Dear Friends of FAIR,

I’m thrilled to announce Dr. Doug Novotny as Interim Director of FAIR in Medicine, stepping into the role following Nikki Johnson’s departure. We are grateful for the foundation Nikki built and energized by Doug’s vision for FAIR in Medicine’s next chapter.

Doug is a licensed clinical psychologist with a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and more than 25 years of experience in clinical practice. He currently serves as Senior Advisor at Open Therapy Institute, where he leads a peer group helping clinicians restore client-centered, evidence-based practice against politicized pressure in the field. Doug brings a rare combination of clinical expertise and moral clarity to this role, skills that are desperately needed as identity politics continues to reshape the teaching and practice of psychotherapy.

Doug comes with a clear diagnosis of the problem in the medical and mental health professions and a track record of doing something about it. For years, licensed practitioners have been subjected to ideologically charged training that sorts patients by identity rather than treating each one as an individual. Indoctrination begins in medical school and extends well into their careers through the Continuing Education (CE) they’re required to complete to keep their licenses. This unwarranted activism insults the intelligence of professionals who are perfectly capable of thinking through, on their own, the best ways to treat their patients.

Doug was inspired to create an alternative: informed consent that’s actually informed, a commitment to first do no harm, and a model for practice that sees the whole patient, not a label. That’s the direction he’s taking FAIR in Medicine, and we’re excited to have him lead it.

Doug’s leadership builds directly on work already underway at FAIR. Since February, FAIR has offered “Culture in Psychotherapy, Without the Corrosion of Identity Politics,” a CE course Doug developed that draws on FAIR Advisor Jonathan Haidt’s Moral Foundations Theory, giving clinicians a structural model for their work and restoring moral depth without moralism. The course was offered live in February, March, and April and is still available for those who couldn’t participate. Whether you’re a clinician navigating these pressures or simply someone who cares about keeping psychotherapy grounded in evidence rather than ideology, you’ll benefit from this course.

With Doug helming FAIR in Medicine, we will develop additional CE offerings that reach more clinicians, educators, and others looking for a pro-human alternative to the identity-politics frameworks reshaping their fields. More details on upcoming CE courses and how to get involved are coming soon.

Doug will also continue the work of expanding FAIR’s network of professionals and thought leaders willing to apply pressure to institutions that violate their duties and subject practitioners to cancellation for refusing to submit to groupthink. Under his leadership, FAIR in Medicine will also expand support for Suzannah Alexander’s research into accrediting agencies that pressure educational institutions to indoctrinate students rather than educate them. This is critical work aimed at reforming the incentives at the root of the problem, since accreditation is where much of this damage originates, yet is difficult to see from the outside. Lastly, FAIR in Medicine will endeavor to reach medical students entering the field who lack an understanding of the fundamental principles and ethics of medicine and are best positioned to help us recover them.

FAIR in Medicine isn’t only for physicians and clinicians. It’s for everyone — because sooner or later, all of us are patients. Confidence in the medical field has plummeted over the past several years, and rebuilding it means giving people tools they can actually use. To that end, Doug will lead the development of toolkits to help patients identify practitioners they can trust.

Plenty of people criticize a broken system. For the past several years, I’ve watched Doug create the infrastructure to offer something better. That’s the spirit I want FAIR in Medicine to carry forward, and it’s why I’m confident in handing him the reins.

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

Your gift today helps us do all of this: grow FAIR in Medicine’s CE series under Doug’s leadership, deepen our support for Suzannah Alexander’s accreditation reform work, build the network of professionals standing up for their colleagues, and put trustworthy-practitioner tools directly into patients’ hands.

No matter the size, your donation will help FAIR restore confidence in medicine.

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

With gratitude,

Monica Harris
Executive Director, FAIR

Subscribe now to receive FAIR News weekly in your Inbox

This summer, FAIR’s Film Series will explore these questions through four compelling documentaries produced by Eli Steele and discussions with filmmakers, scholars, and thought leaders.

Join us for this can’t-miss lineup:

🎬 15 Days — August 12 — 69 minute run time then 1 hour discussion

Directed by Natalya Murakhver, a New York City mother who sued to reopen schools during the COVID pandemic. The film investigates why America’s closures lasted longer than nearly every other nation and examines the science, policy decisions, and human costs ignored along the way.

Date: Wednesday, August 12th

Time: 7pm EST/4pm PST (until about 9:30pm EST)

Register Here

FAIR in Conversation is Back!

Defining & Understanding the “Isms”
What do we actually mean when we say capitalism, fascism, socialism/democratic socialism, communism or any of the other “isms”? In a culture where these words are used constantly and often imprecisely, clarity matters.

Join us for an open, rigorous conversation as we examine the definitions, histories, and real-world applications of some of the major “isms.”

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

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

Register Here

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

Join the FAIR Community

• Join us, and become a member of FAIR.

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

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

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

• View our Many Stories, One Nation curriculum.
  

Dear Friends of FAIR,

This summer, FAIR attended two important education conferences: the School Boards for Academic Excellence (SBAE) Summer Conference in Charleston and the Utah Rural Schools Association (URSA) Summer Conference in Cedar City. The feedback we received from educators and administrators has been incredibly energizing and provides valuable guidance for our work going forward.

In June, FAIR Executive Director Monica Harris attended the SBAE Summer Conference in Charleston, South Carolina, an event bringing together school board members and education leaders who are navigating complex curriculum adoption decisions. What emerged was both clarifying and inspiring.

