Black Nationalist Gets $20 Million to Promote ‘Segregation’ in Public Schools
Francesca Block, Free Press, October 16, 2024
Sharif El-Mekki is an adviser to Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro. He also supports school segregation, is a member of the Black Panther Party with family ties to Iran, and runs a nonprofit that has raked in nearly $20 million in donations from the government and nonprofits, including the Gates Foundation.
El-Mekki, a former middle and high school teacher and principal, founded the Center for Black Educator Development (CBED) in 2019, which defines its vision as “a world where. . . all black students are taught by high-quality, same-race teachers,” and where “all teachers demonstrate high levels of expertise in anti-racist mindsets.” CBED argues that employing black teachers to educate black students increases educational outcomes.
Since its founding, CBED has trained thousands of teachers across the U.S. in “education activism,” urging a “commitment to liberation education from the racism inherent in America’s institutions, including our schools.” A CBED information packet titled “The Anti-Racist Guide to Teacher Retention,” developed with the Pennsylvania Department of Education, defines education as “a political act” that “can upend white supremacy and a racist history of using education as an oppressive social force.”
“Every lesson plan is a political document, and every classroom interaction a political statement,” the guide reads.
El-Mekki’s nonprofit boasts more than $19.5 million in assets, boosted by funders including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which donated over $1.4 million between 2020 and 2021, and the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, which gave over $1.1 million in 2022, according to public tax filings. Other backers include NBC Universal, Nike, the Bezos Family Foundation, the University of Pennsylvania School of Education, and dozens more. In 2023 alone, CBED trained more than 1,700 educators. In their most recent tax filing from 2023, El-Mekki drew a salary of $233,410 from the organization.
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As a child, El-Mekki attended a Black Panther–inspired “freedom school,” where black students were taught by black teachers. His parents were members of the Black Panther Party, and on his nonprofit’s website, El-Mekki is seen sporting a Black Panther t-shirt.
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In just five years, Philadelphia native El-Mekki has become a major influencer in public education in Pennsylvania and beyond. In 2022, he served on the Education and Workforce Advisory Committee of Governor Josh Shapiro’s transition team, and last month, he testified in front of Congress on the need for more teachers of color. {snip}
In addition to his big nonprofit donors, El-Mekki’s organization has secured at least $560,000 in contracts from 2022 to 2024 with the Philadelphia School District—the twentieth largest in the country—to run summer school programs that teach “a culturally responsive, affirming, and sustaining early-literacy curriculum” to “address educational inequalities and our nation’s racist history.” CBED is now expanding outside Pennsylvania, inking contracts with school districts in Fresno, California, San Antonio, Texas, and New York City.
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El-Mekki is also part of a group that developed Pennsylvania’s “culturally relevant and sustaining education framework,” which came into effect in 2022. {snip}
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