For most people, “where are you from?” takes three seconds to answer, but I need a moment.

As a kid, I never really knew what my mother tongue was. The first language I spoke was Russian. But we moved to Israel when I was six, and ever since, I think and dream in Hebrew. So which culture is the more accurate answer?

At 42, the question only got harder. I was born in Ukraine. I grew up in Israel. Now my wife Lital and I are raising our kids on an island in Thailand. If there’s a single clear answer, I still haven’t found it.

My parents left Ukraine for Israel with a box of vodka bottles, which they traded for bananas somewhere in Hungary along the way. They were running from a hard life toward a country that promised them safety and belonging–a tribe.

Thirty years later, their kid walked away from the stability they’d worked so hard to build.

I built my life on the foundations they provided, and I don’t blame them for the stability they worked so hard to create. But eventually, that stability started to feel less like a foundation and more like a ceiling. Everything was predictable, safe, and finished–and honestly, I was suffocating under all that certainty. I realized I needed a little friction just to feel alive. As it turns out, I’m not an outlier. I keep meeting other children of immigrants who are doing the exact same thing: walking away from the safety our parents fought for, not because we reject their struggle, but because it’s not the life we want to live.

For years in Israel, I could predict almost exactly what my life would look like ten years out. Not a bad life, just a predictable one. Same morning traffic, same supermarket, same news, same playgrounds, and the clarity, strangely, started to suffocate me. Apparently, I need some uncertainty to feel alive.

My wife Lital didn’t. She loved what we had. I understood that dragging her and the kids into an adventure she didn’t want wouldn’t end well, so I let the dream go.

And then a war started in our home, Israel. We flew to Thailand for two weeks, to spare the kids the worst of it.

The ability to simply leave, to seek refuge in a tropical paradise while the world we knew was consumed by conflict, is a privilege I know most don’t have. While others were huddled in shelters or facing the front lines, we were able to trade the sound of sirens for the sound of the ocean; a reality that carries a weight of its own.

Two weeks became two months. Two months became almost three years. Without ever intending to, we’d left our whole life behind.

A few months in, we had to fly to Cambodia for a visa run. I thought I was starting to understand Asia. Cambodia didn’t fit any pattern I had previously encountered.

Cambodia didn’t feel like another country, it felt like another planet. Even the airport was a ceremony: lines, entry fees, a police officer offering to move us up the queue with the kids for a little extra. I still don’t know if that was a bribe or an express lane. Even the money felt made up. Tens of thousands of the local currency for a coffee.

That sense of total disorientation–feeling like I’d landed on an alien world– forced me to see how much of my “clarity” was really just lazy pattern recognition. When everything from the money to the social codes becomes unreadable, your brain starts desperately scanning for any familiar anchor just to simplify things again. This is not to suggest one culture is superior to the other. As a multilingual, multicultural traveler, I have experienced the best and worst of many nations. Rather, in a world that often sends us out from our homes, away from our tribes and into places we can’t speak our mother language, familiarity becomes the ultimate comfort.

That was the hard part, actually: I couldn’t read the people around me. I came from a place where people mostly say what they think. Here, “yes” didn’t always mean yes, and a smile didn’t always mean agreement–sometimes it was just a way to keep the peace. Once I pressed my palms together and bowed to thank a taxi driver, the way I do in Thailand. He smiled, then shook my hand. I hadn’t broken a rule, I had just used the wrong cultural gesture. Living between so many shifting worlds meant I was constantly recalibrating, forever switching gears just to avoid stumbling over a cultural line I couldn’t quite see.

One night we had a Friday dinner with a group of Israeli travelers, and everything clicked at once. My people. Same humor, same codes, the same inside language you can’t fake. I felt safe before anyone had said a single real thing.

We all do this. We land somewhere strange and scan the room for someone who looks like us. Drop me into a world of aliens, and suddenly every human feels like family.

But the identity boxes aren’t fixed. That’s the part I didn’t expect.

Lital was sure no place but Israel could ever feel like home. Today she sings in Thai in the island bars, goes out dancing with Thai friends, trains Muay Thai, and has a Thai flag tattooed on her arm. She’s smashed every box that used to define her and built a life she couldn’t have imagined.
What does “where are you from” tell you about her?

It tells you perhaps where she was born or what her passport says, but it tells you nothing about her, who she is, or what cultures she truly belongs to.

And then there are the kids.

We recently got stuck in Vietnam for three weeks–another visa run. Almost every day we’d take the boys somewhere to burn off energy: a play zone, a roller rink, a park.

It never stopped amazing me. Every time I came to collect them, they were in the middle of a pack of Vietnamese kids, proudly introducing them to me: “Dad, I made two new friends.”

No shared language. No shared country. No passports checked. Just two new friends, in a city we were only passing through.

I went to Cambodia looking for my own tribe, just to feel safe. Lital learned you can belong to more than one. The kids don’t look for tribes at all, they just look for someone to play with.

Maybe that’s the real difference. Some of us have to understand a person before we’ll connect. Others connect first, and understand later.

When was the last time you met someone before it mattered where they were from?

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About the Author:

Vic Levitin built four startups, then stepped off the default path to rebuild life from the ground up on a Thai island with his family. Writing about the experiment at viclevitin.com

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.

With America’s 250th anniversary having just passed, many conflicting opinions on the nation have risen to the surface. There are those who are enamored with our great nation and whose faith in the American dream is unshakable. On the opposite end of the conversation are those who see endless issues with the USA and can’t wait to emigrate elsewhere. While both stances are valid in their own rights, I feel the truth is somewhere more in between.

