Director of the Center for Jewish Studies at Ford University.
Joined November 2024
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Ford Dean A.D. Yates retweeted
In case you were wondering what men "falling behind academically" looks like it means that men still have to handle all g-loaded tasks in society but Suzy got better scores on the 'memorize historical n*ggers' test in 8th grade
Ford Dean A.D. Yates retweeted
For penning her mea culpa, Hannah-Jones has received a good deal of praise. Well, you can count me out of all that. Her actions were morally indefensible and analytically ignorant, and her supposed metamorphosis remains invisible to the naked eye. nationalreview.com/2026/09/w…
Ford Dean A.D. Yates retweeted
It’s 2026, it’s NYC, and we have a $45 billion education budget.
If you are claiming that kids aren’t learning reading and math because of racism and “apartheid”, you should be laughed at, not given a prominent journalism career at the NYTimes.
Ford Dean A.D. Yates retweeted
I have some thoughts!
Nikole Hannah-Jones interviewed me at the height of woke-1 to champion and virtue signal her “fight for every black child” and disparage and dismiss my fight for all NYC public school students to enjoy the rising tide that lifts all boats of academic rigor and meritocracy.
She thought my support of the Specialized High School Admission Exam, the SHSAT, was racist. I thought her school politics were deeply misguided, and well, quite racist.
Unlike Hannah-Jones I have nothing to walk back.
I knew then what she has just figured out that her identitarian race-based grievance project would not fix anything. And in fact, it has hurt all public school students. Not just in NYC—her Magnum Opus of racial grievance, The 1619 Project, is taught in schools across the country and its reasoning is used to dismantle and stop the creation of the kind of high school that her daughter ultimately chose—the one that finally taught her algebra.
NYC Public School students score lower on all academic metrics now than they did when her daughter started school—and we tax payers pay more for it. Enrollment continues to plummet while those in charge dumb down standards and hide results. So much of that is because any solution that challenged Hannah-Jones' race-baiting—endorsed by The Times and Democratic leaders alike—was verboten.
Like Hannah-Jones I have a HS junior. My two older kids have graduated from NYCPS and are in college and my youngest is in NYCPS elementary school. I have qualms with parts of their education but also many success stories. Can you get a great education in NYCPS? Yes. But you have to fight for it. And insisting on the schools that grade math homework is a start.
Knowing what your child is learning and mastering is a non-negotiable. Standardized tests help with that, but are a starting point only. Blaming phantom racists instead of understanding the role parents play was and is a lazy cop out.
There is still an effort–alive and well right now-to dismantle great schools like NYC’s specialized high schools because they use standardized admissions tests. The effort still relies on the same failed logic that Hannah-Jones has peddled for years. She insisted that kids like her daughter who did not score high enough on a test to gain admission were the victims of racism. But she refused to acknowledge that poor Asian kids whose parents had NONE of the resources that her daughter enjoyed (or should have enjoyed) (English speaking parents, resources to pay for prep classes, knowledge of how the system works, etc) were not racist oppressors—but kids willing to work hard and apply their smarts with parents that prioritized subject mastery and took the time to make sure their kids were actually learning.
Her daughter is right. She deserved much better. But it is not the cauldron of racist grievances that Hannah-Jones still cannot let go of that failed her daughter. It’s her daughter’s parents that did not figure out for NINE YEARS that their daughter was not learning enough.
New York City Public Schools should be among the best in the world because we have so many incredibly talented, smart and hard-working students that could and should learn more by being challenged more–and that means sorting kids into cohorts where they can rise to the level of their abilities and willingness to work. In other words “screening”—the exact project Hannah-Jones fought against for so long and which she has now relied on to rescue her daughter’s education.
You’re welcome Nikole. Your daughter’s chosen high school would not exist but for parents like me who fought so hard to keep screened schools.
Ford Dean A.D. Yates retweeted
This conversation is going to remain seared into my own imagination as the perfect example of death of discourse.
Scenario:
> Provocateur / Autist baits rightoid true-believers with something that seems like a simple question but really has a complicated answer
> Sincere RW true believer says she'd like to respond but the answer is nuanced and she's tired of having her words twisted
> Provocateur / Autist says "No really, come on I want to hear your answer"
> Sincere RW true believer speaks from the heart alluding to intangibles and on the ground realities that are obvious put unprovable, makes references to nuanced considerations
> Provocateur / Autist totally disregards nuance either our of autism or spite (I really can't tell which one), ignores context, demands nuance fit into arbitrary boxes, demands that the answer confront hypothetical ideas that have never exist ("what about the perfectly assimilated immigrant!")
> Provocateur / Autist also unaware that her lack of understanding perfectly demonstrates the RW true believers original complaint
> Sincere RW true believer says "forget it"
> Provocateur / Autist "Why are RWers so afraid to answer my question???"
Ford Dean A.D. Yates retweeted
Just like after 9/11, if the Muslims had said we understand we look the same as the problem and are new here, we must be profiled and be under the scope, we could have seen the patriotism there. It never happened. It’s not happening with the jeets again. They’re unfit. As ever.
I’m a U.S. Army combat veteran and a Hindu American. I didn’t put on that uniform, leave my family, and go to war so some third-rate talk show guy could announce that when his side “wins,” they’re coming for my religion.
I served with Christians, Jews, Muslims, atheists, and other Hindus. Nobody pulled rank on God before we went outside the wire. Some of those men never came home. None of them died so you could fantasize about ravaging someone else’s faith. The people who worship in those temples pay taxes, run businesses, and send their sons and daughters into the same Army I served in. “When we win, we are tearing this down” is not patriotism. It is a threat against Hinduism itself to vandalize another American community’s house of worship because you hate the faith inside it.
If winning in America means demolishing Hindu temples, you don’t want the country I fought for. You just want a license to go after people who aren’t you. America is not your theocracy. Religious liberty does not expire for Hindus when you decide you’ve won. You don’t get to tear anything down. Not legally. Not morally. Not in the country for which I actually sacrificed.
@CoHNAOfficial @sudhaj12 @pushpita @carlwheless @shiva_makki @ShawnBinda @Cloudwatch199
Ford Dean A.D. Yates retweeted
One really important problem with Nikole Hannah-Jones's approach to and values about education are right there in her headline:
She is "fighting for every black child." But there are no white parents who make their education decisions within a framework of "fighting for every white child" or Asian parents who are "fighting for every Asian child."
Rather, members of these groups understand their kids as competing with other white or Asian children for scarce opportunities for social advancement. Whites and Asians are competing for those scarce opportunities with whites and Asians from all over the country, so no matter how well their kid may be performing relative to the local cohort, they always need to push harder, move faster and do and be more.
In a setting where everyone is white and there are no race politics implicated, white people have absolutely no compunction about pulling the highest performers out of a class and putting them on a gifted track, and pulling the low performers out of the class and putting them on a special education track, and getting the discipline problems out of the classroom entirely. And then the special ed parents advocate for special ed, and the gifted parents advocate for gifted funding, because everybody is advocating for the resources they think their kid needs to compete against all the other kids.
Hannah-Jones believes whites and Asians favor academic tracking and sorting through standardized testing and selective admissions primarily as a ploy to separate their groups from blacks and Latinos, because she perceives all of politics as being about groups that practice internal solidarity lobbying for collective benefits over other groups.
She despises people who are not like her and limits her contact with them to the point that she does not understand them and has no theory of mind for them. She simply assumes they are a mirror of herself and therefore she assumes white people hate black people the way she hates white people. She thinks all the sorting of children whites and Asians do is actually a shell game that is just meant to keep people like her out. But the truth is, people like her aren't even part of the consideration, because kids like hers are not part of the competition.
This has historically worked out fine for children like her daughter, because affirmative action has historically meant kids like hers have seats reserved and don't have to outperform whites and Asians for a spot. As long as her kid was doing well among her cohort, she could go to any college she wanted. That is now less true since SFFA.
Najya perceived that the schools that weren't like hers were better than her school, and Nikole tries to blame that disparity on resources or on privilege or on systemic racism. But the truth is, it's about values and it's about the perception of school as a competition that brings about better outcomes. Nikole Hannah-Jones has a values system built around resentment and complacency.
She doesn't think in terms of trying to beat an Asian kid on a math test, instead she dismisses the test as an inaccurate instrument steeped in racist assumptions. But then it turned out her kid really couldn't do math.
And, like her daughter, she didn't learn anything.
Ford Dean A.D. Yates retweeted
a thing that occurred to me about this whole "anyone who has become a citizen is just as American as anyone else" thing along with this kind of performative hatred of one side in 150 year old, long settled American internal conflicts is that it's kind of analogous to a family.
if you marry into a family, are you just as much a member of that family as someone born to it? in one, legal sense, yes, sure. but in another very obvious sense, of course not.
if you married into a family that a few generations back had had a big conflict. say one of the great uncles had a horrible drinking problem and ended up abandoning his wife and child and it was a whole thing. and then after some years, he came back, sobered up, and the family for whatever reason decided it was best to accept him back into the family. prodigal son type stuff.
and now, you, 100 years later, recently married into the family, learn of this family lore and make a huge point about saying how you will never accept long dead great uncle Abe as a legitimate member of this family bc you simply can't stand and won't forgive men who abandon their families. it's unforgiveable.
and if you went further and declared no *real* Gunderson (lets pretend the family name is Gunderson) would ever accept great uncle Abe as a Gunderson, then I think everyone can see you are being an absolute knob.
and the fact that you have a valid marriage certificate to point to that makes you legally every bit a Gunderson in no way makes you just as much of a Gunderson as those descended from the folk who had to deal with and forgive great uncle Abe's transgressions and your vehement rejection of their forgiveness doesn't make you *more* of a Gunderson, as you seem to think or hope, but actually highlights how much you are not and perhaps never will be Gunderson.
Ford Dean A.D. Yates retweeted
I'm not averse to competing with foreigners, but if you cede that we are in competition & not in cooperation, then it is rational & correct for me to want to exclude them from moving pieces on my side of the board, too.
Ford Dean A.D. Yates retweeted
Siddharth Jawahar - the guy who scammed Travis Kelce and many others for over $35M, entered the U.S. in 2005 to study at UT Austin.
And 21 years after entering and remaining illegally, he’s now behind bars.
But yeah - those were all Texans in that photo. 🤡
There’s way more to the Siddharth Jawahar story.
Jawahar came to the U.S. from India in 2005, around age 17 or 18. Prosecutors later described him as unlawfully present.
One of the earliest public-record addresses associated with him is 5101 Guadalupe Street in Austin, an area heavily associated with UT student housing.
Court records call Jawahar a college graduate.
But we still haven’t identified the college.
That becomes more interesting because, in a recorded jail call, he referred to a “college buddy” who became a “big hedge fund guy.”
His biography also says he began his finance career at Morgan Stanley. I still haven’t found records confirming his dates, title or role.
By 2010, Jawahar was involved in creating Swiftarc Capital.
One of the important early Swiftarc figures, Siamc Kamalie, a then-recent UT graduate, who previously worked at UTIMCO. They managed the investment assets for the University of Texas and Texas A&M systems.
None of that proves Jawahar attended UT.
But an early UT-area address, an unidentified college degree, a “college buddy” in hedge funds, and an early business partner coming directly out of UTIMCO make the missing education history worth answering.
In 2021, campaign-finance records show Jawahar gave $13,704 to Steve Demetriou’s Ohio House campaign.
For those unaware, federal law bars foreign nationals from contributing to U.S. elections unless they are lawful permanent residents.
Texas regulators found Swiftarc engaged in securities fraud beginning in 2019 and revoked its registration in 2022. Prosecutors say Jawahar continued taking investor money afterward and the scheme exceeded $35 million.
After indictment, prosecutors say Jawahar coached a victim, lied about his finances and immigration status, and asked his sister to wipe his iPhone.
While awaiting sentencing, Jawahar hired Axiom Strategies for $10,000.
A recorded jail call captured Jeff Roe of Axiom discussing promoted media and geofencing the judge’s home.
Days later, Congressman Sam Graves requested a 48-month sentence. Graves’ campaign had paid Axiom about $1.77 million since 2006.
