Hey everyone welcome to K-Puff. I'm Jonathan K-part.

Kaleel Jibran Mohammed is a professor of history, race, and public policy at

Harvard's Kennedy School and found himself embroiled in a huge

controversy in the local schools of his hometown South Orange, New Jersey over the

last few weeks that involved race and slavery. Here him discuss the lessons he learned and the dangers they revealed for African Americans,

the left, and our democracy as we know it, right now. Professor Khalil-Tibron Mohammed, thank you very much for being on the podcast.

Thank you so much Jonathan for having me. So the idea of having you on the podcast came about

when we were having dinner after a salon hosted by the New York University campus in Florence, Italy.

And we had just talked about Ralph Ellison's book, The Invisible Man.

And we got to talking about something that happened in your hometown in South Orange,

New Jersey.

And correct me if I'm wrong, your wife is on the school board and there's a big controversy

there involving an assignment in colonial American history.

The controversy got so big, you got involved if I'm not mistaken.

Talk about that. What happened?

Sure. So about a month ago, just sometime inside of February, the fifth grade class of a middle school here in South Orange, we're completing a two-week project

to explore colonial America.

And this included some distinctions between the New England colonies, the Middle colonies, the Southern colonies,

a full exploration of the politics, culture, economy of these various regions, and really

three elements, a newsletter that would talk about the full life of the colonies,

a brochure, as if you were sort of a chamber of commerce person describing the benefits of your place, and then finally some visual representation of the period

which can include a poster of selling tobacco or horses or including slave auction ads.

...