Info Magzine: What Andrew Gutman Letter to Brearley School Decrying Anti-Racism Policies Said

A rich former funding banker who now heads up his circle of relatives’s chemical enterprise has written a scathing letter to probably the most costly non-public colleges in New York City, decrying its anti-racism insurance policies.

The letter was penned by Andrew Gutman, explaining why he pulled his daughter out of Brearley School, an all-girls non-public college within the Upper East Side neighborhood of Manhattan that expenses $54,000 per 12 months.

Gutman despatched the letter to almost 600 households whose kids are enrolled within the college, urging them to communicate out towards the faculty’s “misguided” anti-racism insurance policies and “cancel culture that has of late permeated our society.”

Quite a few celebrities have despatched their daughters to the varsity, together with Chelsea Clinton, Tina Fey, Drew Barrymore and Steve Martin.

Gutman known as for the varsity’s “obsession with race” to cease and that the establishment had “completely lost its way.”

Andrew Gutman full letter:

Dear Fellow Brearley Parents,

Our household lately made the choice not to reenroll our daughter at Brearley for the 2021-22 college 12 months. She has been at Brearley for seven years, starting in kindergarten. In quick, we not consider that Brearley’s administration and Board of Trustees have any of our youngsters’s greatest pursuits at coronary heart. Moreover, we not have faith that our daughter will obtain the standard of schooling crucial to additional her growth right into a critically pondering, accountable, enlightened, and civic minded grownup. I write to you, as a fellow dad or mum, to share our causes for leaving the Brearley neighborhood but additionally to urge you to act earlier than the harm to the varsity, to its neighborhood, and to your individual kid’s schooling is irreparable.

It can’t be said strongly sufficient that Brearley’s obsession with race should cease. It must be abundantly clear to any pondering dad or mum that Brearley has fully misplaced its means. The administration and the Board of Trustees have displayed a cowardly and appalling lack of management by appeasing an anti-intellectual, intolerant mob, after which permitting the varsity to be captured by that very same mob. What follows are my very own private views on Brearley’s antiracism initiatives, however these are only a handful of the criticisms that I do know different dad and mom have expressed.

I object to the view that I must be judged by the colour of my pores and skin. I can’t tolerate a college that not solely judges my daughter by the colour of her pores and skin, however encourages and instructs her to prejudge others by theirs. By viewing each ingredient of schooling, each facet of historical past, and each side of society by way of the lens of pores and skin shade and race, we’re desecrating the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and totally violating the motion for which such civil rights leaders believed, fought, and died.

I object to the cost of systemic racism on this nation, and at our college. Systemic racism, correctly understood, is segregated colleges and separate lunch counters. It is the interning of Japanese and the exterminating of Jews. Systemic racism is unequivocally not a small variety of remoted incidences over a interval of a long time. Ask any lady, of any race, if they’ve ever skilled insults from buddies, have ever felt slighted by lecturers or have ever suffered the occasional injustice from a college at which they’ve spent up to 13 years of their life, and you’re sure to hear grievances, some petty, some not. We haven’t had systemic racism towards Blacks on this nation for the reason that civil rights reforms of the Nineteen Sixties, a interval of greater than 50 years. To state in any other case is a flat-out misrepresentation of our nation’s historical past and provides no understanding to any of in the present day’s societal points. If something, longstanding and widespread insurance policies comparable to affirmative motion, level in exactly the wrong way.

I object to a definition of systemic racism, apparently supported by Brearley, that any academic, skilled, or societal end result the place Blacks are underrepresented is prima facie proof of the aforementioned systemic racism, or of white supremacy and oppression. Facile and unsupported beliefs comparable to these are the polar reverse to the mental and scientific reality for which Brearley claims to stand. Furthermore, I name bullshit on Brearley’s oft-stated assertion that the varsity welcomes and encourages the really tough and uncomfortable conversations concerning race and the roots of racial discrepancies.

I object to the concept Blacks are unable to succeed on this nation with out support from authorities or from whites. Brearley, by adopting important race principle, is advocating the abhorrent viewpoint that Blacks ought to ceaselessly be thought to be helpless victims, and are incapable of success no matter their abilities, abilities, or exhausting work. What Brearley is educating our youngsters is exactly the true and proper definition of racism.

