The Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR) is an American nonprofit organization founded in 2021.
The group has campaigned against diversity and inclusion programs, ethnic studies curricula, and antiracism initiatives that it refers to as "critical race theory" (CRT). Critics argue that the organization conflates CRT with any race-related discussions, distorting its academic origins. In addition, FAIR has taken a stance against gender-inclusive policies in schools, particularly regarding the use of preferred gender pronouns and lessons on gender identity. The organization claims that such policies infringe on free speech and religious freedoms, often challenging the legality of these measures in various school districts. The group has supported lawsuits against school equity policies and opposed race-based COVID-19 treatment guidelines.
Founding and advisors FAIR was founded in early 2021 by Bion Bartning, an investor, entrepreneur and co-founder of Eos Products. Bartning had sent his children to attend Riverdale Country School, a private college-prep school located in New York City. He observed his children's schooling in the fall of 2020, which was conducted virtually over Zoom. The school introduced a theme of "allyship" for the school year, promoting the idea that members of "privileged classes" should advance the interests and the voices of oppressed groups over their own. The students were shown a video of the school's mascot instructing them that they needed to "check each other's words and actions". After removing his children from Riverdale Country School, Bartning founded FAIR to oppose antiracist efforts that he views as "a kind of religion taking hold in American education that forces people into categories according to their race." He argued the initiatives did more harm than good by focusing on differences between people. Bartning established FAIR in January 2021 and expressed his concerns about how schools teach about racism in a March Wall Street Journal opinion piece.
The organization is a nonprofit. Monica Harris, a lawyer and business executive, is the organization's executive director.
FAIR describes itself as non-partisan and "pro-human". Bartning is a self-described independent who says he grew up with liberal values. FAIR has a diverse board of advisors comprising around 50 people, including journalists, academics, artists, and human rights activists. Advisors include Megyn Kelly, Daryl Davis, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, John McWhorter, Glenn Loury, Melissa Chen, Bari Weiss, and Abigail Shrier. The organization says it is non-partisan, and its board includes cognitive scientist Steven Pinker, a Democrat, as well as venture capitalist and Republican donor Alexander Lloyd. Conservative activist Christopher Rufo was formerly an advisory board member.
Activism and positions
Opposition to diversity, equity and inclusion policies
Almost all the cases profiled on FAIR's website involved battling what it calls critical race theory (CRT). A FAIR spokesperson denied the organization was founded to combat CRT and stated that it seeks to advocate for "one human race". FAIR hosts a message board where members discuss their activism against CRT in schools. Visitors to FAIR's website can report schools and organizations for teaching about diversity, equity, and inclusion in divisive ways. Critics have likened their approach to an All Lives Matter mentality, which was a response to the Black Lives Matter movement that sought to delegitimize the notion that Black people have been systematically discriminated against in the United States. According to experts and educators interviewed by Lancaster Online, what FAIR calls CRT is not CRT, but a catch-all term for anything race-related. CRT is a legal study of the ways in which race has been created, defined, and embedded into law throughout American history.
In January 2021, FAIR and anti-LGBT organizations including the Alliance Defending Freedom and the International Organization for the Family collaborated to support a federal lawsuit by a mother in Nevada claimed that her biracial son could not opt out of a mandatory sociology class that "appeared to be teaching students critical race theory and intersectionality".
In April, FAIR opposed a federal grant program supporting American history and civics education projects that, among other criteria, "incorporate racially, ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse perspectives". FAIR also highlighted, as a "profile in courage", a legal challenge to a debt relief program for Black farmers.
In June, FAIR started a campaign to support Dana Stangel-Plower, who resigned from the Dwight-Englewood School due to what she called "essentialist, racialist thinking". In her resignation letter she stated "this year, administrators continue to assert D-E's policy that we are hiring 'for diversity,' D-E has become a workplace that is hostile toward educators based solely on their immutable traits."
In August, an event at the American Legion in Island Pond about CRT featured Ben Morely, who started the Vermont chapter of FAIR and encouraged the crowd to vote down school budgets, file Freedom of Information Act requests to find what teachers are teaching, and take legal action against school districts if they found "evidence of indoctrination or discrimination". In December, Morley announced that he was running for a seat on the Lake Region Union High School board in Orleans County, Vermont. Local papers in Vermont published commentaries from parents that copied, word-for-word, a template letter from FAIR.
In September, conservative speakers at a Springfield forum about CRT denounced diversity education curricula ahead of a school district discussion about the use of DEI education in Springfield schools. Gregory Thayer, the founder of Vermonters for Vermont, objected to the term "equity" and advocated for the curricular approach outlined by FAIR.
