Welcome to the Quillett Podcast. I'm your host Jonathan Kay, a senior editor at Quillett.

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social events.

And this week's guest might be the youngest we've ever had on the podcast. She's Sahar Tartak, a freshman at Yale University

and a fellow at the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, where, full disclosure,

I serve on the board of advisors. In a recently published Wall Street

journal article Sahar tells the story of what happened to her last year at her highly rated

Long Island Public High School where she served as student government

treasurer. School officials were intent on bringing in a racial equity group that was going

to deliver a paid lecture on the evils of institutional racism.

And Sahar didn't feel comfortable signing off on a $375 check to a group that she didn't know much about.

Moreover, it bothered her that many of the students at her school, who were either

Jewish or Hispanic, seemed to be lumped in with lectures about the problems with whiteness, and when she

raised questions about whether she and her fellow students should be lectured to in this way in the name of anti-racism education, school officials became furious, comparing her to someone who questioned the evils of slavery or who would block a Holocaust survivor from speaking at the school.

But in the end, Sahara succeeded in raising the issue all the way to the school board where she received a standing

ovation for her efforts. I spoke to Sahar Tartak in October just as she was

beginning her first year at Yale. Here are excerpts from our conversation.

I guess my first question Here are excerpts from our conversation.

I guess my first question relates to this social cringe that I had as I was reading your article,

because I was just thinking about your experience at school, like after this episode you described,

...