The Tudor Dixon Podcast: College Admissions Chaos, Grade Inflation & School Activism

Summary

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The Tudor Dixon Podcast: College Admissions Chaos, Grade Inflation & School Activism

Date: March 20, 2026
Host: Tudor Dixon
Guest: Josh Weiner, Chief Strategy Officer, North American Values Institute (NAVI)

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Episode Overview

This episode of The Tudor Dixon Podcast, part of The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show, delivers an incisive, personal, and critical dive into the current chaos surrounding the American education system, focusing primarily on the complexities of college admissions, the effects of grade inflation, and the prevalence of political activism in schools. Tudor shares her firsthand challenges navigating the admissions process for her daughter, and invites Josh Weiner for expert insight on how educational trends and activist ideologies are shaping—and in some cases, undermining—the future of students, parental rights, and national values.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Changing College Admissions Landscape

• Complexity & Expense: Tudor comments on the overwhelming number of steps, consultants, and significant costs involved in modern college admissions.
  • “You pay us $10,000, we’ll help you fill out 12 applications for college...and have some special project for her to do over the summer, and then she’ll be more desirable...” (Tudor Dixon, 03:13)
• Test-Optional Confusion: Post-COVID, many schools dropped SAT/ACT requirements, but are now reconsidering as they struggle to evaluate student ability due to grade inflation.
  • “Turns out an A is not an A anymore. …these kids have not learned.” (Tudor Dixon, 03:13)

2. The Problem of Grade Inflation

• Lowered Standards in the Name of Equity: Josh highlights how some schools award A’s for scores over 80%, eroding academic rigor.
  • “If you get above an 80%, that’s an A. And this is a big problem for a couple of reasons…” (Josh Weiner, 05:34)
• Consequences: Lack of reliable standards harms motivated students and overall academic excellence.
  • “By flattening the grading curve, you’re just allowing individuals to not perform as highly and get the same achievement…” (Josh Weiner, 05:34)

3. Activism as a College Application Asset

• Activism Requirement: Colleges now seem to value activism—even over other traditional achievements—prompting questions about the nature and type of activism that is rewarded.
  • “...can you tell us if she’s done any activism to help her get into college?” (Tudor Dixon, 03:13)
• Origins in Pedagogy: Josh connects modern activism in schools to Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, a text promoting critical consciousness and intentional political education.
  • “Colleges of education…ask teachers to raise critical consciousness and…wake up their students to social and political power differences…” (Josh Weiner, 05:34)

4. Political Polarization and Social Justice in Education

• A New Milieu: Both Tudor and Josh reflect on how politics at college has become more polarized—even comparing coming out as Republican to coming out as gay.
  • “It’s harder to come out as a Republican in school right now than it is to come out as gay.” (Josh Weiner, 09:50)
• Social Justice Dominance: Growing emphasis on social justice potentially unpreparing students for rapid AI-driven economic changes.
  • “If universities…are really focused on this social justice activism, how is that preparing anybody for a world…completely usurped by AI?” (Josh Weiner, 09:50)
• Humor and Frustration: Tudor’s anecdotes about campus visits and the joy of learning in the past contrast the present environment.
  • “There’s a real joy crush here.” (Tudor Dixon, 19:29)

5. Ideology and Stress in K-12 Classrooms

• Private vs. Public Schools: Story of a student transferring from public to private school to escape ideological pressure, drama, and stress, highlighting well-being improvement.
  • “It is an awakening. I have a different child at home, a child that doesn’t have the stresses, that doesn’t have the constant drama…” (Tudor Dixon, 19:29)
• Intersectionality and Oppression: Josh details the current classroom operating system: labeling students as “oppressed” or “oppressor,” and linking virtue to activism.
  • “If you’re oppressed, you’re a victim…The only solution…is to tear down the systems that are oppressing people…” (Josh Weiner, 21:31)
  • “Imagine the social pressure…” (Josh Weiner, 22:12)

6. Unvetted Online Curricula and Foreign Ideological Influence

• Resource Oversight: Due to digitization, teachers often source class materials online, leading to unvetted ideological content and even anti-Semitism.
  • “They go to a place that…there’s no vetting by the school of what these materials actually look like…” (Josh Weiner, 24:34)
• Foreign Funding Examples:
  • Teach Palestine Curriculum: Tied to Middle East groups, correlates US immigration issues to Palestinian struggles.
  • Qatar Foundation International: Funds Arabic language teachers who also guide political discourse in schools.
    • “Here’s a grant for a hundred thousand dollars…We have proof of this from Signal chats…on how to talk about controversial issues like the war in Gaza.” (Josh Weiner, 26:04)

