Commentary on Edina’s curriculum and climate

powerline:

Katherine Kersten is a Senior Fellow at Center of the American Experiment, the think tank that I run. In the Fall 2017 issue of our magazine, Thinking Minnesota, she wrote a long, thoroughly documented expose of leftist political indoctrination and bullying of nonconforming students, teachers and staff in the Edina, Minnesota public school system. She did a follow-up story in the Winter 2018 issue of the magazine. Because of their quality and depth of reporting, these articles (along with an op-ed by Kathy in the Minneapolis Star Tribune on the same subject) triggered a vigorous local debate.

The issue of left-wing indoctrination in the schools is, of course, of national interest, and Kathy’s articles began to attract attention from national news outlets, as well. The Weekly Standard commissioned a piece by Kathy which greatly expanded the national reach of the story. Kathy’s Weekly Standard article was featured on the Drudge Report. Links to the article were tweeted by prominent conservatives like Brit Hume. Fox’s Dana Perino included it in her weekly reading list. Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson, the Canadian psychologist whose recent book was the #1 best seller on Amazon for several weeks, discussed it. The piece became one of the Weekly Standard’s most-read articles of 2018.

Many popular web sites linked to, and discussed, Kathy’s various Edina articles, including, of course, Power Line. In addition, national web sites including Real Clear Politics, InstaPundit (three times), Fox News, the Kansas City Star, the Independent Women’s Forum, Intellectual Takeout, Education News, Breitbart, The American Conservative, PJ Media, Erick Erickson in the Macon, Georgia Telegraph, Legal Insurrection, Frontpage Magazine, Hot Air, Alpha News, and many more.

In addition, Kathy appeared on television on Fox & Friends, and on Dennis Prager’s radio show, and was also a guest on a number of local radio programs across the country. Her stories about indoctrination and bullying in the Edina schools truly had gone national.

Thus, I was not surprised to get an email from Solvejg Wastvedt, a reporter for Minnesota Public Radio, on March 5. Ms. Wastvedt said that she wanted to interview me. She wrote: