Ted Cruz harangued Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson about critical race theory. Why did her daughters attend a private school that teaches CRT, he asked, when she sits on the board of the school. Judge Jackson patiently explained that the board does not write the curriculum for the school, Georgetown Country Day School. Cruz professed shock that the school library contains books by Ibram X. Kendi. He is shocked!
Dana Milbank called out Ted Cruz for hypocrisy. His daughters attend the elite St. John’s School in Houston, which unabashedly endorses and teaches critical race theory.
He writes:
Georgetown Day School, in the nation’s capital, does indeed take a strong “anti-racism” approach. So does St. John’s School, the private school in Houston where, as the New Republic’s Timothy Noah noted, Cruz sends his daughters.
As the headmaster and chair of the board of trustees at St. John’s put it in 2020: “Black lives matter. … St. John’s, as an institution, must be anti-racist and eliminate racism of any type — including institutional racism.”
To its credit, the school has vowed to continue to “ensure that diversity, equity and inclusion are foundational aspects of our educational program,” and to “incorporate cultural proficiency, diversity, global awareness, and inclusivity into all facets of the K-12 curricula.”
A St. John’s class called “Issues of Justice and Equity in the Twenty-First Century” is labeled a “Critical Race Training Course” by the right-wing Legal Insurrection Foundation.
And there in the St. John’s library catalog is — wait for it — Kendi’s “Stamped (for Kids),” the very book Cruz demanded Jackson account for at Georgetown Day School. Cruz’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Ted Cruz is an embarrassment to the state of Texas. He is my Senator and I cringe every time he speaks. He was a student of Alan Dershowitz who once praised him as being an excellent student, however, yesterday Dershowitz said that the questions Cruz asked Judge Jackson were “absurd.” Texas deserves better!
Cruz is indeed an embarrassment to Texas, my home state. I fail to see how he can run for president since he was born in Canada. The Constitution is clear.
Cruz should be an embarrassment for every living creature on Earth, even malarial mosquitoes should be embarrassed to share the same planet with him.
.
You don’t have to be born in the U.S. to run for president. You just need to be a citizen of the U.S. at birth. The law at the time of Cruz’s birth said that a foreign-born baby was a U.S. citizen if at least one parent was a U.S. citizen. So the argument goes that Cruz was a U.S. citizen at birth because his mother was a U.S. citizen, and thus he’s eligible to run for president.
Too bad. Thanks for the correction.
Ted Cruz is not eligible to run for President, according to the birther movement which Ted Cruz’s own beloved Republican party has embraced with a fervor that is so strong that they take their marching orders from its foremost purveyor, Trump.
It is clear that flerp!’s explanation is 100% incorrect because the Republican party and their birther leader Trump have never questioned the citizenship of Obama’s mother.
Ted Cruz’s own Republican party questioned the PLACE where Obama was born and said it was not in Hawaii. They believe Obama was born in a foreign country which made Obama an illegitimate president despite his mother being an American citizen.
I always thought that Ted Cruz was short sighted but that he clearly believes he himself is not eligible to be president. And if Ted Cruz claims he is eligible but he was too cowardly to oppose Trump because his own needs are more important than the country’s, then he isn’t fit to be president.
In the case of Obama, he was actually born in Hawaii and his parents did not plot to run a fake Hawaiian birth announcement in 1961 because they expected their son to run for president someday and wanted him to be eligible.
But since Ted Cruz’ Republican Party clearly believes the place where Obama is born is the determining factor of whether he is a “legitimate” president or not, then Ted Cruz is illegitimate.
Maybe Ted Cruz can make a heartfelt speech about how he and his fellow Republicans were just being racist, and therefore being born in Canada makes a person eligible but being born in African does not. And frankly, isn’t that the truth of what the Republicans believe?
Diane — there are probably other readings of the Constitution, but that’s the one that makes sense to me.
Thanks, FLERP.
Alas, the law, as I understand it, on this question is debated. Currently, it tends in expert opinion toward the view that if the parent was a citizen at birth, the person is eligible, wherever the parents happened to be living at the time. But there are legal scholars who debate this. It’s not a settled question, I think. The racist Trump administration, btw, at the instigation of Stephen “Goebbels” Miller, wanted to overturn birthright citizenship. That IS established law.
