FAIR News: Standing Up for Open Discourse on Campus
Newsletter
Emory Law Students Stand Up for Free Speech on Campus
Last year, a group of Emory Law School students established the Emory Free Speech Forum (EFSF). Their belief is that the best answers are often found through open inquiry and debate. Having witnessed intolerance at Emory (and on other college campuses), the EFSF students sought to create a place for interested students to hear, consider, and debate diverse ideas.
In October 2021, the EFSF applied for formal recognition as a student organization, which would enable it to use school space and potentially receive funding. Applications are heard and decided by Emory’s Student Bar Association (SBA). The SBA denied the EFSF’s application twice, under the pretext that open inquiry is “harmful” and the EFSF “overlapped” with other organizations. Notably, during the hearings, an SBA member remarked that the EFSF members were incapable of operating a free speech organization because of their perceived skin color: “I don’t know how like y’all would foster like such diverse conversations because…like no offense…all of you are white.” (The EFSF members are not all “white.”) Another SBA member stated that funding would be inappropriate because the EFSF has “very few individual[s] of color.”
FAIR sent a letter to the Emory SBA and administration on January 18, 2022, informing them that their actions violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits federally-funded institutions from discriminating based on skin color and race. More than a month has passed, and the SBA has still not reversed its decision to deny the EFSF’s application.
If you are concerned about intolerance and civil rights violations on university campuses, please follow the link below to donate and show your support. Funds raised will support legal efforts on behalf of the Emory Free Speech Forum and similar endeavors.
Coming Soon: FAIR Merchandise
This Friday, March 4th, FAIR is launching an online store with official FAIR merchandise. Check our website and social media on Friday for links.
FAIR Summer Internship program
Do you value the civil rights and liberties of all individuals regardless of their skin color, ancestry, or other group identity? Are you interested in supporting and learning more about FAIR’s nonpartisan and pro-human mission and how FAIR promotes fairness, understanding, and our common humanity? Join us this summer as a FAIR Intern.
We are seeking highly motivated and open-minded undergraduate students and recent graduates for full-time summer internships ($2,000 stipend provided). Ideal candidates will value curiosity, compassion, and courage, coupled with communication and leadership skills and a passion for FAIR’s pro-human values and vision. This internship will provide you with real-world experience in a nonpartisan, dynamic, and mission-driven organization, while also empowering you to develop resources and become ambassadors for FAIR’s mission in your own communities.
Visit our summer internship page for more information.
TODAY: FAIR in Medicine Webinar
TODAY (March 3rd) from 8:00p.m. – 9:30p.m. EST, FAIR in Medicine will be hosting a webinar titled “Health Professionals in the Nazi Era: Learn from the Past, Understand the Present, Protect the Future,” presented by Matthew Wynia, MD, MPH.
The terrible history of health professional involvement in the Holocaust has had a profound influence on modern healthcare ethics, from the ways we think about race in medicine, genetics, caring for people in detention, abortion, end of life issues, medical research, etc. Virtually every issue in bioethics today is deeply influenced, implicitly or explicitly, by the medical crimes of the Nazi era. Dr. Wynia will explore the legacy of health professional involvement in the Holocaust and how it continues to resonate in health care and society today.
CONTENT WARNING: The Health Professionals in the Nazi Era lecture is intended for adult audiences and contains images and descriptions of genocidal violence and human rights violations.
Publish Your Writing on Our Substack!
We want our FAIR Substack to be the go-to publication for people interested in sharing and reading diverse perspectives on our culture and civil rights. Whether you’re a seasoned author or an amateur writer with a story to tell that contributes to our mission of promoting fairness, understanding, and humanity, we would love to receive your stories, opinions, investigations, reviews, interviews, and more!
Please submit your piece to submissions@fairforall.org
Submission guidelines:
Complete articles only (i.e. no “works in progress”).
No submissions that have already been published elsewhere.
We have no hard word count limits, but prefer submissions between 1000 and 2500 words.
In the email, please include a short personal introduction and brief (one paragraph) summary of the article.
We hope to hear from you!
FAIR Perspectives
Our guest this week is Dr. Sheena Mason.
Sheena earned her PhD, with distinction, from Howard University in Washington DC in May of 2021, and is currently a tenure-track assistant professor in African American Literature at SUNY Plattsburgh. She is also the president and co-founder of the educational firm Theory of Racelessness, as well as the author of the forthcoming book Theory of Racelessness: A Case for Antirace(ism), which presents a skeptical and eliminativist philosophy of race and racism.
We discuss Sheena’s theory in great depth, including whether race is a biological reality or a social construct, how racism creates race and not the other way around, the conflation of race with culture, class, and ethnicity, Whoopi Goldberg’s views on race and the Holocaust, the difficulty of communicating racelessness to the public, common pushbacks to and misconceptions of the Theory of Racelessness, and whether a raceless future is even possible.
FAIR News Podcast
For audio versions of our FAIR News and FAIR Weekly Roundup newsletters, subscribe and listen to our FAIR News Podcast.
FAIRstory: Slavery in the Modern Day
This week we have released our ninth video in the FAIRstory Curriculum—Slavery in the Modern Day. Throughout the history of humankind, humans enslaving their fellow humans was considered natural and acceptable. But in the modern day, we have advanced immensely, and every nation in the world has outlawed slavery. Despite this, an estimated 38 to 46 million people remain enslaved today around the world.
FAIR Wellness Webinars
Every Tuesday (the first four Tuesdays of the month) from 7:00p.m. to 8:00p.m. ET, beginning March 1st, FAIR Advisor Zander Keig will be hosting a series of FREE Wellness Webinars for FAIR members.