7. The Surge in Anti-Semitism and Moral Relativism

• Current Events: Increase in anti-Semitic incidents in K-12, with specific reference to a California lawsuit alleging harassment of Jewish students.
  • “It’s always been there, but it’s not been this bad.” (Josh Weiner, 30:47)
• Ideological Roots: Historic and academic frameworks (like Said’s Orientalism) encourage moral relativism and victimize the "West" as oppressors.
  • “There’s this sort of like, moral relativism…you need to respect their culture and their version of morality…which I think is…where we get to this.” (Josh Weiner, 33:27)
• Moral Confusion: Tudor’s reflection on the world’s reaction to October 7 events and the erosion of shared values.
  • “When 10/7 happened…that wasn’t the response. And that’s when we started to question where is morality today?” (Tudor Dixon, 32:50)

8. Faith as a Foundation for Confidence & Resilience

• Role of Faith: Tudor shares observation that teens with strong faith demonstrate more confidence and less anxiety.
  • “The teenagers that have a strong faith…have a stronger confidence because they are living for something bigger than them.” (Tudor Dixon, 36:50)
• Religion vs. Identity Politics: Josh defends Judeo-Christian values as the original basis for equality, suggesting their erosion has led to divisions.
  • “We see everybody as equal and created in the image of God…We’ve gotten away from…humanism that religion really professes.” (Josh Weiner, 37:47, 39:19)

9. The Dangers of Polarization and Media Echo Chambers

• Media’s Role: Discussion of polarizing figures like Candace Owens, and the broader role of outrage media in cementing divisions.
  • “It’s kind of like the National Enquirer…and you know, it’s all lies…but it’s so dangerous.” (Tudor Dixon, 41:15)
• Both Sides: Josh stresses the need for accountability on both left and right for combating the spread of harmful ideologies.
  • “Anybody on either side really doesn’t hold their own side accountable.” (Josh Weiner, 39:57)

10. Actionable Advice for Parents

• Get Involved: Josh’s closing advice for parents:
  • “Ask your kids what’s going on in school…report if you think you’re concerned…to NAVI…run for school board…” (Josh Weiner, 43:01)
• Parental Power: Tudor encourages listening and engagement over digital distraction.
  • “Put that down and ask what happened, because your kids are going to tell you what happened…” (Tudor Dixon, 43:31)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Grade Inflation:
  • “If you get above an 80%, that’s an A.” (Josh Weiner, 05:34)
• On College Admissions Stress:
  • “I feel like Lori Laughlin…do I have to pay someone to fill out all these applications? What is happening?” (Tudor Dixon, 03:13)
• On Activism in Schools:
  • “It looks good on your college application to have been an activist in school.” (Josh Weiner, 05:34)
• On Ideological Stress:
  • “Imagine the social pressure…you’re walking on eggshells in school…” (Josh Weiner, 22:12)
• On Moral Relativism:
  • “There’s this sort of like, moral relativism…you need to respect their culture and their version of morality…” (Josh Weiner, 33:27)
• On Parental Involvement:
  • “Ask your kids what’s going on in school…run for school board if you’re concerned.” (Josh Weiner, 43:01)
• On the Joy of College:
  • “There’s a real joy crush here.” (Tudor Dixon, 19:29)
• On Divisive Politics:
  • “It’s harder to come out as a Republican in school right now than it is to come out as gay.” (Josh Weiner, 09:50)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 03:13 – Tudor introduces the modern college admissions maze and her personal experience.
• 05:34 – Josh Weiner explains grade inflation and educational activism.
• 09:50 – Political polarization on college campuses and value of college education.
• 19:29 – Tudor relates the contrast between campus joy (then) and ideological stress (now).
• 21:31 – Josh describes “oppressed vs. oppressor” ideology in K-12.
• 24:34 – The rise of digital, unvetted curriculum and foreign influence in school resources.
• 26:04 – Foreign funding examples and their impact on classroom narratives.
• 30:47 – Rising anti-Semitism and analysis of recent lawsuits/harassment.
• 33:27 – Moral relativism and critique of Edward Said's Orientalism.
• 36:50 – Discussion of faith, confidence, and its protective effects.
• 41:15 – Media polarization and dangers of popular extremist influencers.
• 43:01 – Actionable advice for parents to engage with children’s education.

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Conclusion

This episode offers a thought-provoking and, at times, alarming look at the ongoing shifts in American education—from grade inflation and the new hurdles of college admissions to the pervasiveness of activist ideologies and anti-Semitism. Both Dixon and Weiner advocate for greater parental engagement, transparency, and an intentional return to foundational values to equip students for the real challenges ahead. Parents—ask questions, check in, and get involved.