Flerp is not wrong. Those who sought to derail Obama were wrong.
Even if Obama had been born in a foreign country, he would still have been eligible to be President.
“A natural-born citizen refers to someone who was a U.S. citizen at birth, and did not need to go through a naturalization proceeding later in life.” -From the Cornell Law School
Alan Dershowitz, pal of Jeffrey Epstein, is also an embarrassment to wherever he was born.
New York, New York. 1938, same year as my father.
1938 was a good year for me.
Baby pics, please!
Typical of Ted Cruz. {maybe someday he will ‘cruise” out of sight, the sooner the better.
I watched his harangue of Judge Jackson. Outside of a few Republicans who asked legitimate questions and addressed personal concerns it was a political show to shore up their Trump base of support. They projected the same questions over and over which she had more than adequately already answered.
Whatever happened to statesmanship which has been supplanted by political machinations.
And then Ted was photographed scrolling through his phone peering at Twitter for his “likes”.
Old joke:
Q. Why do people take an immediate dislike to Ted Cruz?
A. Saves time.
Q. What is the difference between Ted Cruz and a carp?
A. One is barbed, bottom-dwelling, and slimy, and the other is a fish.
That is a very funny joke. I lol.
Love it, Christine!
🙂
Cruz is a slimy creature of ambition who doesn’t believe a word of his vicious, utterly unwarranted (in the sense of having no evidential underpinning) attack on Judge Jackson. The contrast between the honorable Judge Jackson and her dishonorable attacker could not be more stark. He demonstrated only that there is no low to which he is not willing to sink in order to score points with the moron wing of the Repugnican base. If his attack looked like defamation and hate speech, that’s because that’s what it was, and Cruz, the Harvard-trained attack dog, knows this, too. He’s disgusting. It is no wonder why he is loathed by his colleagues, even by those who find him useful.
“Lucifer in the flesh”…..John Boehner
It doesn’t surprise me at all. On no issue are ed reformers more hypocritical than on private schools (and private school vouchers).
Completely and utterly incoherent. You see it with the voucher legisislation they all support. They are happy to impose reams of regulations on public schools (increse every single year) but they don’t regulate or provide any transparency at all on the private schools they all lobby to fund.
An absolute anti-public school double standard and ed reform is such an echo chamber this glaring inconsistency is never even mentioned.
Right now in Ohio the echo chamber are all lobbying to test public school students more- while lobbying for more voucher funding that comes with no requirements for the private schools that receive it. A pure ideological preference for private over public and private school students over public school students. Our schools get gimmicky, faddish ed reform regulations piled one of top of another, their schools get public funding but no regulation.
Mentions work by Timothy Noah in The New Republic
Ted Cruz Attacked Ketanji Brown Jackson for Affiliating With a Private School Like the One Where He Sends His Daughters
I’m not defending Ted Cruz because I find him to be a repugnant blob of flesh, but he is highlighting a problem even though he is a hypocrite. I straddled the line with 1 kid in public school and a 2nd kid in private school. There IS a HUGE difference in the way DEI/SEL is implemented in the 2 different school systems. This is where the problem lies. We all know that most American children attend public schools.
Most private schools, as a condition of their “mission statements” encourage students to do community outreach and serve under privileged communities. When scholarships are awarded by private schools (and there are many!) the condition of taking the $$$ includes service requirements. My son plays hockey for his school and does service hrs helping poor kids or disabled kids on the ice. He is also in the Honors program and must do service hrs for that. Clubs that kids join have a community service component. The DEI/SEL is a lived experience and it means something and has value in that it fosters empathy. They don’t realize they are learning…. by doing.
Public schools have DEI/SEL “curriculum” and some of it is pretty poor. Much of it comes from the corporate world. It is “taught” in the classroom and delivered much like a boring ” have to do” by teachers who are mandated to “teach” it. There are many surveys and questionnaires (developed by people who don’t know much about educating children) that are age inappropriate or worded in an odd way (can you say CC ELA standards!!??). It seems to rile up the kids (homework and more boring drivel in school) who in turn go home and complain to their parents. There is NO lived experience, therefore, there is NO empathy developed…..but it sure gets parents’ “spidey senses” going wild.
