Ted Cruz’s Daughters Attend a Private School That Is ‘Antiracist’

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas helped lead the Republican cost in opposition to antiracism efforts at a non-public college in Washington throughout the Supreme Courtroom affirmation listening to this week for Choose Ketanji Brown Jackson. However leaders on the non-public college in Houston the place the senator sends his two daughters have articulated an analogous dedication.

Mr. Cruz mentioned throughout the listening to that the curriculum of Georgetown Day, an costly non-public college in Northwest Washington the place Choose Jackson is one in all 23 members of the board of trustees, was “stuffed and overflowing with essential race idea.” Essential race idea is an instructional idea that Republicans have more and more used as a imprecise, catchall time period to criticize how educators infuse concepts about racism and inequality into curriculum.

Flanked on Tuesday by a blown-up web page from “Antiracist Child,” by Ibram X. Kendi, Mr. Cruz held up guide after guide that he described as assigned studying on the college and grilled Choose Jackson about whether or not she endorsed their messages.

Mr. Cruz’s feedback have been a part of a stunning assault on Georgetown Day as Republicans sought to take advantage of barely coded appeals to racism throughout the listening to for Choose Jackson, who’s poised to grow to be the primary Black lady on the Supreme Courtroom. The college has for many years educated kids of the liberal and conservative elite. Dad and mom who enroll their kids pay greater than $40,000 a yr.

St. John’s College, the place Mr. Cruz’s daughters are college students, can also be an elite establishment, with annual tuition topping $32,000, in accordance with its web site. And leaders there have advocated an analogous antiracist stance.

In June 2020, shortly after George Floyd, a Black man, was killed by a white police officer who pinned Mr. Floyd’s neck below his knee, setting off protests throughout the nation, college leaders wrote to the neighborhood about their method.

“St. John’s, as an establishment, should be antiracist and remove racism of any sort — together with institutional racism — inside our faculty neighborhood and past,” wrote Mark Desjardins, then the college’s headmaster, and John Moody, the chairman of the board of trustees.

A press release on neighborhood and inclusion, accredited by the board in 2018, says the college ensures “cultural intelligence and proficiency” for all neighborhood members. It additionally incorporates “cultural proficiency, variety, world consciousness and inclusivity into all aspects” of the curriculum.

The New Republic and The Washington Publish reported earlier on St. John’s. A spokeswoman for Mr. Cruz didn’t instantly present solutions to questions late Thursday.

In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. Cruz mentioned his questions throughout the listening to weren’t meant to recommend that folks didn’t know what their kids have been studying, or that there ought to be any motion taken in opposition to the college — which might undermine rules like college selection and personal college autonomy that Republicans champion.

“I’m saying that Choose Jackson is on the board of a faculty that aggressively teaches essential race idea,” he mentioned, “and that’s an excessive and divisive idea that pits kids in opposition to different kids, divides us primarily based on race, and teaches a false and revisionist historical past of our nation.”