Fair For All

Weekly Roundup

Fair For All — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 11:31:01 GMT

“You Can’t Say That!”: How Speaking About My Experiences as a Woman Researcher Ended My Academic Career

This week, we highlighted a personal essay by postdoctoral researcher Sylvia B.

In the piece, Sylvia reflects on the professional fallout that followed her attempts to discuss the challenges women in academia face. What began as a conversation about career mobility and sex-based differences evolved into accusations, formal complaints, and ultimately her decision to leave academia altogether. Through her experience, she asks whether institutions that encourage employees to “bring their whole selves to work” truly make room for diverse perspectives and imperfect conversations—or only some of them.

“A healthy intellectual community should be able to tolerate imperfect conversations and different viewpoints. I am not rejecting inclusivity or efforts to make all people feel welcome in science. I am asking whether the exhortation to “bring your whole self to work” actually includes everyone. Instead of empowering the performatively self-righteous to demand ideological obedience, we should promote open communication and professional tolerance of different lived experiences—for all people, not just select groups.”

Read the Full Article

Breaking the Spell: White Guilt from Belfast to Britain — with Jenny Holland

In a recent episode of Man of Steele, filmmaker and writer Eli Steele speaks with Belfast-based commentator Jenny Holland about the social and political tensions unfolding in the UK. Drawing on her proximity to recent unrest in Belfast, Holland discusses immigration, policing, identity politics, and the influence of what she and Steele describe as a culture of “white guilt.” Their conversation explores concerns about institutional ideology, the changing character of Irish republicanism, and growing frustrations among segments of the British public. Together, the pair argue that many of these issues are being overlooked or misunderstood by political and cultural elites.

“The younger generation aren’t seeing the benefit of the anti-colonial resistance narrative. In fact, they’re really getting it in the rear, to be crude about it. And they know they are. They know that they’re getting fucked, basically. And they’re like: no, we’re not going to endure this — so that you can pontificate in front of a microphone about how great and good you are, and how migrants are welcome. You’re not doing that off our backs. I think there’s more of that sentiment on the ground than has been reported.”

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Why We Should Listen to Robert Coles — and to Each Other

Shared by FAIR board advisor Nadine Strossen, this reflection by historian Jonathan Zimmerman revisits the life and legacy of psychiatrist Robert Coles, who died on June 4. Coles spent decades listening to Americans from across racial, social, and political divides. He resisted reducing people to stereotypes, insisting that understanding begins with curiosity and conversation. He was best known for his conversations with children, especially those who had faced racial violence. Through more than 50 books and hundreds of articles, Coles championed the idea that every person—and especially every child—has something important to say. His work offers a timely reminder that listening to one another as individuals, rather than caricatures, is essential to a more humane and less polarized society.

“…every individual you meet becomes exactly that: an individual. They’re no longer a category or a caricature. They’re a human being, trying to make sense of the world. Just like you, and like me.”
“I don’t look upon them as good or bad,” Coles explained. “I look upon them as human beings, strong and sensible, weak and full of faults.” He readily acknowledged “the blindness, the distortions, the racism, the meanness” among them. But he refused to reduce them to that.”

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Engaged citizens built America. Today, civics education is coming back.

Can a divided nation rediscover the habits of self-government? As America nears its 250th anniversary, a growing movement to strengthen civics education aims to do just that. Across the country, students are learning not only how government works, but how to wrestle with competing interpretations of history, engage opposing viewpoints, and participate responsibly in civic life. In an era of deep polarization, many see these efforts as essential to preserving a culture of pluralism and constructive disagreement.

“Nicholas Longo, director of the Rutgers Democracy Lab at Rutgers University, says young people want to be engaged, and when they have opportunities, they do great things. In these tumultuous and highly polarized times, teaching young people civics skills can have a profound impact on society, he says.”

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Juneteenth Reminds Us That Equal Protection Requires Our Vigilance and Constant Work

Fair For All — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 11:31:23 GMT

Dear Friends of FAIR,

Today, millions of Americans will observe Juneteenth — a day of remembrance, gratitude, and moral clarity.

On January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued his final Emancipation Proclamation declaring that “all persons held as slaves” within rebellious states “are, and henceforward shall be free.” But that proclamation could not be enforced in places under Confederate control. The roughly 250,000 enslaved people in Texas, the westernmost state of the Confederacy, remained in bondage after Lincoln’s Proclamation.

It wasn’t until June 19, 1865 — two and a half years later — that General Granger arrived in Galveston to publicly deliver General Order No. 3, announcing that enslaved men, women, and children in that state were free. The order began simply: “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.” Order No. 3 also included language that seemed extraordinary at the time: freedom involved “an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves.”

The moment that Order No. 3 reached enslaved Texans marked the final stroke in a long and bitter struggle for freedom. Hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children who had been waiting years for freedom finally learned they were free. The following year, citizens gathered to celebrate in their finest clothes, with prayer, music, food, and deep thanksgiving.

