Moms for Liberty, through M4LU seeks to be the go-to resource for parents to learn more about the issues and ideologies facing their children in the classroom, and to gain practical tools to navigate those issues.
Punctuation errors in the original.
The program director is Melissa Karwowski. She is touted as having "a diverse background in marketing, operations, data analytics, and tech consulting." Her sister-in-law started the M4L chapter in Washington County, PA (southwest of Pittsburgh) where Karwowski lives.
She appears to be the same Melissa Karwowski whose LIinkedIn profile shows her working the tech side of multiple industries, most recently working as Director of Operations for IndeVets, an outfit that appears to provide floating employment for veterinarians. It appears that she was also a Mary Kay lady at one point. She's a military spouse (there's a nice piece in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about her welcoming her husband home in 2018). They have three children. She has a couple of degrees from Robert Morris University--one in business administration, and one in data analytics, both from 2021.
While this very much appears to be the same woman who is program director, her LinkedIn does not mention the M4LU job at all.
So the program director seems a bit more qualified to manage digital resources than an actual university, which seems about right. But she also doesn't appear to have been the first person in the job. January and February lecture videos are hosted by Robin Steenman, who introduces herself as M4LU director. Steenman may be familiar as the M4L leader in Tennessee who led the book banning charge there.
The "university" launched in January. As Jennifer Vilcarino noted at Ed Week, M4LU is not actually accredited. Karwowski describes the goal a little more specifically:
Radical ideologies that have been building for decades are being daily inculcated in our children’s minds. What are the seeds being sown in our children today in America? If we as parents are to combat these efforts, we must understand the ideology. We must become experts ourselves. That is the goal of M4LU.
The website lists two "semesters" for 2025, but the format seems much more like a "topic of the month" structure. January-- Social Emotional Learning. February-- Critical Race Theory. March-- Restorative Justice. April-- Gender Ideology. May-- Comprehensive Sex Ed. In the fall, things get a bit more esoteric. August-- Generative Curriculum. September-- Graphic Content in Libraries. October-- Ethnic Studies. November-- Marxism.
For each topic, there's a group of resources. There's a "smart book" that provides a history and background of the topic from the far right perspective. This includes talking points arranges according to the points to which one is responding. The resources include presentation slides, and a set of videos. There is also a set of "white papers" and some books for recommended reading, plus a whole laundry list of related links (CRT gives links to videos that Williamson County M4L created when they were trying to ban the Wit and Wisdom books series, including a Riby Bridges bio-- that was three years ago).
The "experts" cites are the usual crew. James Lindsay, Chris Rufo, Parents Defending Education, the American Enterprise Institute, and plenty of Heritage Foundation stuff. There are also "watch parties for films every month or so.
As mentioned, there's a live lecture with each month, apparently filmed at a studio in Nashville (for $25 you can be part of the studio audience)
I could get into the specifics, but-- okay, just one. To respond to the argument that restorative justice is a good idea because children who commit offenses do so because of social factors beyond their control and punishing them just makes matters worse, the resources suggests you say that "Bad social circumstances caused by government policy make it more likely that members of certain groups will commit crimes."
The newly made materials for this endeavor are slick and professional looking, the website also slick and easily navigated. However, you can't squint hard enough in a million years to make this look like a university. What it is is a deep resource library being rolled out a month at a time. It is a library of all the usual complaints and grievances of the culture panic crowd, presented in an academic-looking form that should be welcome by the "I'm not trying to stir up trouble, I just want to answer some questions" crowd.
M4LU told EdWeek that it includes counter perspectives, and that's true, though it's also clear that those perspectives are there in a Know Your Enemy function and not to be engaged as ideas that reasonable people might hold. M4LU frequently credits itself with an "academic" approach, but I'm not sure that they know what that means. Granted, it's a vague sort of term, but I've never understood it to mean "we have already decided the conclusion and we will now just build a scaffold to support it and discredit all others." I think maybe they think "academic" means "not screaming," and M4LU does seem to clear that floor-level bar.
M4L remains far more interested in using culture panic to stir up political activism than it is interested in actual education or, for that matter, liberty. M4LU is one more aspect of that mission to outrage and agitate MAGA ladies. If you want to get a picture of what the current talking points and arguments are, this website is just the thing. But a university it is not.
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