Sharif El-Mekki is an adviser to Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro. He also supports school segregation, is a member of the Black Panther Party with family ties to Iran, and runs a nonprofit that has raked in nearly $20 million in donations from the government and nonprofits, including the Gates Foundation. ...

“He started up this organization, which on paper sounds like a really wonderful endeavor, getting more black teachers in the classroom,” said Dr. Mika Hackner, a senior research associate at the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values, which drafted a report on El-Mekki’s extremist views and activism that she shared with The Free Press. “But if you scratch beneath the surface—not even beneath the surface, it’s on their website—he’s propagating some pretty dangerous and divisive ideas.” 

El-Mekki, she added, is “bringing in segregation by a different and more socially and politically acceptable name.”