Melania Trump promotes 'peace through education' at UN as war with Iran expands

Washington — Melania Trump, the first lady, presided over a meeting of the United Nations Security Council on Monday and delivered a speech advocating “peace through education” amid President Donald Trump’s expansive war with Iran and cuts to US education funding.

Melania Trump said that nations should promote the values of tolerance and “empathy for others, transcending geography, religion, race, gender” and denounced “rigid thinkers who embrace prejudice and shun human dignity.”

“When a nation restricts thought, it restricts its own future,” she told the council.

Though Trump’s speech did not directly use terms like “diversity,” “equity” and “inclusion,” the values that she sought to promote in her speech are similar to concepts that the Trump administration has publicly denounced and moved to purge from the federal government. Terms such as “prejudice,” “gender” and “race” that the first lady used throughout her speech are on a list of words that federal agencies have been instructed to limit or avoid.

The Trump administration’s campaign targeting policies and programs it deems “woke” has often focused on education, threatening universities, research laboratories and other institutions of learning with lawsuits, funding cuts and other punishments if they did not submit to a list of demands as part of an effort to remake the culture of American education.

In her speech, Melania Trump lamented that in some countries, “children and young adults are banned from attending secondary schools and universities,” warning that as a result, humanity has lost potential “new medical breakthroughs, advancements in food security” and “groundbreaking technologies.”

She said education was a cornerstone of peaceful and flourishing societies, adding that “a society that excludes vast segments of its population can realize only a fraction of its potential.”

The president is in the process of dismantling the Education Department, fulfilling a campaign promise, and has threatened to withhold funding from public schools. His education secretary, Linda McMahon, has said that the changes were an attempt to “refocus education on students, families and schools.”

The administration has also moved to cut funding for research in every field of science and medicine. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said last week that he would ban service members from attending graduate-level programs and fellowships at nearly two dozen top universities and think tanks.

The U.N. Security Council operates on a monthly rotating presidency, and the United States assumed the presidency in March. The White House said in a statement that Melania Trump was the first spouse of a world leader to preside over the U.N. Security Council.