faculty Group – five faculty members who opposed his appointment and held enough votes to sink it. Their concern? Gordon’s statement indicated that he treated people equally, without regard to race, gender, or sexual orientation. That is no longer acceptable. Under activist EDI, one must not treat people equally; one must treat them unequally, according to a shifting hierarchy of “marginalized” identities.

Read the Full Article

Gad Saad’s “Suicidal Empathy” Is the Misdiagnosis

For Man of Steele, FAIR Advisor Eli Steele reviews Gad Saad’s new book Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind, arguing that Saad correctly identifies self-destructive Western policies, but misdiagnoses the root cause as excessive empathy. Steele contends the true driver is “white guilt” masquerading as empathy, which leads to performative compassion, racial essentialism, institutional self-sabotage, and policies that prioritize absolution over reality or individual humanity.

This distinction exposes the flaw in Saad’s framework. Empathy is an individual emotion, triggered by a face, a voice, a wound, a human being standing before us. In America’s racial politics, what often triggers the public display of “empathy” is not contact with suffering but the pressure of guilt. When whites took to the streets after Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and George Floyd, the driver was not “I feel your pain.” It was, “I fear being on the side of the racists, and I must prove my innocence.”

Genuine empathy flows outward toward another person. What white guilt produces flows inward and toward releasing one’s own moral distress. This is guilt-alleviation dressed as compassion. Look at the protestors and their signs after Floyd’s death, many of them self-referential performances of innocence that improved the lives of blacks not one iota. What Saad calls “suicidal empathy” is not empathy corrupted by excess or “misfiring.” It is white guilt masquerading as empathy from the start, never really about the victim, but the performer’s need to be seen as innocent.

Read the Full Article

Does DEI Strengthen or Harm Intellectual Freedom?

For Heterodoxy in the Stacks, Michael Dudley and Kyle Breneman critique an American Libraries Association post claiming that “Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Accessibility” provide the foundation for intellectual freedom in libraries. They argue that DEI fosters ideological conformity, self-censorship, and speech restrictions, ultimately harming intellectual freedom. The authors instead advocate institutional neutrality, viewpoint diversity, and treating patrons as autonomous individuals.

The greatest misunderstanding in this debate is that neutrality demands that the librarian actually be objective and unbiased. Not at all: it only asks that the librarian recognize that their users will hold a wide range of views, such that they should (as an ethical commitment) not permit their own biases to prevent them from making available in their collections a diverse range of perspectives, many of them with which they may personally disagree. As such, far from conflicting with the needs of a diverse, pluralistic society—replete as it is with people representing many different racial backgrounds, ethnicities, faith groups, and belief systems—library neutrality (we would argue) is the necessary ethical framework for recognizing and serving this diversity…and for granting individual library users from these backgrounds the freedom and autonomy to pursue their queries and meet their informational needs.

Read the Full Article

Author Discussion: “Black Women Speak on Gender Ideology”

For her blog, 2026 FAIR Artist Grant Winner N3VLYNNN hosts a discussion with two co-authors of her newly released anthology, She Holds The Line: Black Women Speak on Gender Ideology. The three women share their essays, poetry, and personal journeys of “waking up to the harms of queer & trans ideology as LGB and detrans black women.”

Join us for an incredibly vulnerable and thoughtful, yet loving and lighthearted discussion… This amazing project [She Holds The Line] was made possible by an Artist Grant from FAIR in the Arts. Thank you Fair For All for believing in this project and investing in my vision!

Watch Here

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.

We have exciting news to share: FAIR is a finalist in the Jack Miller Center’s Civics Innovator Competition, and our own Dr. Adam Seagrave will be presenting on the national stage at the 2026 National Summit on Civic Education in Philadelphia next week.

This is a major achievement for FAIR, and we want you to celebrate it with us.

Each year, the Jack Miller Center — one of the nation’s most respected organizations dedicated to civic education and the principles of America’s founding — brings together educators, scholars, policymakers, and philanthropists from across the country to advance the cause of civic renewal in American schools. This year’s summit, themed around the celebration of America’s 250th anniversary and the enduring relevance of the American founding, promises to be one of the most significant gatherings in civic education in recent memory.

And FAIR is proud to be part of it.

Dr. Seagrave, one of FAIR’s lead curriculum developers, is an Associate Professor in the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University and co-founder and co-director of the Race and the American Story Project. His academic work sits at the intersection of civic thought and the American political foundations that FAIR’s Many Stories, One Nation curriculum was designed to explore.

At the summit, Dr. Seagrave will present highlights from our curriculum and bring FAIR’s educational vision to a national audience of donors, thought leaders, and civics professionals. His presence reflects the caliber of expertise driving our curriculum: rigorous, principled, and deeply committed to helping students understand who we are as Americans and what our founding ideals demand of us as citizens.

FAIR has been selected as a finalist in the Jack Miller Center’s Civics Innovator Competition, a “Shark Tank”-style pitch competition in which selected organizations present their projects before a live audience for a chance to win $10,000. This unique competition identifies bold, catalytic projects with the potential to shape civic education for generations, and we believe Many Stories, One Nation does this, and much more.

Three winners will be selected by breakout session attendees on Tuesday, May 19, and will then be promoted to a national audience of donors and education leaders. The $10,000 prize would directly support FAIR’s continued work to bring this curriculum into schools across the country, funding teacher training, outreach, and the materials that make lasting adoption possible.

Many Stories, One Nation does something rare in today’s educational landscape: it teaches the full, complex story of America without resorting to division. At a time when polarization is rising, public school enrollment is declining, and civic knowledge is at historic lows, our curriculum offers students something they desperately need: meaningful, honest, and unifying civic education. FAIR’s curriculum encourages students to see themselves not as adversaries, but as participants in a shared national — engaging with our history and principles as allies in building the foundation for a better future.

This summit is an opportunity to expand FAIR’s educational network and introduce our curriculum to the educators who need it most. Stay tuned — we’ll report back after the event with updates on Dr. Seagrave’s presentation, the competition results, and the new connections made on behalf of the students and communities we serve.

Moments like this don’t happen without the support of people who believe, as you do, that American students deserve better. If this recognition inspires you, please consider making a gift to FAIR. Every dollar goes directly toward bringing our curriculum into more classrooms, training more teachers, and reaching more students. The Jack Miller Center has given us a national stage. Help us make the most of it.

Donate now and help us win and grow from our work in Philadelphia.

We are incredibly grateful for this recognition and energized by the opportunity ahead. FAIR was built on the conviction that American civic education can, and must, do better. Philadelphia is our next step toward making that vision real.

Onward,

Monica Harris
Executive Director, FAIR

Donate

The War on Words: A Conversation with Nadine Strossen

From college campuses to corporate boardrooms to the chambers of Congress, the pressure to restrict speech is intensifying, and it’s coming from every direction. Nadine Strossen and Greg Lukianoff have heard every argument for censorship, and they take each one apart in their new book, The War On Words: 10 Arguments Against Free Speech―And Why They Fail.

Join Fair For All’s Executive Director Monica Harris on Thursday June 11th, 4pm PT / 7pm ET, for a conversation with Strossen, a member of FAIR’s Board of Advisors and former ACLU president, as they dissect the case for censorship and what it will take to defend free expression in an era that is increasingly hostile to it.

