Full Circle With the Southern Poverty Law Center

“Mom, this journal prompt is weird,” my son told me one afternoon in November 2019. He was a fourth-grade student at a private Montessori School. The students wrote weekly journal entries inspired by assigned articles to practice writing. “It’s kind of scary. Can you read it?” he asked me.

“Sure,” I answered.

He passed me the handout entitled, “Thanksgiving: A Native American View,” by Jacqueline Keeler. The commentary began with the author’s conflicted emotions about Thanksgiving in light of her American Indian ancestry. It quickly devolved into a threatening diatribe against Europeans: “I see, in the ‘First Thanksgiving’ a hidden Pilgrim heart…. We have seen the evil that it caused in the 350 years since. Genocide, environmental disasters, poverty, world wars, racism.” She asked, “Where is the hero who will destroy that heart of evil?”

I never imagined my 10-year-old would be charged to “destroy the heart in order to stop the evil” in elementary school lessons.

According to a school administrator, the “heart of evil” homework originated from national American Montessori Society curricula. Around the same time, diversity resources appeared on the school website, one being Learning for Justice from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). 

In researching the SPLC, I did not like what I discovered. Its founder, Morris Dees, was fired recently for undisclosed reasons. The New Yorker published, “The Reckoning of Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Center,” written by a former SPLC employee detailing racist and sexist practices within the organization.

(Read more: Why Is the Southern Poverty Law Center Bullying Victims of Radical Islamists?)

(Read more: How the Southern Poverty Law Center Smeared Immigration Group)

In 2016 the SPLC erroneously named Maajid Nawaz, the Muslim founder of a counterterrorism think tank Quilliam Foundation, as a radical extremist. Mr. Nawaz filed a defamation suit, settling for $3.375 million, and forcing the SPLC to apologize. This case was no one-off. The SPLC falsely condemned other minorities including Aayan Hirsi Ali and Dr. Ben Carson — bizarre actions for an organization advocating tolerance.

One article, written by Nathan Robinson of Current Affairs, exposed dubious fundraising tactics by the center. In 1981, KKK members murdered 19-year-old Michael Donald. The SPLC represented his mother in a suit that awarded her the Klan’s remaining assets of $55,000. The SPLC exploited the tragedy for money, using pictures of the teenage victim’s lynched body to raise millions. Mr. Donald’s family received none of these funds.

After exploring the politically biased SPLC websites, I decided to experiment. I typed the author’s name from my son’s holiday lesson into the Learning for Justice search engine. Sure enough, an assignment labeled “Thanksgiving Mourning” popped up. The link included Ms. Keeler’s piece with the same advertisement printed on my son’s Montessori handout. Was the SPLC feeding controversial, age-inappropriate curricula to the national American Montessori Society?

None of the staff at my son’s school knew about the SPLC’s systemic racism. None of them knew the SPLC’s “questionable management practices” were the subject of a 1995 Pulitzer finalist article by the Montgomery Examiner. Montessori — an educational philosophy originally grounded in childhood innocence — was now weaponized by ideologically corrupted entities to inculcate children in left-wing activism. By December 2019, I withdrew my kids from Montessori.

Over the ensuing months, the world turned upside down. Covid-19 hit, and schools went virtual. Nationwide, parents witnessed radical materials — from lessons on white privilege to the violence of the gender binary — uploaded on their children’s screens. Parental rights groups formed as mothers and fathers turned to each other for support.

By 2021, I joined two groups advocating for common sense in education: No Left Turn in Education and Education First Alliance. Members of these organizations share curricular concerns, research educational policy, and support parents who feel betrayed by the education system. We advocate for high academic standards and transparency in primary education.

Last week, the SPLC added these two organizations (and several others) to its “The Year in Hate and Extremism 2022” report. For speaking about my experience and helping other parents, the SPLC labelled my efforts and thousands of others “extreme.” My relationship with the SPLC has come full circle.

Based on personal experience and research, I hold no respect for the SPLC or its lists. The Biden administration, however, regards the SPLC as an expert partner in counterterrorism strategy. In 2021, a Biden Department of Defense memo revealed that SPLC leaders collaborated with the Secretary of Defense through a “Countering Extremism Working Group.” In January this year, the SPLC’s director for Intelligence Projects met with Biden’s National Security Council counterterrorism advisor at the White House. A March 2023 report from the Weaponization of Government Subcommittee exposed the FBI’s use of counterterrorism laws to target parents critical of school boards.

I told my 10-yeear-old he could skip the journal prompt about the 350 years of genocide and disaster perpetrated by white Americans; however, he insisted on completing it.“This doesn’t affect any understanding of Thanksgiving to me,” he wrote. “I think Thanksgiving is a time to appreciate, celebrate, give, and have fun. I think there is no reason not to celebrate Thanksgiving.”

Will the Biden DOJ and SPLC hate groupies be targeting my son for domestic terrorism as well?

Nancy Andersen, M.D., is the president of the North Carolina chapter of No Left Turn in Education and serves as a board member of Education First Alliance.

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