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Transcript

[Tudor Dixon]

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[Tudor Dixon]

Welcome to the Tudor Dixon Podcast. Today, I want to get into, like, a deep dive into education. And it's kind of a personal thing right now because we are in the midst of trying to figure out what the next steps are to get my daughter, who is at the end of her or in the midst of her junior year, going into her senior year, looking at colleges. And what does that all mean? And what do test scores mean? And in the middle of me doing this, which I thought, like, when I went to college, you just applied and there weren't all these tricks that you had to do and you didn't have to pay people to try to get you in. And I feel like Lori Laughlin, or Laughlin, whatever her name is, and I'm like, what am I? Do I have to pay someone to fill out all these applications? What is happening? But there's all these groups that do this. Okay. So if you're in the middle of this, it is so much more complicated than I thought it was. And so I have this company, and they're like, you know, if you pay us $10,000, we'll help you fill out 12 applications for college, and we'll have some special project for her to do over the summer, and then she'll be more desirable for these colleges. And then he says something to me, which I was like, hmm, that's interesting. He says, do you think you're going test optional or are you planning on using a school that requires testing? And I was like, hmm, okay, so breakdown. Test optional is after Covid, some universities said, we're not going to require SAT or ACT scores anymore. And now they're starting to go, oh, crap. We actually didn't know that then, people. We would have no judge of whether or not these children were actually intelligent and could do the work at the school. So he said. I said, I thought all of the schools were going to requiring testing again. And he said, well, yeah, kind of, because, you know, turns out an A is not an A anymore. And then moved on really quick. And I was like, what exactly does that mean? Because these kids have not learned. So we found someone that can take a deep dive into this. We have Josh Weiner with us today. He is the chief strategy officer at NAVI North American Values Institute. It's a nonprofit that advocates for American civil civic values and combats extremism and political activism in the K12 classrooms. Josh, political activism was one of the things that they were like, can you tell us if she's done any activism to help her get into college?

[Josh Weiner]

Thank you so much for having me on tutor. It's a pleasure to be here today. Yeah. You know, you identified two things there. One of them is the flattening of the grading curves. And they're doing this in the name of equity. And we have seen schools that have basically said, if you get above an 80%, that's an A. And this is a big problem for a couple of reasons. One, we have no real standards to figure out, you know, how students are actually performing when it comes to their. Their grade point averages. And two, it's really not promoting academic excellence. You know, academic excellence is actually holding people to high standards. That's how you actually cut it. And by flattening the grading curve, you're just allowing individuals to not perform as highly and get the same achievement that others do. So it's not only unfair to the individuals who need to be pushed, but it's unfair to the individuals who have pushed themselves and have earned those higher grades. The other thing is that, you know, you need to be an activist, and it looks good on your college application to have been an activist in school. Now, like when I was going to school, that was sort of true. You know, they liked to see that you were, you know, social issue minded and that you did clubs and activities. You didn't have to be like, you know, in Earthworks or part of social justice clubs, though. But this is actually part of what has been taught to teachers. And in colleges of education, there is a book called Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire. And this is taught now in all colleges of education. And it asks teachers to raise critical consciousness and to make classroom education actually political intentionally, in order to wake up their students to social and political power differences between people based on their identity. So this is the kind of stuff that is now in schools that's impacting what you're seeing when you're doing college applications now, which is very concerning.

[Tudor Dixon]

This is so different than when. And I went to school a long time ago. I realized this. But I Don't remember. I will say I remember. Bill Clinton came to campus and I got a ticket to go see Bill Clinton speak on campus. Now you know how old I am. So I went to see Bill Clinton speak on campus. And it wasn't like a. It really wasn't even a political thing. It was like, this is amazing. The President is coming to our campus. And we were all excited. Didn't matter what side of the aisle you were on. There was not even discussion of politics when I was in college. I don't remember it being a big deal. I know that there were probably people in Republican and Democrat clubs. I wasn't one of them. I was just, you know, focused on food service, where I was going to go out that night and what my classes were. I mean, really, this was. And it was a huge time of growth for me and growing up and getting away from my parents, but not being in the world yet, like out in the world having to totally fend for myself. And yet here I have this. Like, we have two extremes. I think we have, first of all, more women than men in universities. So men are not going to universities anymore. And I think that's a somewhat tragic situation. And I'm not saying that everybody has to go to universities, but I do think that there is a good growing up period. And I do think there is a lot of value in a college education. And now people are being told not to go. And then I have a situation where my daughter goes to a Christian school and the families there are like, well, college isn't really that important. And like I said, I'm not saying it's for everybody, but I do think that there is a value in a college education. And these parents are like, how are you going to pay for it? First of all, it's too expensive. You can't pay for it. And then what if you lose your daughter? So I have like so many concerns. Can she even get in, coming from a Christian high school because she's an activist for Jesus and not an activist for the left, you know? And then also, is it going to be that she'll only be with people that are learning social constructs and not actual facts? And then I lose her.