Too often, the narrative around school boards centers on disengagement or powerlessness, but SBAE painted a different picture. The board members Monica met were deeply invested in their communities, genuinely committed to finding non-polarizing alternatives to liberated Ethnic Studies, and motivated to make meaningful curriculum decisions. Many were eager to continue the conversation post-conference and discuss adoption possibilities immediately. One attendee from Georgia, whose district has struggled with polarizing curricula, became emotional describing the relief she felt upon learning about Many Stories, One Nation. It was truly a moment that captures why FAIR’s work matters and can make a difference in so many communities.

These conversations confirmed what we at FAIR have long suspected: education leaders want a curriculum that won’t create controversy and won’t sanitize history. They want assurance that their investment in rigorous instruction won’t invite backlash. Many Stories, One Nation answers those questions by teaching difficult history through civil discourse methodology while maintaining academic rigor without ideological polarization.

This month, Jefferson Shupe, Aly Shupe, and Gabe Brown represented FAIR at the URSA Summer Conference in Cedar City. The conversations there revealed another critical insight: adoption pathways are multiple and creative.

Chuck Woodhouse, who teaches on an Indian reservation, asked how Many Stories, One Nation treats Native American history. When Jefferson handed him Chief John Ross’s letter and showed how it connects to the Declaration of Independence, Woodhouse’s immediate response reflected what educators across the country are discovering: this curriculum is exactly what they need. Three high school history teachers realized they could integrate Many Stories, One Nation into existing courses rather than adopting an entirely new curriculum. For rural districts with limited resources, this adaptation model may prove just as powerful as standalone adoption.

What both conferences revealed is how adoption happens in practice: through relationships with decision-makers, through educator-to-educator conversations about real constraints and creative solutions, and through board members like those in Charleston who are ready to lead their communities toward more complete American history.

We’re so grateful for everyone who represented FAIR this summer, and so energized by the momentum we’re building across the country!

With gratitude,

The FAIR Team

Monica Harris
Executive Director, FAIR

Subscribe now to receive FAIR News weekly in your Inbox

As America approaches its 250th anniversary, the nation is still wrestling with some of its oldest questions: Who belongs? What does equality require? How should we understand our differences?

This summer, FAIR’s Film Series will explore these questions through four compelling documentaries produced by Eli Steele and discussions with filmmakers, scholars, and thought leaders.

Join us for this can’t-miss lineup:

🎬 Killing America — July 29 — 38 min run time + discussion featuring Dr. Diana Blum and Eli Steele

🎬 15 Days — August 12

Register Here

FAIR in Conversation is Back!

What does it mean to have “rights”?

The foundational claim upon which our Declaration of Independence and thus our Constitution and The Bill of Rights are based is the radical belief that individuals possess rights that are inalienable and independent of government.

Our goal is to have an intellectually rigorous and inspirational conversation that aligns with FAIR’s emphasis on open inquiry and civil discourse.

FAIR in Conversation has relaunched with a new monthly format built for this moment.

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

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

Register Here

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

Join the FAIR Community

• Join us, and become a member of FAIR.

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

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

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

• View our Many Stories, One Nation curriculum.
  

Dear Friends of FAIR,

Three years ago this week, on July 13, 2023, FAIR Chapter leader Richard Bilkszto took his own life.

A retired Toronto principal, Richard spent his career championing the students who needed the most support: the ones who were bullied and overlooked, the kids who didn’t fit the mold. He could have spent his retirement on the beaches he loved. Instead, he kept showing up for the causes he believed in. Richard was a public servant who believed fairness and academic merit weren’t in conflict with one another — and he paid an enormous price for saying so out loud.

Richard’s death followed a diversity training session in which he was publicly accused of racism for voicing a disagreement while the administrators around him stayed silent. The story became international news, cited widely in debates over how DEI programs are run and who they’re allowed to hold accountable. But before he was a headline, Richard was a colleague, a friend, and to many of us at FAIR he was proof that one person’s willingness to speak plainly could move an entire conversation forward.

This week, our Substack published a tribute to Richard by Natasha Willowdale, a friend and fellow educator who worked alongside him on the issues he cared about most. It’s a personal, unflinching piece about grief, about regret, and about the fight over merit-based admissions to specialized school programs that Richard was in the middle of when he died.

Natasha’s tribute also carries a piece of good news that Richard unfortunately didn’t live to see: after three years of advocacy from groups like Friends of Richard Bilkszto and Save Our Schools Ontario, the lottery-based admissions policy that replaced merit-based entry has been revoked. Starting this school year, students will be admitted through a centralized evaluation. It’s not a perfect system, as Natasha acknowledges, but it’s a meaningful step toward the standards Richard fought for.

And that’s the part of this story that belongs to all of us now: not just mourning what happened to Richard, but continuing the work he started. FAIR exists because people like him were willing to speak plainly when too many people around them weren’t. Honoring him means refusing to look away from that discomfort when it’s our turn to speak up.

One reader’s poignant comment on Natasha’s tribute resonated with us. Tom Dearie, who knew Richard only briefly, observed that news of his death was “framed into a cynical narrative that overlooked the human side of his story.” That’s the risk when any tragedy becomes a symbol: the individual gets lost inside it. We don’t want to make the same mistake.

Richard was not a talking point. He was a principal who stayed late to help the kids other adults had given up on, and a man whose family and community are still living with the aftermath of his tragic death three years later.

We’ll leave you with the sentiment that Natasha’s piece closes on: Richard would be glad to know that his work wasn’t in vain, and that the work he was committed to doing is now bearing fruit.

Rest in peace, Richard. You are missed.

