Emma Green

And she's spoken in an interview with The New York Times about how that made her tough, how it made her really be willing to sort of hold her own.

And she's kind of a do-gooder.

She went to the University of Kansas and then she went to teach for America.

And she spoke at length with me about the kind of do-gooder motivations for that.

She spoke a lot about how, as she described it, the victimhood thing really bothers her.

This idea that she has about college in America, which is that kids are going to these schools and they're taught that they're victims.

They're taught about all of the ways that structural racism or racism

sexual harassment or gender discrimination or whatever has made people into victims.

So it was interesting to me that someone from this really do-gooder background wanted to help kids in need also develop this allergic reaction, I think through experiences like Teach for America, to this idea that kids would be taught about their lack of power.

You know, I think what she would say is that there's a culture within our education system.

Here she was talking about K-12, but also in higher ed, there's a focus of certain types of ideas, certain types of analysis, and they are negative.

They are trying to deconstruct things.

They are probably, she would argue, anti-American.

She told me American schools are mostly educating kids who like to go to riots, right?

Her perception is that our education system is skewed in this way.

That's not helping kids to learn how to better themselves and believe in something and, you know, fight for their country and do cool, amazing, make America great again things.

They're learning something else.

So I think it's a couple things.

October 7th splashed campus protests all over the news.

These ideas about DEI and how to fix structural racism has been such a part of the cultural conversation.