Chaska School District tries to stay “woke,” instead associates with Anti-Semites

The Eastern Carver School District and its Superintendent, Clint Christopher, awarded Khalifa’s AES $52,250 over a two year period to conduct the equity survey and provide certain follow-up services.

AES


The Eastern Carver County School District (Chaska, MN) has a problem. After a petition was sent around by activists, asking the school district to reduce “racism,” the district brought in a group run by Dr. Muhammad Khalifa to conduct an “equity survey.” 

Khalifa’s group—Adjusted Equity Solutions (“AES”), and the affiliated Culturally Responsive School Leadership Institute (“CRSLI”)—sells its services, which focus on bias recognition education and training, to schools.

The Eastern Carver School District and its Superintendent, Clint Christopher, awarded Khalifa’s AES $52,250 over a two year period to conduct the equity survey and provide certain follow-up services.

Last month, on June 24, a school board meeting took place, where parents pushed back against the school board on the issue. No doubt AES and some school board members will take this as more evidence of bias—which just so happens to require the school district to pay more money to Dr. Khalifa’s companies. 

The “equity survey” was sent out via email to parents by a man named Sherief Elabbady, who has a history of leftwing and anti-Israeli posts on Facebook. This includes sharing posts by Linda Sarsour, a far-left activist with a long history of blatantly anti-Semitic comments. For example, Sarsour has praised radical preacher Louis Farrakhan, and is infamous for trying to oust Jewish women from the leftwing “women’s march,” because “Zionists can’t be feminists.” In another example, Sarsour once called for a “jihad” on President Trump and his supporters. 

Elabbady also helped organize a protest of the Trump administration’s travel restriction from countries that the Obama administration deemed cannot properly vet their travelers to the United States, including because they have excessive terrorism or corruption problems. That travel restriction has since been upheld by the United States Supreme Court.

“Jerusalem is the capitol of Palestine,” another Elabbady post reads. And another reads, “End the Israeli occupation of Palestine.” 

After Elabbady and his “equity survey” were covered by the conservative website Deplorable Housewives, Elabbady scrubbed his Facebook page of the anti-Semitic content and changed his name to “Abu Maryam” on Facebook.

Deplorable Housewives goes on: “Elabbady was listed on the CRSLI website as Chief Operating Officer (COO) at the time the survey was sent out to Eastern Carver County school district parents. Shortly after our article was published, Elabbady was removed from the website and is no longer listed as the COO of CRSLI.”

Is Elabbady still employed by CRSLI? It should be noted that Elabbady is still listed as the Chief Operating Officer of AES.

Dr. Khalifa, the CEO of AES and CRSLI, has his own problems. He’s closely associated with the Muslim American Society-Islamic Circle of North America (“MAS-ICNA”), a Muslim Brotherhood affiliate. The next conference features several controversial speakers, including the aforementioned Linda Sarsour. According to Deplorable Housewives, Dr. Khalifa also removed a picture of himself speaking at the MAS-ICNA conference from Facebook, after Deplorable Housewives reported on the issue. 

What would Dr. Khalifa and his organization push after the “equity survey” if the school district keeps them on, or even extends their contract?

First, there’s indoctrination to “recognize that Islam is not a religion in the sense that Western Europeans separated their faith from other aspects of life; It is a way of life.” As a result, AES / CRSLI seek to “infuse [the] curriculum” with Islam.

And AES / CRSLI would seek to use school resources, “even financial resources,” to do this.

Why can’t a school district bring in an orthodox Christian group? Imagine the reaction in the Star Tribune, etc. if a school district brought in “fundamentalist” Christians to affect the curriculum, all while taking taxpayers dollars from the school? The only possible answer is that so-called “separation of church and state” is a one-way street. There is no such thing as a “neutral” public square. The sooner conservatives and nationalists figure this out, the better.

Willis Krumholz

Willis L. Krumholz is a fellow at Defense Priorities. He holds a JD and MBA degree from the University of St. Thomas, and works in the financial services industry. The views expressed are those of the author only. You can follow Willis on Twitter @WillKrumholz.