In crackdown on race-related content, Education Department targets internal book clubs, meetings
The guidance largely echoes OMB’s memo in describing the type of content that is now disfavored in government training sessions.
The Education Department plans to scrutinize a wide range of employee activities — including internal book clubs — in search of “Anti-American propaganda” and discussions about “white privilege” as it carries out the White House’s demand that federal agencies halt certain types of race-related training.
In an internal email this week obtained by POLITICO, the department ordered a review of agency contracts for diversity training and "internal employee activities" to root out topics such as “critical race theory” or materials that suggest that the U.S. is an inherently racist country. The crackdown comes as the department implements a government-wide directive the White House issued Friday to stop what it called “un-American propaganda training sessions" about race.
To implement that policy, the Education Department will require each of its offices in D.C., as well as regional outposts throughout the country, to review a range of training materials, including outside contracts for diversity workshops, plus content produced internally at the agency.
An Education Department spokesperson did not comment on the internal agency guidance Wednesday night.
The department's guidance largely echoes OMB’s memo in describing the type of content that is now disfavored in government training sessions: any material “that teaches, trains or suggests the following: (1) virtually all White people contribute to racism or benefit from racism (2) critical race theory (3) white privilege (4) that the United States is an inherently racist or evil country (5) that any race or ethnicity is inherently racist or evil (6) Anti-American propaganda.”
Department officials, according to the email, have already concluded that at least some of its training activities — including a program called “Unconscious Bias and Conversations in the Midst of Change” — would be allowed to continue because they do not include any of the topics prohibited by the OMB memo.
The email said department officials have similarly determined that all diversity and inclusion training offered by the agency’s Office of Equal Employment Opportunity Services complies with the new OMB policy.
The OMB memo, first reported on Friday evening by The Washington Post, states that “it has come to the President’s attention” that the federal CONTINUE READING: In crackdown on race-related content, Education Department targets internal book clubs, meetings - POLITICO