Invasion of the Body Snatchers: Identity Politics and the Soul of Psychotherapy
For FAIR’s Substack, Dr. Doug Novotny examines how identity‑politics frameworks can distort both clinical judgment and everyday understanding. He argues that reducing “culture” to immutable group traits flattens individuality, fuels polarized thinking, and critically impairs psychotherapy. He advocates a return to nuanced engagement with identity, morality, and human complexity.
Intelligent, well-meaning people with common-sense can be misguided by the rigid framework of “us-against-them;” “oppressor vs. oppressed.” This ideology foments dehumanizing trait categorization, flattens identity, and heightens division.
All of us are vulnerable to collapsing our ideas into ideology, and it appears across the political spectrum. It’s deeply concerning when politicians practice such divisiveness. It’s an abdication of authority when “experts” promote activism. It’s sad when it affects personal relationships. But it’s especially damaging when it enters psychotherapy —a field entrusted with expanding, rather than constricting human understanding. Therapists should be working to simultaneously enhance the better angels of our nature and our culture’s nobler aspects, like the sanctity of individual character.
Uncanceling the Canceled
For Free Black Thought, FAIR Advisor Erec Smith writes about the wrongful cancellation of former Seattle principal Ed Roos, the long-term impact of “DEI” on educators, and the dangers of ideology overriding evidence. Roos first shared his story publicly on FAIR’s Substack, which you can read here.
One could say the tenet of “innocent until proven guilty” devolved under DEI into “guilty until proven innocent,” but this is worse than that. It is “guilty until proven guilty.” This is a side effect of a narrative that whiteness is inherently racist (a message Roos received frequently) and the concept of positionality: no white person can truly understand a black person, so anything he does is either dismissed or treated with suspicion. We cannot allow such blatant illiberalism to prevail. When one person’s uncorroborated word is all it takes to ruin a man, we are not staying true to the principle of fairness this country is supposed to uphold.
Zion Lights: Green movement is “anti-human at its roots and goes back to Malthusian thinking”
For PUBLIC, FAIR Advisor Michael Shellenberger interviews Zion Lights, a former environmental activist and author (Energy is Life: Why Environmentalism Went Nuclear). They discuss how the green movement, by restricting fossil fuels in the Global South, has prioritized ideology over people, leaving millions without reliable energy.
In a small village in the Punjab, a girl of about eight years old crouches over a clay stove, feeding it patties of dried cow dung. Smoke billows into her face. She coughs while feeding the fire. There is no reliable electricity. When the family gets a little extra money, they buy liquified petroleum gas (LPG), which burns cleanly, as natural gas does in stoves in the wealthy West. Unfortunately, that LPG just got priced out of reach for hundreds of millions like her.
The 2026 Iran war and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz were the triggers for the current energy crisis, but the underlying cause is the chronic underinvestment and underdevelopment of oil and gas resources by poor, developing, and rich nations alike over the last ten years. Policymakers diverted that money into green energy, which failed to prevent the crisis.
This Post Won’t Save the World
For The Certainty Trap, FAIR Advisor Ilana Redstone reflects on the Iran conflict and the limits of persuasion in a polarized environment. She explores how overconfidence in our own certainty can get in the way of genuine understanding, and why intellectual humility may be a more effective starting point.
Like so many people, I worry that this conflict will escalate to an apocalyptic, existential, World War III event. I fear what the future holds for my teenage kids. What kind of world will they inherit? Could this lead to a draft that affects them? What does real economic destruction look like? I get lost in the sheer number of things I take for granted every single day that could vanish in the blink of an eye. I go to the grocery store and expect that the shelves will be stocked. I flip a light switch and assume the electricity will come on. And if, God forbid, I have to call 911, I assume that someone will answer and someone will come. But what if everything I assume will always be there is actually deeply, heartbreakingly, fragile?
Teaching History Without Taking Sides
For Derate the Hate, Wilk Wilkinson sits down with FAIR Executive Director Monica Harris for wide-ranging conversation about FAIR’s Many Stories, One Nation curriculum, the disempowering and discriminatory “oppressor/oppressed” framework, (de)polarization, and much more.
At the center [of the discussion] is Many Stories, One Nation—FAIR’s high school social studies curriculum. What begins as a question about how this differs from traditional ethnic studies quickly opens into something deeper: how we teach history, how we frame identity, and what we’re actually preparing young people to walk into. If the goal is to equip the next generation for a complicated and often divided world, the way we tell these stories matters.
The Psychology of Speech Repression
For The Bedrock Principle, Antoine Marie Ph.D., examines why people across the political spectrum might support restricting speech. He points to perceived social threats, group identity, and the protection of shared narratives, arguing that these dynamics often fuel self-censorship and deepen polarization.
When people underestimate how widespread this self-censorship is, the result can be pluralistic ignorance: a situation in which public discourse becomes grossly misaligned with private beliefs. Everyone hears the same dominant opinions expressed in public, and each person assumes others genuinely believe them. In reality, many individuals privately harbor doubts that no one dares to articulate. Some examples in U.S. contexts: criticism of Trump’s authoritarianism in MAGA bubbles; scepticism towards open border immigration policies or biological sex denialism among strong liberals.
Supreme Court sides with therapist in challenge to Colorado’s ban on “conversion therapy”
For SCOTUS Blog Amy Howe reports on last week’s Chiles v. Salazar decision. The Supreme Court ruled 8–1 that the First Amendment prohibits states from using their licensing power to limit the topics therapists and other professionals can discuss with their clients.
The court has also acknowledged, Gorsuch continued, “the even greater dangers associated with regulations that discriminate based on the speaker’s point of view. When the government seeks not just to restrict speech based on its subject matter, but also seeks to dictate what particular ‘opinion or perspective’ individuals may express on that subject, ‘the violation of the First Amendment is all the more blatant,’” Gorsuch stressed. “’Viewpoint discrimination,’” Gorsuch said, “represents ‘an egregious form’ of content regulation, and governments in this country must nearly always ‘abstain’ from it.”
Anti-Racist Task Force Report in Social Work Confirms Rufo’s CRT Suspicions
For The Multilevel Mailer, Nathan Gallo and Arnold Cantú write about how the CSWE quietly wove critical race theory into national social work standards under the banner of ‘anti-racism.' This essay is Part 4 of a five part series uncovering the ideological capture of Council on Social Work Education’s (CSWE).
“By applying CRT,” the report explains, “social work practice can uncover its White supremacy and ensure the multiple realities of people of color/minoritized groups are centered.” Conveniently, “realities” from minority groups—and individuals—that refused to fit with the pre-built White- and racism-blaming CRT narrative didn’t count.
“To advance anti-racist social work education,” they also reasoned, “the profession must examine the White supremacy and ethnocracy that underscores social work as an applied social science that maintains information structures, paradigms, theories, and practices ensconced in academia.” (Imagine if the authors, instead, sought to examine a “Jewish ethnocracy” or “Black ethnocracy” or “Chinese ethnocracy.”)
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