[Josh Weiner]

Yeah, there's so much to unpack there first. I remember being in college, it was around. I went to college, 2006 to 2010. So this is when Obama was first elected. And it got highly political around then. I remember, actually I was. I'm a gay man. I was not out of the closet at the time. And I remember a Republican friend of mine who played hockey with me said something to me once, he goes, man, it's harder to come out as a Republican in school right now than it is to come out as gay. At the time I was highly offended by that because I was very much like in that mind space. Yeah, right. You don't know. But honestly, like, looking back on it, I like understand where that came from because it was different than even I think Tudor to how it was when you were in college. And I just think that had to do with the transition our country was going through between Bush and Obama. The other side, you know, you, you talked about this, this activism piece of it. Well, actually I'll go to the, the like is college necessary? Because we're in this really weird time right now where people really don't know what jobs are going to be available in the economy based on what's coming with artificial intelligence. And I would say that most universities really aren't prepar. And you, you talk about it a little bit like if, if universities, you're going to them like a university like Columbia or Harvard or something, and they're really focused on this social justice activism, how is that preparing anybody for a world that you know, really is going to be completely usurped by AI Just as far as what kind of jobs people are actually going to be able to do in that marketplace. So I think when you're thinking about where your kids are going to go to college, this is a critical think thing to think about. First of all, I wouldn't send them to any of these schools that are really framing everything from a social justice lens. As a Jewish person, I certainly wouldn't because these tend to be the places where there are more incidents of anti Semitism because of the way that social justice is being framed by these universities. I've seen though that universities, especially actually in the south, tend to be a little bit more values driven and thinking about how to prepare people for the, the, I guess the new world that we're coming into now, nobody really knows what it's going to look like, but at least if you're founding them in, in real academics versus this social justice stuff, you're putting them in some sort of good trajectory for what's going to come. You know, the last part is costs. I mean, you know, there's a whole. The guarantee of loans by the federal government is a big problem for student loans because it just allows these student loan companies to just kind of like throw out as much money as they want. And then you have developers that are, you know, building real estate on these college campuses because, hey, they got loans to pay for these rents. And it's just this, this ongoing spiral. So, you know, I don't see that really letting up until we really have kind of this bifurcation between schools that are preparing kids, social justice work, and the ones that are preparing kids for the new economy. I think that may help, but we certainly need some changes. I think on the federal level as far as student loans go, a humanities degree right now is not going to get you as far as an engineering degree. And that's going to change greatly in the next, you know, who knows, two months, six months, two years. It's going to, it's going to change fast.

[Tudor Dixon]

Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on the Tudor Dixon Podcast.

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[Tudor Dixon]

So I come from the manufacturing world and I think about just 20 years ago when I was starting out in manufacturing and I know 20 years ago sounds like a long time, but you think about just in the realm of how different businesses in that period of time. It hasn't changed as much as I think it's changing today. Because I look, I mean we had some of our drawings were still hand drawn by people for parts and then it was like CAD drawings but you're still printing them out. I mean we didn't have big computer screens or anything. We still had landlines and faxes. You know, I, I think about how different it is and I do question like how do, how do all of these curriculums prepare you? And I think a lot of that preparation is life preparation, you know, because I think a lot of what you're going to do, a lot of what you do in college does prepare you for being on your own and taking care of yourself and life, but also critical thinking and how to think through a problem and how to get from here to there and how to put all of anxiety of things aside and focus on how you get a missional approach, like, how do I get to the end of this? How do I finish this journey? And that was something I felt like I got out of college was like, there are going to be challenges and this is how you navigate those. But I don't know that that's what they're getting today.

[Josh Weiner]

Right. I don't know either. And I think about even my college degree was in environmental policy and law. And, you know, I left school after the financial crisis. I wasn't getting any sort of environmental policy or corporate environmental management job at that point. And I end not really using my degree. I went into media and advertising, and eventually, long story, I ended up in advocacy. But you know what I really got out of college is what you're saying. It's how do I plan my life, how do I manage social situations, how do I make sure that I succeed at my responsibilities while balancing all those things? How do I learn what I need from a life skill perspective from these classes that I can hopefully apply somewhere after school gets out? So, you know, I think there's certainly something to that, that social building, that cultural building, that university really does. But, you know, maybe it's more important the type of culture that you're going into than the type of academics that you're going into right now, because we're not sure if the academics are actually going to be helping you in the new economy.

