| A small nonprofit launched by the journalist Bari Weiss devolves into tribalism.  Illustration by Ben Hickey How anti-woke do you have to be to succeed in the world of anti-woke nonprofits? This is the question Emma Green takes on, in a deeply reported new story about the Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism, or FAIR, founded by a small group led by the journalist Bari Weiss in 2021. The group positioned its goal as countering an “intolerant orthodoxy” on the left, with the loftier dream of supplanting the A.C.L.U. as the nation’s chief defender of civil liberties. Money and attention flowed in, and FAIR grew to include roughly eighty local chapters around the country—but fissures among members soon appeared. Everyday management of the organization fell to a co-founder named Bion Bartning, an entrepreneur and investor with no professional background on issues related to race or civil rights. The group’s decentralized nature and vague goals left many local organizers feeling unmoored and confused. “FAIR was basically virtue-signalling for the anti-woke,” one volunteer said. “It was not an organization designed to actually do anything.” But, as Green writes, the group’s failures may stem less from mismanagement than from the fact that it wasn’t willing to fight the culture wars hard enough to satisfy its core audience. Support The New Yorker’s award-winning journalism. Subscribe today » | 
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