That was the first Juneteenth celebration.

Juneteenth isn’t merely a holiday about delayed news. It is a holiday about the long and bloody effort to bring American law into alignment with American principle: that all men are created equal.

Here’s why that matters: Juneteenth marks the moment when American law finally aligned with American principle. The nation had declared its independence in 1776 on a self-evident truth: “all men are created equal,” yet slavery persisted for nearly 90 years. The contradiction was glaring and unavoidable.

Throughout history, many cultures and governments accepted slavery as natural and even customary. But America could not. The moment our nation declared universal human equality to be the foundation of its legitimacy, slavery became an unbearable moral problem. Good people living within a nation founded on good principles cannot indefinitely tolerate such a contradiction.

This inconsistency demanded resolution, but that resolution came at catastrophic cost: a civil war that claimed more than 600,000 lives, a constitutional amendment, and the complete reconstruction of American law and society. In less than a century after its founding, Americans finally ended a practice that had existed for thousands of years across cultures and continents.

The story of American abolition teaches something vital: When a nation’s founding principles are rooted in genuine respect for human dignity and equal protection, its work becomes the work of ensuring these principles are adhered to in practice.

That is the bedrock of FAIR’s mission.

We believe that a pluralistic democracy built on equal protection and free expression requires constant, deliberate work. It requires that each of us practice civil discourse, even when we are in disagreement. It requires that we defend the constitutional rights that protect minority groups and dissenting voices from majoritarian overreach. It requires that we educate citizens so they can better understand one another and grapple seriously with difficult history.

It requires the work that Juneteenth represents: aligning law, practice, and culture with our Founders’ commitment that all people deserve equal dignity and equal rights.

This commitment was not fully realized on June 19, 1865, and it is still not fully realized today. The arc of justice does not bend toward itself; rather, it demands that people who see the contradiction between principle and practice refuse to accept it and work tirelessly to resolve it.

Today, we honor those who fought and sacrificed to bring law into alignment with principle — and we invite you to ask: What does it look like to continue that work in your own community?

We all have a unique role to play in this mission. You can answer the call today by:

Engaging Your Community: Join the conversation by attending an upcoming webinar, educational program, or local discussion.
Building Local Connections: Connect with a FAIR Chapter near you or spark something new by starting a chapter to host events, conversations, and outreach in your area.
Bringing History to Light: Help us introduce FAIR’s new Many Stories, One Nation curriculum to schools and civic leadership in your community.
Fueling the Movement: Every program, resource, and classroom tool we offer is made possible entirely by the generosity of people like you. Consider making a donation to sustain this work.

This is FAIR’s calling, and it’s a calling that Juneteenth reminds us all to answer.

With gratitude,

Monica Harris
Executive Director, FAIR

The Canadian Free Speech Crisis with Lisa Bildy

Canada shares our values, our language, and our legal traditions — yet free speech there is under pressure in ways that would have been unimaginable a decade ago. FAIR Advisor Lisa Bildy of the Free Speech Union of Canada will walk us through the landscape: who’s being silenced, who’s pushing back, and the cultural pressures that are reshaping expression north of the border. Join us for a candid look at what’s happening in Canada and why it matters for all of us.

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.

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!

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!

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“You Can’t Say That!”: How Speaking About My Experiences as a Woman Researcher Ended My Academic Career

Sylvia B — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 11:31:26 GMT

After devoting half of my life to academia, I learned a career-destroying lesson in irony: In a workplace that celebrated diversity, equity, and inclusion, discussing my own experiences as a woman post-doctoral researcher was professionally dangerous.

It started at lunch in a restaurant with my non-binary research supervisor and two graduate students. We were discussing short-term visiting professor positions in our field (chemistry). Often these positions lack a clear path to stability, and so position-hopping can continue indefinitely. I made an observation (backed by data from Stanford University): Men are less likely than women to relocate for their partner’s career. I admit I was hyperbolic: “Men won’t follow women around for their careers,” I vented. At the time, I was struggling to find academic positions that would allow me to remain in contact with my friends, family, or partner. I worried that I would have to choose between human connection and employment.

My supervisor (whose wife is fortunate enough to have a dual-hire arrangement — the kind of institutional accommodation that, for some, solves the problem I was describing) became visibly angry and shouted: “You can’t say that!” Even though I explained that I was referring to a possible statistical or cultural pattern, their response was to liken my observation to the racist misuse of crime statistics.

I was stunned and shaken, too distressed to explain myself in a more nuanced way. My supervisor’s publicly posted policy was to immediately fire anyone who said anything they deem racist, sexist, or “-phobi”c: “The consequences will be swift and severe.” That didn’t stop others in the group from routinely making sweeping generalizations about society and identities without consequence. Yet when I referenced a sex-based pattern I had noticed in my own life, I was loudly and publicly shut down.

My supervisor heavily promoted their nascent research group as a place where people should “bring their whole selves to work.” Discussions of sexuality, gender identity, mental health, and personal struggles were common. I always listened supportively when others shared their experiences, feelings, and identities.

