A self-proclaimed “revolutionary” who was removed from a role where she pushed left-wing ideology in schools for children of military members following outrage about her anti-white rhetoric was subsequently given a higher-paying government job impacting a much larger number of children.
Kelisa Wing, the former Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Chief for the Department of Defense Education Activity schools, drew pressure from Congress after she gave speeches about how tired she was of “white folx” and how the police should be defunded. Wing’s social media posts frequently lash out at white people, saying someone “had the CAUdacity to say that black people can be racist too” in 2020, calling people Karens, and saying “I am exhausted by 99% of the white men in education and 95% of the white women. Where can I get a break from white nonsense for a while?”
The Pentagon, after initially refusing to cooperate with Congress, last year said it disbanded its schools’ DEI office.
But the Department of Education apparently found Wing to be an excellent candidate, naming her to a $153,000-a-year job as senior adviser for the department, where she continues to push the same extremist politics, according to a new investigation by OpenTheBooks shared first with The Daily Wire.
“We can confirm that Kelisa is the Senior Advisor to the Performance Improvement Officer in Office of the Deputy Secretary and her portfolio does not include DEI work,” the Department of Education said.
But the claim that DEI was not part of her “portfolio” makes the situation even worse, amounting to a “shell game” where the government hides ideological activities by changing their names.
In the past, political employees would attempt to “burrow” into the permanent federal workforce before a change in administration. DEI professionals could similarly “burrow” by assuming more neutral-sounding titles, even if many of their actions remain the same. The Biden administration’s Department of Education admitted as much in its 2022–2026 strategic plan, saying “Equity is a cross-cutting priority integrated into every goal, objective, and strategy.”
Indeed, Wing has made speeches to left-wing activist groups, funded by the government, where she appears under her Department of Education title. This year, she was a keynote speaker at a conference titled “The Backlash Against Equity” by the left-wing Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, which has received government funding. The conference focused on how teachers could continue pushing the equal-outcomes philosophy even “in these times,” an apparent reference to the fact that many people no longer want them to do so.
In other speeches, she called for “revolution” and demanded that people “interrupt this White dominant culture.” She has frequently pushed “social emotional learning,” a coded phrase for left-wing activism that displaces rigorous education.
While lecturing military families on their privilege and pushing left-wing ideology on a traditionally conservative military was uniquely shocking, the Department of Education stands to reach a far larger number of children than the military schools.
That such a person is now embedded into the workforce of the Department of Education, in a role that is not explicitly DEI but instead more wide-ranging, is likely to give ammunition to critics who wonder why the department — which does not actually operate any schools — should exist at all.
OpenTheBooks said contractors are also used to shield inappropriate ideological activity by government, in part because they aren’t subject to the Freedom of Information Act. The Department of Defense’s military schools, for example, sent millions of dollars to Discovery Education, which does “implicit bias and systemic racism” and “social justice” trainings and Advancement Via Individual Determination, which promotes overtly partisan “Learning for Justice” materials.