| See more about the Brearley letter here. |
Dalton School’s Jim Best announced he was leaving Friday to pursue "other exciting and inspiring opportunities" after 16 years at the school. His departure came after months of controversy at the Upper East Side academic bastion over the school’s "anti-racism" focus.
At the same time, a father at the equally prestigious, $54,000-a-year Brearley School sent a scathing, nearly 1700-word letter to the institution’s roughly 600 families over Brearley’s "obsession with race."
The letter by Andrew Gutmann, first published in Bari Weiss’ Substack, explained why he was pulling his daughter out of the Upper East Side school after seven years. She started there in kindergarten.
"It should be abundantly clear to any thinking parent that Brearley has completely lost its way," Gutmann wrote. "The administration and the Board of Trustees have displayed a cowardly and appalling lack of leadership by appeasing an anti-intellectual, illiberal mob."
He went on to say that he objects "to the view that I should be judged by the color of my skin. I cannot tolerate a school that not only judges my daughter by the color of her skin, but encourages and instructs her to prejudge others by theirs.
"By viewing every element of education, every aspect of history, and every facet of society through the lens of skin color and race, we are desecrating the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and utterly violating the movement for which such civil rights leaders believed, fought, and died."
Gutmann’s most controversial claim in the letter was objecting to what he said was the school’s belief in "systemic racism."
"Systemic racism, apparently supported by Brearley, that any educational, professional, or societal outcome where Blacks are underrepresented is prima facie evidence of the aforementioned systemic racism, or of white supremacy
...the pernicious doctrine that laws were intended to be obeyed, that society works better when people don't pour shreiking from their places of worship every Friday for a weekend of rioting over insults real or imagined; and that cannibalism, beastiality, incest, murder, theft, rape, and similar activities are bad. A Dead White European (which invalidates his opinion) philosopher once opined that societies thrive when a person's word can be relied upon, and that a society which puts individual happinessfirst will invariably fail. Strangely enough, other successful societies, such as China, Japan, Korea, and those kinds of places could also be lumped with
white supremacistsocieties, since they push the same values...
and oppression," he wrote.
Brearley head of school fired back Friday with her own missive to the school’s families, calling Gutmann’s letter "deeply offensive and harmful."
"This afternoon, I and others who work closely with Upper School students met with more than one hundred of them, many of whom told us that they felt frightened and intimidated by the letter and the fact that it was sent directly to our homes," Jane Fried wrote. "Our students noted that as this letter, which denies the presence of systemic racism, crossed their doorways, the evidence of ongoing racism — systemic or otherwise — is daily present in our headlines."
Gutmann told the Post Saturday that he stood by his letter and expressed scorn for Fried’s contention that upper school students would be "frightened" by a letter.
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