If you’d like to support the organizations carrying this work forward, visit Friends of Richard Bilkszto or Save Our Schools Ontario.

If you or someone you know is struggling, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (call or text 988 in the US) and Talk Suicide Canada (1-833-456-4566) are available 24/7.

With gratitude,

Monica Harris
Executive Director, FAIR

Subscribe now to receive FAIR News weekly in your Inbox

This July, FAIR will join educators from across Utah at the Utah Rural Schools Association Conference to explore how Many Stories, One Nation can support rural classrooms and strengthen civic education.

Conference Link

As America approaches its 250th anniversary, the nation is still wrestling with some of its oldest questions: Who belongs? What does equality require? How should we understand our differences?

This summer, FAIR’s Film Series will explore these questions through four compelling documentaries produced by Eli Steele and discussions with filmmakers, scholars, and thought leaders.

Join us for this can’t-miss lineup:

🎬 Killing America — July 29 — 38 min run time + discussion featuring Dr. Diana Blum and Eli Steele

🎬 15 Days — August 12

Register Here

FAIR in Conversation is Back!

What does it mean to have “rights”?

The foundational claim upon which our Declaration of Independence and thus our Constitution and The Bill of Rights are based is the radical belief that individuals possess rights that are inalienable and independent of government.

Our goal is to have an intellectually rigorous and inspirational conversation that aligns with FAIR’s emphasis on open inquiry and civil discourse.

FAIR in Conversation has relaunched with a new monthly format built for this moment.

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

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

Register Here

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

Join the FAIR Community

• Join us, and become a member of FAIR.

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

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

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

• View our Many Stories, One Nation curriculum.
  

Dear Friends of FAIR,

We’re excited to announce that FAIR will attend the Utah Rural Schools Association (URSA) Summer Conference in Cedar City, Utah on July 15-17. This conference brings together educators and administrators from rural districts across Utah, serving every grade level, who are dedicated to improving student outcomes and strengthening their curricula. URSA provides hands-on and break-out sessions focused on mental and behavioral health supports, literacy best practices, grading practices, and building a culture of investment. For FAIR, the event will be an important opportunity to introduce Many Stories, One Nation to educators and administrators who understand the unique challenges and strengths of rural schools.

FAIR is bringing a dynamic team to Cedar City: Jefferson Shupe, a veteran FAIR Utah Chapter Leader; Aly Shupe, FAIR’s Social Media Coordinator; and Gabe Brown, creator of FAIR’s educational reels and shorts.

Utah holds particular significance as FAIR expands its work in the West. Rural communities have their own complex narratives — stories of settlement, immigration, indigenous presence, and agricultural heritage — that deserve thorough, multi-perspective exploration in classrooms. Yet the needs of rural schools are often overlooked in curriculum development conversations. Many districts lack access to rigorous, comprehensive resources that reflect their history and distinct experiences. That’s where Many Stories, One Nation comes in.

The URSA conference theme, “Teaching and Reaching Every Student,” aligns perfectly with FAIR’s work. Rural educators are deeply committed to understanding their students’ needs and building curricula that serve them well — and Many Stories, One Nation embodies that commitment: it equips students to think critically about competing perspectives and engage with an increasingly complex society.

What makes FAIR’s curriculum ideal for rural districts is a framework that gives students a better understanding of America’s broader story. Students learn how and why different groups experienced the same historical moments in fundamentally different ways, while grounding that understanding in the values and heritage of their own communities. FAIR’s curriculum is academically robust without being ideologically polarizing, meeting students where they are and equipping educators with material that honors both national complexity and local identity.

FAIR’s team will share lesson materials and demonstrate to education leaders what Many Stories, One Nation looks like in action and how it can serve students, teachers, and rural communities navigating Ethnic Studies adoption. We’ll also document the conference on social media to share insights with FAIR’s community.

The conversations we have in Cedar City next week will help us understand how to better support these districts in bringing a fuller American story to their classrooms. We look forward to connecting with Utah educators and administrators and showing them what’s possible when a curriculum grounded in academic integrity meets communities that are committed to every student’s success. Stay tuned–we’ll share what we learn from these conversations in our next update!

Join us.

With gratitude,

Monica Harris
Executive Director, FAIR

Subscribe now to receive FAIR News weekly in your Inbox

This July, FAIR will join educators from across Utah at the Utah Rural Schools Association Conference to explore how Many Stories, One Nation can support rural classrooms and strengthen civic education.

Conference Link

As America approaches its 250th anniversary, the nation is still wrestling with some of its oldest questions: Who belongs? What does equality require? How should we understand our differences?

This summer, FAIR’s Film Series will explore these questions through four compelling documentaries produced by Eli Steele and discussions with filmmakers, scholars, and thought leaders.

Join us for this can’t-miss lineup:

🎬 What Killed Michael Brown? — July 15 — 110 min run time + 30 min discussion

🎬 Killing America — July 29 — 38 min run time + discussion featuring Dr. Diana Blum and Eli Steele

🎬 15 Days — August 12

Register Here

FAIR in Conversation is Back!

What does it mean to have “rights”?

The foundational claim upon which our Declaration of Independence and thus our Constitution and The Bill of Rights are based is the radical belief that individuals possess rights that are inalienable and independent of government.

Our goal is to have an intellectually rigorous and inspirational conversation that aligns with FAIR’s emphasis on open inquiry and civil discourse.

FAIR in Conversation has relaunched with a new monthly format built for this moment.

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

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

Register Here

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

Join the FAIR Community

• Join us, and become a member of FAIR.