I object to obligatory anti-racism coaching for fogeys, particularly when introduced by the rent-seeking charlatans of Pollyanna. These classes, in each their content material and supply, are so sophomoric and simplistic, so unsophisticated and inane, that I might be embarrassed in the event that they had been taught to Brearley kindergarteners. They are an insult to dad and mom and unbecoming of any academic establishment, not to mention one in all Brearley’s caliber.

I object to Brearley’s vacuous, inappropriate, and fanatical use of phrases comparable to “equity,” “diversity” and “inclusiveness.” If Brearley’s administration was really involved about so-called “equity,” it will be discussing the cessation of admissions preferences for legacies, siblings, and people households with particularly deep pockets. If the administration was genuinely critical about “diversity,” it will not insist on the indoctrination of its college students, and their households, to a single mindset, most harking back to the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Instead, the varsity would foster an surroundings of mental openness and freedom of thought. And if Brearley actually cared about “inclusiveness,” the varsity would return to the ideas encapsulated within the motto “One Brearley,” as an alternative of educating the terribly divisive concept that there are solely, and all the time, two teams on this nation: victims and oppressors.

l object to Brearley’s advocacy for teams and actions comparable to Black Lives Matter, a Marxist, anti household, heterophobic, anti-Asian and anti-Semitic group that neither speaks for almost all of the Black neighborhood on this nation, nor in any means, form or kind, represents their greatest pursuits.

I object to, as we have now been instructed time and time once more over the previous 12 months, that the varsity’s first precedence is the protection of our youngsters. For goodness sake, Brearley is a college, not a hospital! The primary precedence of a college has all the time been, and all the time will likely be, schooling. Brearley’s misguided priorities exemplify each the protection tradition and “cover-your-ass” tradition that collectively have proved so poisonous to our society and have so broken the psychological well being and resiliency of two generations of youngsters, and counting.

I object to the gutting of the historical past, civics, and classical literature curriculums. I object to the censorship of books which have been taught for generations as a result of they include dated language doubtlessly offensive to the thin-skinned and hypersensitive (one thing that has already occurred in my daughter’s 4th grade class). I object to the decreasing of requirements for the admission of scholars and for the hiring of lecturers. I object to the erosion of rigor in classwork and the escalation of grade inflation. Any dad or mum with eyes open can foresee these inevitabilities ought to antiracism initiatives be allowed to persist.

We have in the present day in our nation, from each political events, and in any respect ranges of presidency, probably the most unwise and unvirtuous leaders in our nation’s historical past. Schools like Brearley are supposed to be the coaching grounds for these leaders. Our nation won’t survive a technology of management much more poorly educated than we have now now, nor will we survive a technology of scholars taught to hate its personal nation and despise its historical past.

Lastly, I object, with as robust a sentiment as attainable, that Brearley has begun to train what to assume, as an alternative of how to assume. I object that the varsity is now fostering an surroundings the place our daughters, and our daughters’ lecturers, are afraid to communicate their minds at school for worry of “consequences.” I object that Brearley is making an attempt to usurp the position of oldsters in educating morality, and bullying dad and mom to undertake that false morality at residence. I object that Brearley is fostering a divisive neighborhood the place households of various races, which till lately had been a part of the identical neighborhood, are actually segregated into two. These are the explanation why we are able to not ship our daughter to Brearley.

Over the previous a number of months, I’ve personally spoken to many Brearley dad and mom in addition to dad and mom of youngsters at peer establishments. It is abundantly clear that almost all of oldsters consider that Brearley’s antiracism insurance policies are misguided, divisive, counterproductive and cancerous. Many consider, as I do, that these insurance policies will finally destroy what was till lately, a beautiful academic establishment. But as I’m certain will come as no shock to you, given the insidious cancel tradition that has of late permeated our society, most dad and mom are too fearful to communicate up.

But communicate up you need to. There is energy in numbers and I guarantee you, the numbers are there. Contact the administration and the Board of Trustees and demand an finish to the harmful and anti-intellectual claptrap generally known as antiracism. And if modifications are usually not forthcoming then demand new management. For the sake of our neighborhood, our metropolis, our nation and most of all, our youngsters, silence is not an possibility.

Respectfully,

Andrew Gutmann