[Tudor Dixon]

And it's like, is that less than worth $300,000? You know, you also go, oh my gosh, am I really talking about sending my kid to college to, to grow up and learn those skills for that price tag? But I do think that as I, I went to the University of Kentucky and that's what. So we took our girls down to the university because we both went to the University of Kentucky over the summer. We took them there and they all loved it. And there is a part of me that feels like those, some of the southern schools have still focused on education and it still felt that way. It still felt fun. There was still joy on the campus. And I think that you can walk on some campuses and be like, there's a real joy crush here. But I think that that's happening in lower school too, for K through 12. I feel like there is. So I will tell you an example of this. Just recently, there was a child that was at our school, and I went up to mom and I was like, oh, what are you guys doing here? Because they're public school, they're a Public school family. And she said, you know what? The child made the decision on their own that they wanted to come here. They'd seen things that were. And this was junior year, junior year. To switch over in the middle of your junior year to go to a private school is a big decision for someone that's 16. And she said that the child was having so many tough experiences in the public school that they said on their own, I want this. And she said, you would not believe. There's no drama, she said, compared to what the child had been experiencing in public school. She said, it is an awakening. I have a different child at home, a child that doesn't have the stresses, that doesn't have the constant drama. And I do think that some of this ideology that they teach in K through 12 is causing a massive amount of stress and not enough learning.

[Josh Weiner]

Yeah. And it certainly depends on the private school. Cause this is a problem in private schools, too. Let me be clear. But in public schools especially, there's this real demoralizing factor that's going on. And it's basically this operating system by which we're teaching children that based on their intersectional identity, they are either an oppressed or oppressor person. And they are basically told, if you're oppressed, you're a victim, and you're not going to be able to succeed in our. In our society because capitalism is against you. And so is democracy. So is the US form of imperialist democracy. And the only way.

[Tudor Dixon]

This is, like, so heavy, the words that you're even using right now.

[Josh Weiner]

I'm like, this is what they do. It's demoralizing, right? Like, it's r. It is heavy. And look, it's softer, younger, and it gets stronger when you get older. But you'd be surprised the things that they say to people in kindergarten. I'll give you an example in a second. But they say then that the only solution to this is to tear down the systems that are oppressing people. And then if you're part of the intersectional oppressor, it is your responsibility to use your privilege to tear down these systems. And if you're not, and if you're not actively doing it, or if you don't say the right things in the right moments to support the oppressed people, you are racist, white supremacist, homophobic, transphobic, et cetera, depending on the context. So this is tremendous. Like, imagine the social pressure of that. Like, every day you're walking on eggshells in school to make sure that you're Sort of like falling in line to this ideology. And it is like first of all, tremendously stressful. And second of all, you're telling somebody you either are hopeless because of who you are and the only way is revolution, right? We can get into like what they do or you, you have the original sin of being, you know, an oppressor. So you should feel bad about yourself. The only way to make up for it is to do these things. It's, it's entirely terrible.

[Tudor Dixon]

This is so, I mean, it's so sad to think it's something I would never have had to imagine dealing with. And, and I think it's, I think people are mistaken when they believe, well, we'll elect new people and the whole education system will change because it's, it's got such deep roots. And it's got deep roots outside of just the education system as well. Because I know that we recently had a young friend become a teacher and she was going online to get her resources for her classes because there's a whole new world for teachers out there that my teachers certainly didn't have with online resources. And they go and they get ideas, but the ideas online are filled with these, these biases and these, these, it's like all filled with ideology. The curriculum is ideology based and they don't really real. I don't think they really realize they're even doing it.

[Josh Weiner]

Yeah, there, there are bad actors, but most people are just caught up in a terrible system. It used to be that there was a curriculum and a textbook that supported that curriculum. And then you sort of had some wherewithal to use the textbook in your own way. While textbooks are out the window, schools are very much digitized and teachers in a lot of ways are under res. Even when we're paying more than we ever have for schools in some places they're under resourced and they go to a place that, you know, we've seen teachers payteachers.com and there's no vetting by the school of what these materials actually look like. And actually a lot of the anti semitic material that we see in schools, they end up coming from online resources. And this is a transparency problem. Like it's. We, we, we have a hard time catching up to these things as a society, especially with how fast they're moving. And like it should be incumb on school boards to understand that their teachers are getting their classroom materials from these places that are not being vetted or are not being approved. And there should be a process by which to do that. Otherwise you end up with stuff that you don't know who's planting it there. This is actually where we see foreign funding come into play. One of the places in K12 education, in manipulating it is putting out materials that then end up on these sort of like free or, you know, low cost gig economy teacher resource websites.

[Tudor Dixon]

What kind of foreign funding?