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

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

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

• View our Many Stories, One Nation curriculum.
  

Dear Friends of FAIR,

I was a kid when America celebrated its bicentennial anniversary. I don’t remember much about what was happening in the country at the time, but I remember the feeling: parades, red-white-and-blue everything, collector’s items everywhere, and a sense that the whole country had agreed on what we were celebrating. It was simple. We had made it 200 years, America was doing well, and that seemed worth being proud of. Nobody felt compelled to qualify their pride or patriotism with an asterisk or explanation.

This year feels different, and I don’t think I’m the only one who feels it. We’re marking 250 years as a country still fighting a war, still sorting out how much division we can absorb before it becomes something worse, still trying to figure out what AI, social media, and a fast-changing economy are going to do to the way we live and work. A lot of people who love this country, who have given real parts of their lives to it, are feeling something more complicated than pride this year. Conflicted might be the better word. Even people deeply invested in America’s future are struggling to say, in one clean sentence, what this milestone means to them.

Our constitutional inheritance was never a finished project handed to us so we could admire it from a distance. It was built by people who often disagreed with each other, sometimes bitterly, and kept working anyway. They understood that America would only survive if each generation was willing to look honestly at where we stood and recommit to the work. Our country wasn’t built on consensus, but by people who realized the value of holding genuine disagreements and committed to staying at the table regardless. That’s the part of the founding story that tends to get lost or smoothed over during celebrations.

Our country is fifty years older than it was the last time we celebrated. If America were a person, it would be more experienced, but not always wiser for it. Being part of this moment requires us to step up and examine our history honestly — the parts we’re proud of and the parts we’re still wrestling with — without collapsing into either uncritical celebration or blanket cynicism. To honor America’s 250th anniversary, we need to do the hard work of showing up for the arguments like our Founders did instead of walking away from them. It means extending patience to neighbors who see the country differently than we do. That’s a lot harder than showing up for a parade or watching fireworks explode in the sky, but it’s a more fitting tribute to the grand experiment our founders built.

So what does this look like in practice? Here’s one small, concrete place to start: go back to the sources. Not a summary of America’s history, but the actual record of how our country has evolved and understood itself over time. Because history examined through primary resources is often more complicated and more interesting than the version we read secondhand through the lenses of other people.

Our own Many Stories, One Nation curriculum was built on a similar premise: that understanding this country and what it represents means being able to hold multiple, sometimes competing, true stories about it at the same time, rather than flattening our history into a single narrative in either direction.

Our friends at FAIR in Libraries and the Association of Library Professionals just released three reading lists (elementary, middle & high school, and adult) for America’s 250th, built by librarians who care about the same free and open discourse our founders cherished. These lists are a good way to spend part of your holiday weekend, and worth passing along to a librarian in your life who isn’t yet an ALP member.

If you’re not already a member of these communities, this is a good week to change that: join FAIR in Libraries or ALP. Their membership drive closes July 11th, and it’s a small, direct way to support the people doing the quiet work of keeping libraries places for open inquiry rather than ideological battlegrounds.

None of this resolves the tensions our nation is grappling with, and it’s not supposed to. But learning our own history honestly and supporting the people and institutions that help others do the same feels like a fitting way to meet a complicated anniversary. This year, honor America with more than a parade. Honor the actual work this anniversary celebrates.

We don’t get another 250th. Let’s do this one right.

Join us.

With gratitude,

Monica Harris
Executive Director, FAIR

Subscribe now to receive FAIR News weekly in your Inbox

As America approaches its 250th anniversary, the nation is still wrestling with some of its oldest questions: Who belongs? What does equality require? How should we understand our differences?

This summer, FAIR’s Film Series will explore these questions through four compelling documentaries produced by Eli Steele and discussions with filmmakers, scholars, and thought leaders.

Join us for this can’t-miss lineup:

🎬 How Jack Became Black — July 1

🎬 What Killed Michael Brown? — July 15

🎬 Killing America — July 29

🎬 15 Days — August 12

Register Here

FAIR in Conversation is Back!

FAIR in Conversation has relaunched with a new monthly format built for this moment. We’re leaning away from books and into the issues themselves: the debates, decisions, and developments that are defining what fairness, free speech, and equal dignity mean in America, and beyond, right now.

Each session will center on a pressing topic of the day, drawing on a curated mix of articles, book summaries, short essays, podcasts, films, and other multimedia resources to ground the conversation before opening the floor for discussion.

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

These are exactly the conversations America needs now, and we are committed to modeling them. Sessions will run monthly through September 23rd. We hope you’ll join us!

Register Here

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

Join the FAIR Community

• Join us, and become a member of FAIR.

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

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

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

• View our Many Stories, One Nation curriculum.
  

Dear Friends of FAIR,

This summer, FAIR is launching a four-film series exploring how Americans have debated and constructed racial identity, belonging, and the nation itself. These documentaries ask urgent questions about what we owe one another across differences and how we talk about it.

The series launches July 1st with How Jack Became Black, a documentary that traces the invention of Blackness as a racial category in America. The film examines the roots of colorblindness, the hope that we might one day see people as individuals rather than group members, and shows how that promise collides with lived experience. It’s a fitting opener for a series running alongside the nation’s 250th anniversary, a moment when we’re reckoning with what America is, who belongs to it, and what we’ve promised ourselves about equality and freedom. Monica Harris, FAIR’s Executive Director, will host the discussion with Eli Steele.

July 15th, we screen What Killed Michael Brown?, a sharp, unflinching look at the facts, rhetoric, and storytelling that followed the shooting in Ferguson. The film eschews easy narratives and instead asks viewers to sit with an uncomfortable complexity: the difference between what happened and how it was told.