This webinar will be livestreamed on FAIR’s X, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Zoom.

Register Here

FAIR in Conversation is Back!

This month’s topic: What happens when certain questions become too dangerous to ask? Join FAIR In Conversation on Wednesday, May 27th, 8pm ET, for a discussion on taboo topics, alleged hoaxes, and the role of open inquiry in the search for truth.

FAIR in Conversation has relaunched 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. 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!

Register Here

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.
  

In recent years, some of America’s largest library organizations have begun explicitly rejecting neutrality as a professional ideal. In 2021, the American Library Association (ALA), the profession’s dominant institutional body, adopted a resolution condemning “neutrality rhetoric” as complicit in white supremacy and fascism. The ALA later amended its Code of Ethics to commit librarians to advancing social justice activism. These changes marked a significant shift in the profession: from a model centered on intellectual freedom and viewpoint neutrality toward one increasingly comfortable with political and ideological advocacy.

For many librarians, that shift raised an uncomfortable question: if libraries are no longer neutral institutions, what are they becoming?

The Association of Library Professionals (ALP), founded in 2023, emerged in response to that question. ALP is a nonprofit focused on championing neutrality, intellectual freedom, open inquiry, and freedom of thought and speech. ALP welcomes librarians, library staff members, library board members, and concerned community members who want to work with us to ensure that libraries as institutions, and their staff, avoid ideological capture and partisan political activism, instead keeping neutrality and intellectual freedom as the lodestar of our profession.

Since the 1960s, librarianship has gradually shifted from a profession grounded in neutrality and intellectual freedom to one increasingly defined by political and ideological activism, and organizations like ALP have emerged in response to that transformation.

Although local libraries are beloved public institutions in America, most people probably don’t spend much time thinking about how the library works or what librarians do. Library associations shape the profession far beyond conferences and networking. They create ethical standards, influence hiring and training practices, guide continuing education, and lobby on political and legislative questions affecting libraries. In practice, they help define what it means to be a librarian.

Library associations also serve social, professional, and political advocacy functions. Professional associations provide a mechanism for librarians to network with one another to advance their careers. Academic librarians often need to show that they’re providing service to the profession outside of their college or university, and committee service within a library association is a great way to demonstrate this. Finally, many library associations will officially lobby for or against state and federal budget and legislative questions that affect libraries, often sponsoring annual legislative days when librarians meet directly with politicians.

America has dozens of library associations, many of which are divisions or affiliates of the ALA.

So why are a group of librarians forming yet another association?

At ALA’s 2021 Midwinter Conference, the organization formally adopted the Resolution to Condemn White Supremacy and Fascism as Antithetical to Library Work. Notably, this resolution attacks and condemns the traditional professional ethic of neutrality, declaring “…that the American Library Association…acknowledges the role of neutrality rhetoric in emboldening and encouraging white supremacy and fascism” and “charges the Working Group on Intellectual Freedom and Social Justice, with a representative from the Committee on Diversity, to review neutrality rhetoric and identify alternatives…”

By pledging unquestioning support for social justice pedagogy, and by attacking neutrality as both inimical to these goals and a prop of white supremacy and fascism, ALA made an unmistakably political statement that alienated many within the profession.

Later in 2021, ALA amended its Code of Ethics, adding a ninth item which states, “We affirm the inherent dignity and rights of every person. We work to recognize and dismantle systemic and individual biases; to confront inequity and oppression; to enhance diversity and inclusion; and to advance racial and social justice in our libraries, communities, profession, and associations through awareness, advocacy, education, collaboration, services, and allocation of resources and spaces (emphasis added).” This language represents notable overreach by ALA, clearly committing librarians not only to the ideology of critical social justice, but also to activist pursuits in service of the same.

Librarians should be free to choose their own ideologies, and to work towards justice, truth, beauty, and goodness in their “libraries, communities, profession, and associations” in ways that align with their own personal philosophy, without dictates from the ALA. Yet the reality is that librarianship has become permeated by social justice ideology, critical theory, and political activism in service of the same. While these changes often happen behind the scenes, their impact is revealed in the professional literature and the specific training sessions offered to library staff. Below are several representative examples of this new activist direction.

In 2011, Char Booth published Reflective Teaching, Effective Learning, a practical guide for academic librarians teaching undergraduates skills for finding and evaluating information. Booth’s work borrows heavily from Marxist philosopher Paulo Freire’s pedagogical theory, itself grounded in critical theory. In 2016, the Association of College and Research Libraries formally adopted the Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education, replacing the Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education which had been in place since 2000. Drabinski’s and Tewell’s entry on Critical Information Literacy (CIL) in The International Encyclopedia of Media Literacy acknowledges that the Framework was shaped and informed by CIL, and candidly recognizes CIL’s aspirations towards activism, declaring that “libraries are not and cannot be neutral actors, and embraces the potential of libraries as catalysts for social change” and that CIL “ultimately seeks to identify and take action upon forms of oppression, and proposes to undertake the work by engaging with local communities.” These are far from fringe positions in professional librarianship, and it’s telling that Emily Drabinski later served as president of ALA from 2023-2024.

Recent professional development offerings illustrate how pervasive these ideas have become within the profession.

In April 2026, ALA’s Association of School Librarians provided an online presentation, Subversive Librarianship: Embedding Social Justice and DEI in Our Schools which encouraged librarians to “subtly and strategically embed social justice principles” into their work despite “external pressures.”

Library Journal and School Library Journal offered a multi-day, 15 credit hour class, Antiracism 201: Digging Deeper in Antiracist Library Cultures, in 2024. Stated learning objectives included “Understand tenets of antiracist theories and how they apply to libraries…Recruit, hire, retain, and promote staff in an equity-centered way…Identify and start to resist white supremacist values or qualities in your library’s internal work culture.”

Another multi-day Library Journal training in 2023, focused on “How to Build LGBTQIA+ Inclusive Libraries.” Learning outcomes for this program included: “Make yourself visible as an LGBTQIA+ advocate and ally… Create trans and gender nonconforming programs, spaces, and services … [and] Advocate for LGBTQIA+ representation in materials and services.”

Many librarians are recognizing that our profession has become heavily invested in one creedal idea: that social justice activism is the only way to be a librarian. Our professional associations issue resolutions inveighing against neutrality and calling on librarians to commit themselves to political and cultural activism in the service of social justice.

A steady stream of charged rhetoric (“book banning!”), and politically oriented professional development opportunities make it clear that librarians who disagree with the illiberal progressive political agenda (or who simply believe that libraries and librarians ought to be neutral instead of political), are either expected to either adopt these activist roles or remain silent. More and more librarians who are alarmed by these developments are making their way to organizations like ALP, which seek to return the profession to its first principles.

The ALA’s turn toward ideological activism didn’t happen overnight, and reclaiming the profession may take just as long. But the work has begun. My favorite bumper sticker says, “The world is run by those who show up.” It’s a simple but powerful reminder that ordinary people can make a lasting difference simply by deciding to participate.

Libraries were built on the foundational idea that access to knowledge belongs to everyone. That idea is worth defending, and so are our libraries. Let’s show up for them.