[Josh Weiner]

Yeah, so we've seen like, there's some, some foreign funding from like an organization called JITO or an organization called the Middle East Children alliance. And they have funding ties that actually in some cases go back to the pf, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. And they are basically. This Teach Palestine curriculum has ended up in a lot of different schools. And it also is a professional development tool and it basically teaches these things. Like it correlates immigration in America, the immigration debate in America with the Palestine Israel conflict. And it basically says, like, it sort of says, you know, Palestinians, Palestinians are indigenous to Palestine, as are indigenous people to, you know, certain parts of the United States. And this is about Turtle island and Land Back. And it makes these sort of like, like solidarity type of claims between the two. And then these teachers bring that professional development into the classroom and sometimes these materials into the classroom. Also, Qatar has funded something called the Choices program, which they got Brown University behind, which is a very skewed version of Middle east studies that minimized the war of Independence narrative in favor of the Nakba narrative, for example, erased Jewish indigeneity to the land of Israel. And that program, you know, while Brown eventually dropped the program, their endorsement of the program, it floated around in state education websites or at school resources source guides for a very long time. And we actually identified some of those, reached out to departments of education across the country and got about six or seven states to take them down because they don't even realize that they're there. Right. So those are just two examples. A last one is in Chicago and actually across the country, Qatar Foundation International will fund Arabic language teachers. So they'll just say like, here's a grant for a hundred thousand dollars and you have an Arabic language teacher and the Arabic language teacher forms relationships with other teachers and then consults and guides them. We have proof of this from signal chats that we've infiltrated actually on how to talk about controversial issues like the war in Gaza. So like, you know, this comes up in a class and a teacher will say, oh, who do I know that can help me defend that Gaza is the genocide? Well, the Arabic language teacher, you know, so.

[Tudor Dixon]

So the teachers are being indoctrinated and then they pass it along to the children and they don't even know that this person has been hired specifically to indoctrinate them on certain issues.

[Josh Weiner]

Yeah. I mean, it's not said that that's what they're there to do.

[Tudor Dixon]

Right, right.

[Josh Weiner]

Arabic. Yeah.

[Tudor Dixon]

Right. Well, that's how indoctrination happens. Right. You don't really know.

[Josh Weiner]

Right. But if you teach a construct of. Of intersectional identity where the experience of the oppressed person is correct in a situation where there's power dynamics, the Arabic language teacher is the one whose experience is correct. It's not the Jewish Zionist, pro Israel person. So that teacher, because they've been formed through their college of education, through their culture at the school to believe that the oppressed person is the one that they need to. They call it center, they will defer essentially to the person of color or the person of oppressed status as the arbiter of truth in these situations.

[Tudor Dixon]

Okay, so what is the solution now in California? There's that there's been this suit that's recently been filed against the state of California alleging that they're allowing harassment of Jewish and Israeli students in public education. That's In K through 12, I believe this. This suit that's been filed. And there are young girls who say that they had their lives threatened by students. If they heard them speaking in Hebrew, they were going after them and telling them that they should be dead. This is obviously this. The anti Semitism has spread so quickly. And maybe from your perspective, maybe it's just what we're seeing now. And maybe you would say, say, look, it has always been this bad. It just feels like it's insane right now.

[Josh Weiner]

It's always been there, but it's not been this bad. I mean, when I was growing up, we had some of it. And there's also like this kind of subversive anti Semitism where it's kind of joking and like, nobody, like, people think it's no big deal, but it makes me feel, like, not proud to be a Jewish person. Like, you're money hungry, you're not good at sports, you're anxious, geeky, yada, yada. Right. Like, those are the tropes. But that never made me proud to be, like, Jewish, and I never really was until later in my life. And that's a real thing. And, you know, we had bomb threats at, like, the school when I was in a Jewish area. So, like, this stuff has been there. But what we've seen is, like, this explosion because of the Manipulation of this ideology into Jew hatred, into framing not just Jewish people, but people who hold up the systems of the West, Americans, white people, as evil and giving a permission structure to say, you know, resistance, which is another word for basically violence, because they, they. Then they say resistan and then they actually teach you, well, you know, decolonization, that that's only achieved through violence. And then, you know, it's kind of this. They don't make the direct. They do like two hops. And so it makes this permission structure for people to hate and be violent against, not just Jewish people, but whoever is perceived as upholding these systems of power. I saw this really coming, getting crazy in 2021. There was a, a military operation between Israel and Gaza at that time. And it was the first time that I was told that I was a white supremacist and actually a Nazi for supporting Israel in, in that war. And, you know, I think probably even a Little bit before that, 27, 2018, 2019, is when a lot of this stuff has gone a little bit wild. And if you think about the proliferation of social media and the SM and kind of the early 2020 teens, it very much correlates with that because this. Is that. That problem too.