Roe was once Graves’ Chief of Staff. The Houston Chronicle described the Roe-Graves relationship as exceptionally close; Roe’s wife also worked in Graves’ congressional office.
Jawahar ultimately received 11 years in prison and $31.35 million in restitution.
But the beginning of the story is still remarkably unclear:
Where did he attend college?
Was it in Austin?
What exactly did he do at Morgan Stanley?
Who is this hedge-fund “college buddy”?
How did he enter Austin’s investment network so quickly?
What was his immigration status through all of this?
And given the documented campaign contribution, alleged obstruction, false statements and post-indictment conduct, are there additional violations that should be investigated or charged?
Beware: The rabbit hole is deep on this one. He was clearly adept at exploiting the transfer of trust - but I can’t help but wonder what his partners knew.
Ford Dean A.D. Yates retweeted
Confederate Gen. Richard Taylor, son of President Zachary Taylor, had to surrender to a German 48er immigrant officer at the end of the war. Describing his response to the lecture about "American values" he received from the German in broken English, he wrote:
"I apologized meekly for my ignorance, on the ground that my ancestors had come from England to Virginia in 1608, and, in the short intervening period of two hundred and fifty-odd years, had found no time to transmit to me correct ideas of the duties of American citizenship. Moreover, my grandfather, commanding the 9th Virginia regiment in our Revolutionary army, had assisted in the defeat and capture of the Hessian mercenaries at Trenton, and I lamented that he had not, by association with these worthies, enlightened his understanding. My friend smiled blandly and assured me of his willingness to instruct me. Happily for the world, since the days of Huss and Luther, neither tyranny nor taste can repress the Teutonic intellect in search of truth or exposure of error. A kindly, worthy people, the Germans, but wearing on occasions."
Ford Dean A.D. Yates retweeted
imagine a home invader without a gun. he’s holding a spelling bee trophy. he barges in and doesn’t steal anything, in the normal sense, but takes a seat and acts like it’s his home. he demands you make him food and cries out as if struck when you refuse
when you tell him to …
Ford Dean A.D. Yates retweeted
Joel, if wearing a hat and rooting for a team makes them Texan does my wearing gold chains and using the word “Nigga” make me black?
Ford Dean A.D. Yates retweeted
You are accidentally making a great argument for defining who Texans, and more broadly who Americans are
Once again, there are lies, damn lies, and statistics.
Children of foreign born visa holders qualify as Texas residents if their parents have been here for more than a year. Because we have no real standard for what an American/Texan is outside of arbitrary creeds that are impossible to enforce, you and other dorks get duped into thinking Americans are still getting preferential treatment. But the funny thing about saying anyone can be an American is it actually means something legally, therefore it affects statistical record keeping.
They can produce a piece of paper touting “only 4% of UT admissions are foreigner students” when in reality a massive replacement is happening right under our noses.
But you know what, Ben? I don’t think you’re being duped. I’ve seen you make extremely deep and critical takes about statistics that have been cooked. Something tells me you know the statistics you’re touting are BS. Something tells me “you don’t give a damn about the so called browning of America.”
Ford Dean A.D. Yates retweeted
They call it X money because you'll always have to x-plain why you have no money
Ford Dean A.D. Yates retweeted
As a direct living descendant of Sam Houston, the founder of Texas, it's important for everyone to know that Sam Houston founded Texas explicitly for the Anglo-Saxon race and as a vehicle for the expansion of the Anglos from Oregon to the Darien Gap in his own personal writings.
Texas is an idea that does not hold a single race, religion, class, or creed.
If this is your takeaway from watching Longhorns celebrate an incredible win, the simple truth is you’re an awful person who has no business serving 31+ million Texans on the RRC.
To my Republican colleagues rightfully calling on this post to be deleted: this is just who this man is — and this isn’t the first time. Human decency and respect for one another should never come second to partisanship.
@Jon_RosenthalTX is an honorable man who will actually address the issues the RRC faces and will not dehumanize Texans in pursuit of elected office. It’s time for Texas to do better. 🤘🏾 #txlege
