Chloé Simone Valdary is an American writer and entrepreneur whose company 'Theory of Enchantment' teaches social and emotional learning in schools and diversity and inclusion in companies and government agencies.
Valdary founded a pro-Israel student group, Allies of Israel, while a student at the University of New Orleans. According to The Times of Israel, Valdary "garnered widespread attention" with an article she wrote in Tablet in which she argued that anti-Israel activists misappropriate the narrative of the Civil rights movement. Valdary says that she became interested in Israel after viewing Freedom Writers, a 2007 film about a teacher who uses material about the Holocaust to help her inner-city students understand the racism they face in their own lives. Before 2015, she served as a Robert L. Bartley Fellow and Tikvah fellow under journalist and political commentatorBret Stephens at The Wall Street Journal. Valdary has written articles for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Atlantic magazine. She also developed the conflict resolution program called the Theory of Enchantment, based on three main principles, namely we are human beings, not political abstractions; use criticism to uplift and empower, and not to tear down or destroy; and lead with love and compassion.
Social commentary
On the rise of mental health challenges in America: "A study found that one in five college students last year had suicidal thoughts, which is a significant new trend that we’re dealing with in this country. The curriculum aims to teach basic life skills relating to knowing oneself and knowing one’s neighbor. The essential idea is that you cannot really navigate the complexity of the world if you don’t understand the complexity of your own self. What that means is being aware of everything that human beings deal with, like insecurities and parental baggage, and all the things that we have to navigate that are part of the human condition..”
"Even music is a text of sorts, right? So we can look at lyrics from Jay-Z or from other contemporary artists - even Lil Wayne has certain songs that would be relevant to healthy identity-formation. And so I thought, let’s expand this canon, because what Shakespeare is saying in this piece, I heard in a song by Drake earlier this week. Think of people like W. E. B. Du Bois, who said, “I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not,” or Baldwin, who was very explicit about how the Western canon shaped and informed his ability to write."