Initially, I brushed off the incident. My young supervisor and I were close: I cat-sat for them, and we went night-time owl-watching together. They shared a lot of personal information with me, so I felt comfortable making myself vulnerable. I was their ally and sang their praises to anyone who would listen. After a conference we attended together, they texted me their hope to remain “lifelong friends.” But over time, further conflicts arose between us whenever I mentioned issues that disproportionately affect women.

A few months later, while discussing my academic career plan with my supervisor, I opined, “Nobody wants to talk about it, but I think there are differences between men’s and women’s experiences in academia.” I mentioned that some women may face cultural and biological realities—such as women’s health problems necessitating a hysterectomy, or menopause—that affect their ability to remain in extended periods of geographical mobility and career uncertainty. I was not criticizing men (and certainly not non-binary people) or arguing that women are a uniquely oppressed group. I was sharing my own anxieties as a woman on the tenure-track academic job market who also hopes to have a family someday. In that same meeting, I also tried to explain to my supervisor how their often belittling or even angry comments about my “terse,” “direct” academic writing style contributed to my feeling deeply discouraged about my professional future.

By the end of the meeting, I thought we had achieved mutual understanding. But a few days later, I received a formal email stating that my speech had made my supervisor feel “unsafe” and “extremely uncomfortable.” The department chair and Faculty Affairs were alerted. My supervisor planned to reduce mentorship and seek official guidance on ominous “next steps.” My request for mediation through the ombuds office was declined. It seemed that I would imminently be fired—“swift and severe consequences.” My supervisor updated their group policy sheet with boldface and underlining to emphasize the dire consequences for anyone perceived as being intolerant at any time.

I spent over a month trying to figure out what I had done wrong. Eventually, my supervisor revealed that my comments had “made [them] feel like [they were] being binned in with a gender that [they] don’t identify with.” Apparently, any discussion of my personal, female experiences could be reframed as an attack on another gender.

Early in my post-doctoral appointment, the university counseling center dropped the “TQIA+” from the “LGBTQIA+ Peer Support Space” calendar event listing, an ultimately temporary omission. My supervisor described the “erasure” as “genocide” on our research group messaging board, and I responded with a prayer emoji to offer my sympathy for their distress at the university’s seeming pre-emptive over-compliance with new government mandates. But it occurred to me that once an issue is cast in terms of “genocide,” colleagues who hold different views can easily be treated as participants in violence who deserve “swift and severe” punishment. In retrospect, I should have foreseen my fate.

A few more tense months passed until I spoke up again. I was troubled by what I perceived as new, retaliatory, gendered work expectations. I knew my supervisor had told the department chair that I was a productive researcher. But my supervisor started to limit my autonomy while still allowing my male colleague the freedom to work from home at his own discretion, on his own schedule. Now, my workdays were spent listening to loud student conversations in the chaotic group office and doing what felt like student babysitting at the expense of my productivity and career.

They summoned me to their office to discuss my written concerns. That day, my attempt at self-advocacy culminated in a threat to withhold future recommendation letters. In academia, that is career-ending. My concerns and observations were dismissed as “unprofessional” and even unspeakably disgusting when they involved women’s health. My supervisor warned me to look harder and more broadly for a new job. Then they told me to get out of their office. Leaving tearfully, I explained how much their friendship meant to me, emphasizing that I respected their gender identity. Nevertheless, HR began an “information-gathering process” later that day.

Months later, I have still received no resolution from the university, which committed $1 million to start up my supervisor’s lab. Faculty Affairs and HR conspired to employ misleading tactics, tried to impose a prohibited gag order, and, before seeing the evidence, told me I was somehow more “unprofessional” than my supervisor. I decided to complain to the Title IX office. After an initial interview, the office failed to follow up as promised or even respond to my emails for two months until my Family Medical Leave Act job protection was scheduled to end. (Having my career threatened for a perceived transgression took a toll on my mental health and triggered an autoimmune flare, necessitating unpaid leave.) The university appeared far more responsive to accusations framed through the gender-identity lens than to concerns I raised as a subordinate woman. This is an issue because it unjustly serves one group over the other rather than providing dignity for both sides and the opportunity to respectfully resolve conflict. As a result of my experiences, I’ve made the decision to leave academia—happily, at this point.

A woman describing sex-based realities affecting her career makes no one “unsafe.” A healthy intellectual community should be able to tolerate imperfect conversations and different viewpoints. I am not rejecting inclusivity or efforts to make all people feel welcome in science. I am asking whether the exhortation to “bring your whole self to work” actually includes everyone. Instead of empowering the performatively self-righteous to demand ideological obedience, we should promote open communication and professional tolerance of different lived experiences—for all people, not just select groups.

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.