July 29th, we move to Killing America, a documentary that wades into the historical and contemporary tensions between individual rights and group identity. The film traces how America has wrestled with inclusion, exclusion, and the meaning of membership.

We close our summer series on August 12th with 15 Days, directed by Natalya Murakhver, a New York City mother who sued to reopen schools during the COVID pandemic. The film investigates why America’s closures lasted longer than nearly every other nation and examines the science, policy decisions, and human costs ignored along the way.

Each screening will be followed by a discussion with subject matter experts and scholars who can help audiences think carefully about what these films reveal.

FAIR believes that civil discourse across genuine disagreement is foundational to a free and equal society. The COVID pandemic was one of the most traumatic moments in American history, and race and racial identity remain among the most contested topics in our society. We struggle to discuss these issues clearly. We retreat into defensive positions. We mistake agreement for understanding. We assume bad faith instead of engaging with hard questions.

FAIR believes these topics cannot be discussed and debated on the fringes. They shape education policy, civil rights enforcement, hiring practices, and how young people understand themselves and their country. These films don’t promote a single perspective or conclusion. They present evidence, arguments, and human stories that require viewers to think. They are an invitation to think carefully, together, across lines of difference.

These screenings are open to FAIR newsletter subscribers and community members. Whether you work in education, media, or civil rights advocacy, or simply want to engage with evidence-based analysis and diverse expert perspectives on some of the nation’s most contested questions, this series is for you. Stay tuned for details in our newsletter or follow us on social media for registration information and screening times.

This summer, as we celebrate America’s 250th anniversary, our country is reckoning with its founding promises of equal protection, free expression, and belonging. These four films tackle that question from different angles. They model what it looks like to engage seriously, to resist easy narratives, to think together across genuine disagreement. That’s the conversation America needs now.

Join us.

With gratitude,

Monica Harris
Executive Director, FAIR

As America approaches its 250th anniversary, the nation is still wrestling with some of its oldest questions: Who belongs? What does equality require? How should we understand our differences?

This summer, FAIR’s Film Series will explore these questions through four compelling documentaries produced by Eli Steele and discussions with filmmakers, scholars, and thought leaders.

Join us for this can’t-miss lineup:

🎬 How Jack Became Black — July 1

🎬 What Killed Michael Brown? — July 15

🎬 Killing America — July 29

🎬 15 Days — August 12

Register Here

The Canadian Free Speech Crisis with Lisa Bildy

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

Register Here

FAIR in Conversation is Back!

FAIR in Conversation has relaunched with a new monthly format built for this moment. We’re leaning away from books and into the issues themselves: the debates, decisions, and developments that are defining what fairness, free speech, and equal dignity mean in America, and beyond, right now.

Each session will center on a pressing topic of the day, drawing on a curated mix of articles, book summaries, short essays, podcasts, films, and other multimedia resources to ground the conversation before opening the floor for discussion.

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

These are exactly the conversations America needs now, and we are committed to modeling them. Sessions will run monthly through September 23rd. We hope you’ll join us!

Register Here

FAIR Educators Alliance 2025-2026

Join the FAIR Educators Alliance for the 2025–2026 school year to equip PK–12 educators with the knowledge, strategies, and community support they need to foster schools that are more enriching and free from bias for students and educators.

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

Following the presentations, participants will have space for open-forum discussions to connect, seek advice, and coordinate on pressing issues in their schools. Breakout rooms will be divided into PK-6 and 7-12 grade levels with experienced teachers facilitating those conversations.

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

Join Us!

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

Join the FAIR Community

• Join us, and become a member of FAIR.

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

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

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

• View our Many Stories, One Nation curriculum.
  

Dear Friends of FAIR,

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

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

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

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

That was the first Juneteenth celebration.

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

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

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

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

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

That is the bedrock of FAIR’s mission.

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

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

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

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

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

• Engaging Your Community: Join the conversation by attending an upcoming webinar, educational program, or local discussion.

• Building Local Connections: Connect with a FAIR Chapter near you or spark something new by starting a chapter to host events, conversations, and outreach in your area.

• Bringing History to Light: Help us introduce FAIR’s new Many Stories, One Nation curriculum to schools and civic leadership in your community.

• Fueling the Movement: Every program, resource, and classroom tool we offer is made possible entirely by the generosity of people like you. Consider making a donation to sustain this work.

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

With gratitude,

Monica Harris
Executive Director, FAIR

The Canadian Free Speech Crisis with Lisa Bildy

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

Register Here

FAIR in Conversation is Back!

FAIR in Conversation has relaunched with a new monthly format built for this moment. We’re leaning away from books and into the issues themselves: the debates, decisions, and developments that are defining what fairness, free speech, and equal dignity mean in America, and beyond, right now.

Each session will center on a pressing topic of the day, drawing on a curated mix of articles, book summaries, short essays, podcasts, films, and other multimedia resources to ground the conversation before opening the floor for discussion.

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

These are exactly the conversations America needs now, and we are committed to modeling them. Sessions will run monthly through September 23rd. We hope you’ll join us!

Register Here

FAIR Educators Alliance 2025-2026

Join the FAIR Educators Alliance for the 2025–2026 school year to equip PK–12 educators with the knowledge, strategies, and community support they need to foster schools that are more enriching and free from bias for students and educators.

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

Following the presentations, participants will have space for open-forum discussions to connect, seek advice, and coordinate on pressing issues in their schools. Breakout rooms will be divided into PK-6 and 7-12 grade levels with experienced teachers facilitating those conversations.

