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Reason: One of the most shocking moments we saw on campus this year came from a Texas college, where a student (now withdrawn) decided the best way to express political disagreement was to imitate the brutal death of TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk during a memorial event.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 Executive Officer Imran Ahmed, presents itself as a mission-driven nonprofit dedicated to “stopping the spread of online hate and disinformation” and making the internet safer “through research, campaigns, and policy advocacy.” In practice, however, CCDH has played a central role in advancing an aggressive global push for expansive content moderation, platform pressure campaigns, and regulatory actions – efforts critics argue resemble ideological enforcement more than neutral safety work. In late December, the U.S. State Department announced visa bans targeting CCDH’s CEO, alongside European digital regulators, citing concerns that foreign actors were pressuring American technology platforms to censor U.S. viewpoints. The Administration framed the move as a response to what it described as growing “censorship-industrial complex.” When “counter-hate” advocacy driven by international actors, operating through an organization rated as having a left-wing bias, becomes a vehicle for narrowing acceptable discourse and imposing controversial platform controls, the outcome is not genuine safety, but ideological gatekeeping. CCDH thus fits squarely among institutions that claim moral authority while advancing policies that chill speech, rather than foster open exchange.
Award Winner: National Public Radio (NPR)
Reason: Multiple 2025 whistleblowers publicly criticized NPR’s newsroom culture for enforcing a rigid progressive orthodoxy, especially around gender ideology, policing coverage, and election topics. At the same time, think-tank research, media bias ratings, and independently published analyses show NPR audience has become dramatically more ideologically homogenous, even as the organization continues to brand itself as a trusted, neutral news source. Despite that branding, NPR’s 2025 coverage repeatedly reflected bias in both story framing and guest selection, reinforcing a narrow political worldview rather than presenting competing perspectives. Until a Congressional vote last summer halted funding through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), NPR received substantial financial support from U.S. taxpayers – including millions of Americans whose views were routinely dismissed, marginalized, or caricatured by its reporting. When a publicly funded broadcaster functions less as a journalistic institution and more as an ideological megaphone for one faction of the nation, standard news coverage, tolerance, and basic factual balance give way to activism. NPR’s latest work and standards are not public service broadcasting, rather its left-wing propaganda funded by the public itself.
Award Winner: Girl Scouts of Northern New Jersey and Girl Scouts of Western Washington
Reason: Over the years the Girl Scouts of America have faced rightful backlash for the adoption of transgender policies, implementing diversity, equity, inclusion, and racial justice (DEIRJ), and being forced to explain themselves after deleting a congratulations post to Amy Coney Barrett for being confirmed to the United States Supreme Court. 2025 spared no exception for the organization as the Girl Scouts of Northern New Jersey and Girl Scouts of Western Washington chapters exemplified how a once-trusted youth organization has drifted from character building into ideological enforcement. Both councils advanced activist messaging that critics say prioritized identity politics over leadership development, pressuring troops and volunteers to adopt DEI and Pride-related messaging regardless of parental concerns or community values. In Washington, a public-facing council post reinforced fears that political ideology is being injected into programming for young girls. Their frequent updates on Facebook often come with a disclaimer caption reading this, “Girl Scouts of Western Washington uses the term girls inclusively to speak to everyone who identities with the Girl Scout experience, which includes cisgender girls, gender-expansive youth, transgender youth, non-binary youth, gender nonconforming youth, genderqueer youth and any girl-identifying human.” Almost unbelievable! Meanwhile in New Jersey, a volunteer mother says she was removed simply for refusing to push Pride Month messaging onto children within her troop. These incidents reflect a broader, ongoing pattern dating back years, where Girl Scouts programming has encouraged children to sort themselves into boxes by race, identity, and perceived privilege – teaching division and segregation rather than unifying as fellow Americans under our nation’s very own red, white, and blue flag. Thankfully for the sake of our nation’s young women, Girl Scouts of the USA sees youth membership rapidly declining throughout the years.
2025 Champion of Tolerance
In a year filled with hypocrisy and double-standards, one organization went above-and-beyond to right their wrong and return to their core principles centered on “country hospitality.”
Organizational Award Winner: Cracker Barrel
Reason: New Tolerance Campaign is proud to award Cracker Barrel the 2025 Champion of Tolerance Award for doing something increasingly rare in corporate America: listening to its customers and choosing hospitality over ideology. In August, Cracker Barrel openly recalibrated its direction after receiving clear feedback from longtime patrons who felt alienated by costly rebranding efforts, modernized logo changes, and real estate redesigns that drifted away from the brand’s longstanding identity. This course correction came even after the company’s CEO had publicly unveiled the new branding strategy on national broadcast news, making the decision to step back not just notable, but courageous. Rather than doubling down out of pride or chasing elite approval, Cracker Barrel refocused on the core principle that built its success in the first place: “country hospitality,” familiarity, and a welcoming environment where customers are served. While many socially conscious brands remained consumed by ideological rebranding, political posturing, and activist signaling — often at the expense of their own customer base, Cracker Barrel chose humility, accountability, and community. That decision aligns squarely with New Tolerance Campaign’s mission: rejecting performative inclusion in favor of genuine respect for everyday Americans. By prioritizing customer trust over cultural trends and restoring a brand built on shared experience rather than imposed ideology, Cracker Barrel demonstrated that real tolerance means meeting people where they are and welcoming them as they are.
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For Interview or Inquiry:
New Tolerance Campaign Communications
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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.
