Massive SPLC-linked grant under fire as watchdog exposes ties to middle school programs

FIRST ON FOX: A watchdog is sounding the alarm over at least $3.85 million in taxpayer-backed support tied to the Southern Poverty Law Center, including a multimillion-dollar federal grant for a university-led project that it says integrates SPLC’s racial justice curriculum into middle school classrooms.

Using the power of public records requests, taxpayer watchdog OpenTheBooks released a report Friday highlighting $1,352,655.07 in taxpayer dollars it said had been paid “directly” to the SPLC from school districts, states, cities, counties, universities and other public entities since fiscal year 2016. OpenTheBooks also found an active National Institutes of Health-backed University of Michigan project grant worth $2.5 million, which materials from the university say integrates the SPLC’s “Learning for Justice” curriculum, previously called “Teaching Tolerance,” into programming for middle school classrooms.

The grant’s original Freedom of Information Act-obtained application said researchers would integrate “the Teaching Tolerance curriculum from the Southern Poverty Law Center” into an existing middle school program and test it across six Genesee County, Michigan, middle schools. 

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Eighth-grade lesson materials from the SPLC’s curriculum, reviewed by Fox News Digital, directed students to a “map of active hate groups” suggesting “anti-gay” and “radical traditionalist Catholic” organizations are equivalent to the Ku Klux Klan, Neo-Nazis and Black-Separatists. Other Learning for Justice youth materials encourage students to see themselves as part of a “movement for justice” and include toolkits for sustained activism.

President Donald Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) told Fox News Digital the program “is no longer being funded” and has been “redesigned” to focus on reducing teen and family violence. However, OpenTheBooks points to University of Michigan’s current project page, which still says the active NIH-backed project integrates SPLC’s Learning for Justice curriculum and lists SPLC as a partner. FOIA-obtained NIH records also show the original grant documents repeatedly described the project as integrating SPLC’s Teaching Tolerance curriculum into the YES program.

“Utilizing taxpayer resources to promote harmful, leftwing rhetoric in our education systems is inappropriate, and I support efforts to root out and expose organizations like SPLC,” Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee Rep. Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., said in response to the grant funding. “I support the important work of the House Judiciary Committee to expose the nefarious agenda, funding, and tactics of the Southern Poverty Law Center.”

The grant scrutiny comes the same week the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing titled “The Southern Poverty Law Center: Manufacturing Hate,” examining what the committee described as SPLC’s role in “distorting civil rights policy” and newly released information that the group allegedly funneled money to extremists it was claiming to combat.

The hearing featured testimony from author of “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center” and Daily Signal senior reporter Tyler O’Neil, who told Fox News Digital that “the NIH needs to address parents’ concerns about this grant.”

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“The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Learning for Justice project pushes critical race theory and transgender ideology. Meanwhile, the SPLC uses its ‘hate map’ to condemn parental rights groups on the other side of the issue, silencing opposition to its agenda by comparing these groups to the Ku Klux Klan,” O’Neil added. “Federal tax dollars should not promote this divisive program in schools.”

University of Michigan’s current project page says the active NIH-backed program integrates SPLC’s Learning for Justice curriculum into a middle-school program aimed at addressing “racism and racial discrimination” and measuring students’ “racist beliefs and behaviors.” Meanwhile, the SPLC’s current Learning for Justice materials frame the program around “educating for liberation,” “racial equity” and the “deconstruction of White supremacy.”

Fox News Digital reached out to the University of Michigan, including the grant’s project leader, professor Marc Zimmerman, and Kate Barnes, a communications manager for the university’s Office of the Vice President for Research whose staff bio says she handles media relations for various projects, but did not immediately receive a response.

Learning for Justice materials that included curriculum instruction for 8th graders, reviewed by Fox News Digital, categorized “Anti-Gay” and “Radical Traditionalist Catholic” under the same “hate group” banner as the “Ku Klux Klan,” “Neo-Nazi[s]” and “Black Separatist[s].”

The same teaching materials directed students to SPLC’s “map of active hate groups,” part of SPLC’s broader hate-group tracking work that the organization has indicated was once supported by its now-disbanded informant program. The Department of Justice alleges that the program secretly funneled donor money to informants inside extremist groups, but SPLC has denied wrongdoing.

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Other Learning for Justice youth materials reviewed by Fox News Digital encourage students to take part in a “movement for justice” and include resources for nonviolent direct action, public rallies, social media campaigns and community organizing. Materials for grades 6-8 and 9-12 include tasks directing students to write letters to corporate or elected officials calling for action and organizing live social media chats to raise awareness for social justice issues.

OpenTheBooks argued the dollar figures they uncovered may understate SPLC’s taxpayer-backed footprint because free classroom resources and teacher-training materials often do not show up in spending databases.

“Open the Books only came upon the details of ‘Teaching Tolerance’ and the SPLC curriculum by submitting a FOIA request and waiting ten weeks. That suggests there could be plenty more indirect support for the nonprofit that’s not readily visible to taxpayers,” the watchdog’s report states. “Anecdotal evidence suggests that’s true,” it continues, pointing to a second investigation OpenTheBooks has been working on into the Pentagon’s K-12 public schools, which also turned up SPLC learning materials.

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A previous Fox News Digital report, citing an investigation by conservative nonprofit Defending Education, found SPLC’s Learning for Justice program had been integrated into K-12 lesson plans and materials in 169 school districts across 42 states and Washington, D.C., including in classrooms as early as kindergarten.

Defending Education said the materials promoted themes including “anti-racism,” White privilege, White supremacy, “whiteness,” gender ideology, “queer theory,” and more.

“Taxpayers have the right to know what groups, like the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has financed racial animosity, are doing with their money,” said John Hart, president of OpenTheBooks.

Fox News Digital’s Peter Pinedo contributed to this report.