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

Join Us!

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

Join the FAIR Community

• Join us, and become a member of FAIR.

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

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

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

• View our Many Stories, One Nation curriculum.
  

Dear Friends of FAIR,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With gratitude,

Monica Harris
Executive Director, FAIR

The War on Words: A Conversation with Nadine Strossen

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

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

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

Register Here

The Canadian Free Speech Crisis with Lisa Bildy

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

Register Here

FAIR in Conversation is Back!

FAIR in Conversation has relaunched with a new monthly format built for this moment. We’re leaning away from books and into the issues themselves: the debates, decisions, and developments that are defining what fairness, free speech, and equal dignity mean in America, and beyond, right now.

Each session will center on a pressing topic of the day, drawing on a curated mix of articles, book summaries, short essays, podcasts, films, and other multimedia resources to ground the conversation before opening the floor for discussion.

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

These are exactly the conversations America needs now, and we are committed to modeling them. Sessions will run monthly through September 23rd. We hope you’ll join us!

Register Here

FAIR Educators Alliance 2025-2026

Join the FAIR Educators Alliance for the 2025–2026 school year to equip PK–12 educators with the knowledge, strategies, and community support they need to foster schools that are more enriching and free from bias for students and educators.

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

Following the presentations, participants will have space for open-forum discussions to connect, seek advice, and coordinate on pressing issues in their schools. Breakout rooms will be divided into PK-6 and 7-12 grade levels with experienced teachers facilitating those conversations.

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

Join Us!

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

Join the FAIR Community

• Join us, and become a member of FAIR.

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

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

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

• View our Many Stories, One Nation curriculum.
  

Dear Friends of FAIR,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With gratitude,

Monica Harris
Executive Director, FAIR

The War on Words: A Conversation with Nadine Strossen

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

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

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

Register Here

The Canadian Free Speech Crisis with Lisa Bildy

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

Register Here

FAIR in Conversation is Back!

FAIR in Conversation has relaunched with a new monthly format built for this moment. We’re leaning away from books and into the issues themselves: the debates, decisions, and developments that are defining what fairness, free speech, and equal dignity mean in America, and beyond, right now.

Each session will center on a pressing topic of the day, drawing on a curated mix of articles, book summaries, short essays, podcasts, films, and other multimedia resources to ground the conversation before opening the floor for discussion.

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

These are exactly the conversations America needs now, and we are committed to modeling them. Sessions will run monthly through September 23rd. We hope you’ll join us!

Register Here

FAIR Educators Alliance 2025-2026

Join the FAIR Educators Alliance for the 2025–2026 school year to equip PK–12 educators with the knowledge, strategies, and community support they need to foster schools that are more enriching and free from bias for students and educators.

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

Following the presentations, participants will have space for open-forum discussions to connect, seek advice, and coordinate on pressing issues in their schools. Breakout rooms will be divided into PK-6 and 7-12 grade levels with experienced teachers facilitating those conversations.

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

Join Us!

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

Join the FAIR Community

• Join us, and become a member of FAIR.

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

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

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

• View our Many Stories, One Nation curriculum.
  

Dear Friends of FAIR,

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

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

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

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

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

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

The letter helps parents:

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

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

• Open a respectful, documented dialogue with school administrators

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With gratitude,

Monica Harris
Executive Director, FAIR

The War on Words: A Conversation with Nadine Strossen

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

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

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

Register Here

FAIR in Conversation is Back!

FAIR in Conversation has relaunched with a new monthly format built for this moment. We’re leaning away from books and into the issues themselves: the debates, decisions, and developments that are defining what fairness, free speech, and equal dignity mean in America, and beyond, right now.

Each session will center on a pressing topic of the day, drawing on a curated mix of articles, book summaries, short essays, podcasts, films, and other multimedia resources to ground the conversation before opening the floor for discussion.

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

These are exactly the conversations America needs now, and we are committed to modeling them. Sessions will run monthly through September 23rd. We hope you’ll join us!

Register Here

FAIR Educators Alliance 2025-2026

Join the FAIR Educators Alliance for the 2025–2026 school year to equip PK–12 educators with the knowledge, strategies, and community support they need to foster schools that are more enriching and free from bias for students and educators.

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

Following the presentations, participants will have space for open-forum discussions to connect, seek advice, and coordinate on pressing issues in their schools. Breakout rooms will be divided into PK-6 and 7-12 grade levels with experienced teachers facilitating those conversations.

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

Join Us!

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

Join the FAIR Community

• Join us, and become a member of FAIR.

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

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

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

• View our Many Stories, One Nation curriculum.
  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With gratitude,

Monica Harris
Executive Director, FAIR

Donate

The War on Words: A Conversation with Nadine Strossen

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

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

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

Register Here

FAIR in Conversation is Back!

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

FAIR in Conversation has relaunched with a new monthly format built for this moment. We’re leaning away from books and into the issues themselves: the debates, decisions, and developments that are defining what fairness, free speech, and equal dignity mean in America, and beyond, right now.

Each session will center on a pressing topic of the day, drawing on a curated mix of articles, book summaries, short essays, podcasts, films, and other multimedia resources to ground the conversation before opening the floor for discussion. Sessions will be virtual, open to all FAIR members, and designed to be as accessible as they are substantive. You don’t need to have read anything in advance. Just bring your curiosity, your willingness to listen, and your commitment to engage in good faith.