As a Bahamian-American raised primarily outside of the US, I feel uniquely able to bridge this gap. I have experienced life in a developing nation, and the hustle of modern American life.

Growing up on the tiny island of Nassau–147 square miles and less than the length of the average marathon–I was fortunate to have a two-parent household, a private education and enjoyed a middle-class lifestyle. Despite these privileges I was only partially shielded from the reality at hand. Many Bahamians can’t swim–which is dangerous when you live in a country surrounded by water, many don’t pass grade school, and have no post-secondary education options unless they leave the country. While Nassau has two hospitals—one private and one public, both lacking in many ways–other islands–such as Grand Bahama where I lived for three years–have no real medical facilities.

Food and water are also a national concern. The majority of food in the Bahamas is imported, as a result supply chain issues, governmental corruption and resource scarcity have increasingly devastating effects on the population. Water that isn’t bottled is unsanitary for drinking and alternatives, such as rainwater collection, are costly and hard to maintain.

Additionally , the nation operates on an insufficient power grid as a result of the government catering to the power needs of ever-expanding hotels. These touristic hubs take precedence over residential neighborhoods and the daily power needs of locals because tourism is the nation’s sole industry–there is an economic reliance on foreign comfort. Most homes, excepting those who can afford a generator of which my family was not one, are without power daily for substantial lengths of time. The frequent on/off of the power damages appliances, and interrupts business. It also makes it impossible to cool homes–the ones that have air conditioning–which is hazardous in a hot humid nation.

The geographical location of The Bahamas also makes it a prime target of severe yearly hurricanes. Candle light baths with salvaged water and cold rationed dinners were not uncommon during hurricane season. Coupled with high rates of violence, an astronomical cost of living, an internationally valueless dollar, a corrupt government and storms that can leave locals without adequate food and water for weeks to months, the Bahamas is a travel beauty but a living disaster.

Hurricane Dorian, for example, was a category five storm that decimated the nation after stalling over islands like Grand Bahama for three days (storms usually blow through in a matter of hours). Dorian flooded 80% of the island, left the island’s only airport out of commission and forced locals to rely on foreign aid. It also led to an unreported death toll in the dozens without any concrete plans to rescue people or rebuild infrastructure.

Despite the hardship of life in the Bahamas, I love the country of my childhood and celebrate its joys just as I love my present American home.

I moved to America after losing a lot: My parents gave up their dream of owning a house in their home nation in favor of moving to a nation of greater stability. I had to, in the middle of high school and in the months precursing covid, change schools which brought a total cultural whiplash. Travel is expensive and time consuming, as is filing mountains of paperwork to demonstrate that your family are decent law-abiding people. Paper work that often makes no sense without legal guidance becomes an all day task. Packing is busy and even busier when you realize you will have to sell or leave behind boxes of belongings that meant so much to you. Learning that the humane society you had spent years volunteering at had become a watery death trap for pets and the brave workers who stayed with them during the storm reminds you that you have lost a lot and yet still less than others.

Walking away with my life, family, pets and most important belongings was a sobering experience and has given me a deep appreciation of our American nation. While we can argue about the government, bicker about history, acknowledge that the American dream is fleeting or take issue with any number of things across the country, one thing remains true: This is a great nation. That doesn’t mean perfect or always unified, but it does mean great. We live in a nation where we can freely voice opinions, contact our leaders, demand representation, access any part of the country reliably through public transport, and receive medical care from a licensed doctor who is up to date on modern medicine (however expensive it might be). We can select our educational paths, shop online and in-person, and reliably expect both the availability of products and the consistency of pricing.

I will never forget the first time a package arrived at my door after I moved to the United States. It felt like magic. I will never forget my first time in a Super Walmart. I thought it was a mall—I couldn’t imagine such abundance. I will never forget my first time riding a train or visiting a library or museum, many of which are free in America. Having police that respond in minutes, a court system that takes its cases seriously, and being able to vote in ways that bring about impact are all things that as an American I am thankful for and as a Bahamian am amazed by.

So, as we move beyond July 4th and continue our celebration of the 250th year of this great nation, I hope that we can all remember that it is ok—and even good —to love your home nation, to love your American nation and to simultaneously recognize its faults. Our areas for growth should not detract from our greatness and do not detract from the value of celebrating 250 years of that American greatness.

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Allen Levi’s Theo of Golden is this summer’s go-to read for BookTokers and academics alike—and it broke every rule in contemporary publishing.

This past week, The Wall Street Journal ran a feature on Levi’s unconventional journey to literary fame following the publication of his bestselling novel Theo of Golden. While I tend to gloss over most contemporary fiction news (which often pertains, as The Wall Street Journal admits, to BDSM or vampires), this particular story immediately captured my attention: Since its publication, three years ago, Theo of Golden has sold 2.5 million copies—amazing for an originally self-published work.

That fact alone should give every editor in New York City pause: If a novel capable of reaching millions of readers could not initially find a home in the traditional publishing industry, then literary professionals have erroneous assumptions about what readers desperately crave today.

Upon its initial release, Theo of Golden sold three thousand copies—a more than respectable number for a self-published title. It continued to reach indie fiction lovers across the country until Simon & Schuster finally recognized what readers knew long ago: Our culture is in desperate need of serious literary fiction.

As someone who has spent the past few years analyzing trends in the publishing industry, I can only chuckle at the reaction of Levi’s literary agent, who felt like she was “walking into the woods and discovering a unicorn.”

