Undercover with Liberated Ethnic Studies

WITH parents, teachers, and students coming forward with information on mismanagement in their school districts, I believe it is even more important to reveal what I discovered in my almost two years inside Liberated Ethnic Studies.

As the public becomes more aware of just how insidious the rot in K-12 education is, I expect more whistleblowers to come out from behind the shadows. I also expect that the powers that be will try to silence those who want to put student learning ahead of ideological agendas, as recently happened to a teacher in Hayward Unified who was suspended from teaching after revealing the fraud, waste, and abuse of federal funds in the sum of $250,000 spent on the “Woke Kindergarten” program.

Make no mistake, his suspension is a scare tactic implemented by administrators who are attempting to brush their misdeeds under the rug, far away from public scrutiny.

My name is Dr. Brandy Shufutinsky, and I’ve spent the past two years undercover with Liberated Ethnic Studies.

After seeing what appeared to be an attempt to hijack California’s public school system in order to institutionalize anti-Semitism in K-12 education, I decided to go behind the scenes with the group that was leading the charge. Much but not all of what I uncovered is included in this piece.

In February 2022 I created an alias in order to register for what I thought would be a one-off webinar about the national roll-out of Liberated Ethnic Studies (LES). I, along with more than 200 registrants, quickly learned that the LES folks had much bigger plans, as demonstrated by the heat map below.

After spending a few minutes going through the usual virtue signaling, pronouncement of pronouns, and land acknowledgements we were sent to regional break-out rooms to get to know one another before rejoining the main webinar room. Before I go into what was said, I want to mention who was there.

The presence of activist organizations in public schools has become increasingly common as administrators lean on community organizations to provide programming for both teachers and students. Districts allow these activists into schools to provide teacher training, curriculum development, and oftentimes they are even given access to students by providing “programming.”

Lara Kiswani, executive director of the Arab Resource Organizing Committee (AROC), is one of these activists. Kiswani is a leader in the Liberated Ethnic Studies movement, and she is also well-known for her anti-Zionist/anti-Semitic beliefs.

During the February 6, 2022, webinar, she stated that one of the reasons for the national launch of the LES is to counter Zionist participation in education.

“As a lot of you know, they are very and you’re probably here because of this very reason, we are facing a moment in which the terrain of education is being attacked from all sides. Mainly? Right wing and other Zionist pro-Israel forces who are attempting to co-opt education to water down education ... to literally strip it of its potential liberatory potential. And specifically we see attacks on ethnic studies, whether that’s what happened in California with the California model ethnic studies, the ESMC. Just curriculum, which is meant to be a model where teachers across the state to use and they’re in their classrooms and was written by actual practitioners and scholars and ethnic studies. And then was co-opted by the California Department of Education, along with other elected leaders, who were working very closely with right-wing forces. Namely the ADLs, the Jewish community relations councils, and pro-Israel, Zionist, and racist organizations, and white supremacist orgs across the state.”

Throughout the webinar it became clear that the purpose of the LES is not to expand on social studies, including the experiences of Black, Asian, Latino, and Native Americans, but rather to indoctrinate children with an ideology that exists solely to “critique empire and its relationship to white supremacy, racism, patriarchy. Cisheteropatriarchy capitalism, ableism, and anthrocentrism and other forms of power and oppression at the intersection of our society.”

The activist leaders of the LES made it clear that their goals are to:

• Critique the foundations of Western democratic values by labeling them as tenets of white supremacy;

• Center “Palestine,” CRT, and BLM as essential components to ethnic studies;

• Silence anyone they label as Zionist, or conservative (right-wing);

• Hijack the experiences, histories, and narratives of ethnic communities;

• Establish a monopoly over everything related to ethnic studies.

Over the course of the past (almost) two years, I have uncovered the LES’ plans to spread their radical ideology, not only in California, but across the U.S. They have been working with a number of other organizations, identifying challenges and attacks, and coordinating responses.

Unsurprisingly, LES activists believe the two most obvious challenges to spreading their ideology continue to be Zionists and public awareness. They spent months weighing the pros and cons of going public, trying to build up support while not exposing themselves to public scrutiny.

However, this tactic meant that they would be unable to build the widespread support grassroots activism demands. I chose to join the northeast regional group for two reasons. First, it is the area of the country where I live, and second, it was one of the regions identified by the LES as a next target, with Boston serving as a sort of ground zero.