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

Register Here

FAIR Educators Alliance 2025-2026

Join the FAIR Educators Alliance for the 2025–2026 school year to equip PK–12 educators with the knowledge, strategies, and community support they need to foster schools that are more enriching and free from bias for students and educators.

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

Following the presentations, participants will have space for open-forum discussions to connect, seek advice, and coordinate on pressing issues in their schools. Breakout rooms will be divided into PK-6 and 7-12 grade levels with experienced teachers facilitating those conversations.

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

Join Us!

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

Join the FAIR Community

• Join us, and become a member of FAIR.

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

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

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

• View our Many Stories, One Nation curriculum.

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

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

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

And FAIR is proud to be part of it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Onward,

Monica Harris
Executive Director, FAIR

Donate

The War on Words: A Conversation with Nadine Strossen

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

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

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

Register Here

FAIR in Conversation is Back!

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

FAIR in Conversation has relaunched with a new monthly format built for this moment. We’re leaning away from books and into the issues themselves: the debates, decisions, and developments that are defining what fairness, free speech, and equal dignity mean in America, and beyond, right now.

Each session will center on a pressing topic of the day, drawing on a curated mix of articles, book summaries, short essays, podcasts, films, and other multimedia resources to ground the conversation before opening the floor for discussion. Sessions will be virtual, open to all FAIR members, and designed to be as accessible as they are substantive. You don’t need to have read anything in advance. Just bring your curiosity, your willingness to listen, and your commitment to engage in good faith.

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

Register Here

FAIR Educators Alliance 2025-2026

Join the FAIR Educators Alliance for the 2025–2026 school year to equip PK–12 educators with the knowledge, strategies, and community support they need to foster schools that are more enriching and free from bias for students and educators.

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

Following the presentations, participants will have space for open-forum discussions to connect, seek advice, and coordinate on pressing issues in their schools. Breakout rooms will be divided into PK-6 and 7-12 grade levels with experienced teachers facilitating those conversations.

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

Join Us!

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

Join the FAIR Community

• Join us, and become a member of FAIR.

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

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

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

• View our Many Stories, One Nation curriculum.
  

Dear Friends of FAIR,

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

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

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

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

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

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

With Gratitude,
The Fair For All Team

Donate

* Join Our Webinar Tonight * The Body-Mind Connection: Rethinking How Medicine Approaches Adolescent Development

Mood swings, difficulty focusing, disrupted sleep, irregular periods are all hallmarks of adolescence and not necessarily signs of disorder. Yet antidepressant prescriptions for teens have risen 66% in six years, ADHD diagnoses now affect more than 6 million children, and hormonal contraception is routinely prescribed to teenage girls for symptoms that may reflect normal development.

Join FAIR and Dr. Kendra Kautz, DC *TONIGHT* Wednesday, May 6th, 4pm PT / 7pm ET, for a candid conversation about what parents are often not told before a prescription is written and what questions they have every right to ask.

Drawing on real cases and peer-reviewed research, this webinar will explore the physiological context behind adolescent symptoms and ask what informed consent should really mean before a family agrees to a prescription that could change a developing brain.

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

Register

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

FAIR in Conversation is Back!

FAIR in Conversation has relaunched with a new monthly format built for this moment. We’re leaning away from books and into the issues themselves: the debates, decisions, and developments that are defining what fairness, free speech, and equal dignity mean in America, and beyond, right now.

Each session will center on a pressing topic of the day, drawing on a curated mix of articles, book summaries, short essays, podcasts, films, and other multimedia resources to ground the conversation before opening the floor for discussion. Sessions will be virtual, open to all FAIR members, and designed to be as accessible as they are substantive. You don’t need to have read anything in advance. Just bring your curiosity, your willingness to listen, and your commitment to engage in good faith.

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

Register Here

FAIR Educators Alliance 2025-2026

Join the FAIR Educators Alliance for the 2025–2026 school year to equip PK–12 educators with the knowledge, strategies, and community support they need to foster schools that are more enriching and free from bias for students and educators.

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

Following the presentations, participants will have space for open-forum discussions to connect, seek advice, and coordinate on pressing issues in their schools. Breakout rooms will be divided into PK-6 and 7-12 grade levels with experienced teachers facilitating those conversations.

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

Join Us!

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

Join the FAIR Community

• Join us, and become a member of FAIR.

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

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

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

• View our Many Stories, One Nation curriculum.
  

Dear Friends of FAIR,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With gratitude,

Monica Harris

Executive Director, FAIR

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

Mood swings, difficulty focusing, disrupted sleep, irregular periods are all hallmarks of adolescence and not necessarily signs of disorder. Yet antidepressant prescriptions for teens have risen 66% in six years, ADHD diagnoses now affect more than 6 million children, and hormonal contraception is routinely prescribed to teenage girls for symptoms that may reflect normal development. Join FAIR and on Wednesday, May 6th, 4pm PT / 7pm ET, for a candid conversation about what parents are often not told before a prescription is written and what questions they have every right to ask. Drawing on real cases and peer-reviewed research, this webinar will explore the physiological context behind adolescent symptoms and ask what informed consent should really mean before a family agrees to a prescription that could change a developing brain.

Register Here

FAIR in Conversation is Back!

FAIR in Conversation has relaunched with a new monthly format built for this moment. We’re leaning away from books and into the issues themselves: the debates, decisions, and developments that are defining what fairness, free speech, and equal dignity mean in America, and beyond, right now.

Each session will center on a pressing topic of the day, drawing on a curated mix of articles, book summaries, short essays, podcasts, films, and other multimedia resources to ground the conversation before opening the floor for discussion.

