November 23, 2025 The Ideological Erosion of College Readiness Tamar Caspi & Sharon Ceresnie Sorkin California’s Ethnic Studies mandate, which took hold over the past five years, coincides with a sharp decline in statewide test scores for grades 3-8 and 11 in English Language Arts and math. While activists spent years crafting curricula that demonize America, Israel, Jews, and the West, students were robbed of the opportunity to master fundamentals. Originally Posted In: https://www.realcleareducation.com/articles/2025/11/23/the_ideological_erosion_of_college_readiness_1149189.html < Back A stunning new report from the University of California, San Diego documents what many educators have feared: incoming college students are less prepared than ever. This “steep decline in the academic preparedness” of incoming college students isn’t limited to advanced subjects; it’s hitting the bedrock of learning: literacy and numeracy. These are the skills upon which all higher-order thinking depends. The report points to pandemic disruptions, the removal of standardized tests like the SAT, and grade inflation masking academic weakness. But these are symptoms, not causes. The deeper problem is an ideological takeover of America’s K-12 system -- an approach that dismisses standardized tests as “products of white supremacy” and inflates grades to preserve the illusion of success. It’s an approach that relies on a teaching philosophy that promotes activism in the classroom for causes like decolonization (“down with America”) and anti-racism (solving racism with more racism), all at the expense of core academic proficiency. No one made this clearer than Cecily Myart-Cruz, head of Los Angeles’s teachers union, who said : “ It’s OK that our babies may not have learned all their times tables. They learned resilience. They learned survival. They learned critical-thinking skills. They know the difference between a riot and a protest. They know the words insurrection and coup.” California’s Ethnic Studies mandate, which took hold over the past five years, coincides with a sharp decline in statewide test scores for grades 3-8 and 11 in English Language Arts and math. While activists spent years crafting curricula that demonize America, Israel, Jews, and the West, students were robbed of the opportunity to master fundamentals. This is a cautionary tale for the rest of the country. Minnesota ’s ethnic studies mandate will take effect in 2026–27. Michigan has considered similar proposals. Nationally, ideologically-driven curricula like Rethinking Schools -- endorsed by the National Education Association, the country’s largest teachers union -- are spreading rapidly. If California’s experience is any guide, academic decline will not remain a regional problem. The irony is painful: these ideological experiments claim to uplift minority and disadvantaged students, yet they harm them most. Low-income families, English-language learners, and first-generation college aspirants suffer when schools trade core skills for political agendas. Recent research shows widening excellence gaps; even high-achieving students from disadvantaged backgrounds are falling further behind. The ripple effects are not trivial: mastery of basic mathematics is a gatekeeper for access to STEM pathways, and strong reading comprehension is essential for civic and informational literacy. A high school diploma that no longer signals readiness wastes time and money for students and the state, and it undermines social mobility. Public education’s primary duty is to teach what is demonstrably necessary for the next stage of life. If mandatory ethnic studies courses or ideologically organized curricula prevent that duty from being fulfilled, they must be rethought. The modern university and the modern high school exist in a contract: high schools certify that graduates possess the fundamentals needed to succeed in college, and colleges admit on the expectation that those fundamentals exist. But the UCSD data show that even admitted students with “acceptable” high school credentials may still lag significantly in readiness. Schools must recommit to the basics: coherent writing, mathematical reasoning, scientific analysis, and evidence-based thinking. Schools should publicly track and report not just representation goals and qualitative indicators of representation, school climate, discipline, and engagement, but also measurable growth in reading, mathematics, science attainment, and readiness for tertiary education. And inflating grades to make students look more successful than they actually are only exacerbates the problem. While there may be some inherent biases in the tools we use to measure academic success, research shows these tests are critical predictors of success in higher education. According to researchers at Brown University , while disparities do exist in standardized test outcomes, these disparities cannot be solely blamed on test biases. NAEP ’s own interpretive guidance