Share

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

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

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

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

Schrödinger's Race

For FAIR’s Substack, high school sophomore Maitreya Kershner writes a reflective essay on biracial identity, perception, and the limits of categorization. Her piece explores the tension between social labels and individual identity, questioning whether people can ever truly be reduced to fixed categories.

We long for the binary, for simple categories that can be easily explained. We long to understand one another, so we create an array of boxes to place ourselves in. And still we don’t understand. We just create smaller and smaller, ever more specific boxes, hoping we will one day be able to summarize all the perfect complexities of a human being.

Much of this comes from the dualism that runs through our society. We see things as one or the other — right or left, good or evil, black or white — and we deny the gray areas that are always there. We are slowly learning to escape these patterns, but their hold is hard to release. The issue lives not only in the systems we’ve built but in the way we interpret and express our reality. Most of us can’t pull ourselves out of our day-to-day perceptions long enough to see past them. And even when we glimpse a deeper truth, we struggle to put it into words.

Read the Full Article

Ten Arguments Against Free Speech

For the So to Speak: The Free Speech Podcast, FAIR Advisor, and former ACLU President, Nadine Strossen joins FIRE President and CEO Greg Lukianoff to discuss their new book, “War on Words: 10 Arguments Against Free Speech—And Why They Fail.” These arguments include: Words are violence; Words are dangerous; Hate speech isn’t free speech; Free speech is outdated; Free speech is right-wing; Misinformation and disinformation; About the Holocaust and Rwandan genocide; and more.

Nadine Strossen: “‘Oh, you defend free speech because you take the ridiculous position that words can cause no harm.’ No, no, no, we acknowledge words can do harm, but you pro-censorship people never acknowledge the greater harm that giving the government greater censorial power will do.”

Watch Here

“The Civil Rights Act of 1964 Does Not Include Whites”

For Man of Steele, FAIR Advisor and filmmaker Eli Steele argues that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 no longer functions as a neutral protection against discrimination, but has instead evolved into a broader system of ideological and institutional enforcement.

I saw an X post by New York Magazine that featured the headline, “The White Man Suing the New York Times for Discriminating Against White Men.” The piece described how the plaintiff, a longtime Times editor, claims that he was passed over for a deputy editor job so the paper could meet its diversity and leadership targets. He alleges that, despite his experience, he was excluded from final‑round interviews because he is a white man and the role went to a less qualified candidate.

I thought, good for him. Discrimination is discrimination. Whether the case has merit or not, he should be allowed to exercise his American rights and have his day in court. Then I thought about why this was a story at all. The headline made news for one reason only: the plaintiff is white. A black man suing for racial discrimination today would not be treated with the same level of curiosity. His case would be seen as routine, not remarkable.

Read the Full Article

Many of the Problems AI Creates for Democracy Can Be Solved With This Basic Change

For The Certainty Trap, FAIR Advisor Ilana Redstone writes about the convergence of AI and democracy, arguing that both AI systems and their users gravitate toward answers that appear definitive, even when reality is more uncertain and contested.

When an AI summarizes a policy debate, it makes choices — based on whatever its training data treats as mainstream — about which framings count as reasonable and which count as fringe…

This isn’t a bug in any particular AI platform—it’s a structural feature of how they work. They take in language, which is saturated with contested moral and causal premises, and produce output that inherits those same premises. This means the question isn’t whether AI systems will encode contested commitments as facts. They already do. It is whether we will teach it to make those commitments visible to the people using them.

Right now, they’re not. And that’s devastating for democracy…

Democracy doesn’t require that citizens agree on contested questions. It requires that the institutions mediating public life — including, now, AI systems — remain legible enough that citizens can see what they’re being asked to accept. The danger isn’t that AI takes positions. It’s that AI takes positions invisibly, at scale, in the voice of neutral authority and factual claims.

Read the Full Article

Women Terrorized By ‘Trans’ Male Inmate Launch Massive Lawsuit Against Prison System

For the Daily Wire, Megan Brock reports on FAIR’s lawsuit, in partnership with the America First Policy Institute, regarding the Washington State Department of Corrections (WSDC) policy of housing men in women’s single-sex prisons. Our lawsuit asserts that WSDC’s policy violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment and the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection.

The lawsuit highlights public data showing that over 50% of males in federal prisons who self-identified as transgender between May 2024 and January 2025 were sex offenders…“The housing of these male inmates with females — including as bunkmates in the same cell — has led to multiple instances of violence and sexual abuse against the female inmates, persistent harassment, and the routine intimidation of female inmates in violation of their fundamental constitutional rights to serve their sentences in safety and without further punishment,” states the lawsuit. “[Washington] DOC’s Transgender Inmate Policy exposes female inmates to a population statistically more likely of having committed a sexual offense, and only females can become pregnant as a result of these offenses.”

The plaintiffs, the Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism, Inc. [Fair For All], and Faith Booher-Smith, are suing the Washington DOC and Tim Lang in his official capacity as Secretary of the Department of Corrections.

Read the Full Article

The Fraying Tightrope: When Medicine Abandons the Individual

For her Substack, Dr. Diana Blum reflects on the erosion of trust, judgment, and human connection in modern medicine. Drawing on her experience as a physician, she argues that healthcare systems increasingly prioritize bureaucracy, metrics, liability, and ideological conformity over individualized care and the doctor-patient relationship.

This clinical battle for the individual is a microcosm of the crisis facing the profession itself. Medicine has always required a delicate balance between two distinct poles: the measurable precision of science and the intuitive, often messy, art of human connection. To practice medicine is to walk a tightrope stretched taut between these two anchors, relying on the hard data of biology while never losing sight of the unique human soul it inhabits.

But today, that tightrope is fraying. I find myself fighting a systemic adversary far more insidious than a failing nervous system: a collapse of the moral foundation upon which the healing arts were built. We are witnessing a terrifying disconnection where the individual is being sacrificed to the collective. In our rush toward corporate efficiency and ideological conformity, we have abandoned both the rigorous pursuit of science and the sacred art of the relationship, leaving a hollowed-out system that values the metric more than the human.

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.

Written by Maitreya Kershner

Growing up, my race always felt like a very important part of my identity. And yet that importance always seemed to be projected onto me by outside forces, not born out of my own experience. My family culture feels like a thing on its own, disconnected from racial stereotype or assumed cultural identity. I felt I was being taught, through my community, that being biracial was supposed to mean something. But I could never place what that meaning was supposed to be.

Many people see me as white. This makes sense. I have light skin and hair. I don’t look like the “stereotypical” white person, but I certainly appear to be one. When I was little, being seen as white bugged me. I wanted my skin to be darker. I wanted it to be obvious; to take on my heritage as a kind of birthright, something that would make me stand out, that would let people see I was unique.

Some people see me as black, mostly people of color. I’m undeniably a person of color too. Ironically, calling me black follows the same logic the slave masters used, where “just one drop” turned you into the tragic mulatta of a minstrel play. Even so, I wanted to be seen as black. It connected me to a historical struggle. It made my existence feel like disobedience to racist ideology. We all long to be part of something bigger. I fell so deeply into that longing that I would become defensive whenever I felt “misidentified,” or when attention was drawn to the lightness of my skin.

Looking back, I can see that wanting to be read as black and resenting being read as white were really the same impulse: I was letting other people’s categories tell me who I was.