In May 2022, FAIR wrote a letter to the Superintendent of Evanston/Skokie School District 65, Devon Horton, claiming that lessons teach young children that people are in danger because of whiteness, that racism is exclusively associated with whiteness, and that it claims without qualification that white people have more opportunities than "non-white" people.
In June, the University of California shelved a draft for a proposal that would add a semester of ethnic studies as a requirement for admission. FAIR wrote a letter opposing the policy, claiming it would lead to content that is highly political and ideological and promotes "divisive and radical ideas that pressure students to become activists to foment a political revolution".
A statement from the El Paso/Teller County chapter of FAIR opposed the equity policy adopted by the Colorado Springs School District 11 in May 2020. The policy, which was developed with input from more than 2000 community members in 2019, said that the district would support the equitable allocation of funding, diverse hiring practices, and a "culturally responsive" curriculum and training for staff about historic achievement inequities between white and nonwhite students.
In January 2022, Joseph Boyle of the El Paso-Teller chapter of FAIR criticized an audit by the American Institute of Research that was paid for by Colorado Springs School District 11. The audit found racial disparities in student achievement, both when comparing schools and students in the same school, and found this to be due to a concentration of high-needs students, school spending patterns, differences in access to better teachers, implicit biases, and low diversity among teachers. Boyle stated the "equity audit appears not to be a product of open inquiry, but the result of a quest to justify a predetermined ideological conclusion." Alexis Knox-Miller, the equity director, hosted "equity cafes" where parents and community members could discuss the reports which FAIR members attended to criticize the focus on equity as racism and "race essentialism". Knox-Miller stated that FAIR "followed me to every community cafe", were "poisoning the room", and that Boyle's complaint about equity work felt personal to her, stating "I'm a Black woman, and I'm sorry, the world looks at me through a racialized lens. We're not colorblind."
In September, Jeff Campbell, leader of the Twin Cities chapter of FAIR, wrote a statement to the Minnesota Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board (PELSB) criticizing their new standards, which included language requiring teachers to acknowledge the various backgrounds and gender identities of their students. Since 2020, teachers have had to participate in cultural competency training to renew their licenses, so the proposed changes would make new teacher licenses match the renewal process. Campbell stated that students are best served when they are all treated the same. FAIR argued that the new standards fall outside the agency's authority and that their implementation would complicate educator licensing requirements amid a teacher shortage.
Emory Free Speech Forum In November 2021, Emory Law School's Student Bar Association (SBA) rejected a charter requested by the Emory Free Speech Forum (EFSF). The charter would have meant that the organization could receive University funding, use University spaces, and advertise at the school's activity fair. The SBA wrote that it denied the charter because the group's goals overlapped with other established clubs and because they were concerned with the lack of safeguards such as moderators to facilitate discussions. The EFSF wrote to FAIR and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) for assistance. Letitia Kim, managing director of the Legal Network at FAIR, wrote a letter to the SBA president, Jadyn Taylor, urging the board to reverse their decision to reject the charter proposal. In late March, the SBA granted EFSF's charter. When the EFSF began to promote their event with FAIR titled "A Pro-Human Approach to Civil Rights", students began to protest the event and FAIR, describing it as a transphobic organization opposed to CRT.
Transgender students The Southern Poverty Law Center released a report that described FAIR in Medicine as "a key voice amplifying anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience". The report stated FAIR uses the framing of "parental rights" to suppress LGBTQ+ representation and that it fights to oppose the social affirmation of transgender people. FAIR's FAIR in Medicine program is led by Carrie Mendoza, an advisor to Genspect and Detrans help. It attempts to distinguish "talk therapy" from other forms of conversion therapy and has opposed a Department of Homeland Security nondiscrimination rule covering gender identity. FAIR made comments to the Department of Education opposing Title IX nondiscrimination protections for transgender students.
In September 2021, the conservative True North Reports published an open letter by Ben Morley, the FAIR Vermont chapter founder, to his son's teacher questioning why his son had been asked to share his pronouns in an eighth-grade humanities class.
In December, Letitia Kim, managing director of FAIR's legal network, argued that a school questionnaire at Jamesville-Dewitt (NY) Central School District which asked students their preferred pronouns violated the First Amendment of the United States Constitution since "requiring students to choose their pronouns is effectively demanding that they affirm a particular set of ideological beliefs about sex and gender, which many do not share" and "while teachers should permit students to declare their pronouns if they so choose, they may not require them to do so."