UPDATE #1
Principal photographed with Confederate monument protesters is 'removed from campus'
Comment
Updated on May 22, 2017 at 10:53 PMPosted on May 22, 2017 at 7:06 PM
BY DANIELLE DREILINGER, NOLA.COM
The Times-Picayune
A New Orleans school principal has been "removed from campus" after a photo emerged showing him standing at the Robert E. Lee statue in front of a Confederate flag.
Crescent Leadership Academy superintendent Tracy Bennett-Joseph confirmed Monday (May 22) that Principal Nicholas Dean was removed from campus. She said the school's management was investigating.
"With the recent events in the city it is important that this matter is thoroughly reviewed," she said.
Dean said he did go to the monument Thursday evening to take photos as rumors circulated of the statue's imminent removal. Mayor Mitch Landrieu had the statue of the Confederate general taken down Friday, the last of four Confederate monuments to go.
However, Dean said the fact that he was shown standing next to monument supporters was pure coincidence.
"I didn't go to protest for either side. I went because I am a historian, educator and New Orleans resident who wanted to observe this monumental event," he said. "People who know me know that I am a crusader for children and I fight tirelessly on their behalf."
Crescent Leadership Academy educates some of the most struggling students in the city: It is a second-chance public school for those who have been expelled. They stay at Crescent anywhere from a semester to two years.
The school is also almost entirely African-American, whereas Dean is white. The photograph, particularly within that context, incensed some people on Facebook and led them to call for Dean's removal.
The argument over the monuments' removal has raged fiercely online and off. Among recent headlines, a Mississippi lawmaker said Saturday that people who supported the takedown should be lynched, though he later apologized. On May 15, 23 members of Louisiana House's Black Caucus walked out of the chamber after their colleagues passed a bill protecting Confederate monuments
The investigation will take one to two weeks, Bennett-Joseph said.
UPDATE #2 (thanks to @Vann Tablack )
New Orleans principal loses job after wearing Nazi-associated rings in video
Crescent Leadership Academy Principal Nicholas Dean appeared in a video wearing rings associated with white nationalism and the Nazi movement. A screenshot from the YouTube video is above. (YouTube)
By Danielle Dreilinger, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune Follow on Twitter
on May 25, 2017 at 10:48 AM, updated May 25, 2017 at 10:07 PM
Crescent Leadership Academy Principal Nicholas Dean has been removed from his job. The announcement was made shortly after a video surfaced showing him wearing rings associated with white nationalism and the Nazi movement.
He "will not return as the Principal or be associated with Crescent Leadership Academy," the charter school's parent group and board said in a statement Thursday (May 25).
Dean declined to comment.
Photographer Abdul Aziz posted the video to Facebook and YouTube three days after Crescent Leadership management removed Dean from the campus while investigating a photo that showed him at the statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee next to a Confederate flag.
The principal had told NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune Monday that he went to the Lee statue only as a student of history, to record an important moment -- the removal of Confederate monuments by Mayor Mitch Landrieu -- and was not protesting on either side.
Dean was also interviewed two weeks ago in a podcast that bills itself as defending Western civilization. The podcast's other guest was anti-Muslim, anti-Marxist activist Kyle Chapman.
In both the video and the "Guerrilla Radio" podcast, Dean identifies himself as "Nick Andrews."
He says straight off in the podcast that he works in a charter school that enrolls mostly African-American students.
The podcast host says, "So it's probably fair to say, then, you're not a white supremacist, or some crazy KKK member from the Confederate past?"
Dean responds, "I am not by my definition, absolutely not. But by others', most certainly."
The video shows Dean wearing two rings that have been used as symbols of white nationalism: a German Iron Cross and a skull ring that was awarded to key members of the SS.
The Anti-Defamation League warns that the Iron Cross should not be taken as a hate sign in isolation: Although the German symbol is favored by white supremacists, it also has become a fashion element for skateboarders who might not know its roots.
Southern Poverty Law Center researcher Alex Amend said Dean's gear in the video -- from "the 300-esque 'Sparta' shield to the America Metallica letters t-shirt... baseball helmet, goggles" is "very popular among 'alt-right' street activists."
Dean is holding an American flag in the video, and complains that journalists don't know their history.
Aziz identifies the video event as the "May 7, 2017 'Battle of New Orleans' aligned with known white nationalist organizations, such as the Ku Klux Klan, League of the South and the Based Stick Man movement."
The Guerrilla Radio podcast, dated May 4, bills itself as an emergency special episode. The host warns that left-wing activists are being bused into New Orleans to take down Confederate monuments.
The interview lasts about 25 minutes. When the host laments that Marxist professors tell whites to hate themselves, Dean doesn't disagree, saying that he considered himself a liberal Democrat until he went to Goddard College in Vermont for graduate school with "radical leftists."
"If these people get their way, I don't exist," Dean says.
After that, he began working in largely black schools. "I started seeing how the black community looked at each other and how race and tribe is so powerful for them, and I really respected that. Even though they fight a lot, kind of tribally, there's a sense of unity among blacks that's just understood," Dean says. "That was when I began my own kind of identity, if you will, quest."
Among the other points he makes in the interview:
- Dean calls Take 'Em Down NOLA, which advocated for removing the monuments, "a black supremacy movement."
- He says he asked his students about the removal issues. Some of them advocated keeping the monuments up, saying they preserved history, as did some of his school's mostly African-American staff, he says.
- Removing the "benign" symbols -- the monuments -- wouldn't solve the city's problems, Dean says in the podcast. "It's a very dangerous city," he says. "Here's this bronze statue of Lee -- but he's watching a war everyday."
- Seeing Lee as pro-slavery and pro-secession is revisionist history, Dean tells the podcast host, and some of Abraham Lincoln's writings "would be considered as vile as anything any white supremacist, that they would say, is today."
- When the host asks why New Orleans police have not arrested leftist agitators, Dean defends the force, saying they're understaffed and busy with ordinary crime and Jazz Fest.
Crescent Leadership is the city's public school for students who have been expelled. Dean speaks frequently of his students in the podcast episode, often with concern, saying as of January 6 percent of them had been shot.
"We work with the students that have kind of challenging behaviors," Dean says in the podcast, and briefly explains the school's efforts to help the students change their behaviors and become productive members of society who change society for the better.
The Recovery School District authorizes Crescent Leadership's charter. Superintendent Kunjan Narechania praised the board's decision to remove Dean.
"Educators are role models, and they should prioritize this sacred role above all else," she said in a statement. "While the circumstances surrounding this decision are regrettable and damaging, I appreciate the board making a swift decision so that school can move forward and so that our community can continue to heal."
The charter school's management group, Rite of Passage, runs a variety of programs for troubled youth in 16 states, according to its website. The Rite of Passage superintendent would not say whether Dean might continue to work elsewhere in the organization.
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not one white kid in the New Orleans school district been expelled? Lol institutionalization at its finest, they even have a real life overseer for a principal 
I can't tell how many studies have been put out about how doctors have biases about how they view Black patients as being able to tolerate more pain and for longer periods of times. They treat a lot of Black people with health issues - especially if they're Black women - very poorly. I got the same kind of dismissive attitude when I spoke to a physician not long ago.