No hate for Theo of Golden, which abounds with beautiful sentences and complex ideas, but the irony is, of course, that the book only appears to be a unicorn because the publishing industry has spent decades engineering a literary landscape in which slow, introspective, and profound books have become exceedingly difficult to find.

The rise of BookTok culture—a TikTok book community characterized by algorithm-driven content and bite-size recommendations—has increasingly conditioned readers to expect stories that deliver immediate gratification rather than those that require sustained intellectual engagement. Several “BookTokers,” in fact, admit to reading only dialogue in novels while skipping over “slower” scenes, creating a reading culture where books are almost literally reduced to screenplays. Publishers, in turn, cater to the BookTok community, and the cycle continues.

In other words, Theo of Golden has only earned its claim to uniqueness precisely because the publishing industry systematically turns away all other books like it.

Every year, the publishing industry churns out hundreds of new fiction titles that all sound the same. Teeming with short sentences and declarative phrases, these books no longer require readers to consider what a work of fiction means. The value of a book has been reduced to its ability to provide quick, digestible entertainment rather than to challenge its reader.

The result is an entire literary ecosystem that has surrendered its capacity for reflection—and a broader culture that has lost its ability to think critically about our world.

Let’s look at some examples from recent literary fiction bestsellers, starting with Sally Rooney’s Normal People.

Marianne answers the door when Connell rings the bell.

She’s still wearing her school uniform, but she’s taken off the sweater, so it’s just the blouse and skirt, and she has no shoes on, only tights.

Oh, hey, he says.

Come on in.

She turns and walks down the hall. He follows her, closing the door behind him.

Rooney’s sentences are simple to a fault. Her prose contains overly simplistic words and ideas, communicating only the bare minimum information required to advance the plot.

One could excuse the publishing industry if it were just Rooney writing in this infantile style, but such literary minimalism has infested nearly every single literary fiction title that lines our shelves today.

Let’s take a look at another bestselling example—Caro Claire Burke’s Yesteryear, the literary rave of the past few months.

THIS IS THE LAST DAY of the life I imagined for myself.

I woke up two minutes before my alarm went off, like usual.

Five fifty-eight and bing: eyes wide open, ready to greet the day. I’ve never had a hard time waking up in the morning. Never used the snooze button, either, not once in my life. Sobriety helps. I don’t drink. Discipline helps, too.

Burke’s prose follows much the same pattern as Rooney’s: short, declarative sentences move the reader rapidly from one assertion to the next. We can describe Burke’s prose as utilitarian, creating a novel that is easy to consume but difficult to contemplate.

Let’s contrast these examples with the opening of Levi’s Theo of Golden:

On his first full day in Golden, Theo woke early, pulled back the curtains of his hotel room, and looked out over the southern dawn. He had arrived the previous afternoon from his home in New York City, where winter, with a newsworthy late-season mixture of snow and ice, was in full fury. The flight to Atlanta (on a private jet) and the drive farther south to Golden (in a chauffeur-driven Lincoln Town Car) had transported him to a world of warmth, abloom in myriad shades of green, yellow, lavender, and pink.

The difference is almost immediately apparent. Where Rooney’s prose reports, Levi’s evokes; where Burke explains, Levi reveals. Theo of Golden demonstrates that language is not simply a vehicle for plot but an art form in its own right. Levi trusts his readers to slow down and savor the cadence of a well-crafted sentence—and the meaning of his ideas as a whole.

Theo of Golden therefore stands as a direct antithesis to the prevailing wisdom of the contemporary publishing industry. It challenges the broader orthodoxy that readers want fiction that reads like a movie script.

But if readers are clearly willing to embrace the thematic and stylistic complexity of Theo of Golden, why, then, does the publishing industry keep pushing out didactic and minimalist literature?

The fact is that the stylistic similarities among the novels we examined above are not accidental—they reflect an editorial philosophy that increasingly equates literary quality with accessibility.

In the contemporary publishing world, minimalism has become not only the norm but a hard requirement. Publishing professionals routinely claim that any sentence over fifteen words causes readers to “concentrate too hard.” Such language suggests that the publishing industry has not only become convinced that readers of contemporary fiction do not have the attention spans to digest long, flowery sentences but also that the industry itself has shaped the tastes of its own readers.

Operating in this paradigm, writers are frequently told to avoid “poetic prose and metaphors,” with one agent offering the following advice on her blog:

Often times the writers will focus on sounding “literary” and write meandering, prosy or metaphor laden sentences. While it is a style choice, it’s not usually a successful one… Flowery prose and metaphor often detract from your writing.

Thus, this type of “literary” voice becomes not only the less desirable writing style but an active faux pas. Writers who take after Fitzgerald or Nabokov face rejection, while writers who produce “legible” writing see their books line our shelves. Over time, these editorial preferences have created the very reading habits they claim merely to reflect: Readers are told they no longer have the patience for long, intellectually demanding books but are rarely given the opportunity to encounter them in the first place.

Despite this, the success of Theo of Golden offers hope for a civilization that has increasingly abandoned its capacity for reflection.

Publishing shapes our culture more than we like to admit. The very books championed by our publishing professionals become the books that we not only read and discuss but also aspire to write ourselves. If year after year the publishing industry rewards simpler, faster, and more disposable fiction, then readers inevitably become accustomed to “fast-paced” books that require no afterthought.

If, on the other hand, publishers start championing ambitious, intellectually rich novels again, then there is every reason to believe readers would rise to meet them.

As our literature loses its capacity to challenge readers, an entire generation of thinkers becomes less comfortable with complexity—but we can restore the critical thinking brought by complex stories by daring to publish difficult books again.

