Jane Araf
speaker
1,797 appearances
216 recordings
2 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard 6d ago
Jane Araf’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 190 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 39.
Appearances
Moms for Liberty came to be at the height of the pandemic when parents were really frustrated with masking policies, with school closures. And it was also a time where there were a heightened amount of threats of violence against school board members.
And so this group has also framed the FBI's previous investigations into those types of violent threats against school board members as a politically motivated campaign to silence parents and organizations like theirs.
But things are very different now. There were representatives from Moms for Liberty in the White House when the president signed an executive order that aims at eliminating the Department of Education, another executive order that banned transgender athletes from playing on women's and girls' sports teams. And they endorsed an announcement from the Department of Education recently that
announcing the NDEI portal. And that's a portal where pretty much anyone in your community or beyond can go on this website and report educators if they see instances of diversity, equity, inclusion lessons in the school. And this is part of a larger effort by the Trump administration to just root it out.
You know, they've threatened federal funding to schools that they think are doing these types of programs.
Yeah. I mean, when I was speaking to a teacher who was afraid of the NDEI portal that I just mentioned, she found out about it and she thought, oh, my gosh. What if I get reported? And what are the consequences? Does it mean I just lose, you know, I can't teach anymore? Will I lose my job? And so she found herself censoring herself in her social studies class where she teaches history.
And so when her kids started making connections or saying things that might be not positive about the administration, she would just shut it down.
She just didn't want to feel like she was running awry of these very vague guidelines. And she didn't want to use even her first name with us because she was so scared of what repercussions might exist. She asked us only to identify her with her first initial E. Now, we reached out to the Department of Education, of course, about the intentions of this end DEI portal and about what would happen.
You know, if somebody gets reported, what's the process look like and what are the possible penalties for that? And we so far haven't gotten a response to those repeated requests. We spoke to another teacher in Idaho. Her name is Sarah Inama. She teaches sixth grade. And she had a sign up in her classroom and And it said, everyone is welcome here.
And the letters were multicolored, and there were hands up with little hearts in the middle, and each hand was a different skin tone. She'd had it up for years in her classroom, and one day the principal and vice-principal were going through the hallway looking for things that might not comply with new parameters, and they decided it was controversial.
No parents had complained, nothing like that, and they told her, you need to take it down.
She told me, I just don't want my students to think that I no longer believe in what that sign said. that they're all welcome here, no matter what their background is. So you put the poster back up.
So we did ask the school district what happened. They pretty much confirmed Inama's account of the way things happened. And they said it wasn't the words, everyone is welcome here on the sign, that they found problematic. It was the different colors of the letters and the different skin tones of the hands.
They said it could be, quote, determined to potentially express viewpoints regarding specific identity groups.
Yeah. She's still teaching. She's gotten a lot of support from the community. And that sign is still up.
Yeah, I mean, I think that's the fundamental question, right? You know, I went back to Tina Deskovich from Moms for Liberty, right? which is the group that endorsed this portal and is anti-DEI in schools. And I asked her, what about the people who feel silenced by things like the NDEI portal?
And she told me, you know, they should fight for their right, legally fight for their right that they have to free speech, just like we fought for our First Amendment right.
I talked to this pastor in Florida, and everybody knows him as Maynard. He's retired. He's another person who didn't want me to use his full name because he said he didn't want to endanger his family or members of the churches he preaches at. He's somebody who kind of fills in now since he's retired, still gives a sermon here or there when pastors are on vacation.
And he said now when he goes and gives sermons— If a person doesn't like what he said, how he's interpreted the Bible, the message he's giving that day, they'll walk up to him and say, I'm going to put you on a list.
And then another day, he was preaching a sermon around the idea that, you know, you love your neighbor as you love yourself, and you even love your enemy, which is a very, very difficult thing to do. And that was his sermon that day.
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