Register for any of the wellness webinars below.
This Week’s Wellness Webinar: Navigating Uncertainty
FAIR Twin Cities Member Meeting
FAIR Diversity Training
Meet FAIR Diversity: What It Means to Be Pro-Human
For all FAIR Members and volunteers. These events are typically held on the last Monday of each month.
Monday, March 28th, 7:00p.m. – 8:00p.m. EST
FAIR Diversity Conversations Series
Open to the public! These events are typically held on the first Monday of each month.
In this webinar series, FAIR Diversity panelists discuss how to apply the fundamental principles of inclusive and civil dialogue to everyday social interactions. We use the pro-human approach to navigate challenging conversations in healthcare, education, corporate, non-profit sectors, and more.
March Conversation: Navigating Workplace Conversations Using Pro-Human Approaches
Monday, March 7th, 7:00p.m. – 8:00p.m. EST
Please feel free to bring any relevant thoughts, ideas, questions, and insights, to the conversation!
To learn more about FAIR Diversity, please visit our FAIR Diversity website.
FAIR Chapter Events
FAIR Open House Events
March 10th:
FAIR Chapter Events
TODAY (March 3rd):
Long Island Kick-Off Meeting
7:30p.m. EST, ZOOM
March 7th:
Hudson Valley (NY) Chapter Meeting – “How to Run for School Boards”
7:00p.m. EST, ZOOM
This meeting will focus on the topic about which we have received the most requests: running for BOE. We will be joined by Tanya Simons, who will share with us her incredible wisdom and concrete guidance.
Tanya Simons is a member of the Osseo School Board, the fifth largest district in the state of Minnesota. She will share her story and experiences in running for school board and how she applies FAIR principles to drive positive pro-human solutions in education for the students and families of her district. You can read more about the Twin Cities FAIR chapter here.
Please join us for the call and bring friends from your communities whom you have personally vetted and are interested in learning more.
Western Massachusetts – “Let's Make Western Massachusetts Schools FAIR!”
7:00p.m. EST, ZOOM
Join us to learn about the current issues Mount Greylock Regional School District (MGRSD) is facing. Participants will discuss the new Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB) proposal.
Las Vegas Spring Reboot
6:30p.m. PST, ZOOM
March 12th:
FAIR Oregon Meet & Greet
2:00p.m. PST, DETAILS & REGISTRATION
Twin Cities Quarterly Membership Meeting
9:00a.m. CST, REGISTER
Grants Pass, OR Meet & Greet
2:00p.m. PST, REGISTER
Chapter Leader Training
March 21st:
Chapter Leader Series 1: Pro-human Approach to Inclusive Dialogue
7:00p.m. – 9:00p.m. EST,
Meeting ID: 859 8742 9884
March 23rd:
Chapter Leader Series 2: Pro-human Approach to Inclusive Leadership
7:00p.m. – 9:00p.m. EST
Meeting ID: 868 8969 6734
April 6th:
Chapter Leader Series 3: Now What? (follow-up debrief (pilot))
MUST have attended both a Series 1 AND a Series 2 training
7:00p.m. – 9:00p.m. EST
Meeting ID: 851 0018 9385
FAIR Educator Alliance
Teachers often feel isolated and alone in their schools, but FAIR is here for you! We will be holding weekly informal “happy hours” to share experiences and concerns and work on developing resources just for teachers. We’ll also be holding more formal monthly meetings to address issues based on your needs and interests.
For more information, please email educators@fairforall.org
The Zoom link to our weekly happy hour can be found here.
Grassroots Training Workshops
Are you ready to be an effective advocate for pro-human values in your community? You know in your heart of hearts our common culture of fairness, understanding, and humanity requires you to be civically engaged and actively organizing and advocating in your community.
But how do you get started?
We’ve got you covered with the FAIR Grassroots Leader Training series.
Register to learn practical tools for organizing your community, how to be a more effective advocate, and ways to create positive, bottom-up change in our culture and country. The sessions include:
Grassroots Leader Session 1 | Bottom-Up Organizing
Grassroots Leader Session 2 | Finding Your Place At FAIR
Grassroots Leader Session 3 | Organizing Your Organizing
Public Speaking Training | Keeping Your Audience Captivated
Register now for the next Grassroots Leader Training series.
Join the FAIR Community
Become a FAIR volunteer or to join a FAIR chapter:
Join a Welcome to FAIR Zoom information session to learn more about our mission, or watch a previously recorded session in the Members section of www.fairforall.org.
Sign the FAIR Pledge for a common culture of fairness, understanding and humanity.
Join the FAIR community to connect and share information with other members.
Share your reviews and incident reports on our FAIR Transparency website.
There are those who contend there are no races. That is true but not relevant. There are gene pools, and one of the manifestations of a gene pool is skin tone. I am white (my visual similarity to Newt Gingrich is uncanny). My Zimbabwe-born South African business partner is the blackest human I have ever seen. We have been great friends for nearly twenty years.
I told him about the role of sunlight in combating viruses. He or his wife takes his special needs son outdoors every day for supervised play; the others don't need supervision. I've told him to increase Vitamin D supplements, zinc supplements and Vitamin C supplements. He agreed. I told him to give his family Ivermectin. That's when the brown material hit the rotating blades.
"I won't do that. The news says it's killing people in Sub-Saharan Africa." Censorship has decided that white American authoritarians are better than black South Africans.
How does one determine whether one race is better /superior than another?