Perhaps, then, the real lesson of Theo of Golden is not that readers suddenly rediscovered serious literary fiction but that they never stopped wanting it.

So maybe it’s time for the publishing industry to take notes from Theo—and to believe in its readers again.

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Three years ago, July 13, 2023, I received the dreadful news that our friend, Richard Bilkszto, had taken his own life. Nothing prepares you for news like that.

Our friendship started through a FAIR meeting for Ontario educators and carried its course through our mutual concerns, commitments, and convictions. Those who knew Richard remember his belief in supporting the most vulnerable students, his efforts to stop the bullies, and his understanding of the needs of students who did not fit in some way or another.

The last time I was in touch with Richard was a week before this tragic event when I had messaged him. His response was brief: two-words, “thank you”. I assumed he was simply busy. I should have called. I should have asked. The “what ifs” and the regrets will not undo this tragedy. They will not bring him back to his family, to us, to the many people he was so passionate about helping or to those whose lives he touched when he didn’t have to. As a retired principal, he could have easily chosen to sit back on a beach, relax, and enjoy the well-deserved, hard-earned freedom of retirement.

But that was not who Richard was.

Even though we will never know exactly what or who pushed Richard to the edge, the fact remains that something did. Someone did. Society did. The system did. A system that claims to value diversity, equity, and inclusion — words I now loathe. A system that constantly beats the drum about the importance of mental health, yet has no qualms about blaming everything on the white man. Yes, that is what he was accused of being by a paid presenter, for expressing his opinions while numerous other administrators – principals and vice principals who attended that session – remained silent and went on with the flow. Appalling! They should have objected, stood up, walked out, denounced. Nope! They did no such thing. They approved the blatant racism by remaining a bystander. Ironically they are the ones running our schools. Go figure!

Openly blaming people simply for being white, specifically men at that time, was the prevailing trend. Now, the attitude seems more subtle, implied in job and admissions applications like an underlying disease that, instead of being treated, has simply been managed.

Richard’s tragic passing in July 2023 stirred an uproar not only in Canada and the United States but also globally, with coverage appearing across different media outlets and in multiple languages. The DEI mandates came under scrutiny and continue to be scrutinized, not only by some institutions and organizations, but most importantly by members of the general public, some of whom are gradually, but finally, beginning to question them.

Yet like any other news story, it is only “breaking” until something else breaks — and as we all know, things keep breaking all around the world. So, to not let Richard’s legacy be forgotten, a group of his friends who shared his values on education, merit, fairness, and equality of opportunity decided to recognize, encourage, and honour exceptional teachers, and future teachers in his honor. Friends of Richard Bilkszto was born. The group continues their advocacy for preserving and improving the education system including but not limited to policies regarding specialized programs.

Why things have to get really bad before they start getting better beats me—it is such an uncommon sense.

Three years ago, under the umbrella of DEI, the merit- and qualification-based admission process for specialized programs was revoked and replaced with a lottery system that considered historical backgrounds and, bluntly put, perceived victimhood as eligible criteria for admission. The community consultation meetings in which many of us — parents and teachers alike — participated and voiced our opposition to the idea, were simply a checkbox exercise; the decision had clearly already been made. A decision that was influenced, in no small part, by the loud voices of those who had the time and energy to accuse the system of racism and, quite literally, disrupt a system that was working and had proven successful. At the very least, it was not failing.

Like many of us, Richard was also opposed to this change. He recognized the social injustices that students in less fortunate families face, he was familiar with the barriers in their way, however, like me, he did not believe the new lottery-based admission policy is the solution. We both had ideas that would address the issue in the long term. He was vocal about his concerns and my proposed solutions received a written rejection and a verbal warning by the people above. Nevertheless, we worked together to try to prevent the change from happening or, at the very least, to educate the public and parents about the inevitable negative consequences of implementing such policies on a large scale without addressing the underlying causes of adversity. At a minimum, conducting small-scale pilot projects, or simply listening to us — the teachers who work with students day in and day out, those who know the lay of the land should have been better explored

That would have made sense.

There is a possibility that the entire process was a way to eliminate specialized school programs that required significant investment and funding by making them appear ineffective. The best way to justify getting rid of them would be to demonstrate that they were no longer successful. That is exactly what happened after the top-down implementation of the lottery system. Many of the students admitted through this process struggled to manage the workload, academic level, and intensity required to complete such programs. As a result, some schools adjusted their programs to better match students’ level. This effectively diluted and lowered the standards of programs initially designed to educate students at a much higher level. Once again, professionals who knew better went along with the flow.

There is something sinister about this approach.

Family and education are the foundations of a society. One would expect these two pillars to be treated as sacred and protected, especially by those entrusted with serving the public. Yet, instead of strengthening and preserving these pillars, there appears to be an insistence on making them irrelevant, fragile, or reduced to something resembling casual entertainment. Whether this is done intentionally or out of ignorance is ultimately irrelevant. The leadership responsible for this flagrancy must be held accountable. After all, we are the ones paying their salaries.

Three years have passed, and the lottery admission policy has now been revoked.

The students entering the specialized programs in the 2026–2027 school year have been admitted based on a centralized evaluation test. It is the closest one can get to merit-based admissions; however, it is still not the ideal approach. Different specialized schools offer different programs, each with its own requirements and standards for admission, which were designed based on the specific nature and demands of those programs. Those who deliver these programs are best positioned to establish the appropriate entrance criteria, and that is something a centralized test cannot fully accomplish. Nevertheless, it is a significant improvement over a lottery system and the consideration of victimhood as a determining factor in admission to specialized programs that require a strong foundation as a prerequisite.