First, Cruz is a skilled lawyer, or he wouldn’t have made it through Harvard Law School. So, he knows that what he did was simply try to smear Judge Jackson with unfounded innuendo. What he did was reptilian and beneath the dignity that should be definitive of such a hearing, on so grave a matter.
Second, yeah, there is some ridiculous DEI instruction out there. There are almost 4 million K-12 teachers in the United States. If you look around, you will find examples of ridiculous instruction and instructional guidance on any topic. We had a reading coordinator at my school who sent around a memo saying that 9th graders should read ALL of the Odyssey–“the whole novel.” A U.S. history textbook infamously called Sputnik a nuclear device. A biology text I was asked to help revise said that blood going back to the heart was blue (not for clarity in an illustration but that the blood itself was blue).
Third, in a country where systemic racism is the lived quotidian experience of millions of people of color, complaining about some poorly conceived but innocuous DEI instruction is like making a big deal about a spot on the brightwork on deck when there is a hole in the hull. Systemic racism is a hole in the hull of our democracy, and it requires attention in our curricula.
“Systemic racism is a hole in the hull of our democracy, and it requires attention in our curricula.”
But NOT the way it’s done in public schools! Ted Cruz likely doesn’t know that his kids are participating in DEI/SEL because of “how” it’s implemented. His kids likely don’t know that they are “participating” in DEI/SEL because of how it’s implemented. Isn’t that how “learning” is supposed to occur? Isn’t that how “change” happens?
Public schools aren’t getting the job done because they make it something to be “delivered” with a shiny new product (mandated curriculum) developed by people with no educational experience or knowledge of how children react/respond/learn. When was the last time you walked the halls of a MS or HS? I’ve still got skin in the game. I know so many public school teachers and Admin that have pulled their children out of public school and put them into private and plan to retire after their kids graduate HS. They cite the behavior problems that are being caused by all of this “othering” of people. Kids/teens are remarkably accepting creatures, but when they are “mandated” to “learn” something that is so prescriptive, they tend to revolt……add in the hormone surge and it is a recipe for disaster. Nothing gets accomplished.
Until public schools do better, they will continue to have an exodus and they will continue to have behavior problems, racial issues etc. We need to get back to basics…..be nice/polite and respect that other people have opinions and different life experiences. Living is learning.
The subject of this post was Ted Cruz’s treatment of the honorable Judge Jackson. We’re getting WAY off the point.
When was the last time you walked the halls of a MS or HS?
I retired from full-time teaching three years ago.
It is NOT way off the point. Democracy is a mess right now! The culture wars are flaming (especially in public schools) and these issues will likely start arriving for high court decisions. I don’t like Ted Cruz any more than you do but he has a right to question a person who will be making rulings on these issues. It’s the way in which he does things and the hypocrisy of it that makes the left seethe with anger. He knows his kids get this at their private school…it’s just not mandated curriculum for the masses like in public school.
Lisa, Ted’s “evidence” that Judge Jackson was part of the VAST CRT CONSPIRACY was one bullet item from one slide from a speech she gave in which she mentioned that CRT was one of many legal approaches to the issue of discrimination. She didn’t take a stand on it. She simply reported that this was the case. But based on that, he launched into a TOTALLY UNFOUNDED bunch of innuendo, implying that she was a CRT activist. This was a lie, and he knew it was. The “examination” by Cruz was dirty tricks theatre for his ignorant racist base and a hit job on a truly judicious and balanced person in an utterly cynical attempt to score a Repugnican “win.”
And, of course, Ted Cruz knows full well that CRT, as referenced in passing in that presentation by Jackson was an academic legal theory, advanced by Derek Black and others, that argued that the legal framework that evolved from the Brown decision had been insufficient to end racism in America because it did not deal with underlying issues of racism embedded in legal, political, and social systems, that CRT is not all the BS that Cruz and his ghoulish cohort paint it to be–racism against whites, teaching children to hate themselves, and other such agitprop drivel.
Derrick Bell and others
Thank you, Diane, for correcting that lapse.
I have a kid in public high school now and LisaM in no way describes the truth.
LisaM believes that public high schools somehow are brainwashing kids with CRT and other programs — it is one of the most outrageous lies I have heard and it is worthy of a right wing Republican.
