‘No Way to Treat a Child’ author to speak March 17

Naomi Schaefer Riley’s best-selling book, “No Way to Treat a Child: How the Foster Care System, Family Courts, and Racial Activists Are Wrecking Young Lives,” makes an important call for change. “Kids in danger are treated instrumentally,” she said, “to promote the rehabilitation of their parents, the welfare of their communities, and the social justice of their race and tribe—all with the inevitable result that their most precious developmental years are lost in bureaucratic and judicial red tape.”

On March 17, Riley will discuss her work in a talk sponsored by the Program on Freedom and Free Societies (FFS), at 5:30 p.m. in Room 198, Statler Hall, on the Cornell University campus. The event is free and open to the general public. It will also be streamed; register to participate online:

https://cornell.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_taoqATGwQL2lNt6ENKheug.

“Naomi Riley is a passionate advocate for the most vulnerable among us,” said Michael Fontaine, interim director of FFS. “She’s done heroic work in showing the sometimes tragic outcome of good intentions gone wrong.” Fontaine, professor of classics in the College of Arts and Sciences, will introduce Riley and moderate the Q&A.

Riley is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute focusing on issues regarding child welfare as well as a senior fellow at the Independent Women's Forum. She writes about parenting, higher education, religion, philanthropy and culture and is a former columnist for the New York Post, a former Wall Street Journal editor and writer, and the author of seven books. Her writings have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the LA Times, and the Washington Post, among other publications.

“No Way to Treat a Child” is being presented thanks to the generous support of Michael J. Millette ’87 and the Millette family as well as that of the Triad Foundation and other donors.