During the past three years, instead of selecting the best of the crop and educating them according to their abilities so they could become the best contributors to their society, as one would expect to be the purpose of our schools, our education system ignored the professional judgment of its own teachers, wasted three years of students’ time, and misused publicly funded programs. The last cohort of students admitted to merit-based specialized programs graduated in June 2026. The next cohort of students admitted through a semi-merit-based process will begin these programs in September 2026. Over the past three years, the larger number of students admitted to these programs, in between these two groups, were placed in a difficult and unfair situation, while many others were denied the opportunity to gain admission. The result speaks for itself.

An inevitable and preventable failure. What a shame.

It has taken three years and an insane amount of work for an army of teachers, parents, individuals, and organizations such as Friends of Richard Bilkszto and Save our Schools Ontario to pressure the Ministry of Education to reverse this decision. Going backwards and returning to where we were in 2023 is not an improvement; that said, it could be considered one if it marks the point at which we stop the downward spiral of destructive policies.

Richard would be happy to know that we are closer to restoring what we had, and therefore the prospect of improvement could now be on the horizon. Rest in peace, Richard. You are in our thoughts and prayers.

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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.

Libraries have been advancing democracy and social justice long before they became consumed by critical social justice ideology a decade ago. They served that mission by providing free access to books and inculcating a love of learning in children, teens and adults of all socioeconomic backgrounds. University libraries supported the mission of their parent institutions, which was to build and transmit knowledge across generations. These goals have always been integral to advancing society by creating community spaces, more equitable access to education, and an informed population.

Unfortunately, many of today’s libraries reject the library profession’s foundational value of institutional neutrality: that is, the development of balanced collections, services and programming. The value that has displaced institutional neutrality is “social justice,” meaning that many librarians see it as the library’s job to educate people about what they see as the right way to think about contested social and political issues.

Tailoring library collections and programming to reflect their worldview, or not allowing certain groups to meet in the library, are the main tools librarians use to advance a “social justice” mission. But just as important for these librarians is to work with people who agree with them, and enthusiastically.

Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) staff trainings are one vehicle for communicating the social justice worldview—while at the same time encouraging staff to defer to the activists by raising the cost of disagreement. These trainings tend to be mandatory (whether explicitly or effectively). New training guidelines were developed in 2022 by the American Library Association’s College & Research Libraries division, replacing just ten-year old cultural competency guidelines that were based on longstanding library best practices. Instead of learning practical steps to serve populations who speak languages other than English, for example, the new Cultural Proficiencies for Racial Equity guideines encourage libraries to implement a staff training program that aims to develop only four competencies: awareness of racial identity, manifestations of racism, commitment to countering racism, and analysis of racialized outcomes.

“As LIS workers, our foundational growth is strengthened by an ability to identify and acknowledge ways in which whiteness and white supremacy have impacted the field of librarianship. Beyond this, Libraries and LIS workers must actively engage in practices that address and redress these inequities.” (Cultural Proficiencies for Racial Equity, ALA, 2022)

It is typical in these DEI trainings to elicit, and then to probe and challenge, the personal beliefs of individual library workers. You can see this proselytizing mission clearly by dipping into the content of any of these trainings (a good example is this account of a former longtime University of Virginia Library employee’s DEI training program). If a library worker challenges anything in one of these trainings it will be made clear to them that failure to embrace this content is unwelcome or even taken as a personal insult (e.g., “denying the existence” of the trainer’s identity); it may also result in a complaint to human resources or the library’s governing board, leading to an investigation or worse.

One staff training program in a university library asked workers “What are the last five books you read? What is the racial mix of the authors?” Those are questions that explicitly violate librarianship’s respect for privacy as articulated in the American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights: “All people, regardless of origin, age, background, or views, possess a right to privacy and confidentiality in their library use.” Do library workers not also have privacy rights? Is not one’s personal reading a private matter? Is it not an individual worker’s right to share—or not—their own beliefs without their employer trying to change those beliefs, or to cast judgment on them? Trainings such as these amount to forcing employer-endorsed political views on staff. They violate both library professional ethics and library workers’ personal privacy.

Just as how an organization treats its workers reflects the values of that organization, so does DEI staff training provide a window for outsiders to see into what a library culture is like. When a privacy-defending public service entity such as a library fails to protect the diversity of thought and privacy of its own employees it has shown itself to have profoundly lost its way.

Those librarians who build collections and workforces that conform to their own politics, and who subject their staff to a politicized workplace, jeopardize the position of trust their library has earned with its community. Trust in a library is built on its being useful and responsive to all segments of its community. Libraries are trusted because they help people think for themselves, without violating personal privacy and without opprobrium. They are big-tent institutions intentionally distanced from the tribal passions of the day. When librarians explicitly disavow institutional neutrality and privacy of thought in favor of becoming partisan institutions, the trust they have earned can be quickly eroded—as we are seeing now. Where we stand today, libraries are at risk of becoming simply another political pugilist in society instead of the glue that binds people together across our differences and between one generation and the next.

If the profession is able to reinvest in its core values, it may be strong enough to weather the damage. As in the broader society, there’s both a hunger and an opening for change right now in the library profession. This change is being pursued through an alternative professional association (the Association of Library Professionals), as well as FAIR for Libraries’ development of resources to support library board members and members of the general public who care about their libraries.

While undeniably weakened by politicization right now, libraries ranging from public libraries of all sizes and in nearly every community to multi-million-volume research libraries, still in meaningful ways embody the twin values of privacy and neutrality. Those values hold within them a profound democratic truth. And in that truth lies resilience.