I’ve tried to put my struggles with racial identity behind me. And yet the questions still come up: Who are you? What are you?

The simplest answer is biracial. The term is accurate enough, but it doesn’t explain my experience as an individual; it doesn’t even specify which races. Mulatto is more specific, but it has, for good reason, fallen out of common speech. And again, it doesn’t really capture the way I experience the world. Why do I feel like I need a word to categorize myself in the first place? In a world with so many words to describe all the things a person can be, it sometimes feels like it isn’t enough to just be a person.

I like to think of my experience as “Schrödinger’s race.” In a famous thought experiment, a cat sealed in a box is imagined to be simultaneously alive and dead until someone opens the box to look, both states existing at once. Like the cat, I am both black and white, a kind of quantum superposition in human form. The box, in this metaphor, isn’t meant to be opened. And yet people keep trying. We long for the binary, for simple categories that can be easily explained. We long to understand one another, so we create an array of boxes to place ourselves in. And still we don’t understand. We just create smaller and smaller, ever more specific boxes, hoping we will one day be able to summarize all the perfect complexities of a human being.

Much of this comes from the dualism that runs through our society. We see things as one or the other — right or left, good or evil, black or white — and we deny the gray areas that are always there. We are slowly learning to escape these patterns, but their hold is hard to release. The issue lives not only in the systems we’ve built but in the way we interpret and express our reality. Most of us can’t pull ourselves out of our day-to-day perceptions long enough to see past them. And even when we glimpse a deeper truth, we struggle to put it into words.

I struggle with this often. The true feeling I’m experiencing doesn’t seem to conform to the words I know. So, I search for more words. I imagine some perfect term: a combination of sounds so self-evident that anyone hearing it would immediately understand. But even when it feels just on the tip of my tongue, the perfect word always reveals itself to be a perfect delusion. Only the feeling remains.

Maybe the feelings hardest to express are the truest ones we have. Maybe identity itself is supposed to be partly indescribable, because so many things shape who we are and how we see the world. Beyond every stereotype lie real experiences, but those experiences are never the whole story. Even people who share the same experience will process it differently, because they’re carrying different experiences of everything else. And deeper than that, there seem to be parts of each of us that don’t stem from any lived experience at all.

Through some combination of life experience and pure happenstance, I’ve found that as a queer woman of color, I don’t feel particularly connected to the identities of “queer” or “woman of color.” I feel more connected to my identity as a person, moving through space. An ever-changing human being who contains multitudes. An individual, just like everyone else. The boxes other people use to read me have never really told the truth about who I am.

When I let go of the imposed binaries, I can finally stop trying to fit myself into them. The individual pieces of an identity will never add up to the whole of a person. The cat in the box stays the cat in the box, regardless of what label gets attached. The surface things matter less than the living of an actual life. And a life, lived honestly, can never be summed up by a category.

Share

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

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

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

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

Dear Friends of FAIR,

This week, we are spotlighting an organization asking one of the most consequential questions of our moment: How can libraries remain trusted civic institutions in a polarized world? That organization is the Association of Library Professionals (ALP).

For generations, libraries have functioned as a bedrock of civic life: spaces where anyone, regardless of their background or belief, could access information freely, without being steered toward a particular conclusion or political or social agenda. Yet this principled commitment to open inquiry is increasingly under pressure. ALP was founded to guide librarianship back to its founding principle, centering the needs of individual patrons and communities through institutional neutrality, open inquiry, and respect for intellectual autonomy. At a time when “intellectual freedom” often means different things to different people, ALP offers a clear and consistent vision: libraries exist to serve the reader, not to shape what the reader thinks or believes.

FAIR is inspired by ALP’s focus on viewpoint diversity, the belief that a healthy civic culture depends on exposure to a genuine diversity of viewpoints. ALP’s commitment to excellence and professional integrity, equipping librarians with the tools and community support to uphold freedom of expression in their institutions, reflects the principled, nonpartisan advocacy FAIR admires.

If you share our admiration for ALP’s work, we invite you to join FAIR in Libraries, our professional network for library staff, trustees, and engaged citizens who believe that libraries should be places of discovery, not indoctrination. Members gain access to a supportive network of peers, shared resources for navigating workplace challenges, and a collective voice advocating for neutrality and excellence in our public and academic institutions.

As it works to inspire a new generation of librarians and to return to these timeless values, ALP is proving that neutrality is not a lack of conviction, but a profound commitment to the freedom of the individual. By focusing on how we think rather than what we think, ALP is helping to preserve libraries as sanctuaries for free thought.

Whether you are a seasoned library director or a dedicated patron, your voice matters in preserving these vital spaces. The library has always been one of democracy's best ideas. Help keep it that way. Join FAIR in Libraries & Join the Association of Library Professionals

With Gratitude,
The Fair For All Team

Donate

* Join Our Webinar Tonight * 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 Dr. Kendra Kautz, DC *TONIGHT* Wednesday, May 6th, 4pm PT / 7pm ET, 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.

This webinar will be livestreamed on FAIR’s X, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Zoom.

Register

Need a primer? Here’s the latest article by Dr. Kendra Kautz:

FAIR in Conversation is Back!

FAIR in Conversation has relaunched 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. 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!

Register Here

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.
  

“Can We Mute the Hate Speech, Please?”

For FAIR’s Substack, recounts a California school board meeting where a parent’s policy concerns were interrupted by a board member labelling her remarks “hate speech.” This incident highlights a broader concern: when policy disagreement is reframed as inherently “hateful,” it can shut down legitimate democratic participation and weaken accountability for elected officials.

Reasonable people will disagree about which path to take, but that is the point of public comment. Yet in that moment, one side of that debate wasn’t treated as a position, but as a voice to be “muted.”

People take note when this happens. Speaking in front of a school board can be daunting — not just for the person speaking, but also for everyone else listening. That was certainly true for me. Whether they are on Zoom, physically in the room, or watching the event later, participants learn which arguments are safe to express and which ones carry a cost.

Some people will choose to keep speaking anyway. But many will not.

Over time, the range of acceptable viewpoints narrows not by formalized rule, but by signal. The meeting still looks “open.” The microphones are still there. But the boundaries have shifted, and that has consequences. You lose the parent who came to ask a budget question and decides it is not worth it next time. You lose the observer who has a similar concern but chooses to stay silent. The community loses the expectation that public officials will engage with criticism rather than deflect it. Once that expectation erodes, effective governance suffers, as well.

Read the Full Article

AFPI Files Suit Challenging Washington Policy That Houses Men in Women’s Prison

For the America First Policy Institute, Leigh Ann O’Neill shares a press release regarding a new lawsuit filed in partnership with FAIR, challenging the Washington State Department of Corrections’ policy of housing male inmates who identify as women in the state’s prison for women, a policy the complaint alleges has led to violence, sexual abuse, intimidation, and ongoing fear among female inmates.

The lawsuit asserts that Washington’s policy violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment and the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection. It argues that female inmates are being subjected to foreseeable and preventable harm while the state prioritizes accommodations for male inmates who identify as women over the safety, privacy, and dignity of the women already housed there.

