How A California Psychology Student Exposed The Dark Side Of Therapy Education

When Naomi Best began a counseling psychology master’s program last year at Santa Clara University, she did not expect her professor to ask her what she disliked about her genitals.

As a required part of Professor Chongzheng Wei’s “Human Sexuality” class, students were asked to submit a “sexual autobiography” that could include talking about their genitals, sharing when they first began masturbating, or discussing their “personal sexual aspirations,” Best said.

The syllabus said students need not answer questions that “make you feel extremely uncomfortable,” but that was easier said than done.

At one point, a trans-identifying male psychologist was invited to be a guest speaker for the class, she said. When Best asked him what he meant by “gender euphoria,” he allegedly told her that he “almost came” when he saw himself in the mirror as a woman for the first time, she said.

The trans-identifying psychologist also allegedly told students, “trans women have the only p***ies that can blow up the world,” Best said.

Then there was the day when Professor Wei, who goes by “he/they/ta” pronouns, allegedly shared that he had bought a device at a kink festival to elongate his foreskin, Best said. The professor also allegedly showed the class an instructional video on how to tie someone up who was wearing a slave “gimp suit” to an X-shaped cross.

He also allegedly had students watch a video of a BDSM dungeon tour that featured a female influencer being flogged, electroshocked, ball-gagged, put in a guillotine, subjected to knife “play,” and wrapped in plastic and made to jump up and down as a “humiliation tactic,” all with no warning, Best said.

Afterwards, Wei smiled and asked if students wanted to try it themselves. Best walked out of class that day, and ended up dropping the class altogether.

There’s an argument to be made that therapists should be aware of the breadth of human sexual practices, including BDSM, and I am not contesting that, but the manner in which this material was presented was promotional,” Best told The Daily Wire.

“There was no clinical framing,” Best said. “I want to be able to talk with clients about sex if they want to talk about it. If a client comes to me and brings it up that they get sexual gratification from inflicting pain upon somebody, I think that therapists should be trained to have curiosity about that association … not for the reason of telling them they’re a bad person. Therapists don’t do that. But to have a conversation about it, if they bring it up.”

She had dropped the “Human Sexuality” class once before when she was asked — and declined — to discuss her “masturbation history” in a group of four students that included a man, she said.

Best, a 26-year-old married mother of a toddler, believed that revealing her personal sexual history would be a violation of her Christian beliefs. So, she requested the same accommodation she had heard female Muslim students were offered, which was to take the course remotely. Instead, Professor Wei asked to meet with her and promised there would be no personal sexual disclosure in his class, but that turned out to be wrong, she said.

“It’s just clearly a hostile learning environment, and I don’t know how to explain that to somebody who just doesn’t inherently understand it,” she said.

Best took her complaints about the course all the way up the chain at Santa Clara University, exhausting every official avenue from the Title IX office to the school’s president. She explained her issues with the class — the invasive sexual autobiography, a swath of “gratuitous” sexually titillating course material, and alleged unprofessional behavior from the professor and guest speakers.

But she said her concerns were not taken seriously. The school dismissed her Title IX claim, and when she asked for a refund for the class, a school representative called her request “astonishing,” according to emails shared with The Daily Wire.

The time is now to take on ideological capture of therapy. I’m just getting started. pic.twitter.com/BTm4OrHUFM

— Naomi Best (@naomieppsbest) June 18, 2025

Ideological capture is near complete in the field of psychology. Schools, training grounds, accreditation bodies, and professional guilds are all complicit.

— Naomi Best (@naomieppsbest) June 18, 2025

Blew the whistle in @WSJopinion on ideological rigidity in therapy training. A week later, I am fired from my internship with the regret of my boss. This field is in crisis. The public needs to know. pic.twitter.com/EldOjq0hOG

— Naomi Best (@naomieppsbest) June 12, 2025

Last week, Best received a letter from Sabrina Zirkel, dean of the School of Education and Counseling Psychology telling her that, “we do not agree with your interpretation or characterization of what the syllabus required” and “based on input from others who were present, we also do not agree with your assertions about and characterization of what occurred during the class.”

The dean argued that “the class requires internal self-reflection which is the type of work that therapists ask of their clients,” but that “under no circumstances were you required to disclose sexual memories, sexual experiences, or any other personal information that you did not wish to share.”

The school said Best still has the opportunity to “complete this content through approved continuing education classes offered by a third-party provider.”

Professor Wei and the heads of the Education and Counseling Psychology school all referred requests for comment to Santa Clara University’s media office.

In a statement to The Daily Wire, Santa Clara University said that “no student is expected to or required to reveal or disclose private sexual information they do not want to share” and “self-disclosure of an intensely personal nature is not required.”