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This morning, I did not need to boil my water to drink it. My power has been on uninterrupted for many months. When I go out later, the vast majority of other drivers will be predictable and follow traffic laws. I will inevitably, at some point, criticize people in power in a very direct and public way, and I will not fear retribution from the government or other powerful people for doing so. When I go to the store, prices will be higher than I like, but they will probably be exactly what’s listed on the shelf, and the products I buy I can almost certainly expect to work properly. If I go for a walk in the park, strangers will greet me with a smile and a “hello.” I will drive past a farmstand that consists only of a shelter, products, and a box to put money in, unmonitored, and there will be both cash and products there. I recognize this isn’t universally true. Prices are unaffordable for some families and a walk in some neighborhoods carries real risk. These are real exceptions, and they matter. But my point is that these are exceptions, not the rule.

I type this from a nation about to turn 250 years old, having spent a great deal of my life in places where all of the above have not been true.

No, I have not described a utopia, but I have described a place we have all taken for granted — or even worse, needlessly denigrated, at one point or another.

Although I do not use social media, I know well that if I took a look at any social media platform I would be bombarded by nonstop cynical rhetoric about how America is a great evil in the world, a failed state, a terrible place to live, a place some long to escape from — a pox on the earth that would be best undone and abandoned.

I think we can reasonably expect that rhetoric to escalate quite a bit at the least appropriate time, as we celebrate 250 years of independence. But I believe a bit of thanks for that independence feels more in order.

Gratitude work has become widely regarded as a huge boost to mental health. The concept is simple: spending time intentionally focusing on what we are happy about in our lives can give us (according to an article from Harvard Women’s Health Watch) “… greater emotional and social well-being, better sleep quality, lower depression risks, and favorable markers of cardiovascular health.”

So, gratitude is good for us. Knowing this makes many anti-America remarks and the deep and unrelenting cynicism on social media look as bad as a pack-a-day cigarette habit.

Some will criticize the US as being “no better than a third-world country”, losing sight of the incredible comfort that we (yes, even many poor people) experience here compared to the vast majority of other countries. Others will talk about how the founders guaranteed only the rights of “rich white men”, willfully disregarding the slow but undeniable progression to guaranteeing those rights for everyone and how absolutely novel that is in history. Others will claim that America “has no culture,” an odd statement to make about the greatest cultural exporter in modern history — a culture that would not be nearly as rich without the contributions of those people they see as “systemically oppressed”.

They’ll make these criticisms from their safe, comfortable, air-conditioned homes. They’ll make them with zero fear of retribution or consequence. They’ll make these criticisms to an audience of similarly cynical, resentful, and ungrateful people who will reinforce their vitriol.

To me, this is like the teenager in the McMansion who screams at his parents, storms out, and speeds off in the BMW they bought him. Where are you going, kid? You’ll be back in your nice bedroom with your childhood toys tonight, and your parents probably won’t even ask you to apologize for your behavior.

That said, there is absolutely plenty to be unhappy about. I believe that on almost all fronts, American society is declining and losing much of what makes us special. I fear that my ability to live on my own terms here is under threat more and more as time progresses. But I also believe that a big part of the reason these problems exist is because so many in our “intellectual” classes are demoralized by this relentless strain of perspective-free self-hate.

A part of how we got here is social media: cynicism, self-righteousness, and snarky jabs at those who are perceived as “powerful.” Hot takes generally play better there, as they drive engagement. That seems to reinforce the shibboleth-like nature of American self-hate as a means of accessing the purported “intelligentsia”. As Benedict Beckeld, author of Oikophobia: Why Successful Societies Turn Against Themselves, says:

“Like Diogenes’ sneers and sarcasms about his fellow Greeks, or Voltaire’s snarkiness about French tradition and religion, little virtue-signaling asides about American faults are de rigeur for those Americans wishing to communicate how cosmopolitan and superior they are.”

It should not be news to anyone that spending all of one’s time incessantly criticizing others is not a strong indicator of moral superiority, but rather a substitute for it. Confidence and competence are quiet because security does not require belittlement.

Having spent half my adult life living in the People’s Republic of China and a great deal of time traveling the rest of the world, I can tell you this: having a global perspective puts the contrast between American society and most others in the world in stark light.

My anecdotal experience aside, simply looking at net migration numbers tells you an undeniable story: In 2025, enough people chose the United States over their home country that, standing in a line holding hands, they would stretch from New York City to Miami.

Being grateful does not mean willfully ignoring real problems or being revisionist about history. But willful ignorance and revisionism cut both ways: as much as they can be used to “whitewash” true evils, they can also be used to reinforce needless negativity. You know what’s wrong with America today. You’re probably bombarded with these problems in your social media feeds, so I’m not going to spend time discussing them here. I, too, am feeling the embarrassment of our broken political system and the existential dread brought about by the state of our economy.

Yet despite the challenges we face today and the many ghastly moments of our history, what we choose to focus on is key to the solution. Allow me to anthropomorphize our nation for a moment. Have you ever loved someone whose bad choices brought them to a bad place? If you truly wanted them to get better, would you spend your time constantly berating them for their flaws and proclaiming how bad they are to everyone you both know? Once you’ve acknowledged their reality, what is the purpose of staying critical? To feel better about yourself? Because some part of you fears you’re just like them? Be honest.

So on this anniversary of independence, if you feel compelled to say that we are inappropriately celebrating 250 years of oppression, imperialism, exploitation, racism, slavery, brutality, and warmongering, spare us the complaints. Take that energy and go make something better instead.

