Walz Education Appointee Calls for the Overthrow of the U.S.

Brian Lozenski, an associate professor of urban and multicultural education at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minn., was appointed by Governor Tim Walz’s state education department to help write the statewide “implementation framework” (similar to a curriculum) for Minnesota’s new “ethnic studies” standards. It now emerges that Lozenski has called for the “overthrow” of the United States.

Lozenski is no outlier. On the contrary, he has been the leading voice advocating the addition of a radical version of “ethnic studies” to Minnesota’s social-studies standards (citizenship and government, economics, geography, history, and now ethnic studies). Lozenski is also the key organizer and thought leader for the radical leftist advocacy groups that Governor Walz has effectively put in charge of rewriting Minnesota’s social-studies standards. While Lozenski’s call for the overthrow of the United States is the clearest expression of his radical stance to date, it’s hardly surprising. For years, conservative voices in Minnesota have sounded the alarm over the extremism of Lozenski and his allies. Maybe now, Walz will have to answer for putting Lozenski and his friends in charge of education in the state.

Yet Walz is apparently doing everything possible to avoid accountability. According to an earlier promise by the Minnesota Department of Education’s interim communications director, Anna Arkin, the ethnic-studies implementation framework was supposed to have been released in time for a public comment period from August 9 through August 22. Yet no framework has yet been published.

The most recent public meeting of the committee that is crafting the implementation framework came and went this past Tuesday, September 24. Once again, no framework was produced. (For more, see this important account by Catrin Wigfall.) Increasingly, it appears that, contrary to earlier promises, there will be no public release or public comment period before the October 31 statutory deadline to submit a finalized ethnic-studies implementation framework. There is good reason to believe that the implementation framework is being withheld from the public to prevent it from becoming an issue in the presidential election.

It is impossible to create an honest implementation framework for Governor Walz’s new ethnic-studies standards without making the radicalism of those standards crystal clear. At points, they are flat-out anti-American. This is disguised at the moment by the standards’ unfamiliar leftist jargon. All of this tallies with Lozenski’s call to overthrow the United States. The anti-Americanism of Minnesota’s new ethnic-studies standards is tied to concepts that come directly from his work. Once you piece together the puzzle, it’s evident that an honest ethnic-studies implementation framework can’t help but expose Walz’s education extremism. That is likely why his administration appears to be hiding the draft ethnic-studies implementation framework.

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Minnesota’s version of ethnic studies, known as “liberated ethnic studies,” is more radical than that of any other state. The scholars and teachers who created liberated ethnic studies are based in California, but even California governor Gavin Newsom has distanced himself from the extremism of their approach. As a proponent of liberated ethnic studies, Lozenski was the founding organizer of Education for Liberation Minnesota, the first and only state-level branch outside of California of the liberated-ethnic-studies movement. Lozenski also provided legislative testimony instrumental to passing the 2023 bill that added ethnic studies to Minnesota’s education standards. On top of that, Lozenski’s scholarly work and opinion pieces have set the tone and agenda for ethnic studies in Minnesota.

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Lozenski wants to see America’s system of government “overthrown,” “done with,” “deconstructed.” He takes it for granted that he and other CRT advocates are anti-U.S. In fact Lozenski laughs with pleasure when he says that the reason he’s a critical race theorist is precisely because he seeks the overthrow of the United States.

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