Author name: Chad Banghart

New Tolerance Campaign Announces 2025 “Worst of the Woke” Awards The American Bar Association, Girl Scouts, and the Texas State University student who brutally mocked the murder of Charlie Kirk are listed in the top 10 offenders of the year. Washington, D.C. — Today the New Tolerance Campaign (NTC), a grassroots watchdog organization unveiled its fifth annual “Worst of the Woke” Awards – a look back at the year’s most outrageous headline-grabbing instances of woke-run-wild in the United States. In 2025, so many radicalized institutions and individuals went to extremes pressing a woke agenda on a weary public and we captured the ten worst of the year. See the full list of “Worst of the Woke” Award winners – as well as this year’s “Champion of Tolerance” below. 2025 Worst of the Woke  Award Winner: Bath & Body Works Reason: A former Utah store manager says she was fired for declining to use a transgender employee’s preferred pronouns, citing her religious convictions – now she’s suing the company. Bath & Body Works markets itself as committed to creating “safe spaces of belonging,” yet appears unwilling to accommodate even modest religious conscience in how employees are compelled to speak. Forcing compelled speech under threat of termination, while selling ‘inclusion’ in every window display is the kind of corporate double-speak we exist to expose. Award Winner: Human Rights Campaign (HRC) Reason: Disney’s 2025 shareholder fight was explicitly about whether the company should stay in HRC’s “Corporate Equality Index,” which HRC uses to pressure companies on LGBTQ-related policies, including controversial gender identity standards. At the same time, HRC reportedly laid off around 20% of its staff amid political and financial headwinds, prompting internal criticism that the organization demands “equity” from others while failing to protect them. HRC is the architect of a lot of corporate “woke scoring,” (hat tip to Delmonte) but 2025 exposed a gap between its lofty rhetoric and how it treats its own people and dissenting viewpoints inside the movement. Award Winner: Texas State University Student Who Mocked Charlie Kirk’s Death On Campus Reason: One of the most shocking moments we saw on campus this year came from a Texas college, where a student (now withdrawn) decided the best way to express political disagreement was to imitate the brutal death of TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk during a memorial event. Instead of choosing debate, dialogue, or even peaceful protest, this student performed a sick theatrical mock execution meant to humiliate and intimidate his peers on campus. To make matters worse, after the disgusting mockery, the student launched a GoFundMe to play the victim – where he defended himself to raise almost $35,000 in order to ‘pursuit an education elsewhere’ or to take ‘the necessary steps to return to Texas State.’ On many campuses around the nation, students are taught that certain groups deserve protection while others are fair game for harassment, vandalism, or threats. Award Winner: Columbia University (again!) Reason: A 2025 Stop Antisemitism “report card” gave Columbia an F, citing widespread antisemitism and Jewish students feeling pressured to hide their identity. Columbia preached about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) until President Trump was inaugurated and signed sweeping executive orders banning DEI programs at institutions that receive federal funding. Yet Columbia’s own Task Force on Antisemitism issued several reports over this last year analyzing “protest rules, hostile incidents targeting Jewish students, and the overall campus climate.” Still, the prominent Ivy League university has managed to make Jewish students feel unwelcome, while presiding over one of the worst free-speech records in the country. Award Winner: Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM)   Reason: The Society for Human Resource Management has spent years positioning itself as the moral and professional authority on workplace “Inclusion & Diversity,” insisting these frameworks are essential to healthy organizations and providing turnkey toolkits to embed them across hiring, management, and culture. Yet reporting paints a sharply different picture inside SHRM itself: former employees describe a punitive, fear-drive workplace with rigid attendance enforcement, alleged retaliation, and leadership rhetoric that openly scolded staff as “entitled” and “sloppy.” In other words, the very organization that trains America’s HR departments on empathy, workplace rules, and best practices is accused of violating the very standards it implements for others – turning SHRM into a case study in woke institutional hypocrisy rather than a model employer. Award Winner: The American Bar Association (ABA) Reason: The American Bar Association gatekept power to enforce ideological conformity in the legal profession. Last year the ABA continued