We here in the USA are so damn lucky. Yes, even you. And while things may feel dystopian at this particular juncture in our history, only by choosing to be grateful for what we have can we stave off those threatening to take it away from us.

As we celebrate America’s 250th birthday, join FAIR in cultivating a common culture of gratitude. The more of us who do, the less we’ll have to criticize.

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Libraries across North America have recently been under fire from parents and authorities concerned that their collections of children’s and young adult books contain material that is sexually graphic. In many cases, the books in question are perceived as part of a progressive agenda that pushes the young to question their sexuality and gender identity. Books introducing gender and sexuality viewpoints to very young audiences have become alarmingly common in libraries. While only a minority veer into graphic sexual territory, together they raise community concern about age-appropriateness.

For the libraries in question, the defensive position is one that invokes intellectual freedom. Outside forces should not limit or direct the content of library collections—that is the purview of professional librarians, who choose material in accordance with carefully considered criteria with the goal of serving the needs of their users and communities. This argument is invoked with particular fervor when it comes to books that express the viewpoint of “marginalized” groups, because these are the groups deemed most vulnerable to censorship. The stated goal is a wide variety of viewpoints, including viewpoints that are potentially not aligned with majority opinion. But how did we get to the point where the professional selection process, seeking to include a wide variety of (often unpopular) opinions, actively collects books that promote a progressive ideology to such an extreme that graphically sexual material is allowed for young people. Has indoctrination of the vulnerable become the norm?

First, let me make clear that in many, if not most public libraries, the actual selection of books by staff librarians is limited. In the past, librarians may have spent hours perusing catalogues and review journals, and in some cases attending publishers’ showcases. Today, public libraries often do not have the resources for that level of labor-intensive work. The number of books published in a given year, thanks to electronic and self-publishing, has grown too large, and library budgets are increasingly stretched.

Instead, many public libraries rely on their suppliers to do part or all of the work. A small number of library wholesalers are in the business of supplying libraries with pre-selected books and providing them shelf-ready, with catalogue records, spine labels, and security tags included. These wholesalers select materials based on profiles that the library supplies, which detail community demographics, interests, genres, copies-to-waitlist ratios, and other criteria. Typically, a local librarian will examine the shipments before acceptance, modify the profile as needed, and supplement these “automatic release plans” with backlist orders, customer request items, specialized books, local history, and anything else that the plan doesn’t cover. The profiles in question often contain a reference to “diversity” with specified targets of books written by or about particular minority groups. In practice, the books that meet these criteria are inevitably skewed toward the progressive viewpoint within these minorities.

But the libraries and wholesalers are only one part of the selection ecosystem. The other players are the publishers themselves, eager to satisfy their progressive impulses, who trip over themselves to sign “minority voices”; and the professional book reviewers and journals, who also are eager to support identity-based causes. This favoritism—born out of an effort to support unheard voices—creates a new silence for stories and others that fall outside of target groups. Wholesalers base their decisions on major publishers’ offerings and positive reviews in library and literature journals. The resulting pipeline leading to library acquisition is ideologically skewed, and deviating from it would take some effort, even if local libraries were not ideologically captured themselves.

Even if these elements are not always aligned, the process still results in library collections being stacked with books for kids on gender and sexuality that skew heavily toward a one-sided viewpoint. These views, presented as fact to an audience not yet capable of critical analysis, are in some cases accompanied by descriptions and illustrations of a sexually explicit nature, compounding the age-inappropriateness of the works. All the actors consider “queer inclusion” to be part of their mandate, not a political stance, and even where skepticism exists, it often succumbs to self-preservation.

Opponents of gender ideology in kids’ books will often call it “grooming.” This is hyperbole; it’s more akin to propaganda, the presentation of a contested ideology as fact in an environment that is intended to be neutral and non-political. Prospects for reform make for some difficult choices. Governmental oversight, community review, and parental permission regimes all present their own challenges to the independence and effectiveness of public libraries. Somehow, we have to find a way to take social-justice ideology out of the decisions at all levels.

To combat some of this skewing and keep libraries neutral and reading options open, readers should request books—most libraries have a purchase request option online. Librarians should try to operate with more autonomy and critically evaluate what publishers are putting out even when it sacrifices some efficiency. As individuals, we should prioritize the value of experiencing a range of literary topics and viewpoints, allowing us to expand our horizons and keep us open to a wide variety of experiences.

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My lifelong career in radio astronomy began in 1972 when I joined the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) as a new postdoc in Charlottesville, VA. After four decades as a Tenured Astronomer, I became an Astronomer Emeritus. Working with its excellent astronomers, engineers, and computer scientists was extremely rewarding—until the NRAO betrayed its founding principles of non-discrimination and merit in favor of DEI discrimination. For example, its revised hiring policy, “If two candidates for the same position have equal qualifications within the uncertainties, the candidate from the under-represented group should be hired” mandated discrimination against majority candidates, violating both Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 14^th Amendment guarantees of equal protection. All scientists and managers were expected to “champion” NRAO’s version of “diversity,” which promoted performative inclusion. Most NRAO employees who oppose DEI discrimination have been silenced by fear of losing their jobs.

In 2017 the NRAO required its employees to complete online training on NRAO’s non-discrimination policies and certify that they understood them. I believed the policies were self-contradictory, and balked at this compelled speech. Consequently, in 2018 I was tasked by the NRAO Director, HR Head, and Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI) to write a confidential memo documenting institutional discrimination that I observed during my four decades at the NRAO.