Parents who are disaffected are not citing the CRT or kids learning about racism in some “bad” way that make them run for private schools. I have seen some obviously racist parents who are right wing anti-CRT ideologues who present that false reality, but it is nonsense.
Bob Shepherd, you are right that this is such a non-issue. And contrary to what LisaM says, it is more likely to be problematic in private schools than public schools.
LisaM, you are simply making the case for private schools over public schools. Despite the fact that private schools don’t produce higher-achieving students per broad-brush statistics, one can recognize that the measure of ed-achievement is minimal and inauthentic [stdzd test scores], and that many private schools provide a better learning environment. I taught in a private hisch myself, back in the day: class size was 18-21, the school itself was smaller than public schools in the area; I could list other features but they basically boiled down to (1)we were not subject to the bureaucratic whims of pubschs, (2)teachers were treated as professionals, and (3)small classes & small school size made for closer relationships/ trust between teachers and students [and parents and admins]. But comparing them is apples and oranges: the advantages of private schools are amply paid for by parents out of pocket.
I think the point you’re really making is that pubschs have strayed far from that ideal in recent decades. You might have been fine with your local zoned pubsch had it been in the 80’s or ‘90’s, pre-NCLB/ ESSA testing & growth assessments, pre-stdzd approaches to SEL & DEI. Agreed. But why tie it into SCOTUS confirmation hearings? Cruz attacked US K12 ed in general— both pubschs and privschs– with his rants against teaching/ raising consciousness about racism & LGBTQ discrimination. He is not making your case.
I have complex ideas and feelings about private versus public schools, and these stem from having taught years ago in a Catholic school run by nuns who were breathtakingly kind and generous and giving of themselves to their students, one in which I ironically felt freer, intellectually and professionally, to teach as I saw fit, than I ever did in a public school. But I emphatically agree with Diane that people should be free to send their kids to private schools, as they should be free to homeschool, but the rest of us shouldn’t be forced to pay for this, as our commitment is to pay for universal public schools open to all. And, I am horrified by the current Repugnican push to use taxpayer dollars to fund fundamentalist, nationalist madrasas to indoctrinate a new generation of youth and so reverse their precipitous loss of grip on the hearts and minds of the young.
Lisa, I would like to add that you have a good point that SCOTUS may be presented in future with cases on whether states can constitutionally quash curriculum requiring teachers to address systemic racism or discrimination against LGBTQ, or require reading that some of the community deems overtly sexual— that that justifies Cruz’s questioning of the candidate. A Senator other than Cruz—someone more intelligent & nuanced or simply less focused on scoring points with voter base– might have been able to get at Jackson’s view on the constitutionality of such questions.
It’s a good thing those poor and disabled kids are there to ensure your son and his peers get their scholarship money.
Well, then how about the chorus kids who go to nursing homes and sing at holiday time? Are they bad too for entertaining old/infirm people? How about the band kids who go into the lower schools and play to pump up band participation at the HS level? I would rather kids use their talents/skills for good…it’s a win-win for all even if the kids are initially coerced. For most of the kids, it becomes part of their life, part of their social network with their team/peers/coaches, and they genuinely like what they are doing and see their impact on others.
Do unto others (the Golden Rule)….isn’t that how we want kids to grow into empathetic adults ready to face the world? Yes….off topic.
Tons of public schools do the same things. Don’t think that service (and if it’s required, is it truly service?) Doesn’t happen at public schools. The chorus and band and orchestra at the public junior high at which I teach all send groups to play at nursing homes and other such venues. We have a good bank at our school that is mostly staffed by students. We fund and donation raise for multiple organizations multiple times a year. Thousands of dollars are raised. And I am at a Title I school. Private schools most certainly DO NOT corner the market on service opportunities.
That’s food bank. I hate autocorrect
Lisa, I didn’t understand LetThemLearn’s crack about poor & disabled kids floating your son’s scholarship [??], but have to echo ThreatenedOutWest’s reply to you. All the pubschs in my region do all the things you mention and more– reachout inschool as well as to the community at large. I know because they regularly get kudos in our local weekly rag. That is not something restricted to private schools.
One of my grandsons is in a private school and the curriculum is awash with CRT. It is so over the top that the students don’t take it seriously.