conditioning law-school accreditation and professional standing on mandatory DEI requirements, including identity-based training, reporting, and policy benchmarks, effectively turning a voluntary trade group into a national ideological regulator. Law schools and attorneys who question these frameworks face real consequences from accreditation risk to reputational damage, disturbing open debate in a field that should prize viewpoint neutrality and equal treatment under the law. By embedding political ideology into credentialing rather than focusing on competence, ethics, and access to justice, the ABA undermines public trust and converts “inclusion” into a loyalty test. When the nation’s most influential legal body substitutes ideology for impartial standards, tolerance gives way to coercion and equal justice suffers. Award Winner: The National Education Association (NEA) Reason: Continuing their previous resolutions in 2025, the NEA promoted gender self-ID for minors, pushing schools to keep gender transitions secret from parents, and tying lesson plans to political activism. Meanwhile, math and reading scores remain at crisis levels across our nation. Over the years, parents attempting to speak out at union-aligned school board meetings have reported being labeled “extremists” or “terrorists.” The NEA claims to put students first but continues to prioritize ideological activism over education. American children do not need more politics inside the classroom, they need reading, writing, and arithmetic. Continuing to call concerned parents ‘dangerous’ in 2025 isn’t tolerance, it’s arrogant and it must stop. Award Winner: Imran Ahmed and the Center for Countering Digital Hate Reason: The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), led by its Chief

Washington, D.C. — The New Tolerance Campaign (NTC) is proud to announce that its “Atlanta ANTIFA” listing on the NTC Hate Map has been cited in official letters signed by Jim Jordan, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and Chip Roy, Chairman of the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government. This citation underscores the growing role of the NTC Hate Map as a credible resource informing congressional discussions on political violence and extremist activity in the United States. The NTC Hate Map, an interactive database documenting incidents of political violence and hard-left organizational activity across the United States, was created to fill a critical gap in public information and research. Unlike traditional civil-rights tracker resources, which often focus primarily on far-right hate groups, NTC’s map provides a balanced dataset capturing violent acts and intolerant behavior regardless of ideological origin. NTC’s “Atlanta ANTIFA” listing is one of many entries that highlight documented instances where members or affiliates of this movement have been associated with politically motivated violence, property destruction, or confrontational public demonstrations. The fact that this data has been referenced by sitting Members of Congress reflects both its relevance to national security discourse and the need for reliable, unbiased reporting on all sources of political violence. “Our mission has always been to ensure that all forms of hate and intolerance are tracked with the same rigor and transparency,” said Chad Banghart, President of New Tolerance Campaign. “When elected officials turn to NTC’s Hate Map as a source of factual reference, it reinforces the importance of documenting facts over ideology.” The “Atlanta ANTIFA” listing being brought into congressional discussion emphasizes several key points: Accountability in Documentation: NTC’s Hate Map provides verifiable, sourced information about violent incidents often overlooked or minimized in other institutional records. Policy Impacts: Congress referencing this data signals growing bipartisan attention on politically motivated violence and the need for comprehensive resources that extend beyond traditional categorizations of “hate.” Public Education: Increasingly, policymakers and journalists alike are turning to independent resources like the Hate Map to inform debates about domestic extremism. The NTC Hate Map also addresses widespread concerns about selective reporting in existing civil-rights tracking tools, which historically have prioritized some forms of political violence over others. By creating a tool that documents incidents linked to both far-left and far-right actors, NTC is advancing a true tolerance framework that rejects all violence and intimidation. ### For Interview or Inquiry: New Tolerance Campaign Communications 520-369-3829 communications@newtolerance.org About New Tolerance Campaign The New Tolerance Campaign is a nonprofit watchdog organization that mobilizes Americans to hold corporations, media outlets, celebrities, universities, and other influential institutions accountable when they display double standards in their actions and rhetoric.