[Tudor Dixon]

I saw someone just, I think, gosh, just a couple days ago on TV say something that. It really struck me. She. I can't remember who it was, but she was saying, you know, when, when 10, 7 happened, we all assumed what the moral response would be, would be a shock and outrage. And that wasn't the response. And that's when we started to question where is morality today? Like, where are the people who are on the right side of things? When all of a sudden people were saying, you didn't see what you saw, and those women didn't get raped and they didn't kill kids. It's like, what do you, what do you. How did this, how did we get here?

[Josh Weiner]

Yeah, and that's something that they play in, in this construct of. There. There's actually a guy named Edward Said who is a professor at Columbia, who, Who structured something called Orientalism, which is based, by the way, in the same constructs that we're talking about. Oppressed oppressor. And he sort of frames basically that we as the west, believe we're right because we are virtuous in like, you know, our dedication to human rights. And that when we push those things on other countries or other cultures, that that is colonization and that. That is actually not understanding where those cultures are coming from. And there's this sort of like, moral reference rel. Relativism that is happening there where they're saying, like, well, you know, you may see that, you know, there's oppression of women in Palestine or in Iran or in, in these, or these, these Middle Eastern countries, these Islamist countries. But that's just because you have a, you don't understand what is moral in their societies. And you need to respect their culture and their version of morality, which I think is, is, is this is where we get to this. Right. So then when you, you, you frame these things as, you know, they are part of this global south that is colonized by the west, and the white people are kind of like just always trying to push their stuff on them. You get like, they become the victims and then people believe it's virtuous and righteous to defend the victims, regardless of like the normal Western moral structure that we have, which, by the way, is based in Judeo Christian values versus kind of of what the, the Islamists would say. So this is how you get when somebody drives a vehicle with explosives into Temple Israel, them saying, well, you know, Israel bombed his family in, in Lebanon last week. Right.

[Tudor Dixon]

Well, that to me, you know, is the most horrifying response, by the way.

[Josh Weiner]

I don't, I, I don't see like, like, you know, there were two Israeli Jews shot outside a, a museum in D.C. there's no retribution being paid for that because we don't believe in that as a society. We don't believe that like, violence begets violent. Like, that's not like, what we do. And by the way, the individual's family was like, one of them was a Hezbollah commander according to the idf. So, you know, look, death is horrible,

[Tudor Dixon]

which means he is the person who put his children in danger, no one else.

[Josh Weiner]

Right. I, I totally agree. So, yeah, this is moral relativism and it's a really big problem. And honestly, I think that, you know, religion and lack of adherence to religion in our country has something to do with it. There's sort of this void that's getting filled by the social justice stuff and the morality structure there has more to do with your identity and whether your identity is oppressing somebody else and then sort of saying, saying, you know, whatever, they're the victims, so whatever they believe or whoever they are, that's fine and. Right. Because we're the ones who need to sort of like, you know, defer at this point in time because we, we, we held them down and that's why they are the way they are.

[Tudor Dixon]

Let's take a Quick commercial break. We'll continue next on the Tudor Dixon Podcast. Something that I, I feel like you're onto something with the faith thing, because one of the things that I've seen with the, the teenagers today is that the teenagers that have a strong faith, they. They have a stronger confidence because they are living for something bigger than them. And they're not live. They're not concerned with, you know, what do people think of me? It's. What does God think of me? And I just think that there is a difference when there's a focus on that faith. I want to ask you something because at the beginning you said you talked about the kid who was the Republican saying it's harder to come out as a Republican than it is as gay, while. Well, let me ask you how you feel today about being Jewish, because one third of Jewish college students say they don't want. They feel uncomfortable displaying their Jewish identity.

[Josh Weiner]

Yeah. And I, you know, I probably should have worn it, but I always wear my, my Mag and David out, like, every day because I believe that that's the only thing that we can do. Our expressions of Jewish pride and people knowing that there are Jews around them is the best thing that we can do. But, like, you know, it's not for everybody. You know, think about, you know, your daughter alone on the subway. If she could have been a target because she's showing her Jewish star. If she was, obviously she's not. But just as a, as an analogy, you may not want that, and I don't encourage everybody to do that, but that's a very sad state that we're in. And you know, back to religion, I mean, this idea of saying that people are different based on their identity, their intersectional identity, it's not, not really based in what Judeo Christian values are like. We see everybody as equal in and created in the image of God. And that means that we treat people equally and we treat them not by, by like their immutable characteristics, but by who they are. And, and like what, sorry? Not by who they are, but like how they, they, they. How they are, like how moral they are, how they treat other people, the content of their character. Right. So I think there's something to that, too. We've gotten away from, I'd say, like the humanism that that religion really professes. And, you know, maybe this, this run away from a religion has allowed people to find something different that, that matches their social justice vibe.

