Website launched to track critical race theory teaching in higher education

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Tucker: Critical race theory is a lie from start to finish

Critical race theory is the latest attempt by the most privileged people in our society to displace the blame for their mismanagement of the country onto the people below them.

A newly-launched website features a free database with information on critical race theory (CRT) curricula and training in higher education – adding to the already-growing effort to track how the controversial ideology is permeating U.S. institutions.

William Jacobson, the Cornell law professor who founded the conservative-leaning site "Legal Insurrection," created the database as a comprehensive resource to "empower" American parents and students as the ideology makes its way into classrooms across the country.

Jacobson told Fox News on Tuesday: "The website is a resource for parents and students who no longer can assume they will be left alone ... the entire ideology of CRT and 'anti-racist' training is that 'silence is violence.'"

He added: "As we head into college application and selection season, we need to get parents, in particular, to focus on CRT that will be forced on their kids."

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Launched over the weekend, CriticalRace.org is the product of a six-month effort at Legal Insurrection and currently includes information on 200 colleges and universities, Jacobson said. In addition to cataloging CRT efforts, the website lists a series of resources purportedly "exposing the falsity and harm" caused by CRT. The homepage currently features a map that allows visitors to search for CRT incidents by state.

"People need to understand that Higher Ed is the source of the problem," Jacobson told Fox News. "It provides the ideological mothers' milk for activists, and trains the people who then go onto jobs in government and primary/secondary education, and the 'journalists' who push this coverage."

The issue received heightened attention in the wake of George Floyd's death last year as institutions began rolling out diversity training and other "anti-racist" initiatives. Jacobson's own university saw a group of faculty and students demanding, among other things, racial quotas and criticizing "colorblind" practices.

CRT and related training have received praise from some who say it helps combat "systemic racism."

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Angela Onwuachi-Willig, an expert on critical race theory at Boston University School of Law, told the Boston Globe, that critical race theory helped people understand the complexity of race – beyond "simple" narratives that they may have been taught.

"Racism is not extraordinary," she continued. "Race and racism are basically baked into everything we do in our society. It’s embedded in our institutions. It’s embedded in our minds and hearts."

Attorney M.E. Hart, who has conducted these types of training sessions, told The Washington Post that the training helped people live up to "this nation’s promise – ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'"

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But critics like Discovery Institute researcher Chris Rufo argue that those sessions actually reinforce racism by fixating on stereotypes and in some instances, encouraging segregation.

Last month, Rufo declared "war" on CRT, launching a legal coalition with the goal of advancing anti-discrimination complaints through the courts. The network's stated goal is to bring a complaint before the U.S. Supreme Court and "effectively abolish critical race theory programs from American life."