Take Back Our Schools Ricochet

On this episode, Andrew and Beth speak with Kim Russell, an activist for preserving girls’ and women’s sports.

Russell shares her story about what attracted her to take the position of the Women’s Lacrosse Coach at Oberlin College, a notoriously left-leaning college and how a social media post on trans swimmer Lia Thomas led to her removal from that position. She talks about the culture of fear on campus on speaking out about protecting the sanctity of women’s sports.

Russell also talks about how the feminist movement has been turned on its head, as well as the epidemic of anxiety, mental illness and depression amongst college age young women.  

Since being removed from het position in September of 2023, Russell has been spending most of her time traveling around the country advocating for girls and women in sport and the Women’s Bill of Rights with the Independent Women’s Forum.   She testified in front of Congress about the importance of Title IX in December and most recently was part of a Title IX Senate Roundtable. She is on the Board of the US Virgin Islands Lacrosse Association and is their Director of National Teams and 1st ever Women’s Lacrosse Head Coach.

Andrew and Beth speak with education activist Erika Sanzi about the Biden administration’s recently released new Title IX Rules. Sanzi gives us a brief overview of the history of the legislation and illustrates how the rules changed dramatically under the Obama administration and then the Trump administration. And now Biden’s new rules bring back kangaroo courts and eliminate due process on college campuses for students accused of sexual harassment. She also talks about how the new rules compel speech and likely violate the First Amendment. Sanzi also explains how the rules make gender a protected class which will inevitably lead to the destruction of girls’ and women’s sports. 

Finally, we discuss what her organization, Parents Defending Education, is doing to combat Biden’s new rules, and shares her view on why Congress has been absent in this fight.

Erika Sanzi is the Director of Outreach at Parents Defending Education. She is a former educator and elected school board member and currently serves on the board of advisors for The Boys Initiative. She is the mother of three teenage sons.

Beth and Andrew speak with researcher Mia Hughes, author of the WPATH report that exposed the insanity of transgender medicine worldwide. Hughes gives us an overview of the organization, World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) and explains why they became so influential globally on transgender issues. She discusses some of the key findings of her report including the lack of informed consent, and the immense damage caused to children by cross-sex hormones and body mutilating surgeries.

Mia Hughes is an Ottawa-based British journalist and researcher for Michael Shellenberger's nonprofit Environmental Progress. Hughes has three children and before becoming a journalist she was a stay-at-home mother.

Beth and Andrew speak with parent activist Alexandra Frank, who shares her own story about what led her to become an "accidental activist," having experienced the ideological capture of her twin daughters’ private school in Pennsylvania and then experiencing the same thing at their new public school in Massachusetts.

She talks about the inappropriate sexual material being taught to elementary school aged children, about segregating affinity groups, and the influence of radical gender ideology. Frank also discusses how schools’ focus on leftist ideology has led to the deterioration of traditional academics.

Alexandra Frank grew up in Colorado Springs, Colorado, graduated from Colgate University with a major in biochemistry and North Carolina State College of Veterinary Medicine with her veterinary degree after which she completed a rotating internship in small animal medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. She has worked in various roles as a clinician in the veterinary medical field in Delaware, Pennsylvania and currently, Massachusetts. She is mother to 11 year old fraternal twin girls and is the creator of the website www.dsfactsandresources.com about the Dover Sherborn school district in Massachusetts.

On this episode, Beth and Andrew speak with author Coleman Hughes about his new book, The End of Race Politics. Hughes talks about race was never an issue growing up and then first experiencing the divisive obsession with race politics as a student at Columbia University. We discuss how the civil rights movement’s dream of colorblindness turned into today’s leftist belief in neoracism and DEI. Hughes also explains how the academic studies behind the idea of implicit bias are bunk.

Coleman Cruz Hughes is a writer and host of the popular "Conversations with Coleman" podcast. He was a fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and is a contributor at The Free Press and  a graduate of Columbia University.

On this episode, Andrew and Beth speak with Free Press reporter Francesca Block. We discuss her recent reporting on the blatant antisemitism and leftist ideological capture of K-12 schools, specifically in a post October 7th world. Block talks about her articles which reports on how BLM materials are used in some New York City public schools, and how one school literally wiped Israel off the map being used to teach students.

We also talk about another recent piece of hers which reports on whether we will see a political realignment of progressive Jews, and her interview with Civil Rights leader Clarence Jones, co-author of Martin Luther King Jr’s I have a Dream Speech.

Block also shares what led her to a career in journalism and talks about the institutional contempt for free speech and open discourse that she experienced as a student at Princeton.

Francesca Block is a reporter for The Free Press. She started her career as a breaking news reporter for the Des Moines Register, where she reported on topics ranging from crime and public safety to food insecurity and the Iowa caucus. She graduated from Princeton University in 2022.