Weekly Roundup

Fair For All — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 11:31:14 GMT

Wildcard: On Authorship and Refusing the Script

This week, we featured Johari Mayfield’s (M. Octavia Faulkner) reflection on Wildcard, an evolving performance project inspired by the life of Saartjie Baartman. What began as an attempt to confront spectatorship and objectification gradually became something more personal: an exploration of embodiment, artistic integrity, and the tension between inherited narratives and lived experience.

Drawing from years of research, collaboration, and recovery, Mayfield traces how Wildcard transformed from an intellectual exercise into what she describes as a “satirical séance” — a communal practice of integration rather than accusation. Her essay raises enduring questions about identity, historical memory, and the relationship between art and authenticity, suggesting that wholeness cannot be engineered or imposed, but must be continually practiced.

“Wildcard is evolving into a larger work — part satire, part embodied inquiry- and what I call a “satirical séance.”…Through movement, dialogue, and humor, participants explore what it means to remain whole — to resist fragmentation in their own thinking and bodies. The aim is not accusation, but integration. Wholeness is not achieved in isolation; it is practiced in relationship.”

Read the Full Article

When the UK Betrayed Justice for White Guilt

This week, FAIR Board of Advisors member and filmmaker Eli Steele examines the cultural and historical forces that have shaped modern conversations about race, identity, and institutional responsibility in Britain. Reflecting on the legacy of anti-racism policies and the tension between group identity and individual dignity, Steele argues that societies flourish when they remain grounded in universal principles rather than inherited guilt or tribal divisions.

His essay explores how the pursuit of justice can lose sight of its original aims when institutions prioritize narratives over individuals, and asks what it would mean to renew a shared commitment to character, accountability, and common humanity.

“If we do not wish to be defined by tribes or condemned because of our skins, then we must accept that we are judged by what we do. That is what it means to be Western. We are judged by our character and actions and that includes protecting and defending the universal Western principles and values for all.”

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Kemi Badenoch: My Plan to Bring Back Common Sense

Kemi Badenoch, leader of the British Conservative Party, gave a powerful speech outlining her vision for restoring what she describes as common sense to public life. The speech provides a compelling case for the importance of free speech, institutional trust, and civic confidence. Addressing questions of national identity and political culture, Badenoch argued that democratic societies function best when they are grounded in shared values, open debate, and a willingness to engage with disagreement rather than suppress it.

“The answer to Black Lives Matter is not a white lives matter born of the same racial grievance. We will not defeat identity politics by building a mirror image of it.”

Watch Full Speech

Critical Social Justice and Its Cognitive Distortions: Diagnosing the Liberal’s Poor Mental Health

In a new paper, Arnoldo Cantú and Nathan Gallo explore the relationship between ideology and mental health. Drawing on concepts from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, the authors examine how certain patterns of thinking embedded within contemporary social frameworks may reinforce cognitive distortions and shape psychological well-being.

Their paper offers an alternative perspective on rising rates of psychiatric diagnoses and invites further discussion about the connections between cognition, culture, and mental health.

"In addition to the distortions listed, a throughline that can certainly cut across the entire ideology is that of the certainty trap: “A pervasive cognitive distortion that leads individuals to treat their knowledge and beliefs as definitive and final rather than provisional, particularly regarding contentious social and political issues”

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FAIR in Charleston: Bringing Many Stories, One Nation to School Board Leaders

Fair For All — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 11:31:01 GMT

Dear Friends of FAIR,

We’re thrilled to announce that FAIR will be attending the School Boards for Academic Excellence (SBAE) Summer Conference in Charleston, South Carolina. The event brings together school board members and education leaders from across the country who are navigating complex curriculum decisions for K-12 students. This will be an important opportunity for FAIR to introduce Many Stories, One Nation to those who often hold the greatest power in adoption conversations — and to show them a path to Ethnic Studies instruction without the polarization that has derailed adoption efforts in many communities.

Charleston itself holds particular significance this year. The historic city’s role in both America’s founding and the transatlantic slave trade illustrates the competing narratives that have often defined our national story. As our nation marks the 250th anniversary of its independence, Charleston reminds us that understanding America’s heritage requires grappling with competing narratives: the ideals enshrined in the Declaration of Independence alongside the lived realities of enslaved people, settlers, and immigrants whose stories are often omitted or minimized in textbooks. That complexity is not something we should dismiss or ignore; it’s the foundation of responsible and educated citizenship.

The question for education leaders is: how do we teach these stories in a way that brings communities together rather than dividing them? That question is what inspired FAIR to assemble our team of educators to create Many Stories, One Nation.

Our work in California, Oregon, and Minnesota has taught us that decisions about Ethnic Studies adoption are rarely made by educators alone. Administrators and school board members, too, have legitimate stakes in what students are taught, yet these stakeholders often operate in a vacuum. They face pressure to choose curricula, but lack the information they need to evaluate these options critically.

School boards want a curriculum that won’t create controversy — and won’t sanitize history. Does it reflect their community’s values? Will it prepare students for college and careers? Will parents be skeptical, and how will board members address their concerns? They want assurance that their adoption efforts won’t invite backlash in their communities.

