A Horace Mann student has denounced in the pages of the marquee New York City private school’s newspaper what he says is a culture of bullying from progressive faculty members.
Senior Ryan Finlay blasted the tony school for allegedly being intolerant of conservative beliefs and accused students and faculty of “vilifying” those who voice more right-wing viewpoints.
“[Horace Mann] like so many other academic institutions today, fosters a learning environment that I believe is hostile to those who do not subscribe to progressive politics,” wrote Finlay in The Record, the school’s student newspaper, adding there was “continuous pressure in the classroom to embrace visions of wholesale societal reform.”
“Casual and sanctioned attacks on non–progressive views are frequently integrated into classes,” Finlay continued in the June 7 Op-Ed.
Horace Mann is one of New York City’s ritziest private schools, with tuition running at more than $55,000 a year.
Like many city private schools, however, the institution has been gripped in a fever of wokeness. In the past the school has partnered with Pollyanna, a nonprofit, which has been widely criticized for pushing Critical Race Theory in academic curricula. Horace Mann’s head of school, Thomas Kelly, earned $1.27 million in compensation in 2020, tax records show.
Finlay, a senior and contributing writer for the paper, said students often censored themselves for fear of academic reprisal from out-of-control far-left faculty.
“Every classmate I know who is not progressive self-censors in class during discussions of current events and politics,” Finlay said, reporting that one classmate had told him it was better to just “lie about what you believe” in class because it was “not worth it” to potentially antagonize a teacher.
“Looming over HM’s conservative students, there is the fear of unknowable and arbitrary reprisal by those in power,” Finlay wrote, adding, in a Nixonion flourish, that the school contained “silent multitudes” of students who felt like him.
The piece ended with a plea from Finlay that school leaders redress the toxic school culture.
“I call upon the administration to clarify its policies on political expression; I call upon the administration to actively protect and sanctify diversity of thought; and I call upon the administration to disentangle itself from the progressive political agenda that has turned the school into an incubator of bias and intellectual intolerance,” he wrote.
Reps for Horace Mann did not respond to request for comment from The Post.
