CORRECTION: This story has been up to date all through to replicate that this was an project to somebody exterior the division.
Lower than two weeks after Ryan Walters, the highest college official in Oklahoma, got here underneath hearth for tapping the far-right founding father of Libs of TikTok for an advisory committee of the state Division of Schooling, one in every of his high staffers appeared to debate one more committee appointee: Joe Rogan.
Rogan, a comic, UFC commentator and host of the podcast “The Joe Rogan Experience,” has soared in reputation world wide for his brash, off-the-cuff long-form conversations with politicians, comedians and philosophers. Rogan, who has almost 14 million followers on X (previously Twitter) and 19 million followers on Instagram, has let anti-vaccine misinformation, conspiracy theories and transphobic and racist speaking factors run wild on his platform.
Inner emails HuffPost obtained through a public information request present that in early February, Dan Isett, a spokesperson for Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters, despatched an “assignment” to somebody exterior the division tasking them with placing collectively a draft press launch asserting Rogan’s addition to the division’s Library Media Advisory Committee — the advisory physique on the middle of the state’s effort to purge from college libraries all books that it identifies as “pornographic” or in any other case unsuitable for kids. The committee critiques and makes suggestions about books and different supplies out there in libraries.
“Thanks again for your attention to this assignment,” Isett wrote. “It’s not meant to be a heavy lift.”
James Gilbert through Getty Photographs
The draft launch, which the person despatched again the next day, featured an image of Rogan and touted him as a “huge addition” to the committee. And it included a fawning quote attributed to Walters, by which he described Rogan as a “giant in the national public square” who would “supercharge” the division’s efforts.
“Joe has warned against ‘woke, guilt-ridden ideology’ in schools, particularly in other parts of the country,” the assertion attributed to Walters learn. “Like Joe, Oklahomans want nothing to do with that. I look forward to Joe’s candor and ideas. This is a huge addition, not just for the purposes of the committee … but also for a free-spoken renaissance personality like Joe Rogan to elevate a larger discussion about real education reform, and ultimately improve student outcomes.”
The fabric additionally included a sequence of draft social media posts by which Walters would promote Rogan’s appointment, together with one which linked to a clip of Rogan on his podcast railing in opposition to California faculties, full with a warning about profanity.
Within the clip, Rogan complains that his youngsters’s college was “indoctrinating” college students to undertake “anti-racist” values and studying about pronouns.
“I didn’t like the woke shit,” he mentioned. “I didn’t like that they were, you know, trying to ask kids their pronoun.”
Rogan has lengthy railed in opposition to so-called “culture war” points on his podcast and in his stand-up comedy. He has raised unfounded issues in regards to the benefit of transgender athletes in girls’s sports activities and prompt that trans individuals are an indication of societal collapse.
The draft announcement was put collectively simply weeks after Republican state Rep. Justin Humphrey, who has a protracted historical past of peddling sexist and anti-trans views, launched a invoice to permit animal companies to take away college students who determine as so-called furries from college. That laws was impressed by repeatedly debunked claims about college students figuring out as cats and faculties offering litter containers — a fantasy that Walters, Rogan and the Libs of TikTok founder all helped give rise to.
It’s not clear within the paperwork that Rogan formally agreed to be on the committee or if he had any conversations with anybody on the division. In the long run, the Oklahoma State Division of Schooling by no means introduced Rogan’s appointment. A publicist for Rogan didn’t instantly reply to HuffPost’s request for remark.
Isett, the Walters spokesperson, additionally didn’t instantly reply.
In October, Rogan welcomed each Donald Trump and his working mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), on his present earlier than sending off a strong endorsement for Trump on X the evening earlier than the election. (Rogan invited Vice President Kamala Harris to his podcast however claimed her marketing campaign had an inventory of “hilarious” necessities to have the ability to do the present. On Wednesday, a Harris aide mentioned that the interview by no means materialized out of worry of backlash from progressives.) At Trump’s victory get together final week, Rogan was given a particular shoutout. With Trump standing behind him, UFC President Dana White thanked “the mighty and powerful Joe Rogan,” together with a number of different male life-style podcasters and comedians.
All through his tenure, Walters has sought to require the Bible in all public lecture rooms, has mandated that faculties ignore the Biden administration’s trans-inclusive Title IX laws, and has issued an emergency rule to bar trans college students from updating their college information with their title and gender marker, even after college students have gotten authorized title modifications.
When Walters appointed Chaya Raichik, the Los Angeles-based founding father of Libs of TikTok, in January, he applauded her for “showing the world exactly what the radical left is all about — lowering standards, porn in schools, and pushing woke indoctrination on our kids.”
Raichik’s account is supposed to incite outrage amongst conservatives, together with by steadily mocking movies of public college academics and trans individuals. Her monumental following on X has impressed real-life violence. In 2023, greater than two dozen public faculties and libraries acquired bomb threats after they’d been focused within the days prior by Raichik’s account. One Tulsa college acquired two bomb threats in the summertime of 2023 after Raichik posted a few librarian who jokingly wrote she wasn’t completed pushing her “radical liberal agenda” of “teaching kids to love books and be kind.”
Bloomberg through Getty Photographs
Dozens of youth and LGBTQ+ advocates have accused Walters and Raichik of making a hostile setting for Oklahoma’s LGBTQ+ and two-spirit college students. In February, Nex Benedict, a 16-year-old nonbinary pupil at an Oklahoma college, died by suicide in the future after being overwhelmed by their friends in a restroom. The federal Schooling Division, which investigated the varsity district after Benedict’s loss of life, discovered this week that the district violated Title IX on a number of events by failing to reply to allegations of sexual harassment from college students.
Instantly after Benedict’s loss of life, greater than 300 advocacy teams known as for Walters’ removing, and famous that he “empowered anti-2SLGBTQI+ extremists” like Raichik, who in 2022 focused one in every of Benedict’s academics in a put up, which prompted them to resign due to the harassment.
The batch of paperwork HuffPost obtained is greater than 3,000 pages. It features a log of quite a few complaints that Oklahoma’s Eeducation Division fielded from offended constituents within the wake of Raichik’s appointment to the committee.
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One lady advised the division that Raichik “should have nothing to do with Oklahoma schools,” a synopsis of the grievance reads. “She states that Ms. Raichik is a terrorist and insights violence on her TikTok feeds. She states that Chaya Raichik caused the Tulsa Public School district to receive the bomb threats last year. She states that Ms. Raichik doesn’t live here in Oklahoma and should not have anything to do with Oklahoma Public Schools.”