In Charleston, we’ll have direct conversations with education leaders about how Many Stories, One Nation addresses the real pressures they face. We’ll walk them through lesson materials and explore what adoption will look like in their districts.

Board members gain confidence when they understand FAIR’s unique approach: students learn not just that groups experienced history differently, but why. Through primary sources and civil discourse methodology, Many Stories, One Nation teaches students to engage deeply with difficult history without the ideological freight that often triggers parent complaints. FAIR’s curriculum gives school boards what they need to lead: Ethnic Studies material that’s academically rigorous and defensible in their communities.

Board members are navigating pressures most people don’t see: the need for rigorous instruction, community trust, and curricula that won’t undermine their credibility. FAIR is bringing a solution specifically designed to address those pressures. This is partnership-building at the level where it matters most. Stay tuned — we’ll share what we learn from these conversations in Charleston in our next update!

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.

The Canadian Free Speech Crisis with Lisa Bildy

FAIR in Conversation is Back!

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!

FAIR Educators Alliance 2025-2026

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

Join Us!

Join the FAIR Community

Wildcard: On Authorship and Refusing the Script

Johari Mayfield — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 11:31:08 GMT

The first time I approached the story of Saartjie Baartman, I built a cage around the audience. It was a sound cage — an attempt to make the audience feel, even for a moment, what it might mean to be placed on display. My movements triggered a sound loop that repeated through the room as the choreography continued. Beat after beat, the structure relied on repetition until sensation overtook comfort. In her time, Baartman was displayed throughout Europe objectified and exhibited as a curiosity for audiences eager to consume difference. I wanted to trouble the act of looking itself. I set out to haunt the conscience of the room. Instead, I found myself haunted.

Beneath the concept of exploring objectification and discomfort was something more personal. A tell-tale heart — a sound that grows louder the more you try to contain it. I believed that if I engineered the structure precisely enough, the meaning would land — that scale would intensify truth. Instead, the performance structure exposed me. During one performance, the loop cut out. The repetition vanished — and with it the cool effect that made the work seem innovative. The floor went silent. I stood there, aware that the audience was no longer watching the concept. They were watching me. In frustration, I broke the fourth wal l— not as strategy, but as ego. I cussed out the audience — not at them, but because I had just ruined my own piece.

From the ruins of the piece, I had a realization. It is easier to accuse spectatorship than to examine one’s own role in it. I was trying to make something architecturally airtight and intellectually impressive. If I am honest, I was also trying to sound smart. The work did not falter because it lacked ambition. It faltered because I had not yet aligned myself with what I was asking the work to hold.

Saartjie Baartman’s name carries historical weight. A South African woman, she was exhibited in 19th-century Europe under dehumanizing conditions. Ultimately, her body became a spectacle and taxonomy. For artists, that symbolism is potent and opens urgent conversations about race, power, and objectification. As I continued researching her experience, something unsettled me. My lived experience as a contemporary Black American woman did not mirror Baartman’s historical conditions. I could study her life. I could feel proximity to her story. But proximity is not equivalence.

Around that same time, I was volunteering with young people who had survived sexual exploitation. Listening to them shifted something fundamental. In their stories, I heard echoes of lives that felt closer to Baartman’s historical reality than to my own. The recognition was sobering. One question kept returning: Was I constructing work around inherited suffering that was not fully mine to perform? Instead of abandoning the project, I complicated it.

I met a visual artist willing to imagine Baartman differently. Together we began rewriting her —not as a specimen or tragic emblem, but as a superhero in a mini zine titled Wildcard. Saartjie, or Lady Sarah, was self-possessed, wry, powerful, and refused containment.

In a deck of cards, a wildcard does not belong to a single suit. It can shift value. It can alter the direction of the game without overturning the table. The name felt right. Baartman’s historical image had been fixed — categorized, labeled, contained. A wildcard refuses fixed placement. It introduces movement into systems that prefer certainty.

And still, I wrestled with form.

At one stage, I borrowed the beat from L’il Mama’s Lip Gloss and looped it until the room leaned forward. I understood what that rhythm carries — shine, visibility, consumability, and I let the complexity sit there. I bopped to it, and so did the audience. A rhythm can celebrate presence. It can also shrink Black women into surface. That tension lived inside the work.

I stitched body parts into the choreography as fragments layered onto fragments, intending to critique the dissection and display imposed on Black bodies. Yet in doing so, I confronted how easily critique can mirror the structure it seeks to expose. The piece had become a creature assembled from theory, history, sound, and ego. The gloss shimmered, but the question of alignment did not disappear.

In later iterations, the work shifted tone. I presented Wildcard in academic and community spaces where satire replaced immersion. The setting became Club Afterlife: a liminal space where history loosens its grip long enough to be examined differently. Here women of history who have faced undue objectification could imagine a new end to their stories.