OMG, Diane, thank you for that breath of fresh air– that reality check. I wonder if anyone read this or were they too busy ranting on. I know you have covered ed fads thoroughly in one of your books. I see this as one more wave of contemporaneous social feeling that will wash over pubschs—they are our creatures & they reflect us—which will be over-the-top at first blush, but will eventually even out into some sort of incremental consciousness-raising.
“My son plays hockey for his school and does service hrs helping poor kids or disabled kids on the ice.”
My son also did this. It was a really great time. There used to be a great program at Lasker Rink in NYC, but the rink was shut down this season as part of a general overhaul.
LisaM,
Can you please stop disparaging public schools?
And while I have no doubt that your son was moved by his “helping the poors” work, I would not be so quick to assume that students who attend public schools where more than half the students are economically disadvantaged – where those students are their friends, not their charity projects – are not being exposed to ideas that are just as good. That’s more than just community service.
“Community Service” is charity. That’s all fine and good, but if “charity” was the same as actually trying to open your mind about the experience of kids who experience racism and poverty then the Republican Party would not embrace racism, and would not have put on the exhibition of nastiness they did.
I’ll stop disparaging public schools when public schools start doing better for children. The testing is out of control (data collection), Common Core has no element of any critical thinking skills involved and the stupid DEI/SEL that is now mandated to try and raise test scores because the kids are unhappy is just pure ridiculousness. It isn’t Covid that had teachers leaving in droves and the parents filling up the private schools. It all started pre-covid and was exacerbated by the pandemic when parents got to see what their kids were really doing online.
I have a sister who taught for 30+ yrs and retired so that the system couldn’t decrease her salary/retirement because her special ed kids couldn’t pass the stupid tests (VAM). I know numerous teachers and Admin and they put their own children in private school. Did you know that about 22% of public school teachers put their kids in private school? Ask them why.
I don’t care if people put their kids in private or religious so long as they pay for it. They should not demand public dollars for their private choices.
LisaM,
Your criticism of testing, data collection and Common Core is valid.
All of those are issues that rose to people’s attention because the opposition to them came from parents and teachers who experienced them. The criticism of those issues got very little attention and very little was done to address the issues with them.
But the criticism of CRT and DEI is manufactured. It didn’t arise from parents. Instead, some right wing operatives – with help from the compliant media – presented this as huge numbers of parents outraged at what their kids were getting, despite none of them being able to point out a specific thing their kid were learning (except Toni Morrison’s Beloved! Ban it!). Instead, they cited some random powerpoint slide for some teacher education that they got from someone’s tweet on the internet that they heard was being used by some school system somewhere and they feared it was coming to their own soon.
In the future, you can tell when something is manufactured when the entire Republican Party immediately passes laws all over the country to “address” the problems.
Notice that there are all kinds of new laws to “protect” against the dangers of the manufactured issue by people who have done nothing about the issues that parents REALLY care about.
over testing. Data collection. Too large class sizes. Budget cuts affecting arts programs and extracurricular programs.
Those aren’t “manufactured” concerns of parents – they have been around a lot longer than the faux “anti-CRT” without changing policy to address those concerns.
Lumping those all together gives credibility to a right wing manufactured “issue” being used to undermine public schools.
nycpsp– I think you are on the right track In your answer to LisaM. Where I think you may be missing the mark: DEI [ / CRT?] may seem like small potatoes now, but it’s undoubtedly on the same ed-bureaucracy track as SEL and every other ed fad that comes down the pike these days. First [and we’re already there], teachers are required to spend extra hours [without compensation] examining all their curriculum to try to align it to the new whim. Next step you can bet on (unless you’re in a red state that bans this stuff) is some kind of assessment, probably by incorporating the new whim into stds & aligning that to assessment.
This is the ed-bureaucracy mentality inculcated by NCLB as enhanced by RTT/ CCSS ‘accountability systems.’ ESSA may have cut the cord to CCSS, but fed DofEd still has review/ approval over state accountability sysems, which are still tied to annual 3rdgr-8th gr + 1 hisch yr assessments to whatever the state stds [which are mostly CCSS, tweaked & re-branded].
THAT is the leviathan we have to put a stop to. It affects every one of the issues the parents really care about.
nycpsp– just want to add, I think your take on how to recognize a manufactured political issue is terrific & I’m adding it to my keeper file for future retorts on MSM comment threads.