“Fairness begins with telling the truth,” said Monica Harris, executive director of Fair for All. “Women in custody are wholly dependent on the state for their safety. When officials ignore reality, ignore repeated warnings, and ignore the women living with the consequences, the law has to step in. No woman should be told that her safety, privacy, and dignity matter less because the state prefers ideology to common sense.”

The complaint describes the August 7, 2025, attack on Booher-Smith and alleges that prison officials had advance notice of the risks posed by certain transferred male inmates, including through prior complaints and litigation. It also alleges ongoing harm to additional Fair for All members at the facility; the nonprofit is involved as a plaintiff to advocate for an entire class of women who are threatened.

Read the Full Legal Complaint

Let’s Return to Teaching Students How to Argue

For The Coddling Movie, Gregory Roper argues that education has drifted too far toward emotional protection at the expense of resilience and intellectual growth. He suggests that shielding students from discomfort, such as avoiding challenging ideas, leaves them less prepared for real-world adversity.

We hear all the time that America is hopelessly polarized, that the electronic landscape allows us to stay in our own hermetically-sealed communities, and that no one can speak with anyone across the aisle. For decades now, the Left has believed that those who disagree with it are not just wrong but evil; in the last three election cycles, we have seen those on the right taking on the same position.

What if the problem is not our politics but the way we are taught to argue?

For four decades, American students have been taking misconceived “rhetoric and composition” classes, which now are almost completely under the ideological control of the woke. We need to fix that so we can return to a republic of vigorous, fair, thoughtful, and productive discussion.

Read the Full Article

Is There Life After Being Cancelled?

For his Substack, former Seattle principal Ed Roos reflects on the personal and professional fallout following his cancellation in 2020 amid a public controversy. He describes how his career path has shifted and shares his ongoing struggle with PTSD linked to what he terms “revenge culture.”

It has been almost six grueling, at times hopeless, years since I lost my livelihood due to cancel culture, which I prefer to call revenge culture. In the immediate aftermath, I made a vow to not let this destroy me. I committed to staying as mentally and physically strong and healthy as possible. I embarked on a healthy dose of endorphins through a healthy diet, exercise, ‘live in the moment’ meditation, sun exposure, hikes, snowshoeing, skiing and walks in nature. Even during the isolation of COVID, I forced myself out of bed and into the elements. I wouldn’t allow myself to wallow in the wreckage; I was determined to overcome it.

Read the Full Article

Why Substack Is Right Not to Ban Andrew Tate

For The Overflowings of a Liberal Brain, Helen Pluckrose makes the case that Substack should restrict bans to clear cases of incitement to violence, rather than policing “harmful” or offensive ideas. She warns that expanding moderation based on subjective notions of “acceptability” risks ideological bias and inconsistent enforcement. Instead, Pluckrose defends a “marketplace of ideas” approach, where users — not platforms — decide what to engage with, ignore, or block.

Once a platform begins moderating speech on the basis of content rather than direct incitement to violence, it enters an inherently subjective moral terrain. It must then justify which ideas are “acceptably” horrible and which are unacceptably so. This requires increasingly complex rules of moderation, heightening the risk of political and cultural bias. It also becomes difficult to prevent the boundaries of allowable speech from steadily contracting.

If Substack justified banning ideas on the basis that they are simply too objectionable, it would then have to contend with the implication that it implicitly endorses those that remain. It would voluntarily abandon the principled defence of free speech as a system in which ideas compete and bad ones can be challenged and defeated as the basis for which it declines to moderate content. This gives activists, fuelled by moral outrage, ammunition to make endless demands using the precedent of already banned ideas, and defences against that will necessarily be subjective and give the appearance of ad hoc rationalisations.

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,

FAIR was founded on the principle that equal protection isn’t a principle that applies only to some people in some settings. It applies to everyone, including women who are incarcerated and wholly dependent on the state for their safety. That is the conviction behind FAIR’s decision to file suit this week against the Washington State Department of Corrections (WSDC).

This is a significant moment for our organization and for the women at the center of this fight. The lawsuit, filed in partnership with the America First Policy Institute, alleges that the WSDC’s policy of housing male inmates who identify as women in the state’s women’s facility has subjected female inmates to violence, sexual abuse, intimidation, and ongoing fear. Fair For All filed alongside co-plaintiff Faith Booher-Smith, a female inmate at the facility who alleges she was violently attacked by a male inmate transferred there under this policy.

Our complaint alleges that Washington officials continued enforcing this policy despite prior incidents, prior litigation, and direct complaints from women in their custody. Female inmates have been forced to share cells, showers, bathrooms, and other intimate living spaces with male inmates — stripped of the sex-based protections a women’s facility is supposed to provide. The lawsuit asserts that WSDC’s policy violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment and the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection.

Women in custody have no choice about where they live or who they live with. They depend entirely on the state for their safety. When the state knowingly places women at risk and ignores repeated warnings, the Constitution requires accountability. These women have no voice in the ordinary sense. They can’t organize, they can’t speak to the press, they can’t walk away. What they can do is have an organization stand with them in court, and that’s what FAIR is doing.

This isn’t a debate about policy preferences. A woman was attacked, officials had been warned, but they continued the policy anyway. The only question here is whether the state intends to honor its constitutional obligations. Equal protection under the law is the foundation of FAIR’s work. We believe constitutional rights are not selective. The same Fourteenth Amendment that protects people from race-based discrimination, viewpoint discrimination, and unequal treatment in education protects incarcerated women from being knowingly exposed to foreseeable harm by the state.

Since filing our complaint, we have had direct conversations with attorneys in the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) about this case, and those conversations have produced a significant development: the DOJ has invited FAIR to formally request a Statement of Interest in our Washington litigation.

This matters enormously. A Statement of Interest is a formal filing in which the federal government provides a court with its recommended framework for evaluating the constitutional claims at stake. It signals that the federal government has a direct interest in how the law is interpreted, and that signal carries substantial weight with judges.

The DOJ has announced investigations into similar policies at women’s correctional facilities in California and Maine, and FAIR’s Washington case presents the same constitutional questions. A Statement of Interest by the DOJ would extend the government’s constitutional framework to our litigation and strengthen the legal foundation for the women we represent. We are preparing that request now and will keep you informed as this process moves forward.

This case reflects the essence of who we are and what FAIR stands for. Equal protection isn’t a partisan value; it’s an American one, and this litigation is proof of that conviction in action.

Litigation like this is only possible because of the support of people who believe, as we do, that civil rights belong to everyone. If you are able to contribute to FAIR’s advocacy efforts, please consider making a donation today. Every contribution directly supports our ability to defend and protect Americans whose rights are most at risk.

With gratitude,

Monica Harris

Executive Director, FAIR

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 on Wednesday, May 6th, 4pm PT / 7pm ET, 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

FAIR in Conversation is Back!

FAIR in Conversation has relaunched 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.

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!

Register Here

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.
  

I regularly watch board meetings in Culver City Unified School District (CCUSD), where my daughter is enrolled, and occasionally attend in person. Since the pandemic the district has settled into a hybrid Zoom format, which has become a biweekly ritual for me.

Recently, public commenters on Zoom stopped appearing on camera, leaving me to hear only faceless voices. So, when I heard a somewhat exasperated but genuine parent begin their public comment with: “Please, for the love of God improve your communications…” it got my attention (48:00).

She then turned to the district’s finances and enrollment.