makes clear that demographic variables correlate with scores and do not by themselves establish causality. Doing away with meaningful grades and standardized tests entirely only does a disservice to the very students the ideologues aim to lift up. We should, of course, strive to make measurement tools as unbiased as possible, but we must do this without sacrificing the ability to measure, and thereby promote, meaningful achievement. This is an educational emergency. Every American who believes in equal opportunity must resist the ideological capture of our schools. In order to lift up all students to meet their highest potential, we should be fighting against the ideological takeover in America’s K-12 system. Curricula should unite, not divide. Schools should prepare students for success based on skills, not activism. If we fail to act, we risk sacrificing an entire generation’s potential on the altar of politics. The UC San Diego report should serve as a wake-up call. Academic preparedness is not a partisan issue; it is a national imperative. If we want students to thrive, we must restore rigor, accountability, and a shared commitment to excellence. Anything less is a betrayal of the very students these ideological experiments claim to serve. Tamar Caspi is a co-founder of PeerK12, a San Diego-based grassroots movement defending Jewish civil rights. Sharon Sorkin is the Director of Community Engagement at the North American Values Institute. Previous Next

July 16, 2024 AFT to vote on controversial proposals Carl Campanile Proposals including ending US military aid to Israel, protecting pro-Palestinian protesters Originally Posted In: https://nypost.com/2024/07/16/us-news/aft-to-vote-on-controversial-proposals-including-ending-us-military-aid-to-israel-protecting-pro-palestinian-protesters/ < Back America’s second-largest teacher’s union has drafted a group of resolutions calling for the end of US military aid to Israel — and defending the anti-Israel protests that have rocked campuses across the country. The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) — which is affiliated with the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) that represents most teachers in New York City public schools — will vote on the controversial proposals at its national convention starting in Houston next Monday . One of the resolutions, which calls for a cease-fire between the Jewish State and the terror group Hamas, demands a halt to US military assistance that enables the “violent dispossession” of Palestinians. “American military cannot be used in ways that facilitate the seizure of Palestinian land, the violent dispossession of Palestinian communities and the annexation of occupied Palestinian territory,” the resolution reads. A related eyebrow-raising proposal even goes so far as suggesting the US is “enabling genocide” in Gaza. “[A]s long as Israel continues to block substantive and meaningful aid to Gaza, the AFT calls for the US to halt military aid to Israel,” it says. Another resolution calls for anti-Israel protesters to be protected — even after violent demonstrations have swept college and school campuses since Hamas’ bloody Oct. 7 attack on the Jewish State. “[T]he AFT expresses solidarity with those students, faculty and other academic workers across the United States who have faced repressive and violent crackdown of their protests in the war in Gaza,” the resolution reads. “[T]he AFT demands that campus administrators cease their campaign of threats, suspensions and expulsions against peaceful protesters and cease using law enforcement agencies to disrupt and attack them,” it continues. The proposal also defends the demonstrations as “academic freedom” and “free speech.” A coalition of pro-Israel educators swiftly condemned the resolutions as antisemitic. “These resolutions not only marginalize our Jewish students, families, and staff but also contribute to an environment of fear and hostility in our schools,” said Tova Plaut , an instructional coordinator and founder of the New York City Public School Alliance. “By targeting Zionism and falsely equating it with colonialism and racism, these resolutions promote a dangerous narrative that fuels discrimination and hatred against Jews.” Amy Leserman, chairwoman of the Los Angeles-based Educators Caucus for Israel also denounced the proposals as “blatantly bigoted.” “It is astounding that AFT leadership has allowed this, and so many other, blatantly bigoted resolutions to move forward, when they are clearly motivated by values contrary to the purpose of the AFT,” she said. Even AFT’s maligned president, Randi Weingarten — a Jew who self-identifies herself as a “progressive zionist” and whose spouse is a rabbi — has opposed resolutions supporting the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel. She co-wrote an op-ed column in April for USA Today with Karen Marder, the pro-Israel New York teacher who was forced to hide in a locked office as an angry mob