Heritage Foundation senior fellow Mike Gonzalez has crisscrossed the country to bring his research on critical race theory and identity politics to audiences eager to counter these left-wing ideas. 

In the past year, Gonzalez has briefed lawmakers in Louisiana, spoken at major conservative conferences, and counseled parents how to fight back against the left’s indoctrination of their kids. He’s done it all while producing hard-hitting research and making numerous media appearances. 

Gonzalez, the Angeles T. Arredondo E Pluribus Unum senior fellow at Heritage, last year wrote the book, “The Plot to Change America: How Identity Politics is Dividing the Land of the Free.” The timely and relevant book had so much demand that its publisher, Encounter Books, ordered a second printing as well as a new Spanish-language translation. 

His next book, “BLM: The Making of a New Marxist Revolution,” will be published in September. 

Long before many Americans even heard of critical race theory, Gonzalez was sounding the alarm with the support of Heritage’s Center for Education Policy.  

Last year, Gonzalez co-authored a comprehensive Heritage report on the subject with Jonathan Butcher, the Will Skillman fellow in education. The report, “Critical Race Theory, the New Intolerance, and Its Grip on America,” is one of Heritage’s most-read publications. 

“Racism and intolerance should have no place in America, but CRT is more than just a philosophical objection to discrimination,” Gonzalez and Butcher write. “When followed to its logical conclusion, CRT is destructive and rejects the fundamental ideas on which our constitutional republic is based.” 

Gonzalez and Lindsey Burke, director of the Center for Education Policy, wrote a commentary for National Review in October 2020 that exposed colleges of education as a source of critical theory, an offshoot of CRT. 

“Our children’s schools are especially vulnerable because that is where the campaign to rewrite the past has been the fiercest,” Gonzalez and Burke wrote. “And the tenets of that campaign are being refined in schools of education, training future teachers in the use of critical frameworks.” 

Gonzalez’s commitment to traditional American values—and the truth about American history—earned him a seat on the President’s Advisory 1776 Commission, which was created by President Donald Trump to safeguard America’s founding principles, to restore national confidence in, and love for, those principles, and to rekindle the faith in the common story that binds us to one another as Americans. 

As left-wing commentators and CRT defenders have ramped up their attacks and falsehoods, Gonzalez has continued to speak out, visiting several states and addressing audiences that often draw hundreds of attendees. He recently appeared at Heritage’s Resource Bank Meeting in Texas and the Western Conservative Summit in Colorado. He also attended rallies in Leesburg, Va., and Waukesha, Wis. 

Gonzalez, a prolific author and leading scholar, outlined the left’s agenda in “The Plot to Change America.” He put the issue succinctly in the introduction of his book: “Identity politics is all around us.” 

Coming at a time of political divisions and unrest in America, the book was released in 2020 to positive reviews—and continues to be a resource for those who want to better understand what’s at stake.  

Popular podcast and talk-show host Ben Shapiro of The Daily Wire wrote, “Mike Gonzalez is a tremendous voice for conservatism. In his new book, ‘The Plot to Change America,’ Mike irrefutably wrecks the identity politics arguments of the political Left, which have been tearing the country apart for years.” 

Added Joshua Mitchell, author of “American Awakening”: “Michael Gonzalez shows us that the idea of ‘identity’ did not just innocently emerge. It was invented for the purpose of dividing citizens into groups to be used as political pawns in a plot to change America. Identity politics turns citizens into ‘innocent victims’ in need of governmental carve-outs, and promotes brokers who do their bidding. Gonzalez lays out just how this madness can be brought to an end. A very timely book. Highly recommended.” 

For more information on Heritage’s efforts to fight critical race theory, click here.