Heritage Fellow calls for the “entire elimination of DEI and inclusion” in schools
Sarah Parshall Perry: Project 2025 “really presents what we believe as a coalition of conservatives is the best vision for a free, prosperous, safe, and flourishing America”
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From the July 18, 2024, edition of NPR’s 2024 Election Special Coverage
SARAH PARSHALL PERRY (LEGAL FELLOW, HERITAGE FOUNDATION): Project 2025 is exactly the same thing that we've done since 1980, every presidential election, and provided to every candidate regardless of politics or political affiliation. In fact, not only were no presidential candidates involved in the crafting of Project 2025, the sole difference this year was that we built a coalition of more than a 100 conservative organizations in addition to publishing everything online. So there would be nothing in the shadows, nothing done that wasn't immediately examinable by anyone who found the project at project2025.org. I encourage your viewers and listeners to visit that and do a word search, do a category search. It is a long document, but that's because it utilizes more than 400 experts in areas from economic policy to national defense to education, and really presents what we believe as a coalition of conservatives is the best vision for a free, prosperous, safe, and flourishing America.
SUSAN DAVIS (HOST): I read a quote from you at Milwaukee where you were speaking at an event where you said, the primary responsibility, I think, of the next administration is to make sure that they don't sacrifice children on the altar of woke progressivism. Can you explain what you mean by that?
PERRY: Yeah. I think we are now seeing in public education more of an effort to indoctrinate than we are to educate. Our math and reading literacy scores are at 30%. We actually find ourselves in the middle of the pack of most developed nations in the world in terms of our ability to produce young educated minds for math and literacy specifically. We have more work to do when it comes to getting back to basics in the entire elimination of DEI and inclusion and what we're seeing now, which is a trend of illustrated porn in school libraries.
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And so our perspective there is that education should focus on education. It shouldn't focus on ideals that are those of one political party over another or pet projects of the teachers unions. And we know that both the AFT and the NEA have been very involved in American education in the last 4 years.