his own the night before our interview. Talk turned to the woke panic at private schools, but at his party, unlike mine, Gutmann said everybody at least agreed that you have to teach about the history of racism in America and that diversity is important (I think I need a new crowd...). “My view is diversity of thought is more important than diversity of skin color,” he then qualified. Gutmann’s letter to Brearley concerns his decision to remove his daughter from the school in response to the trappings of their racial awakening – anti-racist trainings for parents, weekly diversity assemblies for students, and updates to the curriculum to reflect these trends – which, in his view, discourage deep, meaningful engagement with important topics. He wasn’t surprised, he tells me, when he stopped receiving the school’s e-mail updates. Most recently, his daughter was asked not to participate in weekly diversity assemblies, on the grounds that the school’s media privacy policy forbids recounting Brearley’s goings-on to the press. Although its most controversial section denies the existence of systemic racism, a central tenet of anti-racist ideology, Gutmann’s letter wasn’t about race, he says, “It was about freedom of thought and open discussion.” He’s received around 1,000 supportive messages since his letter published in former New York Times opinion columnist Bari Weiss’ newsletter and received favorable coverage in the New York Post , where Gutmann also recently published an op-ed. Much of the fan mail came after he appeared on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show. “This is an intellectual movement,” he tells me, of
his newfound following. “This isn’t just rich people complaining.” The richest private-school parents, in fact, are the most afraid of speaking out. They’re afraid they’ll lose face or fall out of favor with their child’s school – whose loyalty they know they’ll need come college admissions season. “These Goldman Sachs guys are deathly afraid of losing their jobs,” says Gutmann. (He runs his family’s chemical business.) The richest private-school parents, in fact, are the most afraid of speaking out. They’re afraid they’ll lose face or fall out of favor with their child’s school – whose loyalty they know they’ll need come college admissions season. What Gutmann claims as his fundamental argument is hard to refute: “Everything should be talked about,” he says. Actually addressing the core problem – “Why are there racial discrepancies in schools?” – ought to fall to a robust history curriculum, he argues. And he certainly has a point... Consider the unequal distribution of the GI Bill, or the enforcement of neighborhood segregation by mortgage lenders – these are historical facts. “But people are scared to death to have any actual conversations about race.” The same fear he sees among his peers and fellow Brearley parents animated the school’s embrace of anti-racist teaching, in Gutmann’s view. “They go hire a consulting firm to do
American Consequences
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