“I will vote no on any parcel tax,” she declared. “I will campaign no for any parcel tax, because until you guys get a handle on our student body… we need a more restrictive process to prove residency, and we need to right-size our district.”

CCUSD, like many California districts, has been losing students, and a recent district-funded study projects that this trend will continue. Payroll for teachers and administrators, however, has not shrunk to match this loss, and the board is asking voters to approve a parcel tax to close the gap.

As her time expired and the parent was finishing her comments, board member Triston Ezidore interjected: “Can we mute the hate speech, please?”

There was a brief pause.

“What hate speech?” the parent asked, sounding genuinely surprised.

But there was no answer. Her audio feed was abruptly cut, and the meeting quickly moved on (50:00).

Bear in mind the parent’s remarks were about fiscal policy, enrollment management, and district budgeting, which are standard topics at any school board meeting. Yet instead of engaging with the substance of her concerns, board member Ezidore’s remark recast them as a moral violation.

I’ve seen this play out before.

Before this incident, I served on several district committees, including the high school Site Council, the Local Control Accountability Plan committee, and the district’s Equity Advisory Council. In all of these forums, disagreement was often handled indirectly.

The Equity Advisory Council operated under a recurring “Norm Setting Agreement” that asked participants to “elevate marginalized voices” and “respect intersectionality”.

I raised a concern about this process at my first meeting and told the group I could not agree to those rules. My point was simple: experience can inform a discussion, but it should not determine who is right before the discussion begins.

No one engaged with my argument.

Instead, the facilitator read aloud a prepared anti-hate statement, the kind now recited before public comment at municipal meetings. The implication was clear enough. What I had said was not just wrong, but out of bounds.

Following that meeting, I sent an email to the facilitator and fellow committee members reiterating my earlier concerns about elevating voices based on identity rather than ideas. The response, both in the meeting and in the silence that followed, largely reaffirmed the existing framework.

The exchange at the board meeting felt so familiar because the mechanism was the same. You don’t have to refute an argument if you can simply relabel it. When a perspective is framed as harmful or hateful, it no longer needs to be addressed.

The parent’s comments were about trade-offs. The district faces a structural budget problem driven by declining enrollment and a cost structure that does not easily adjust. There are only a few options: raise more revenue, reduce costs, or some combination of both.

Reasonable people will disagree about which path to take, but that is the point of public comment. Yet in that moment, one side of that debate wasn’t treated as a position, but as a voice to be “muted.”

People take note when this happens. Speaking in front of a school board can be daunting — not just for the person speaking, but also for everyone else listening. That was certainly true for me. Whether they are on Zoom, physically in the room, or watching the event later, participants learn which arguments are safe to express and which ones carry a cost.

Some people will choose to keep speaking anyway. But many will not.

Over time, the range of acceptable viewpoints narrows not by formalized rule, but by signal. The meeting still looks “open.” The microphones are still there. But the boundaries have shifted, and that has consequences. You lose the parent who came to ask a budget question and decides it is not worth it next time. You lose the observer who has a similar concern but chooses to stay silent. The community loses the expectation that public officials will engage with criticism rather than deflect it. Once that expectation erodes, effective governance suffers, as well.

School boards are one of the few places where ordinary citizens can directly question decisions about taxes, staffing, and policy. When those questions can be dismissed rather than engaged, the community loses something essential — not decorum, but accountability.

Share

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

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

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

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

Rejecting the Rejection of Empathy

For FAIR’s Substack, argues that empathy is being unfairly dismissed in today’s polarized politics. He contends that empathy is not just a feeling, but a practice of understanding those we disagree with, and warns that abandoning it risks dehumanizing our opponents and weakening democratic culture.

[Empathy] requires us to listen across differences, to sit with the discomfort of perspectives that unsettle our own, and to resist the temptation to dismiss what we haven’t yet tried to understand. Empathy, in this sense, is the foundation of deep listening, and deep listening is the foundation of democratic life.

The skills that make this possible — perspective-taking, active attention, the willingness to be changed by what we hear — are not mere instincts. They are practices. They can be learned, and they can be lost. Empathy does not require agreement. But empathy does require our love for our country to be reflected in our concern for our neighbors. Empathy requires us to take seriously the reality of the person across from us — their hopes, their fears, and the experiences that shape their convictions. That seriousness is what transforms a conversation into a community, and a community into a democracy.

Read the Full Article

We invite you to join us on Monday, April 27th, at 4pm PT/ 7pm ET for a webinar discussion with FAIR Advisors and , moderated by FAIR Executive Director .

Documenting a Decade of Academic Meltdowns

For Quillette, FAIR Advisor Jonathan Kay interviews Canadian filmmaker Ric Esther Bienstock about her new documentary Speechless, which explores the past decade of campus culture wars and their impact on free speech and civil discourse.

As I was watching Speechless, I realized that campus “cancel culture”—a term that now seems somewhat antique—has been around long enough that it has a history. And Speechless tells that history thoughtfully and fairly by focusing on a handful of major case studies—no fewer than five of which center on figures who will be well-known to loyal Quillette readers and podcast listeners: former Evergreen State biologist Bret Weinstein; Erec Smith a former professor at York College of Pennsylvania; philosopher Kathleen Stock, formerly of Sussex University; former Harvard evolutionary biologist Carole Hooven; and right-wing warrior Christopher Rufo, whom Ric and her producer accompanied as he was leading the teardown of DEI programs at New College in Florida, on behalf of his political ally, Ron DeSantis.

In our conversation, Ric discusses why she devoted so much of her life to this project—almost a decade in the end; and how she successfully sold her two-part documentary to the CBC, the BBC, and a number of non-English markets in Europe as well.

Watch Here

They Championed D.E.I. Now They’re Divided.

For The New York Times Opinion, FAIR Advisor Erec Smith joins a panel discussion to share his perspective on how DEI is practiced in universities and institutions. He argues that many DEI programs rely on rigid ideological frameworks — especially oppressor/oppressed narratives — that can oversimplify complex realities and discourage open discussion.

In recent years, diversity, equity and inclusion policies have shifted from an internal workplace initiative to a public reckoning. Critics argue that it has strayed from its original purpose, reshaping institutions in ways that are performative at best and discriminatory at worst… In this episode of “Divided,” we bring together four former D.E.I. leaders to reflect on their accomplishments and failures. Bo Young Lee, a tech executive, and Michael Yassa, a university professor, still see D.E.I. as a worthwhile endeavor and a set of ideals to strive for. Desiree Fixler, a finance executive, and Erec Smith, a professor, once shared that view, but have come to believe D.E.I. is counterproductive.

Watch Here

Welcome to the Nebuchadnezzar: Forecasting a human future

For Heterodoxy in the Stacks, Sarah Hartman-Caverly shares the written interview between FAIR board member Heather Shayne Blakeslee and evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein, who share their “thoughts in-progress” on coexisting with AI while carving out a distinctly human niche.

[Blakeslee:] Ultimately, if you want to argue that humans are special, you have to get real religious real quick. You’re talking about a soul, I think—and that’s really uncomfortable for atheists or even rationalists, but I’m not sure how you avoid that path. I supposed that because I don’t think we have souls, that I’m more inclined to give moral status to non-humans, period, whether or not they have a human-type consciousness.

Our cultural norms and ethics are all over the place on whom and what we grant moral or legal status to. Over our history, some people have been given moral status but not others; we’ve granted legal status to some rivers; the Citizens United ruling granted personhood status to corporations. We give very narrow and limited consideration to other mammals, or non-human animals generally, which has never made sense to me: a great ape can be held against its will and basically tortured, but a corporation’s speech is protected by the first amendment? We have to sort this out, because this big AI tsunami is already in motion.

Read the Full Interview

John Tomasi on the Diversity We Don’t Discuss

For Lean Out with Tara Henley, Tara Henley interviews John Tomasi, president of Heterodox Academy, about the new book, Viewpoint Diversity: What It Is, Why We Need It, and How to Get It, which he co-edited along with Bernard Schweizer. Tomasi discusses the importance of institutional openness to ideological disagreement and the role of viewpoint diversity in strengthening academic and civic life.

Listen to the interview or read the transcript here:

Lean Out with Tara Henley

John Tomasi on the Diversity We Don't Discuss

In recent years, viewpoint diversity has become a loaded term. But my guest on the program today says it is vital that we renew our commitment to dialogue, especially across lines of difference. He has edited a new book that brings together prominent professors and journalists to make the case for free speech, intellectual humility, and societal plurali…

Listen now

a month ago · 24 likes · 2 comments · Tara Henley

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 Executive Director Monica Harris joined a distinguished group of scholars, legal experts, and education leaders for “Building a Culture of Dialogue: A Conversation with Harvard’s Intellectual Vitality Initiative,” hosted by Harvard Alumni for Free Speech. Co-sponsored by FAIR and the Council on Academic Freedom, the conversation explored what it actually takes to cultivate intellectual diversity and open inquiry — on Harvard’s campus and beyond.

In addition to Monica, the panel featured Harvard faculty and institutional leaders Professor Danielle Allen, Edward J. Hall, Ari Kohn, and John Evangelakos. Together, they examined the state of free inquiry at universities, the institutional conditions that make genuine dialogue possible, and the challenge of building cultures where disagreement is not just tolerated but genuinely valued.

Watch the full conversation here:

Monica’s contribution to the conversation brought a dimension often missing from discussions about free expression in higher education: what students are bringing with them when they arrive. If universities are serious about intellectual vitality, the work has to start earlier.

FAIR’s Many Stories, One Nation curriculum is designed to give high school students the tools for exactly this kind of intellectual engagement. During the panel, Monica highlighted two key frameworks at the heart of the curriculum.

The first is logical fallacy identification. Students learn to recognize common errors in reasoning such as straw man arguments, false dichotomies, ad hominem attacks, and more. What makes this instruction distinctive is its direction: students are taught to identify these fallacies in their own thinking, not just in the arguments of others. This self-scrutiny is harder, and more important. It asks students to develop a habit of intellectual honesty that most adults have never been formally taught.

The second framework Monica discussed is one she describes as among the most powerful in the curriculum: the Competing Goods framework.

The premise is straightforward, but its implications are profound. Most genuine controversies, the curriculum teaches, don’t pit a good argument against a bad one. Instead, they pit two legitimate values against each other. Safety versus freedom. Individual rights versus community welfare. Tradition versus progress. Equality versus excellence. In each case, both sides are protecting something real, but the disagreement arises because people prioritize those goods differently, and that prioritization reflects deeply held values, not ignorance or malice.

FAIR’s curriculum encourages students to ask: What is the “other side” actually trying to protect or defend? What legitimate concern is driving their position? Can I understand why a reasonable person with different priorities might reach a different conclusion?

This reframing doesn’t require abandoning convictions or pretending that all positions are equally valid; students can still take sides. But the framework changes the nature of the disagreement. Instead of “my side is right and your side is wrong,” the question becomes: “How do we navigate a genuine tension between things we both care about?” This shift from winning to understanding is what makes productive dialogue possible.

As Monica noted during the panel, this disconnect is at the root of much of the divisive public discourse we see today. When people can’t recognize that the “other side” is protecting something legitimate, they default to assuming bad faith. The conversation degrades into combat. The Competing Goods framework gives students a way out of that trap. Instead of avoiding hard questions, they’re taught to approach them with greater intellectual sophistication.

Open inquiry doesn’t begin or end on a college campus. It’s a cultural challenge, and culture is built over time, through practice, and by equipping young people with the skills and dispositions that genuine dialogue requires.

For educators and administrators interested in bringing FAIR’s Many Stories, One Nation curriculum to their students, or for anyone who wants to learn more about our work to strengthen civil discourse in K-12 education, you can explore it here or contact monica@fairforall.org.

The conversation at Harvard was a reminder of what’s possible when we take seriously the work of building a better public square. We’re proud to be part of it.

With gratitude,
The FAIR Team

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

Read on the topic of empathy for our Substack this week:

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

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.
  

Empathy is an ancient moral instinct that is relatively new to the English language. From the Greek word Empatheia (meaning passion or emotion) and the Greek Pathos (meaning suffering and profound feeling), the German language produced the term Einfühlung somewhere in the late 19th century — a term describing the projection of one’s own feelings onto other human beings and even onto objects. As language evolved, the English term “empathy” came to signify the capacity to understand the feelings of another person as if they were one’s own. Yet this new term reflected a very ancient bit of moral wisdom. It is strange that in today’s polarized discourse we sometimes discard empathy as if it were the product of experimental social science and not something that in substance echoes all the way back to the gospels and beyond.

There is a story that appears in the first book of Kings in the Old Testament about King Solomon, the wisest king of Israel, and the manner in which he dispensed justice. As the story goes, Solomon was confronted with a dispute between two women, each of whom claimed to be the mother of the same infant boy. The women lived with each other and each had recently given birth to a baby, making their children the same age. During the night as they slept, so one of the women claimed, the other woman rolled over and smothered her own child to death. Waking up and realizing what she had done, the mother who had accidentally killed her son went to the bed of the other woman who lay sleeping with her child, and replaced the living child with the dead one. The woman accused of swapping the children denied this charge. Rather than interrogate the women further to rationally deduce the truth, Solomon, in his wisdom, exposed the heart of a true mother:

“Then the king said, ‘Bring me a sword.’ So they brought a sword before the king. And the king said, ‘Divide the living child in two, and give half to one and half to the other.’” (1 Kings 3:23-25)

Solomon’s command was shocking and terrifying to the woman who was the true mother of the surviving child. She pleaded for the child’s life and relinquished her claim to him, while the other woman was willing to let Solomon follow through on his intentions. Thus Solomon declared, “Give the first woman the living child, and by no means kill him; she is his mother.” By being able to inhabit the feelings of a true mother, Solomon was able to dispense true justice through an act of empathy as much as an act of wisdom.

In the modern moment we don’t usually think about empathy in relation to questions of justice except insofar as it enters the conversation under the heading of social justice. In that context, empathy for the marginalized and downtrodden can translate, in some circles, to a default deference to very liberal policies on immigration, law enforcement, public welfare, national security and DEI — policies that privilege the redistribution of resources while looking askance at the question of accountability for particular groups. It is this tendency that gives rise to a critique of empathy in principle by some on the right, encapsulated by the phrase “toxic empathy.” Criticisms of empathy often focus on the tendency to become so absorbed with the struggle and suffering of others that you lose sight of the interests of people (even in your own country or community) who may be harmed by the policies you support on the basis of empathy. “Open borders” policies are frequent targets: empathy for the developing world has opened up flood waves of migration in Europe and the United States that have resulted in the importation of crime, violence, competition for scarce resources and the uneven application of domestic laws against native-born residents.

