An assistant principal of Neighborhood Charter Schools in Harlem with the New York City Department of Education revealed in a Project Veritas (PV) undercover video that he asks a “very specific” question of prospective hires in the area of “Diversity-Equity-Inclusion (DEI),” and “if people don’t answer that question right, they are an automatic Not Hire.”
In this third episode of PV’s education series titled “The Secret Curriculum,” Todd Soper is heard telling the undercover journalist that his teachers are expected to be fully indoctrinated in DEI concepts which, as parents have discovered, are central to Critical Race Theory (CRT).
In this exchange, Soper, a K-4 administrator who has charge of 670 students, says candidates for teaching positions have to show they have “done a lot of work within themselves, within the profession” in DEI concepts, and that a candidate who does not espouse them would not be offered a position. He tells the PV journalist he is looking for a particular response to a “very specific” question:
PV Journalist: But even conservative, like even –
Soper: Well, and it comes out – if people don’t answer that question right, they are just an automatic not hire.
PV Journalist: Well, give me an example of not answering that question. Like what, one of the –
Soper: If they [candidates] say that diversity is about – if they say something that lends itself to be colorblind, which could happen, like, “Oh, it’s like, you know, like everyone is equal.” Those things that are well-intentioned statements, but they’re missing the depth of understanding of how the intersections of our identity live out in the world. So, that person wouldn’t get hired.
Soper is then heard explaining how children’s skin color determines their lives, and candidates who do not accept that concept cannot really teach:
Our students’ lives matter based on the color of their skin, and how that intertwines into the context of the world. So, if you’re not willing to embrace fully that aspect of our students – and that means talking openly about race and talking about injustices in the world, then I don’t know if you’re going to be able to fully fulfill your [teacher] responsibilities.
Soper then provides the undercover journalist with the example of a teacher who “didn’t want to teach Black Lives Matter” ideology to children and ultimately resigned.
“She would’ve probably been fired eventually just based off of mindset,” he said.
Soper explains that embracing gender identity and sexual orientation is as important as racial identity. Children, he says, begin to be indoctrinated in these concepts as early as kindergarten:
We have always and will continue to embrace diversity on all levels. So, the same way we embrace identities that are based off of ethnicity, skin tone and gender, we also embrace orientation… Like for kindergarten, for Pride month, we got – every kid had a mirror and we talked about – a read aloud about an animal, or about a boy that said he wanted to be a mermaid. It’s a way to start, like, “You should be whoever you feel like you should be.” That was kind of the message of [the] read aloud.
“So, in kindergarten and first grade, they [students] are 5 and 6 [years old] – but I think we start with the umbrella theme of ‘embrace who you are. You have to love who you are, and each part of you is beautiful, whatever you feel,’” Soper is heard explaining to the undercover journalist how the indoctrination works.
“As kids get older and the idea of gender becomes more salient, which happens more towards fourth grade … the conversations deepen as the kids get older,” he says.
In the first video of PV’s “The Secret Curriculum” series, Connecticut Assistant Principal Jeremy Boland of Greenwich Public Schools revealed his strategies to ensure he never hires “Catholics” or “conservatives” to guarantee the children in his school are exposed to “subtle” left-wing indoctrination.
Jennifer “Ginn” Norris, the student activities director at elite, private Trinity School in New York City, touted in the second PV video of the series that she “sneaks” her left-wing political agenda into classrooms “wherever I can.”
Norris was heard showing her contempt for “white boys” who push back against her political activism at school, and boasting about how she can control the level of indoctrination to which students are exposed at the school because of her position.
As student activities director, for example, she told the PV undercover journalist she would never allow Republican speakers to come into the school.
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Susan Berry, PhD, is national education editor at The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Todd Soper” by Project Veritas.
