A host of recent developments — pandemic-era school closures, the spotlight shined on critical race theory, political action about school curricula from school boards up to governors’ mansions — have combined to put education, always an important issue, at the forefront of the public mind. If you’re looking for more coverage of this always-interesting topic than National Review offers, I would recommend checking out Chalkboard Review. Run by, among others, some education experts who have also written for us, Chalkboard Review was founded in 2020 “to provide a heterodox outlet for editorials, breaking news, and other commentary from educators.”
In addition to covering the aforementioned topics, contributors at Chalkboard Review also cast an often-skeptical eye at the network of nonprofits that currently dominate the education-reform space. In one such recent dispatch, Anthony Kennett (who has also written for National Review), takes a look at the record of Chris Stewart, CEO of the education-reform organization Brightbeam. Stewart’s various enterprises over the years have been backed by, among others, the Walton Family Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative; he appears regularly at education conferences. Yet beneath Stewart’s sheen of respectability, Kinnett finds a questionable past:
In the early 2000s, Stewart owned and operated a blog called “American Hot Sausage” where extremist and racist diatribes were published under the pseudonym “Reverend Rahelio Soleil.” Although the blog is now defunct, some of “Rahelio’s” rants can still be found at other websites.
Stewart’s ownership of this pseudonym was revealed in a front-page article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune in 2006. No additional blogs under the pseudonym were posted after the scandal, and Stewart sold the domain soon after. At best, Stewart’s backers failed to do their due diligence before giving him a platform and piles of cash.
While Bloomberg donated $15 million to founding the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, Stewart’s pseudonym wrote his disdain for mourning the loss caused by the terrorist attacks, claiming “September 11th is just another day in which nothing extraordinarily superhuman happened…nothing of important [sic] anyway.”
Sickeningly, he adds: “3,000 is not that many dead. Especially considering the amount of deaths we have caused or allowed internationally. Now, go tell Toby Keith and the nation of retards he represents to write a song about that.”
As the Walton Family Foundation donated a considerable amount to the Center named for Harriet Beecher Stowe (the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin), the so-called “Reverend Soleil” gave “Coon of the Week” awards to black people he “considered too cozy with the white power structure.”
In an article by “Rahelio” titled “How do we draw the N****r line?” he states, “The simple answer is that [Justice Clarence] Thomas is not black because he shares almost nothing in common with common black people. He is white with black skin.”
He then admits, “That is a racist statement, I know. I am a racist. America is racist. Only drunk people and liars would say differently.”
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative spent millions on Hispanic-education environments. Stewart spent half of his term on the board of Minneapolis Public Schools suspending and silencing Principal Tim Cadotte for attempting to boost Hispanic and ESL programs—which Stewart claimed were anti-Black.
These days, Stewart engages in the more workaday (for a certain kind of would-be education reformer) pastimes of calling opponents of critical race theory supporters of white nationalism and peddlers of “white grievance.”
Those interested can find more along these lines at Chalkboard Review.