Marie Antoinette and Saartjie Baartman were not adversaries. They were unlikely companions — two women shaped by spectacle in different centuries, comparing notes — yet history had flattened them into symbols. In this imagined afterlife, they could speak.

The metaphor was simple: Can you perform a whole-bodied act in parts? Can you separate intellect from flesh, head from torso, history from body — and still succeed? Marie strategizes. She intellectualizes. At one point, she even removes her head, determined to prove that thought alone can win. She still loses. Saartjie stays intact. The body refuses fragmentation.

At one conference, I invited the audience to test the theory. We found ourselves — academics in sensible shoes included — bending backward beneath an imaginary bar in a hotel ballroom. It was slightly absurd. But it was also clarifying. We were all trying very hard to understand embodiment. Then we had to embody it. Embodiment cannot be footnoted. Integration cannot be compartmentalized.

In the years following the pandemic, conversations around identity and representation intensified across artistic spaces. Statements often came before movement. Language grew sharper. Expectations became more explicit. I felt the subtle pressure to position myself before I moved — to define my place in the conversation before making the work. Instead, I found myself asking a quieter question: Was I aligned with the work I was making? Not politically aligned. Not rhetorically aligned. Ethically aligned. Nearly nine years of sobriety have taught me the difference between intensity and clarity. I know what heat feels like. I also know what quiet feels like. If Wildcard was going to survive, it needed alignment — not proximity to trauma, not institutional approval.

Before literary ghosts entered the room, the name Faulkner already lived in my family. My great-grandmother was Marie Faulkner. The story began at a kitchen table long before it entered theory. Choosing the pen name M. Octavia Faulkner was not an attempt to borrow weight. The “M.” holds two lineages — my great-grandmother Marie, and Mary Shelley, whose stitched creature once echoed in my studio experiments. Blood and imagination. Inheritance and invention.

Wildcard is evolving into a larger work — part satire, part embodied inquiry- and what I call a “satirical séance.” Unlike the private haunting of misalignment, this séance is communal. It invites participants to call history into the room not to reenact spectacle, but to examine it together. The workshops that accompany the piece are designed as spaces of reconnection rather than division. Through movement, dialogue, and humor, participants explore what it means to remain whole — to resist fragmentation in their own thinking and bodies. The aim is not accusation, but integration. Wholeness is not achieved in isolation; it is practiced in relationship.

The FAIR Artist Grant supports this developmental stage: rehearsal time, collaboration, embodied testing. Applying did not feel like chasing validation. Receiving the grant did not feel like triumph. It felt like seeking and making room. Room to draft. Room to test. Room to build without constructing another cage. Saartjie — Lady Sarah — is no longer displayed. No longer compartmentalized. No longer engineered.

FAIR’s support allows Wildcard to move from concept into embodied experimentation, where these questions live not just on the page, but also in the body and in the community. The tell-tale heart I once tried to engineer into the floor was never Baartman’s alone. It was my own misalignment, beating louder each time I tried to bury it beneath structure, theory, or spectacle. I mistook intensity for truth. I mistook volume for clarity. Alignment does not silence the heart. It steadies it. Fully whole, she wins, we all win — and in her wholeness we are reminded that none of us stand intact alone. The script is still in progress. The stage is waiting.

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

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.

Weekly Roundup

Fair For All — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 11:30:43 GMT

When Conscience Meets Compelled Speech

This week, we highlighted the story of Laureen Boll, a Colorado fitness instructor who says she has been forced to choose between her job and her conscience. After her employer adopted a policy requiring the use of preferred names and pronouns, Boll informed her employer that she would treat everyone with dignity and respect — but would not be compelled to speak against her sincerely held beliefs.

Her story raises broader questions about free speech, freedom of conscience, and how society can balance inclusion with the rights of individuals to hold and express differing views.

“…two things can be true at once: every person deserves to be treated with fairness and dignity — and no one should be required by the government, or a taxpayer-funded employer, to affirm beliefs they do not hold. These principles are not in conflict. They are both essential to a free society.”

Read the Full Article

White Guilt Silenced Henry Nowak

FAIR Board of Advisors member and filmmaker Eli Steele, reflects on the death of British teenager Henry Nowak and the public response that followed. Steele argues that the case raises difficult questions about race, media attention, and whether society applies the same standards of empathy and scrutiny across different groups. The essay explores how identity-based narratives can shape public perception and challenges readers to consider what a truly consistent commitment to justice would require.

“My father, Shelby Steele, has argued for years that white guilt is not merely a feeling but the accusation that whites are collectively guilty for the past racial sins of the West. The fear of this accusation drives whites to dissociate from these past sins by seeking ally-ship with people of color. Everybody is trapped in a script with whites eternally the oppressor, people of color eternally the oppressed.”

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Why You Should Be a Techno-Skeptic

Social psychologist and FAIR Board of Advisors member Jonathan Haidt argues that the growing role of technology in childhood raises important questions about early development, education, and human connection. Drawing from research on social media, educational technology, and AI, he makes the case for a more cautious approach—one that prioritizes children’s development, real-world relationships, and opportunities for independent growth. Haidt’s talk is a reminder that innovation and human flourishing are not always the same thing. New technologies should be evaluated not only for what they can do, but for how they shape the lives of the people who use them.