tried to push its way into her classroom at Hillside High School in Jamaica in November. Many students became enraged to learn she was photographed at a vigil for the victims killed two days after Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attac k on Israel. In a statement on Tuesday, Weingarten singled out only one resolution for support — calling for “an end to the war in Gaza and lasting peace, security and self-determination for Israel and Palestine.” Her silence on the anti-Israel resolutions signals that they will likely be defeated. “As we head into our annual convention, here’s a reminder that the AFT is a democracy where locals can submit resolutions. And they do. Plenty of them. Proposals are simply proposals unless they are considered and passed at our delegated, democratic convention,” Weingarten said in a statement on X. “I support Resolution #30 that opposes anti-Semitism and hate of any kind, and that reflects our Executive Council resolution unanimously passed in January,” she continued. “I have been clear throughout this difficult time — hate of all kinds is antithetical to the values we promote as a union and as professionals in our schools. We are a movement driven by love, not fear.” Still, pro-Israel educators slammed that resolution as well, for trying to prevent Israel from defending itself after being attacked by Hamas in a declaration of war. Resolution 30 declares that there is “no military solution to this conflict” and blames “far-right” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for “prolonging” the war. “Netanyahu has an interest in prolonging the war to escape the public scrutiny of his colossal failure to protest Israel’s citizens and his own pending criminal prosecution,” the resolution reads. “While Israel’s initial case of war — self-defense against the criminal acts of Oct. 7 — was just, the ways in which the Netanyahu government has prosecuted it — its sanctioning of indiscriminate and disproportionate violence, resulting in a massive civilian death toll — has made it unjust.” The coalition of pro-Israel educators labeled the resolution as “offensive.” “It is offensive for a union based in the United States to tell a sovereign nation how to conduct its defense and equate a democratically elected government with Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization designated as such by the US Department of State,” the group said. 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June 5, 2025 Ethnic studies course is a disaster in the making in SFUSD Carol Kocivar Should a controversial ethnic studies curriculum be mandated in the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) without approval by the board of education? Originally Posted In: https://thevoicesf.org/ethnic-studies-course-is-a-disaster-in-the-making-in-sfusd/ < Back This is not a theoretical question. SFUSD is doing that right now. This is the second year the school district is forcing ninth graders to take the course without formal curriculum approval by the school board. And to add insult to injury, last year it was a required SFUSD ninth-grade course but it was not approved by the University of California as meeting the A–G requirements. A course that is not approved does not get credit toward the University of California/California State University entrance requirements. Board responsibility One of the most important responsibilities of a school board is to approve what is taught. California Education Code § 60000(c) (2022) : Instructional Materials; Legislative Intent (c) The Legislature further recognizes that the governing boards of school districts have the responsibility to establish courses of study and that they must have the ability to select instructional materials appropriate to their courses of study.[2] For several years, the board and superintendent have been treating formal board approval of this curriculum like a hot potato. The inside scoop It’s not like they have not been asked to step up. I served on the district’s Public Education Enrichment Fund board, which has funded the course to the tune of millions of dollars. And I reminded staff and the superintendent more than once that the board should formally approve the curriculum. Spending millions on a course that is not required Below is a table showing SFUSD spending on this non-board-approved course. Ethnic Studies Support FY 23-24 Budget $1,505,958 FY 24-25 Projected Budget $1,748,890 Source: SFUSD Yup, that million dollar number popped right out at me. Why is a district in a financial crisis spending millions of dollars on a course that is not required for graduation by the state and is not required for entrance into California’s higher education system? Code Red concern of parents in the district To say that the ethnic studies curriculum is controversial is an understatement. There are lawsuits throughout the state calling out discriminatory content. It is so bad that Governor Newsom has refused to put funding