The allies identified by Liberated Ethnic Studies in the northeast region included:

• New Jersey Educators Association

• Black Lives Matter in Schools in New York

• Teaching While Muslim in New Jersey

• CAIR in New Jersey

• Saturday Freedom School in College Park, MD

• BPS Black Studies Collective

• BPS Asian American Studies Group

• CARE Coalition in Boston

As I continued participating in both regional and national meetings using my alias to gather information in order to blow the whistle on what seems to be a highly coordinated effort to subvert education policies, civil rights, and state and federal statutes, I started working for the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values (JILV), an organization that counters radical ideology that fuels anti-Semitism. Countering the radicalization of our K-12 education system quickly became a major focus of my work with JILV.

In April 2022 I obtained a LES document titled Ethnic Studies National Coalition Vision and Commitments Guiding Document. A few of the commitments in this guiding document include:

• “Developing and supporting a national platform and a strategy for the communication and dissemination of a unified message related to Ethnic Studies, including a solidarity network and organizing strategy for rapid response to dehumanizing actions and pushback from zionism and right-wing zealots.”

• “Courses titled “Ethnic Studies” are rooted in the LESMCC Guiding Principles”

• “Educational institutions do not use the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) definition of anti-semitism or any other definitions that equate criticism of Israel with anti-semitism.”

Again, the LES clearly expressed their desire to create and implement an ethnic studies framework that excludes anyone they label as Zionist or “right-wing.” They also made it clear that they are attempting to hold a monopoly over ethnic studies across the country. A major method the LES group is using, with support from California State Representative Wendy Carillo and unions like the California Faculty Association (CFA), is to pass legislation that requires all ethnic studies teachers to hold a specific ethnic studies credential. Of course, the activists who are part of the LES coalition would be in charge of what the credentialing requirements and process would ultimately look like.

In May 2023 the Coalition for Liberated Ethnic Studies (CLES) held a retreat for their core team, naming the following 15 as members:

Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales, Anita Fernandez, Artnelson Concordia, Awo Okaikor, Aryee-Price, Brian Lozenski, Carlos Hagedorn, Deeyadira Arellano, Guadalupe, Carrasco Cardona, Jody Sokolower, JR Arimboanga, Lara Kiswani, Raquel Saenz, Sharif Zakout, Theresa Montano, and Tricia Gallagher-Geurtsen.

During the May 2023 retreat, using strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis, they developed a 5-point needs assessment to continue their national roll out. One of these points was to form a cohort of students from across the United States who would act as a youth activist arm of CLES, and advocate for Liberated Ethnic Studies in their respective school districts. Students had to apply and interview for a position within the cohort. Upon completion of the 8-week cohort, students were guaranteed a payment of $500. A source close to me infiltrated some of these youth sessions and provided me with resources used by the activists, including a statement of solidarity and land acknowledgement that reads:

As LES activists faced pushback from parents, students, educators, and policy makers who felt that schools should teach rather than indoctrinate, they launched an initiative that seeks to use children for their ideological goals. It also is apparent that ethnic studies is being used to “teach Palestine,” which involves trafficking in anti-Semitic tropes and historical falsehoods.

After spending almost two years using undercover aliases and sources, I realized how important it is to go public, exposing just how deep the rot has become. Our children deserve educators committed to teaching, not using students as their personal ideologically driven foot-soldiers.

Liberated Ethnic Studies activists are well connected, highly organized, and deeply committed to establishing a radical pedagogy that seeks to undermine the liberal order by using our public school system as a vehicle to normalize their ideology. They are not limiting their efforts to states, like California, where ethnic studies is now mandatory, but are spreading their radical ideology by any means necessary, including through rethinking how all subjects are taught.

Close to 50 million students are enrolled in public schools in the United States. These students are a captive audience to whatever pedagogy educators and educational policy makers mandate. Our kids are being exposed to ideology that forces them to conclude that the foundations of our democratic republic should be dismantled.

After the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7th, Liberated Ethnic Studies groups ripped the mask off, publicly blaming those who were slaughtered for the massacre. They took the position that “all violence is rooted in oppression,” excusing terrorists for terrorism. Members of the Coalition for Liberated Ethnic Studies used their access to students to organize and implement widespread student walkouts and demonstrations in support of the atrocities committed by Hamas, falsely defining the violence as legitimate resistance to the lie that Israel is a colonial state worthy of dismantling. LES made clear that their goal is to water-down teaching about Black, Latino, Asian, and Native Americans, and instead declare that “Palestine is Ethnic Studies.”

I am choosing to make public Liberated Ethnic Studies’ plans at this time, mostly out of concern about the divisiveness and violence we are witnessing at K-12 schools. More than raising public awareness, I hope that public officials realize the very real harm being perpetrated by activists who are profiting by exploiting their proximity to policy makers and access to students.