[Tudor Dixon]

Don't you think that's part of it, though? If you can continue to create Differences and anxieties around those differences. Like, there's racism, there's this. If you can continue to create more racism, then you have it. It's there. It can divide, it can cause activism. You know, if you have a loving society, there's not enough to push each other apart. And I do think politics plays a huge role in this because you have to divide to get to add your voters. You know, we gotta. We gotta get every. Every voter counts. We gotta just dissuade them from going for the other side. It really has become very nasty.

[Josh Weiner]

Nasty, Very nasty to the point where, like, two things. One, there's. I mean, I didn't used to believe it, but I probably had it. There's certainly a Trump derangement syndrome. I. I am not a Donald Trump fan, but I also agree with some of the things that he's done, and I'm happy with some of the things he's done. There's other things that I'm not so happy about, but the ability for me to decipher those two things is important because it also allows me to understand on the. The side that's like, it's not for me, but like, these people that are sort of like, my side's the left, and we're just here to oppose the right, they then ignore anything that's going bad on their side, because anything is better than this, and it allows all this craziness to fester on their side. So that polarization has been really bad for our country because it actually makes it so that anybody on either side really doesn't hold their own side accountable. And we're seeing that, like, on the left from what I'm describing, and also on the right from, you know, a. Allowing these people like Candace Owens, Nick Fuentes to sort of like, have these platforms. So, you know, I'd like to see the right and some people have really, like, push that stuff away, but the polarization has made it very difficult.

[Tudor Dixon]

I just saw today that she posts. Candace Owens posted that she's like, the number one podcast, I think, with Joe Rogan. They're, like, tied at the top. And that's exactly what I thought how. And the only. Someone explained it to me, like, it's kind of like the National Enquirer. And, you know, it's all lies and it's like the bat boy, you know, you. You see it at the. At the checkout counter at the grocery store, and you, like. People just like to buy it because it's entertainment, but they know it's all fake. But it's so dangerous. It's not just the bad boy. You know, this is really dangerous stuff that people are putting out there. And how do we continue to ignore it? But, but then you got people on the right that are like, well, you can't say anything about spe. I'm sorry, but if we own, we've owned these people in the past. So you have to separate yourself. Say whatever you want, but I have to separate myself from you because you do not represent me. And I am with you on the fact that we have separated parties so much. Like I said at the beginning of this, when I was in college, I knew my parents didn't vote for Bill Clinton and I don't think I had voted in an election at this point in my life. But he was the president and there was a joy in seeing your president. And now I can't imagine college kids that don't like Donald Trump going to a rally, you know? Right. That would never happen.

[Josh Weiner]

Not a chance. It's just way too polarized right now. Yeah.

[Tudor Dixon]

Yes, absolutely. Well, I could talk to you honestly for hours. I so appreciate you coming on today. I think there's a lot more to dig into on how to protect our kids from the anti Semitism that's happening in schools and just this indoctrination. So we'll have to have you back sometime. Josh Weiner, thank you so much.

[Josh Weiner]

Can I just leave your viewers with two things?

[Tudor Dixon]

Yeah, please.

[Josh Weiner]

I just want parents to just be mindful, like ask your kids what's going on in school, take a look at their classroom work, make sure that you understand what's going on in the classrooms and come and report if you think you're concerned to things like this ideology that's in the classroom. To navi. We'[e-mail] and we can kind of direct you on what exactly to do, but also, also run for school board if you're concerned about what's going on in your school, because that's another way that you can impact things. So sorry, I just wanted to leave your viewers with.

[Tudor Dixon]

No, I think that's great because we always say we feel powerless as parents when you see this stuff. But, but what you said to me is so critical. We are in a world where we are so distracted constantly. Even as mom, you know, the phone is ringing, you've got your, you're sucked into social media. Even if you're just scrolling video videos. Put that down and ask what happened because your kids are going to tell you what happened. That's the beauty of kids. They don't hide things. Some of the most bizarre things. I'm sure some teachers are like, why did you tell your mom that? But because they tell me just bizarre things, too, you know? But that's the joy of parenting. Find out. And I love the fact that you gave us the resource in Navi, because we don't know where to go. So thank you.

[Josh Weiner]

Of course. Thank you, tutor.

[Tudor Dixon]

Thank you. And thank you all for listening to the Tutor Dixon podcast for this episode and others. You can get it wherever you get Your podcast, the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, Rumble or YouTubeutter Dixon. Just make sure you tune in and have a blessed day.