in the budget to pay for a mandated state course. And a bill is pending in the legislature that prohibits the use of any curriculum or instructional materials if it would subject a pupil to unlawful discrimination. Better alternatives for teaching ethnic studies – Give high school studies more time for electives. The SFUSD one-year ethnic studies course does not give students enough time to take electives that interest them. Cut the course down to one semester and consider making it an elective. – Do not require the course in ninth grade. Most students do not have the background in United States or world history to put the course into perspective. – Revise the focus of the course. Ensure the ethnic studies course encourages students to appreciate and understand the many ethnicities in SFUSD. All of them have had challenges. All of them have many proud moments of success. A course that emphasizes a political philosophy of “us against them” loses the nuance of learning to work together and learning to value the strengths of each other. – Board review and approval. With so much controversy over what is taught, allow a thoughtful process with public input on the curriculum to ensure it is not discriminatory. Yes, it is a hot potato But it is our hot potato. With community input, the school board and the district should approve a curriculum that meets the test of not subjecting any student to unlawful discrimination. Previous Next

May 5, 2025 CAM REVIEW | Ethnic Studies: The Dangerous Ideology Quietly Shaping US Classrooms Combat Antisemitism Movement If you’ve ever wondered why young Americans are embracing increasingly extreme views on race, power, identity, Israel, and Jews, this webinar connects the dots with clarity, historical depth, and urgency. Originally Posted In: https://combatantisemitism.org/special-features/ethnic-studies-the-dangerous-ideology-quietly-shaping-us-classrooms/ < Back Why are Jewish students facing unprecedented levels of antisemitism — from grade school on up to the university level and beyond? The answer may not lie only in biased news reporting on global events or inflammatory social media discourse, but also deep within the American education system itself. A 2023 survey conducted by Harvard CAPS/Harris revealed that 79% of Americans aged 18–24 believed all white people were oppressors and all people of color oppressed. That same poll found 67% in this age group saw Jews as oppressors, 60% felt the Hamas October 7th attack was was justified, and 73% trusted Hamas to accurately report casualty figures in Gaza. These aren’t isolated beliefs — they form a coherent worldview shaped not by spontaneous cultural trends, but by a deliberate ideological framework increasingly embedded in classroom curricula. In an eye-opening webinar last week, titled “The Ethnic Studies Origin Story: Uncovering the History Behind The Most Controversial Discipline ” and hosted by the Israeli-American Civic Action Network (ICAN) , Nicole Bernstein, co-founder of PeerK12 , traced the roots of this phenomenon back to its source: the rise of Ethnic Studies. Far from being a neutral academic discipline, Ethnic Studies was born from radical activism. It emerged alongside anti-colonial uprisings, Third World Liberation fronts, and revolutionary Marxist frameworks — movements that sought not only to critique Western society, but to dismantle and rebuild it entirely. Bernstein explained how these ideas, once confined to fringe university departments, have entered the K–12 classroom through decades of institutional advocacy, policy lobbying, and grassroots organizing. Today, these same ideologies form the backbone of state-mandated Ethnic Studies curricula across the country, often under the radar of parents, school boards, and even teachers. Concepts like “intersectionality,” “decolonization,” and “dismantling systems of power” are now presented to children as academic truths — not political theories. But as Bernstein made clear, their intellectual DNA is anything but neutral. The result is an educational movement that does more than teach history — it reframes the American story itself through a rigid ideological lens, silencing alternative viewpoints and replacing inquiry with indoctrination. If you’ve ever wondered why young Americans are embracing increasingly extreme views on race, power, identity, Israel, and Jews, this webinar connects the dots with clarity, historical depth, and urgency. Bernstein doesn’t just inform — she exposes the origin story of an educational revolution that is reshaping how the next generation thinks. Whether you’re a parent, educator, policymaker, or concerned citizen, this is the key to understanding how we got here — and why we can’t afford to stay silent any longer. Watch the full recording of the webinar — and find out what’s really being taught in American schools. Previous Next