These are not trivial concerns, but they have never constituted a good basis for rejecting empathy in principle. “Toxic empathy,” properly understood, does not reveal a destructive excess of empathy so much as a lack of it — a failure to extend compassion to people who exist beyond the groups whose challenges we find it easier to feel. Ethically speaking, it makes all the sense in the world to empathize with the struggles of undocumented immigrants, but a complete sense of empathy would also recognize the suffering of people subject to cartel violence on the southern border or workers in inner cities who have lost job opportunities or whose wages are suppressed on account of lax border enforcement policies. Any feeling heart should grieve for the Palestinians in Gaza, yet a complete sense of empathy would also hold space for the devastating pain of October 7th and how it shaped the perspectives of those who acted in defense of Israel.

This is where empathy meets listening, and where both become civic virtues. In a culture that promotes civil discourse, empathy is more than a feeling; it’s a discipline we must practice to allow ourselves to humanize those who disagree with us. The gospels teach that we are to love each other as ourselves, as if we shared a body together, and as if what you feel, I too in some way feel. That kind of love is not passive. It requires us to listen across differences, to sit with the discomfort of perspectives that unsettle our own, and to resist the temptation to dismiss what we haven’t yet tried to understand. Empathy, in this sense, is the foundation of deep listening, and deep listening is the foundation of democratic life.

The skills that make this possible — perspective-taking, active attention, the willingness to be changed by what we hear — are not mere instincts. They are practices. They can be learned, and they can be lost. Empathy does not require agreement. But empathy does require our love for our country to be reflected in our concern for our neighbors. Empathy requires us to take seriously the reality of the person across from us — their hopes, their fears, and the experiences that shape their convictions. That seriousness is what transforms a conversation into a community, and a community into a democracy.

Let this empathy be the substance of how we practice democracy.

Share

We invite you join our upcoming webinar, The Lost Art of Listening: Building Empathy Across Differences, with FAIR Advisors John Wood Jr. and Ilana Redstone, moderated by FAIR Executive Director Monica Harris, on Monday, April 27th, at 4pm PT / 7pm ET.

Register here

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

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

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

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

The Medicalization of Adolescence

For FAIR’s Substack, Dr. Kendra Kautz explores how normal adolescent development is increasingly treated as pathology. Rising diagnoses and prescriptions (especially antidepressants and ADHD medications) suggest clinicians may be moving too quickly, without fully weighing developmental, social, and environmental context or ensuring informed consent.

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…

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.

Read the Full Article

If this topic interests you, please join us on Wednesday, May 6th, at 7pm ET for a webinar discussion with Dr. Kautz.

Jacob Siegel: “The old ruling party is waiting in the wings”

For PUBLIC, FAIR Advisor Michael Shellenberger interviews Jacob Siegel about his new book The Information State: Politics in the Age of Total Control. They discuss the “Censorship Industrial Complex,” the increasing tendency to label anything that contradicts dominant narratives as “disinformation,” and threat this poses to democracy.

There are good reasons to be concerned about the impact of social media on young people, but Siebel Newsom, despite her attempt not to be political, made clear her problem was with boys “moving to the right,” which is a very different concern from the ones being raised by Jonathan Haidt and others about the impact of social media on childhood. And Siebel Newsom’s remarks come in the context of efforts by her husband to control and even censor information. In 2023, Newsom announced a state initiative for citizens to report disfavored speech (non-criminal “hate incidents”) they see online.

Listen to the Full Interview

The Tragedy of Murdered Indigenous Women is Real. So How Did Activists Turn It Into a Punch Line?

For Quillette, FAIR Advisor Jonathan Kay argues that the crisis of murdered and missing Indigenous women in Canada is real and serious, but is more closely tied to social factors like crime and domestic violence than to a coordinated state effort. He contends that framing it as “genocide” can obscure effective solutions.

In 2015, the government of then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the creation of a public inquiry into the issue—known as the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls—noting that Indigenous women were significantly more likely to be murder victims than their non-Indigenous counterparts. Its mandate was to “look at all underlying causes of violence against Indigenous women and girls including systemic issues.” While Pickton’s crimes were unusually horrific, Canadians learned, his victims represented just a small fraction of the approximately 1,200 Indigenous women who’d been murdered or gone missing over the previous three decades.

Read the Full Article

The New ‘Conversion Therapy’ Is Making Gay Kids Trans

For The Free Press, James Kirchick makes the case that “gender-affirming care” for minors functions as a modern form of “conversion therapy,” steering gender-nonconforming or same-sex-attracted youth toward medical transition.

By grouping sexual orientation and gender identity under the same “LGBTQ” umbrella, many conversion therapy bans conflate two entirely separate concepts. Sexual orientation is other-directed, determined by the sex to which one is physically and emotionally attracted…Gender identity, by contrast, is a subjective feeling of one’s own gender, which may or may not correspond with biological sex…For some, this means adopting gendered ideas about how the opposite sex is supposed to look, dress, and act. Others choose to undergo what used to be called a “sex change,” today euphemistically described as “medically necessary gender-affirming care.” This is utterly foreign to the gay experience, especially the young gay experience. Coming out of the closet does not entail the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, or irreversible medical interventions.

Read the Full Article

Yale’s ‘Trust’ Report Affirms HxA’s Reform Agenda — And Our Members Helped

For Free The Inquiry Heterodox Academy writes that Yale’s new “Trust in Higher Education” report independently validates many of HxA’s long-standing reform priorities, including a sharper institutional mission, stronger protections for open inquiry, and greater viewpoint diversity.

On self-censorship, one of HxA’s cornerstone concerns, the report is unsparing. It cites Yale’s own 2025 survey finding that nearly a third of undergraduates do not feel free to express their political beliefs on campus, up from 17% in 2015. “Self-censorship driven by fear of personal attack, academic retaliation, or other political pressure,” the committee writes, “undermines the principles of free speech and academic freedom.”

The committee’s approach to reform is also distinctly HxA’s: change from within. It calls for faculty-led self-studies, joint student-faculty committees on classroom principles, and collaborative governance. This is precisely the model HxA has championed for over a decade: equipping academics inside the institution to drive deep, lasting change.

Read the Full Article

The Decline of Confidence in Higher Ed.

For Expression, Nate Honeycutt unpacks recent data obtained by FIRE which shows that one-third of Americans have no confidence in U.S. colleges and universities.

On their own, these confidence trends reflect an untenable dynamic for higher education leaders. But viewed alongside other indicators, they suggest deeper structural problems… Just as important are signs that many high schoolers — most notably males and Republicans — are less interested in graduating from college, that ideological diversity among professors and administrators is low and still declining, and that highly visible speech controversies continue to pile up.

If colleges and universities want to remain socially relevant and financially stable, they’re going to have to confront the reality that large segments of the public increasingly see them as exclusionary rather than open.

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,

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.