The school said the class has been taught with a similar approach and similar assignments since the mid-1990s.

“We do not agree with many of the student’s public assertions about the class,” the university said. “People who were present dispute statements being made by the student and her characterization of classroom discussions and course content, including the readings, speakers, and assignments.”

Best says one of the books the class studied was “The Guide To Getting It On,” a book with explicit cartoons of sexual acts, whose author said he wrote the book as “revenge for eight years in Catholic school.” Santa Clara University is a Catholic Jesuit school.

The school said it could not comment on the details of Best’s complaint but said the Title IX office may sometimes conclude that “course requirements or classroom content are protected by the principles of academic freedom.”

Best believes her experience points to a deeper problem in the counseling psychology world.

What happened at Santa Clara University was unethical and will be remedied,” she said. “I want to bring awareness to the fact that psychology and counseling has been ideologically captured. That means that there is one permissible worldview for upcoming therapists to hold, and it is grounded in critical theory.”

Earlier this month, Best came out publicly with her concerns and published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal.

After her op-ed ran, Best said she was fired from her required therapy internship — unrelated to the school — after she was called into a meeting with over a dozen colleagues where she said she was “attacked for what I wrote.”

“I think I just blew up my career,” she told The Daily Wire.

However, since going public with her allegations, Best has received an outpouring of support.

An alumnus of Santa Clara University called Best’s experience with her graduate class “gobsmacking, sordid and sad” in a letter to the editor The Journal published.

Her social media videos discussing the situation have been viewed millions of times, and many people have reached out in support, including lawyers and other students with similar experiences, she said.

Two weeks ago, I was living a private life with a great career path,” Best said. “I am putting that on the line to bring this issue to the public’s attention because I think it is important and I think people will be harmed if it is not addressed.”

Ted Cruz Exposes China’s Plot To Undermine American Energy: ‘A Coordinated Assault’

WASHINGTON—During a Senate Judiciary hearing Wednesday, Texas Senator Ted Cruz exposed China’s shady efforts to infiltrate the American energy sector and leave the United States dependent on Beijing for so-called green energy.

“We are witnessing right now a systematic campaign against American energy,” Cruz said at the hearing. “There is a coordinated assault by the radical Left, backed and paid for by the Chinese Communist Party, to seize control of our courts, to weaponize litigation against US energy producers all in order to undermine American energy dominance.”

Cruz in particular focused on Energy Foundation China, a group with ties to the Chinese Communist Party. The senator cited a report from State Armor, which found that “To secure U.S. dependence, the CCP has been co-opting the progressive American climate change lobby to push a transition from fossil fuels and other critical inputs…onto ‘green’ technologies controlled by China.”

By funneling money through the foundation, the report claims, the CCP has funded many climate advocacy groups in America, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, which is well known for its litigious character.

“Their lawsuits are designed to destroy the American energy industry, which happens to perfectly coincide with the political objective of Senate Democrats to destroy the American energy industry,” Cruz said.

Cruz continued by exposing the Climate Judiciary Project, which claims to be impartial and uninvolved in litigation, but reportedly trains and supports judges presiding over cases of climate litigation.

Cruz pointed out that Energy Foundation China, which is run by former CCP officials, is funding litigation groups working to flood the courts with cases against American energy companies. These cases then come before judges trained by leftist-funded climate advocacy groups.

“This three-pronged strategy — foreign funding, mass litigation, and judicial indoctrination — is a full-spectrum assault on American energy independence,” Cruz said. “And while China drills and digs, we sue and shut down.”

“While China prepares for energy dominance, the American Left prepares to attack our own domestic capability.”

Ranking Member Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) called Cruz’s claims a “conspiracy,” arguing that the oil industry’s “dark money” schemes were more concerning.

“The hearing ignores that the fossil fuel industry has, for decades, benefited from secret funding to wage war on the American consumer by making energy more expensive and dirtier,” Whitehouse said.

Whitehouse also dismissed the claim that China was indirectly providing funds to litigious groups. Energy Foundation China, he argued, seemed focused on addressing Chinese environmental concerns, not advocating for legislative change in the United States.

Whitehouse said, “Fighting Chinese pollution in China […] is a very different thing than having a Chinese conspiracy that funds a litigation group here in the United States.”

From 2001 to 2020, the EFC has paid out nearly $1.02 billion in grants to hundreds of different organizations seeking climate reform, according to a report by Influence Watch. The Climate Judiciary Project paid an undisclosed amount toward its judicial education programs.

Scott Walter, the president of the Capital Research Center, was among those testifying about the role the CCP might play among American climate lobbyists and judges.

Asked about the motives of the CCP officials who founded Energy Foundation China, Walter said he was “skeptical that former Chinese communist officials are interested in doing anything that would harm their country.”

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