Wisconsin GOP governor candidate Tom Tiffany accused of fueling online harassment of school board president

An Eau Claire school board president and university professor says Republican candidate for Wisconsin governor Tom Tiffany attempted to incite threats and harassment on herself and her family for acknowledging racial realities.

“A sitting member of Congress and Republican candidate for governor of the state of Wisconsin attempted to incite an online mob against a school board member for sharing information that a parent group was seeking all members who wanted to help Black students succeed in our schools,” said Stephanie Farrar.

Tiffany reposted a Libs of TikTok post in December that stated Farrar was attempting to start a Black Parent Teacher Association in Eau Claire.

“Parents want a good education for their kids regardless of skin color. It is pure insanity that a school board member thinks otherwise,” Tiffany wrote. “While the Left seeks to divide us by race, I will unite us as one Wisconsin. As governor, I will end unfair race-based preferences and DEI statewide.”

Farrar, also a University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire professor, said after that post from Tiffany, public comments accused her of being a segregationist and misogynistic messages were sent. There were no direct threats against her safety, but she said police were monitoring her home for a short period of time.

“In the current climate, I could not feel confident that online chatter would not cross the line into physical confrontation or violence,” Farrar said.

Farrar first ran for school board in 2022 amid highly partisan races around the country in education, where Republican and MAGA candidates used cultural issues, such as safe spaces, to attack other candidates and win elections.

These candidates publicly view any attempt to accept long reported racial disparities as a form of DEI policies, which have been the bane of Republicans' existence because diversity is not viewed as a strength in their party.

“We all know that there are disproportionalities in discipline of Black students and there’s disparate student outcomes for Black students in Wisconsin,” Farrar said. “Wisconsin has the largest gap between white and Black student outcomes in the nation. And this has long been a problem. And as a school board member, it is my job to support the success of every single student that walks through the door.”

Farrar said the Black PTA idea is open to all parents looking to address these disparities in the Black community.

“Pretending that racial inequality doesn’t exist will not move us towards solving racial inequality,” she said. “Our schools need to be forthright and transparent about the disparate outcomes, and we need to do a root cause analysis and identify ways that we can solve that. Pretending that those disparate outcomes are not real and they are not structural is itself racist.

“I am a specialist in 19th century American literature. I teach a lot of classes focused on early African American literature and the struggle for freedom and Black liberation during that time period. And so in my professional life, I am seeing this attack on DEI as an attack on my ability to teach factual documents of American history.

“I find it demoralizing as a person who is invested in discovering and advancing truth. I find it demoralizing as a teacher, and I find it frightening as a school board member that we live in an environment where there is an open attempt to erase American history, and deny the presence of discrimination and oppression in American life today.”

Farrar was unanimously elected school board president earlier this year. She said the board has an equity commitment that serves as a preamble for other policies.

“I think that education in the United States is in peril right now,” Farrar said. “And I think it is up to faculty and administrators in those institutions to show some courage.”

Farrar believes Tiffany is “reckless” about his power in Wisconsin. “People should know that this is a person who is not responsible for the influence he already has,” she said.

Tiffany has repeatedly run on a platform to remove DEI from Wisconsin way of life, whatever that means. His campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment.