Last month, the CEO of a high-performing charter school chain in New York City was fired for, apparently, defending the proposition that low-income students of color deserve a rigorous, high-quality education.
Steven Wilson, the founder of Ascend Charter Schools, wrote a blog post titled “The Promise of Intellectual Joy,” in which he defended the value of a liberal education that allows students to “experience the satisfaction of their intellect: the heady delight in connecting ideas, the pleasure of imagination, and the reward that follows mental struggle.” Wilson expressed concern that the recent push for “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” could be hijacked by a virulent strand of social justice ideology that attacks intellectual virtues such as “objectivity” and “worship of the written word,” as manifestations of “white supremacist culture.”
