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Event Culture Race, Critical Race Theory

Deconstructing Wokeness in K-12 and Corporate America

22
Friday October 2021

As Manhattan Institute senior fellow Christopher Rufo has documented in City Journal, a new “woke” orthodoxy is now embedded in many schools, government agencies, and a large and growing number of businesses.

This year, public and private K-12 schools became the epicenter of a parent-led movement against this orthodoxy. In some schools, primary education requires training students and teachers to resist capitalism, color blindness, and even traditional norms of civility. Parents and policymakers have sought to depoliticize the classroom, but they face entrenched opposition from school boards, bureaucrats, and the federal government. 

Meanwhile, the private sector, once thought immune from radical politics, has gone woke. America’s elite corporations mandate race-segregated trainings, while their diversity offices have institutionalized the demands of an uncompromising brand of racial identity politics. All the while, environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investors have cemented their influence through little-noticed proxy voting.

On October 22, 2021, the Manhattan Institute convened a conference to assess the pervasiveness of political indoctrination in public education and corporate America and chart a pragmatic course toward reform.

AGENDA: 

10:00 AM – 10:30 AM
REGISTRATION

10:30 AM – 11:40 AM
PANEL I: CRITICAL PEDAGOGIES AND WOKE EDUCATORS
Moderator: Christopher Rufo, Manhattan Institute senior fellow and City Journal contributing editor
James R. Copland, Manhattan Institute senior fellow and director of legal policy
Asra Nomani, former Wall Street Journal reporter and vice president of strategy and investigations at Parents Defending Education
Paul Rossi, Advisory Board, Educational Liberty Alliance

11:40 AM – 11:50 AM
BREAK AND LIGHT REFRESHMENTS

11:50 AM – 12:00 PM
Remarks by Vivek Ramaswamy
, Founder & Executive Chairman, Roivant Sciences; author of Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam

12:00 PM – 1:00 PM
PANEL II: WOKE CAPITALISM AND ITS CRONIES
Moderator: Ross Douthat, author and New York Times columnist
Vivek Ramaswamy, Founder & Executive Chairman, Roivant Sciences; author of Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam
Christopher Rufo, Manhattan Institute senior fellow and City Journal contributing editor
James R. Copland, Manhattan Institute senior fellow and director of legal policy

communications@manhattan-institute.org