As CEO of a dark money-backed philanthropy, President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the Office of Personnel Management promoted a controversial racial theorist as well as groups calling to defund the police and post bail for violent left-wing protesters.
Kiran Ahuja would take office at a time of upheaval inside the federal government as it champions radically new notions of race and history. If confirmed in the evenly divided Senate, Ahuja would lead an agency of several thousand employees and act as chief human resource officer to millions of government officials.
BIDEN WANTS TO USE TAXPAYER FUNDS TO PROMOTE CRITICAL RACE THEORY, IRKING GOP
Biden has directed his administration to take a whole-of-government approach to addressing racial inequity, issuing sweeping executive orders and weaving the language of critical race theory into federal directives.
OPM said last month it would play “a critical leadership role” in pursuing the White House’s “governmentwide efforts to advance diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility.” The department also withdrew a Trump administration rule that required agencies to submit diversity training materials to the White House for approval.
In a hearing before the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee on Thursday, Ahuja stressed that she would “focus on diversity” if confirmed.
“Individuals want to see not only diversity all throughout the workforce but in the senior ranks, that they see individuals that come from their communities, that there’s a breadth of experience and people are bringing those experiences from all walks of life,” she said.
While leading Philanthropy Northwest, Ahuja has repeatedly promoted Ibram X. Kendi, a professor at Boston University whose writings about apportioning resources and opportunities by race and ethnicity in the pursuit of “equity has been sharply criticized by both the left and right as bigoted.”
Kendi addressed the charity’s annual conference last October, where he urged donors “to challenge the systems and policies that created this racist society” and expedite change through community funding.
Ahuja, who has praised Kendi’s ideas, described in a blog post last year her goal of freeing black, indigenous, gay, and transgender Americans from the “daily trials of white supremacy.” The piece links to an article by Kendi charging that the election of former President Donald Trump stood as an example of white supremacy.
During her hearing, Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, a Republican, asked Ahuja whether she endorsed Kendi’s claim in an article she shared that Trump’s election amounted to “racist progress.”
“I don’t know, specific to that statement,” Ahuja said before alleging that Kendi did nothing more than advise charities on how to advance “greater equity.”
Asked whether she agreed that Trump’s election was an example of racism, Ahuja said she was not familiar with the article but “would not [personally] make those types of statements.”
She did not say whether she believed the U.S. is a systemically racist nation, instead pointing to the generation-spanning challenges “that many individuals have experienced based on their race or ethnicity.”
Despite those answers, Ahuja worked with organizations looking to restructure institutions such as law enforcement as late as last summer.
When Black Lives Matter protests roiled and burned parts of Seattle, she urged supporters of Philanthropy Northwest to prioritize donations to groups such as the Northwest Community Bail Fund, which called for defunding the police and hosted a “mass bail out” last year for rioters detained by police.
Ahuja, a former Obama administration official, joined Philanthropy Northwest in 2017, a liberal dark-money group funded by corporate and government donors, according to a 2019 annual report.
Among these donors is Arabella Advisors, a network of four funds with designated 501(c)(4) status that, under IRS rules, are exempt from disclosing their donors. Its clients hold more than $100 billion in combined assets, Arabella directors have said.
Estimates of Arabella’s fundraising revenue outpace leading charities, including Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation, or the Clinton Foundation.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
According to public disclosures reviewed by the American Conservative, the Ford Foundation, another Philanthropy Northwest funder, has given $41.8 million to education projects in China over the past 15 years, including those associated with education reform efforts in Xinjiang. Such programs in Xinjiang are broadly understood today as reeducation camps for Uyghur Muslims and are rife with human rights abuses.
