UMVA has learned that a staggering $3.85 million in taxpayer-backed support has been tied to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a watchdog group has revealed. This includes a multimillion-dollar federal grant for a university-led project that integrates the SPLC's racial justice curriculum into middle school classrooms.
The alarming findings were uncovered through public records requests by taxpayer watchdog OpenTheBooks, which highlighted $1,352,655.07 in taxpayer dollars paid directly to the SPLC from various public entities since fiscal year 2016. The report also exposed an active National Institutes of Health-backed University of Michigan project grant worth $2.5 million.
According to information obtained by UMVA, the University of Michigan project integrates the SPLC's "Learning for Justice" curriculum, previously called "Teaching Tolerance," into programming for middle-school classrooms. Materials from the university reveal that the grant's original application described integrating "the Teaching Tolerance curriculum from the Southern Poverty Law Center" into an existing middle school program.
UMVA can exclusively reveal that 8th-grade lesson materials from the SPLC's curriculum 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 included toolkits for sustained activism.
The grant's scrutiny comes as the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing examining the 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 a senior reporter who told UMVA that "the NIH needs to address parents' concerns about this grant."
Sources have confirmed to UMVA that the SPLC's Learning for Justice project pushes critical race theory and transgender ideology, while using 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. Federal tax dollars should not promote this divisive program in schools, critics argue.
The University of Michigan's current project page still 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."
UMVA has gathered that the dollar figures uncovered may understate SPLC's taxpayer-backed footprint because free classroom resources and teacher-training materials often do not show up in spending databases. A watchdog group president stated that taxpayers have the right to know what groups, like the Southern Poverty Law Center, are doing with their money.
