Ben Carson reacts to name being removed from Detroit high school: Ideology trumping purpose of institutions

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Ben Carson speaks out after school board votes to remove his name from high school

Dr. Ben Carson weighs in after a Detroit school board voted to remove his name from the public high school on 'Hannity.' 

Retired neurosurgeon and former Housing & Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson reacted Monday to news his name is being removed from a high school in his hometown of Detroit.

According to a Fox News column by former HUD chief of staff Andrew Hughes, the Detroit School Board voted to change the name of the Benjamin Carson High School of Science and Medicine despite an administrative recommendation and student poll to keep the name as-is.

"It's very sad that we've reached the point where political ideology trumps the whole purpose of an educational institution," Carson said on "Hannity."

"And we're seeing this wokeness spreading throughout our community to the destruction of our community. How does it do any good for us to demonize people with whom we disagree and to teach that to our children at a time when the math scores are down, the reading scores are down; academic performance is down?"

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US Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Ben Carson addresses the Republican National Convention. (NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP via Getty Images)

Carson went on to describe the systemic failures of students at many public high schools, saying some kids graduate despite being "functionally illiterate", while schools themselves appear more concerned with pushing the kind of woke ideology that led to Detroit's decision.

The retired Johns Hopkins surgeon added that the American Cornerstone Institute, which he leads, conversely attempts to give students a full assessment of the nation's history and other important academic subjects, free of ideological influence.

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"We want to change this whole narrative, and we need an inoculation to indoctrination, and that's why we've created that program," he said of his institute's "Little Patriots" endeavor.

Prior to the interview, host Sean Hannity reported the Detroit School District said in a statement that community members had been "expressing concerns regarding how, under emergency management, the schoo's name was changed…"

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Ben Carson greets well-wishers during a 2016 campaign stop in Lakewood, Colo. ((AP))

Hannity added that many people in the city reportedly voiced concerns Carson's political positions and decisions in government "did not reflect Detroiters" and that therefore the school should not have been renamed in his honor.

A school board member who opposed the original name change claimed in 2018 the move was "synonymous with having Trump's name on our school in blackface," the host added.