“...human beings are ultrasocial creatures who need to matter to one another in order to flourish. We are so brilliant that we’ve invented technologies that can replace us, that can take us out of each other’s lives. But human connection is not optional. It’s who we are.”

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Must U.S. and U.K. women be forced to change clothes in front of men?

Kara Dansky explores the case of Scottish nurse Sandie Peggie, who was suspended after objecting to the presence of a transgender-identifying colleague in a women's changing room. The dispute has become a focal point in the broader debate over sex-segregated spaces, workplace accommodations, and competing rights claims. As courts and policymakers continue to wrestle with these questions, the case highlights the challenge of balancing privacy, dignity, and inclusion while maintaining space for open and respectful public discussion.

"Eight years after “Me Too,” women are being…gaslighted into believing that if we have a problem with men in our intimate spaces, we are actually the problem. We are being told that we must simply deal with men’s indecent exposure and voyeurism if they call themselves women."

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When Conscience Meets Compelled Speech

Fair For All — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 11:30:31 GMT

Dear Friends of FAIR,

This week, we shared the story of Laureen Boll, a substitute fitness instructor at South Suburban Parks and Recreation District (SSPRD) in the south Denver metro area. By her own description, she is not an activist; she is a mom, a fitness professional, and a person who simply wants to do her job.

Now her job is at risk — not because of anything she did, but because of something she refuses to say.

SSPRD recently updated its harassment policy to include the “deliberate use of the wrong name or gender pronouns.” For Laureen, complying would mean affirming beliefs she does not hold about gender identity. She treats every patron and coworker with courtesy and professionalism, and she uses neutral language wherever possible. But she will not be compelled to speak words she believes to be false. So she formally notified her employer of her refusal — and FAIR stood with her.

In March, FAIR sent a formal letter to SSPRD leadership putting the district on notice: compelling employees to use language that violates their sincerely held beliefs implicates the First Amendment, and FAIR is prepared to pursue legal remedies if Laureen faces discipline or termination as a result. We have not yet received a response from the district.

Laureen’s situation isn’t happening in a vacuum, and SSPRD is not the villain here; it is merely following Colorado state law. But that law, HB 25-1312 (the Kelly Loving Act), has pushed the state into genuinely difficult constitutional territory. The Act expands the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act to treat chosen names and preferred pronouns as protected aspects of “gender expression.” Refuse to use them in employment or public accommodations, and you risk a discrimination claim.

The result is that well-meaning public employers like SSPRD are caught in an untenable position: comply with the statute and risk infringing on the First Amendment rights of employees, or protect those constitutional rights and risk a confrontation with the state Civil Rights Commission. That isn’t a choice any employer should be forced to make, and it’s not a position any employee should be forced into simply for declining to affirm a contested ideological claim.

Like Laureen, FAIR believes that two things can be true at once: every person deserves to be treated with fairness and dignity — and no one should be required by the government, or a taxpayer-funded employer, to affirm beliefs they do not hold. These principles are not in conflict. They are both essential to a free society.

Laureen is standing her ground. FAIR is standing with her. We will keep you informed as this situation develops.

With gratitude,

Monica Harris
Executive Director, FAIR

The War on Words: A Conversation with Nadine Strossen

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

The Canadian Free Speech Crisis with Lisa Bildy

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Between Conscience and Compliance: Why I’m Standing Up for Speech Rights in Colorado

Laureen Boll — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 11:31:31 GMT

I consider myself a law-abiding person. I’ve never seen a jail cell, I’ve never been sued. I’ve gotten one speeding ticket (I was driving to the airport and was concerned I would miss my flight) and two parking tickets (both times were unintentional). I begrudgingly pay my taxes — on time and always respect the rights of others.

So why am I, of all people, formally notifying my employer that I won’t comply with their policy on “respectful treatment” in the workplace? Because it demands that I use names and pronouns to affirm a gender identity I do not believe exists. My refusal isn’t about disrespect. It’s about refusing to let the government, or my taxpayer-funded employer, force me to speak words I do not believe.

I work as a substitute fitness instructor for South Suburban Parks and Recreation District (SSPRD) in south metro Denver. I’ve been there for several years, teaching a few classes a month. I love this job! The recreation centers are community hubs where people of all ages come to move, sweat, connect, and feel alive. There’s joy in the air, but also real responsibility: I’m recertified in first aid every two years because instructors have literally saved lives when patrons suffer heart attacks or strokes mid-workout. Safety isn’t optional here. It’s part of the community culture.

SSPRD recently updated its definition of harassment to include the “deliberate use of the wrong name or gender pronouns.” Under this policy, a woman who objects to undressing alongside a trans-identifying male in the women’s locker room — or who simply voices discomfort — now risks being accused of harassment. These are not abstract concerns. Locker rooms and restrooms are spaces where women and girls are at their most physically vulnerable. The expectation of privacy is not a preference; it’s a fundamental aspect of human dignity that the law is now stripping away. The district is simply following state law, but that law has pushed Colorado into dangerous territory.

Living in this state feels increasingly surreal. Colorado’s governing majority has made it crystal clear: the feelings of the LGBTQ community must be protected at almost any cost. No hurt feelings. No perceived slights. No “misgendering.” Ever. The message is that immutable sex, as well as the privacy and safety needs of women and girls in sex-segregated spaces, — must take a back seat. If you’re a woman like me who believes that sex is a biological reality determined by chromosomes, not feelings, and that locker rooms, restrooms, and sports should reflect that reality, you’re the problem. You’re the one who must be retrained, silenced, or punished.

This isn’t balance. It’s ideology enforced by law. This is compelled speech, and it has gone too far. Constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley recently called Colorado “arguably the most anti-free speech state in the union.” In a recent opinion piece, he documented how the state’s latest law — HB 25-1312, the so-called Kelly Loving Act — expands the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act to treat “chosen names” and preferred pronouns as protected aspects of “gender expression.” Refuse to play along in employment or public accommodations, and you risk a discrimination claim. Turley sees this as part of a broader, relentless pattern: Colorado keeps passing laws that compel speech, punish dissent, and test the limits of the First Amendment — only to lose in federal court again and again.

I’m not a lawyer or an activist. I’m a mom, a fitness instructor, and a woman who simply wants to do her job without being forced to overlook basic biology. I will treat every patron and coworker with basic courtesy and professionalism. I will use neutral language where possible. But I will not affirm what I believe to be false. And I will not quietly accept that women must surrender our privacy in locker rooms and restrooms to accommodate a trans-identifying man’s feelings.

This is why FAIR sent a letter to SSPRD leadership on my behalf in March. The letter puts SSPRD on notice that compelling employees to use language that violates their sincerely held beliefs implicates the First Amendment, and that FAIR is prepared to pursue legal remedies if the district moves to discipline or terminate me for my refusal. I will not comply with any directive that compels me to speak against my conscience. I remain fully committed to performing every other aspect of my job. If the district chooses to discipline or terminate me for this, I am prepared to defend my rights under the First Amendment.

The Colorado Legislature has determined that compelling speech on a contested ideological matter is a legitimate condition of employment. They have decided that one group’s emotional comfort outweighs everyone else’s speech rights and physical safety. And they have put every taxpayer-funded public entity in an extraordinarily difficult position: either comply with the statute and risk infringing on the First Amendment rights of employees and patrons, or prioritize those constitutional protections and prepare for a potential confrontation with the state Civil Rights Commission. It is unfortunate that well-meaning employers like SSPRD are caught in the middle of this broader legal and cultural conflict.

Two things can be true at once: every person deserves to be treated fairly and with dignity, and no one should be required by the government or their employer to affirm beliefs they do not hold. I hope that the Colorado Legislature comes to that understanding sooner than later.

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.

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.

Weekly Roundup

Fair For All — Sun, 31 May 2026 13:31:09 GMT

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.”

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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."

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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."

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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.”

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Pride Month and Parental Rights: Helping Families Navigate School Activities

Fair For All — Fri, 29 May 2026 13:30:59 GMT

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

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

FAIR in Conversation is Back!

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!

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

Kimberley Tait — Thu, 28 May 2026 13:31:19 GMT

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.

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.

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.

Weekly Roundup

Fair For All — Sun, 24 May 2026 13:31:08 GMT

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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FAIR's Washington Lawsuit Triggers a Federal Investigation

Fair For All — Fri, 22 May 2026 13:31:30 GMT

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

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The War on Words: A Conversation with Nadine Strossen

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

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.

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!

FAIR Educators Alliance 2025-2026

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

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When Diversity Erases the Children It Claims to Include

Lisa Gilbert — Thu, 21 May 2026 13:30:46 GMT

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.

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.

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.

Weekly Roundup

Fair For All — Sun, 17 May 2026 12:02:52 GMT

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.

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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.

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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!

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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!

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FAIR’s Curriculum Takes the Stage in Philadelphia — and Competes for a $10,000 Prize

Fair For All — Fri, 15 May 2026 12:01:33 GMT

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

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The War on Words: A Conversation with Nadine Strossen

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

FAIR in Conversation is Back!

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!

FAIR Educators Alliance 2025-2026

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

Join Us!

Join the FAIR Community

The Neutrality Lodestar: Reclaiming the Library from Ideological Capture

Kyle Breneman — Thu, 14 May 2026 12:03:13 GMT

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.

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

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.

Weekly Roundup

Fair For All — Sun, 10 May 2026 11:31:40 GMT

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.”

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“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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Schrödinger’s Race

Fri, 08 May 2026 11:31:18 GMT

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.

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.

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.