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

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

Register Here

FAIR Educators Alliance 2025-2026

Join the FAIR Educators Alliance for the 2025–2026 school year to equip PK–12 educators with the knowledge, strategies, and community support they need to foster schools that are more enriching and free from bias for students and educators.

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

Following the presentations, participants will have space for open-forum discussions to connect, seek advice, and coordinate on pressing issues in their schools. Breakout rooms will be divided into PK-6 and 7-12 grade levels with experienced teachers facilitating those conversations.

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

Join Us!

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

Join the FAIR Community

• Join us, and become a member of FAIR.

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

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

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

• View our Many Stories, One Nation curriculum.
  

Dear Friends of FAIR,

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

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

Watch the full conversation here:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With gratitude,
The FAIR Team

The Lost Art of Listening: Building Empathy Across Differences

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

Register Here

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

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

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

Register Here

FAIR Educators Alliance 2025-2026

Join the FAIR Educators Alliance for the 2025–2026 school year to equip PK–12 educators with the knowledge, strategies, and community support they need to foster schools that are more enriching and free from bias for students and educators.

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

Following the presentations, participants will have space for open-forum discussions to connect, seek advice, and coordinate on pressing issues in their schools. Breakout rooms will be divided into PK-6 and 7-12 grade levels with experienced teachers facilitating those conversations.

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

Join Us!

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

Join the FAIR Community

• Join us, and become a member of FAIR.

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

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

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

• View our Many Stories, One Nation curriculum.
  

Dear Friends of FAIR,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With gratitude,
The FAIR Team

Donate Here

Join Us

The Lost Art of Listening: Building Empathy Across Differences

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

Register Here

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

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

Register Here

Read Dr. Kendra Kautz on our Substack this week:

FAIR Educators Alliance 2025-2026

Join the FAIR Educators Alliance for the 2025–2026 school year to equip PK–12 educators with the knowledge, strategies, and community support they need to foster schools that are more enriching and free from bias for students and educators.

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

Following the presentations, participants will have space for open-forum discussions to connect, seek advice, and coordinate on pressing issues in their schools. Breakout rooms will be divided into PK-6 and 7-12 grade levels with experienced teachers facilitating those conversations.

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

Join Us!

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

Join the FAIR Community

• Join us, and become a member of FAIR.

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

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

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

• View our Many Stories, One Nation curriculum.
  

Dear Friends of FAIR,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With gratitude,
The FAIR Team

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

Register Here

Culture in Psychotherapy — Without the Corrosion of Identity Politics

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

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

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

Register for TODAY (April 8th)

Register for Home Study

Heterodox Libraries Spring 2026 Symposium: HUMAN AUTHORSHIP

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

Read the full event description and register here.

HxLibraries Spring Symposium

The Lost Art of Listening: Building Empathy Across Differences

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

Register Here

FAIR Educator Alliance 2025-2026

FAIR has launched the Educators Alliance for the 2025–2026 school year to equip PK–12 educators with the knowledge, strategies, and community support they need to foster schools that are more enriching and free from bias for students and educators.

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

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

Join Us!

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

Join the FAIR Community

• Join us, and become a member of FAIR.

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

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

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

• View our Many Stories, One Nation curriculum.
  

Dear Friends of FAIR,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With gratitude,

Monica Harris
Executive Director, FAIR

Make a Gift to FAIR

Culture in Psychotherapy — Without the Corrosion of Identity Politics

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

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

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

Register for Home Study

Register for Wednesday, April 8th

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

The Lost Art of Listening: Building Empathy Across Differences

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

Register Here

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

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

Apply

FAIR Educator Alliance 2025-2026

FAIR has launched the Educators Alliance for the 2025–2026 school year to equip PK–12 educators with the knowledge, strategies, and community support they need to foster schools that are more enriching and free from bias for students and educators.

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

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

Join Us!

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

Join the FAIR Community

• Join us, and become a member of FAIR.

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

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

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

• View our Many Stories, One Nation curriculum.
  

Dear Friends of FAIR,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Warmly,
The FAIR Team

Donate to Support FAIR

Culture in Psychotherapy — Without the Corrosion of Identity Politics

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

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

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

Register for Home Study

Register for Wednesday, April 8th

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

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

Apply

FAIR Educator Alliance 2025-2026

FAIR has launched the Educators Alliance for the 2025–2026 school year to equip PK–12 educators with the knowledge, strategies, and community support they need to foster schools that are more enriching and free from bias for students and educators.

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

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

Join Us!

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

Join the FAIR Community

• Join us, and become a member of FAIR.

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

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

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

• View our Many Stories, One Nation curriculum.
  

Dear Friends of FAIR,

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

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

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

Grand Prize Winners –

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Runners Up –

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

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

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

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

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

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

Warmly,
Brent Morden
FAIR in the Arts

Donate to Support FAIR in the Arts

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

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

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

Read the Full Article

Beyond Binary Thinking: Developing Nuanced Perspectives in Young Minds

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

Register

Culture in Psychotherapy — Without the Corrosion of Identity Politics

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

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

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

Register for Home Study

Register for Saturday, March 28th

Register for Wednesday, April 8th

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

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

Apply

FAIR Educator Alliance 2025-2026

FAIR has launched the Educators Alliance for the 2025–2026 school year to equip PK–12 educators with the knowledge, strategies, and community support they need to foster schools that are more enriching and free from bias for students and educators.

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

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

Join Us!

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

Join the FAIR Community

• Join us, and become a member of FAIR.

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

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

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

• View our Many Stories, One Nation curriculum.