I emailed my memo “Institutional Discrimination by Race and Sex at AUI/NRAO” to the Director. I hoped he would follow HR’s investigation policy and promptly address my claims. Instead, he tried to suppress them. Legal discovery later revealed his email to the heads of HR and ODI: “ugh. Despite how we may feel about the fight, we really need this to die down and go away.” That email showed that the NRAO would never oppose discrimination in the name of maintaining DEI standards. A month later, the HR Head emailed me to suggest I seek employment elsewhere and threatened to place a negative note in my HR file. Having tenure and nearing retirement, I was annoyed but not intimidated.

In August of 2020, the NRAO Director held my UVa PhD student hostage by threatening to remove me as her supervisor. Having nearly finished her thesis and applied for several postdocs, removing me would have set her research career back a year. I had to pay her ransom by falsely certifying that I understood NRAO’s DEI policies. Even though the NRAO Director could not punish me directly, he could exploit others to compel my speech.

On September 14, 2022 the NRAO announced that “Advance broader, equitable, inclusive participation in science and engineering” had been added to its original mission statement. The announcement also linked to NRAO’s web page advertising several prima facie discriminatory DEI programs. Who could speak up for those grad students, job applicants, and employees who would not be accepted, hired, or promoted because they were of the wrong race, sex, or sexual orientation, or because they simply wouldn’t “champion” DEI discrimination? As a 77-year-old unpaid Astronomer Emeritus, I could and so I had to. I reluctantly sent an email to the whole scientific staff publicly opposing NRAO’s discriminatory programs and policies.

The Director promptly halted the scientific staff emailer. Within an hour, he proposed to the AUI President the method of retaliation approved by the AUI Board of Trustees at its next meeting.

Less than four hours after my email, the Director emailed the Heads of HR and ODI:

“I am going to suggest to a carefully selected few members of scistaff that they create a petition (outside observatory resources) to state their support for D[E]I, then get every damn member of scistaff to sign it and present [it] to the observatory to show their support. Every. Damn. One.”

The next day he emailed the AUI President “I have seeded an effort in the scientific staff to provide a widespread condemnation of Condon’s actions/opinions, and demonstrate a firm D[E]I support.” The resulting condemnation was deceptively styled “grass-roots” but was astroturf seeded by the Director for his own benefit.

The NRAO Director also emailed the scientific staff, falsely describing my email as an “egregious abuse” of the Scistaff emailer. The Director also claimed my email disparaged other members of the staff, and AUI later claimed that I falsely alleged that NRAO engaged in career-ending retaliation. My email did neither; both claims were based on fabrications. This completed his “degradation ceremony” and led to my cancellation an hour later by the UVa Astronomy Department, where I had taught their radio astronomy course ten times.

On November 4, 2022 I was shocked to receive a letter from AUI President Cohen informing me that my Astronomer Emeritus status had been revoked, any access I had to NRAO resources would be discontinued, and I should remove my personal items from the NRAO Headquarters building under guard. The letter didn’t say why, but it was in retaliation for my public opposition to DEI discrimination by race and sex at the NRAO. I hadn’t expected the AUI Board would retaliate because the previous AUI President had explicitly promised all NRAO employees “that you will never be subject to retaliation for reporting any concern that has the objective of helping this organization and its people.” Nor had I imagined the Board would act behind my back, denying basic due-process rights.

I was dismayed that my research career would be truncated by losing access to NRAO’s physical and digital libraries, critical computer support, and being made too “radioactive” for my colleagues to work with me. A week later, I removed my personal items from my office, saving what would fit into my small car and losing the rest. I will never forget looking back on the building where I arrived as a postdoc 50 years ago and was now leaving in disgrace, never to return.

I was unfairly dismissed from my lifetime career. Forcing employees to affirm contradictory policies is unjust compelled speech. I worried for the future of qualified scientists like myself who would be excluded due to their race or sex—which is ironic for DEI. Consequently, I sued AUI in federal court for retaliation made illegal by Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. This can cost about $100,000 out-of-pocket for legal expenses, several hundred hours of work helping your legal team prepare your case, and a three-year wait for results. The expensive and time-consuming process makes lawsuits like this impossible for most employees to resist injustice.

Soon after the judge ruled “AUI’s reason for terminating him [Condon] was pretext,” my case concluded in March 2026 with a clear legal victory—a judgment in my favor ordering AUI to pay $130,000 damages plus $79,171.52 to reimburse legal expenses.

Was my legal victory worth the ordeal? I was terminated, but the NRAO director was not. Because I was silenced, most NRAO employees are still afraid to oppose DEI discrimination. Even so, I don’t regret having opposed DEI discrimination, and now I can no longer be silenced. I believe that widely exposing NRAO’s actions is the best way to discourage any future attempts at discrimination or retaliation. The real issue throughout all of this ordeal was never about a truly diverse workplace where all are judged equally on their merits; it is about using diversity to justify compelled speech, bullying, discrimination, and retaliation by employers.

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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.

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

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The 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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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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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.

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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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

There was a brief pause.

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

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

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

I’ve seen this play out before.

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

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

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

No one engaged with my argument.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Developing Brain Needs Context

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

Case One: When Treatment Shifts the Problem

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

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

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

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

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

Case Two: When Environment Is Diagnosed as Disorder

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

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

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

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

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

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

Informed Consent Means More Than a Doctor’s Signature

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

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

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

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

Rethinking What We Owe Adolescents

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

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

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

• Is their child sleeping well?

• Are they moving their body regularly?

• Are they receiving the nutrients their developing brain requires?

• Are underlying stressors being identified and addressed?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Register for Wednesday, April 8th
Register for Home Study

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It felt lousy.

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

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

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

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

But that mea culpa never came.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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