The Dalton School, an elite private prep school in New York’s Upper East Side, is experiencing something of a moral panic, and not about whether or not to have spring sports during Covid-19. On Dec. 18 my blog, The Naked Dollar, revealed a list of race-based demands from 120 Dalton teachers. The Naked Dollar isn’t particularly well-known, but the story quickly went global.
The demands read like a manifesto to codify permanently the “oppressed” status of black students and teachers. Among them:
• Expand the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion to at least 12 staffers. That works out to about one for every 100 students and would cost at least $1.5 million a year. What will they do all day? No doubt ferret out ever subtler racist infractions, real or imagined. The diversity industry needs friction to survive, so it perpetually reworks the definition of racism.
• Reroute 50% of contributions to Dalton to the New York public school system. An effective 50% tax rate on donations—the lifeblood of any private school—is a good way of ensuring that alumni close their wallets. How will the school pay all those diversity officers?
• Compensate “any Black student or student of color” who participate in antiracism initiatives or has his images used in school publications.Financial favoritism based solely on skin color seems an invitation to a civil-rights lawsuit.
An interesting side note is that the manifesto specifically distinguishes blacks from others “of color,” asserting that “anti-Blackness must be understood as distinct from ‘racism’ writ large.” One wonders when the “of color” community will start bristling at being thrown under the bus.
• Require courses focusing on “Black liberation and challenges to white supremacy” and “yearly anti-racist training” for not only employees but trustees and Parent Association volunteers. It’s hard to imagine parents—who are, after all, the school’s customers—enduring re-education sessions for the privilege of working free at the school. Administrators, faculty and staff would also be expected to “produce individual public anti-racism statements.” Such statements aren’t meant to be simple disavowals of racism, but rather advocacy of this new activist approach.
• “Ensure that there is no correlation between a student’s racial background and their ability to be successful at Dalton.” That means abolishing “tracked courses” by 2023 if blacks aren’t “at parity” with nonblacks by then. “Lowering the bar is not the way to achieve equality, and frankly, it’s insulting,” one Dalton mother, anonymous for fear of repercussions, tells me. She adds that many of her counterparts, suitably woke and having little problem with most of the demands, have decided that this is where they draw the line.
It goes on like this for eight pages. The Dalton endowment is $64 million, so annually it throws off about $2.5 million to the school’s operating budget. That number gets blown through by page three. Setting aside economics, the overall theme is a leveling of outcomes.
It is telling that the manifesto begins with a quote from a Marxist professor named Robin Kelley, someone who professes admiration for Trotsky’s “permanent revolution.” Should the Dalton administration give in to every last demand, there will be a new list tomorrow. The goal posts move quickly in this racket.
Which brings us to the pickle in which Dalton finds itself. This fall, Dalton never opened for in-person schooling. It was among the very few private schools in the city that didn’t. Parents have been paying $54,000 tuition for Zoom classes, and they’re unhappy. Headmaster Jim Best recently instructed the teachers to return after the Christmas break, but he gave them plenty of leeway to say no, including if they felt “uncomfortable.”
Despite the school’s motto, “Go Forth Unafraid,” a solid majority demurred. Some black teachers cited racism because they, on average, commute farther and therefore have to endanger themselves on public transportation. Mr. Best stood his ground and tightened the list of acceptable excuses, according to someone inside the process who spoke on condition of anonymity. That insider says teachers angrily responded that Dalton was “showing its whiteness” and “bowing to a right-wing conspiracy.” The fracas over reopening fueled passions over the racial demands, which were originally issued in August.
Dalton is in turmoil. The names of board members disappeared from the school’s website within days of my reporting the story. Parents, caught between feeling virtuous and an eroding quality of education, are conflicted. Several senior staff members are worried about losing their jobs, and that no one knows when the campus will reopen or what will happen when it does.
After I broke the story, Mr. Best responded in an email to the Dalton community. He disputed my characterization of the document as “faculty demands” and described it as “a ‘thought starter’ document” and “a set of ideas created at a specific moment in time as a well-intentioned effort to help Dalton navigate this critical issue.” He didn’t respond to an email Wednesday seeking further comment. As for reopening classrooms, a Dalton spokesman told the New York Post: “We’re expecting all teachers to return after winter break.”
Dalton has always been at the progressive leading edge, so being labeled “systemically racist” from within is a palpable irony. But it’s been clear since 1789 that revolutions eat their own. The uber-woke, demanding purity, come for the moderately woke first. Dalton’s leaders may be coming to realize this. They have heretofore been happy enough to burnish their woke credentials, but now they seek a comity they cannot achieve.
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