New York University, as part of its “anti-racism” efforts, held a workshop for white parents of New York City public school children, on how to become better “allies.”
The workshop was first exposed by The Washington Free Beacon, ‘Woke or KKK’: NYU Hosts Whites-Only ‘Antiracism’ Workshop for Public School Parents:
New York University hosted a whites-only “anti-racism” workshop for public school parents in New York City, barring minorities from a five-months-long seminar that legal experts say was a brazen violation of civil rights law.The all-white seminar, “From Integration to Anti-Racism,” cost $360 to attend and met six times between February and June, according to a description of the program that has since been scrubbed from the university’s website without explanation. Organized by NYU’s Steinhardt School of Education, the workshop was “designed specifically for white public school parents” committed to “becoming anti-racist” and building “multiracial parent communities.”But to promote solidarity with all races, participants were told, it was necessary that the seminar include only one.
The Free Beacon article went on to document the scrubbed website pages as well as video it obtained confirming the segregated nature of the workshop.
In a statement to Fox News, NYU did not deny the evidence, but claimed it was all just one big miscommunication:
“This program, which has the important and valuable goal of reducing racism, is part of a large portfolio of offerings provided by the Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools for parents of all backgrounds. While this particular curriculum was principally intended for white parents of public school children who had a particular interest in this kind of anti-bias training, the program’s materials and content were not clear enough about it being open to all. NYU is working with program leadership to ensure that the program conforms with University’s standards and applicable law.”
The Equal Protection Project conducted its own research and investigation after seeing the Free Beacon article, and confirmed the exclusionary nature of the workshop.
Because the workshop appears to violate numerous civil rights laws, EPP has filed a Civil Rights Complaint with the Office of Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education, which has jurisdiction since NYU is a recipient of federal funding. The Civil Rights Complaint, a full embed of which is at the bottom of this post, reads in part:
We bring this civil rights complaint against New York University (“NYU”) – a private institution that receives federal funds from the U.S. Department of Education – for creating, supporting, and promoting the From Integration to Anti-Racist Workshop Series (the “FIAR”), a program that in 2023 explicitly limited participation to “white public school parents.”NYU’s creation and active promotion of a program that explicitly limited attendance based on race and skin color violates federal and state civil rights laws, including Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (“Title II”),1 Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (“Title VI”),2 42 U.S.C. § 1981 (“Section 1981) and the New York State and New York City Human Rights Laws.3OCR should investigate this blatantly discriminatory program and the circumstances under which the creation and promotion of it was approved, take all appropriate action to end such discriminatory practices and impose remedial relief. This includes, if necessary, imposing fines, initiating administrative proceedings to suspend, terminate, or refuse to grant or continue federal financial assistance, and referring the case to the Department of Justice for judicial proceedings to enforce the rights of the United States.
We went on to provide the evidence of the exclusionary nature of the workshop, and how it was not a mere miscommunication or lack of clarity, as NYU claims. The exclusionary nature of the workshop was crystal clear and is well documented. Here is a brief excerpt of the extensive facts presented in the Civil Rights Complaint:
According to an event website posted by nycASID, attendance for the 2019 FIAR did not appear to be limited exclusively to white parents; rather, participation was requested “[e]specially if you are a white parent committed to becoming antiracist[.]”10The following year, however, a Steinhardt website describing the workshop series for the 2020-2021 school year made clear its racial limitation, describing the FIAR program as “anti-racist training to white parents to help them identify and combat the destructive beliefs and patterns of internalized white supremacy” (emphasis added).11[image omitted]And, in 2023, the FIAR program explicitly stated that the workshops were racially exclusive. It titled the workshop series “From Integration to Anti-Racism: How We Show Up As White Parents In Multiracial NYC Public Schools” and described the program as being “specifically for white public school parents in New York City committed to becoming anti-racist and to collaboratively building equitable, powerful, multiracial parent communities in their schools.”12 A screenshot of the application for the 2023 FIAR program, which has since been removed from the university’s website, is reproduced below:
On social media, NYU described the workshops as a “training series to support white public school #parents to become anti-racist collaborators within multiracial parent communities.”13
The Civil Rights Complaint then reviewed the applicable law, and concluded:
The Office for Civil Rights has the power and obligation to investigate NYU’s role in creating, sponsoring, supporting and promoting the FIAR workshop series – and to discern whether NYU is engaging in such discrimination in its other activities – and to impose whatever remedial relief is necessary to hold the school accountable for that unlawful conduct. This includes, if necessary, imposing fines, initiating administrative proceedings to suspend or terminate federal financial assistance, and referring the case to the Department of Justice for judicial proceedings to enforce the rights of the United States under federal law. After all, “[t]he way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” Parents Involved in Cmty. Sch., 551 U.S. at 748.Accordingly, we respectfully ask that the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights impose remedial relief as the law permits for the benefit of those who have been illegally excluded from the FIAR based on racially discriminatory criteria, and that it ensure that all ongoing and future programming through NYU comports with applicable civil rights laws.
It makes no difference legally that the whites-only workshop was part of an “anti-racism” effort. It is a peculiar perversion of the radical race training that has consumed academia and increasingly corporations that being racist sometimes is part of the anti-racist therapy. Think about “white fragility” and similar programming whose entire purpose is to shame and belittle whites as part of making them supposedly better allies. That race-shaming programming may itself violate civil rights laws, but when it involves segregated and racially exclusionary programs, the line clearly has been crossed.
In covering EPP’s Civil Rights Complaint, the Free Beacon noted:
While many schools have been hit with discrimination complaints over minority-only fellowships, the NYU workshop, “From Integration to Antiracism,” marks the first time in recent memory that a university has faced blowback for excluding people of color.
This is a point I’ve made many times in interviews about EPP’s numerous actions concerning programs that exclude whites, such as at the Providence Public Schools, Albany Public Library, Missouri State University, the University of Minnesota, and SUNY-Buffalo Law School. We challenge those actions not because white people are excluded. It’s just that in this Critical Race Theory and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion obessive environment, every single openly discriminatory program we have come across was to exclude or marginalize whites (and sometimes asians and hispanics).
We promised that if we ever found a program that openly discriminated against blacks, we would bring a complaint in a heartbeat. Now we have.
[At EqualProtect.org we go up against some of the most powerful and wealthiest entities in the nation who are practicing DEI discrimination. Your donations are critical to our ability to carry on this battle.]
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