“Legal Insurrection describes the spirit of what we do, and what we do is disruption. That’s how we’ve been described.” So says Professor William A. Jacobson of the Legal Insurrection Foundation (LIF), a non-profit organization founded in 2019 and whose mission is to “investigate, educate, and litigate.” LIF monitors CRT coursework, training, and related programs in educational institutions across the nation.

The year 2022 was LIF’s busiest and most prolific so far. One of its websites, CriticalRace.org, is a unique platform of databases and interactive maps showcasing the presence of CRT curricula and activities at universities and colleges across the U.S., and is mentioned in Education Reporter’s lead January article, CRT Goes to Medical School. The website’s expansive databases provide a wealth of verifiable information about CRT indoctrination in private schools, K-12 schools, medical schools, and most recently, in the nation’s military academies. The sheer volume of data has prompted more than 100 media mentions.

Jacobson told Fox News: “The ongoing damage to medical education and practice should be a wake-up call to lawmakers, since so much of medical school education and medicine is funded directly or indirectly through the government. The incoming House of Representatives should hold hearings on the destructive racialization of medical schools and medicine.”

The Legal Insurrection Foundation's websites also include Equal Protect.org, a brand new project the group is undertaking, which will be its focus in 2023. As Jacobson explains, the goal of the Equal Protection Project is “to fight the current form of racism that exists in school districts, in universities, corporations, and even government, which takes the form of preferring one race over another in order to advance the diversity, equity, and inclusion agenda.”

Providence Public School District prompts civil rights complaint

Jacobsen says LIF will shift from merely shining a light on the advancement of CRT through CriticalRace.org to “actually bringing litigation to challenge policies.” This new focus grew out of a complaint LIF filed against the Providence, Rhode Island Public School District (PPSD) with the U.S. Department of Education. The complaint charges the district with establishing a program that extends “student loan forgiveness to new teachers that is exclusively available to non-White educators.”

According to LIF, the PPSD openly discriminates by offering “up to $25,000” in student loan forgiveness “once the teacher completes three consecutive years of teaching in the district.” The catch is that the recipients of this largesse must “identify as Asian, Black, Indigenous, Latino, biracial, or multi-racial.” In other words, white teachers need not apply.

The complaint states, “The program violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and a variety of state law anti-discrimination statutes.”

It’s important to note that neither Jacobson nor others associated with LIF oppose recruiting teachers of various races and ethnicities. They believe the answer for past racial discrimination is equal protection and fairness for all, not more or different discrimination. “The discriminatory loan forgiveness program is a pure racial preference,” Jacobson say; “just check a box and you are eligible or not. It reduces people to the color of their skin or ethnicity, and doesn’t even try to take into account their individual life experiences.”

He adds that legally, there are right and wrong ways to achieve diversity, and that PPSD’s is an example of the wrong way. “Outreach to expand the pool of applicants and examining the systems to weed out bias to ensure equal treatment are permissible,” he explains. “Conditioning hiring incentives and employment benefits based on which racial or ethnic box is checked is the legally wrong way to do it.”

LIF files amicus briefs

LIF has also been busy filing amicus briefs in support of free speech and against discrimination, including a SCOTUS Brief filed on behalf of the plaintiff and petitioner in the case, Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College. The case was argued before the high court on October 31, 2022, and a decision could be announced at any time.

LIF’s Summary of Argument states:

• The grand judicial experiment of excusing racial discrimination in university admissions in the hope it would promote the educational objective of diversity of viewpoint has failed, and accordingly, this Court should overrule or modify its holding in Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003) (“Grutter”). Despite the Court permitting the use of race in higher education admissions, viewpoint diversity is increasingly endangered on campus. Since Grutter, the range of viewpoints permitted on campus, particularly on matters regarding race, has narrowed. It’s time to return to the constitutional prohibition against racial discrimination without an exception for education.

With more than 600,000 users of its CriticalRace.org databases, seven million interactive visits, and dozens of favorable stories by high-profile media outlets such as Fox News, The Blaze, Newsmax, National Review, The Epoch Times, Washington Examiner, Campus Reform, Breitbart, and The Daily Signal, and grudging mentions by less favorable “mainstream” media who nonetheless “recognize the thoroughness and reliability of the data,” LIF pledges to continue adding new features to its websites and expanding its strategic initiatives.

Jacobson encourages supporters and users of LIF’s websites to “stay tuned for exciting updates” in 2023. Parents and others who have voiced opposition to CRT applaud their efforts and wish them continued success.

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