On February 27, 2025, the Department of Education issued a press release announcing the launch of the “End DEI Portal” that permits community members to anonymously report “illegal discriminatory practices” taking place in public schools. The goal is to ensure “all students have access to meaningful learning free of divisive ideologies and indoctrination.” The Trump administration is committed to ridding public schools of any promulgation or manifestation of leftist dogma derived from Critical Race Theory (CRT) or what are euphemistically called “diversity, equity, and inclusion” practices.
Americans, angry and frustrated by the ideological monopoly controlling schools subsidized by public money, should first spread the word about this portal, and then use it.
And it’s not just parents who should use it. The people who best know what goes on behind the scenes in public schools are administrators, faculty, and staff.
They hear conversations about discriminatory hiring practices. For years, teachers and administrators have discriminated based on race, sex, and sexual predilections in hiring. Out of earshot of the people who pay their salaries, presumptuous leftists talk openly about their desire to find teacher candidates who have any skin color but white.
In many public schools, teachers and administrators have been subjected to indoctrination with ideas derived from CRT and DEI ideologies during professional development. “Professional development” is what teachers participate in on late arrival days, institute days, and summer breaks. Taxpayers pay for professional development and yet have no idea what takes place in these workshops.
The last three years (2005-2008) of my decade of employment at Deerfield High School on Chicago’s North Shore, I was subjected to controversial leftist indoctrination at every professional development meeting. Teachers in my department, English, were the chief propagandists.
Two of those leftist propagandists/activists, Christine Saxman and Daniel Cohen, also taught at White Privilege Conferences. Saxman has since left to become an “antiracism” consultant and hawk her book Being White Today. At least she’s no longer sucking money out of the pockets of taxpayers.
Cohen moved on to teach English at Oak Park-River Forest High School, where he has continued his leftist activism.
In June 2024, an 18-page complaint against Cohen and two colleagues, Anthony Clark and Wafaa Alwawi, alleges “that each of the three have demonstrated unprofessional conduct as well as promoted and condoned antisemitic statements and/or acts and, as such, have failed to demonstrate the good character required of teachers in the State of Illinois” was filed with the Illinois State Board of Education and the Illinois Attorney General. To get a better understanding of why the End DEI Portal is necessary, spend a few minutes reviewing the shocking allegations and evidence against Cohen, Clark, and Alwawi.
That Cohen would be accused of failing to demonstrate good character doesn’t surprise me. He was one of my daughters’ teachers in her senior year. In one class, he asked students to name stereotypes of blacks. The students had little to say, so Cohen chimed in and said that one stereotype of black men is that they’re “well hung,” and then he wrote those words on the white board. This was twenty-five years ago.
When I worked at DHS, District 113 wasted thousands of taxpayer dollars for diverse CRT/DEI infused programs. They sent staff to White Privilege Conferences. They wasted money on the National SEED (Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity) Project, created by Peggy McIntosh of “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” infamy. And the superintendent at the time, George Fornero, hired the controversial and expensive race grifter Glenn Singleton of Courageous Conversations to indoctrinate staff and faculty at both Deerfield and Highland Park High Schools.
In the face of continual leftwing propaganda during professional development at DHS, I tried to reason with colleagues. I said that as an educational institution, we had a pedagogical obligation to study resources from diverse perspectives, especially on controversial issues, rather than continually studying only one set of ideas. For that, I became a pariah. And nothing changed.
If Americans think hardcore leftist activists will stop exposing students to leftist curricular and supplementary resources; if they think hardcore leftists will stop expressing their social, political, and moral views in the classroom; if they think hardcore leftist activists will stop wearing t-shirts with political messages and adorning their classrooms with leftist paraphernalia, they don’t know hardcore leftist “educators.”
Leftist activists who exploit their jobs and public money to disseminate their beliefs are presumptuous and tenacious. They thrive on anonymity and near-absolute autonomy. And they detest conservatives.
As expected, leftists are having a conniption at the prospect of their days of indoctrinating other people’s children using those people’s money may be ending. Lefty journalist Aziah Siid, fan of Nikole Hannah-Jones, writes that some are calling the portal “a snitch line.”
The far left National Parents Union describes the portal as “a weapon to attack and cause chaos.” What exactly constitutes an attack? What does chaos look like for National Parents Union leftists? Not being free to indoctrinate?
Teachers who stay away from espousing DEI and CRT ideas will suffer no consequences. If they just teach the subjects for which they were hired to teach, nothing will happen. Zip, zero, rien, nada.
Parents have been trying for years to rein in the propagandists, all to no avail. When public school teachers have no respect for the views of all community members or for authority, when they choose to ignore federal executive orders, when they insist on exploiting public schools and money for their pet ideological projects, a “snitch line” is necessary.
Snitching is what people do to report wrongdoing. So, in that sense, it is a snitch line. But many Americans think of it as a much-needed transparency portal. Remember, democracy dies in darkness.
We the people now have a tool: the End DEI Portal. Use it. Parents, administrators, faculty members, staff members, and school board members, when you find out that teachers are promoting the idea that anyone who is white, or male, or heterosexual is an oppressor—a pernicious, bigoted idea Daniel Cohen was promoting twenty-five years ago in District 113—report it.