This is the article that appeared in the October 2024 edition of Catalyst, our monthly journal. The date that prints out reflects the day that it was uploaded to our website. For a more accurate date of when the article was first published, check out the news release, here.
Minnesota Gov. and vice presidential candidate Tim Walz has some very bizarre, even repugnant, ideas about education. He has been reluctant to talk about them, and the media have shown no interest in pressing him on this issue.
Walz has had little to say about the rigors of the curriculum, but he has addressed a variety of side issues. One of them involves equity, diversity and inclusion, code words for combating racism by promoting more of it. He is responsible for launching a center at the Minnesota Department of Education to further this cause.
The education gurus who are the key contributors to this radical agenda include Boston University professor Ibram X. Kendi—he believes all white people are inveterate racists—and Robin DiAngelo, the disgraced author accused of plagiarizing her University of Washington 2004 Ph.D. dissertation. Both have made millions hawking their ideology.
Walz is also responsible for making Ethnic Studies a requirement for graduation.
When Bill Donohue taught a college course on Ethnic Studies, he had the students learn about the Irish (the European example), Puerto Ricans (the Latino example), African Americans (the African example), the Japanese (the Asian example) and Jews (the Middle Eastern example).
This is not Walz’s idea of Ethnic Studies. His notion involves introducing students to lectures on oppression and “cisheteropatriarchy,” which roughly means the study of successful heterosexual males, though in the courses Walz favors it means these guys are responsible for oppressing the world.
Walz is also interested in advancing the LGBTQ agenda, which has no intrinsic bearing on education. He earned the tag “Tampon Tim” when he ordered tampons be made available in every men’s bathroom in the state. Men cannot menstruate, which explains why tampons have never been placed in men’s bathrooms. But this doesn’t matter to Walz.
His anti-science view is shared by Hillary Clinton; she commended him for his “compassionate and common-sense policy.” Also, Minnesota State Rep. Sandra Feist defended Walz by saying, “Not all students who menstruate are female.” She did not identify one person who has a penis, scrotum and testicles who menstruates. He doesn’t exist, except in their heads.
Walz is so passionate about the LGBTQ agenda that effective in July 2025 he is going to mandate that all teachers affirm the sex of a student who falsely maintains that he is of the opposite sex. In other words, if Johnny thinks he is Jane and wants to be called she/her, or even they/them, then the teachers must oblige.
As Joy Pullman, the executive editor of The Federalist, notes, this would effectively “ban practicing Christians, Jews, and Muslims from teaching in public schools.” They do not accept the anti-science view that one’s sex is a subjective determination.
What makes Walz so dangerous is that he refuses to promote school choice, thus ensuring that most students are indoctrinated with his left-wing ideas about race and sex.
Every poll taken in Minnesota on school choice shows that more than 70 percent favor it, and this includes a majority of Democrats. Moreover, 26 states have some form of school choice program—21 run by Republicans and 5 by Democrats—but Walz refuses to offer minorities (whom he claims to champion) the same opportunity to select the school of their choice that those who are more affluent already enjoy.
The media are delinquent in not telling the truth about Walz’s education record. It’s a disaster, and so is the cover up.