Sooooo glad you have him after he left Canada!!! 🙂
A Ted Cruz argument (NB: the following is SATIRE, but I think that it captures what Cruz did yesterday):
CRUZ: Judge Jackson, you and I were both students at Harvard. And we both served on the law review, so you will know that I respect you, despite any differences we might have had. That said, do you recognize this ruling in the case Sheridan v. U.S. Office of Personnel Management?
JACKSON: I do.
CRUZ: And you admit to being the author of this ruling?
JACKSON: I do.
CRUZ: And are you aware, Judge Jackson, that you used the word “the” not once, not twice, but 88 times in this article?
JACKSON: I would have the count them, but doubtless I used the word a number of times. It’s one of the most frequent words in the language.
CRUZ: And are you aware of this speech by Adolf Hitler? [shows display board of the transcript of the speech]
JACKSON: I do not believe that I have read that speech. No. I don’t think so, but I might have encountered it in a college history course.
CRUZ: So you deny that you have read this speech?
JACKSON: I neither confirm nor deny this. I might have read it at some time in the past.
CRUZ: OK. You are refusing to answer my question. So, do you know the words Der, Die, Das, Die. Der, Die, Das, Die?
JACKSON: Yes, those are the German words for “the.”
CRUZ: Now we are getting somewhere. So, you do not deny using PRECISELY the same language that Hitler used.
JACKSON: Everyone uses the word “the,” in any language that has an equivalent to it.
CRUZ: So you not only admit this. You are proud of it. Using the same language as Adolf Hitler did. You insist before this body and the American people that “Everyone” uses Hitlerspeak. And you used this 88 times. Doubtless you also know that “H” is the eighth letter in the alphabet and that you used the word “the” 88 times and that this is a well-known shorthand for HH–that is, for Heil Hitler. Let me ask you, Judge Jackson, are you a Nazi or sympathizer with Nazis? Never mind, let’s go on to the next issue.
Great!
It’s of the same form as
Q: What’s the difference between Trump and the Hindenburg?
A: Both are puffed up, Nazi bags of flaming hot air, but one only appears to be a dirigible.
Oops. The Hindenburg joke ended up in the wrong place.
Ted Cruz is the political equivalent of tabloid gossip magazines like The National Enquirer
Someone who knows Ted Cruz was asked why people took an instant dislike to him. His answer: It saves time.
&–getting off topic once again–I’d mentioned in an earlier, Koch-related blog, that the father, Fred Koch (who, as Diane rightly stated worked not only for Stalin but also for the nazis*) was supposed to travel back to U.S. on the Hindenburg but missed it.
I also mentioned eerie connections between the Koch bros. upbringing & that of it 45 (& his father’s name was ALSO Fred). Must read “Sons of Wichita”**by Daniel Schulman.
*I will not capitalize the n. **Typing in this format doesn’t allow me to use italics–I know books aren’t “” ! (The part of me that taught English.:) .)
I hate not being able to use italics in WordPress comments without resorting to HTML codes. Italics for titles of long works, for words as words (mention rather than use), etc.
Hee-Haw Hawley and Cancun Cruz staged a shameless performance during the confirmation hearings.
As a brit, to be rather basic. Cruz’s performance was a display very bad manners.
This is the preserve of the ignorant and those who deep down are so troubled by the fact that their cause might be slipping from them they blather away in panic.
It is so blatantly obvious he was playing to his own gallery with not a thought for the constitution or decent civility.
The man is a boor.
(Is it a true someone said of him, if he was shot on the senate floor the police would not be able to find enough senators willing to stand witnesses to the fact?…I’ve only heard the alleged comment third hand,)
That is true. He is a boor indeed, filled with vaingloriousness.
He is one of those fellows I wish Groucho Marx could have met.
That experience would have deflated Cruz.
Online information says that Donald and Melania Trump have their son, Barron, enrolled in Oxbridge Academy in West Palm Beach, Florida. Oxbridge’s website indicates that their institution has a DEI policy, committee, and coordinator. DEI has been connected by some conservatives to the definition of CRT. What should we make of this?
^Founded by one of the lesser known Koch Brothers, William I. Koch.