October 3, 2022 Hitler 'had strong leadership qualities' says teacher, photo placed with MLK, JFK Michael Starr Nazi leader Adolf Hitler's photo was placed on a board next to inspirational leaders such as Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy. Originally Posted In: https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/article-718888 < Back Nazi leader Adolf Hitler's portrait was placed alongside inspirational historical leaders in a San Diego school history class last week, and when a student complained the teacher explained that Hitler had committed bad deeds but was a great leader, NGO Partners for Equality and Educational Responsibility in Kindergarten thru 12th grade (PeerK12) told The Jerusalem Post . At the Carmel Valley Middle School, as part of a lesson for 7th graders, Hitler was included on a board that displayed the likes of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi, US president John F Kennedy, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. According to PeerK12 , a 12-year-old student communicated to their teacher that it was inappropriate to display a photo of Hitler alongside such positive role models. The teacher reportedly told the student that “Hitler may have done some bad things, but he also had strong leadership qualities.” How did the parents and school respond? In response to the incident, the San Dieguito Union High School District said "A lesson in World History included a discussion of various historical figures, along with images of them on a whiteboard in the classroom. The images were directly related to the curriculum and displayed during a lesson. After a concern was raised regarding one of the images and the impact it had on a student, it was taken down." However, PeerK12 said that the student that had complained was initially moved to another history class . The NGO further said that while Principal Vicki Kim reportedly told the parent of the student that the portrait would be removed in response to his complaint, the teacher only removed Hitler's picture upon receiving further inquiries from the community. "This is revisionist history, plain and simple," PeerK12 told the Post . "This was not a lesson on World War II or the Holocaust, and in the fact this teacher is only tasked with teaching history until 1914. If this teacher is a Holocaust denier then she must be relieved of her duties immediately. This erasure of Jewish history cannot go unchecked." “Ignorance at best, malice at worse is how we would describe a teacher comparing Adolf Hitler, a genocidal maniac, to global leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr," remarked the NGO StopAntisemitism. “Hitler may have done some bad things, but he also had strong leadership qualities.” Carmel Valley Middle School teacher PEER K-12 also claimed that the parent of the student had contacted the Anti-Defamation League, but had been told that the school was already a part of the ADL's anti-bias training program "No Place For Hate." Carmel Valley Middle School received the designation as a "No Place For Hate school" in May. Calls to investigate Hitler incident PeerK12 also claimed that the parent of the student had contacted the Anti-Defamation League, but had been told that the school was already a part of the ADL's anti-bias training program "No Place For Hate." Carmel Valley Middle School received the designation as a "No Place For Hate school" in May. The families of students and PeerK12 formally called for the school district to hold an investigation into the incident. StopAntisemitism also said that it called "on the San Dieguito Union High School District board to investigate the teacher’s actions, the Principal’s failure to appropriately follow up, and the overall curriculum that would result in such atrocious educational instruction." This incident is not the first racially charged incident that the San Dieguito school board has grappled with this year. In June, Superintendent Cheryl James-Ward was fired over remarks about Asian students and their families' wealth as a reason for their academic success. Previous Next

November 8, 2025 States are pushing for more scrutiny of antisemitism in schools Carolyn Thompson & Michael Casey Tensions over the Israel-Hamas war have spilled into schools around the U.S., with advocates reporting a rise in antisemitic harassment since the 2023 surprise attack on Israel. While some argue school leaders have failed to take the threat seriously, others warn criticism of Israel and the military campaign in Gaza are interpreted too often as hate speech. Originally Posted In: https://apnews.com/article/school-antisemitism-education-free-speech-83ec7b892f8fba16db1d75619a0a5073 < Back In the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas two years ago, high school teacher Josh Hirsch posted comments on social media in support of Israel. It was unrealistic for Hamas to expect a ceasefire, he wrote, as long as they were holding hostages. Soon afterward, a former student called for his firing. A note taped outside the door of his Adams County, Colorado, classroom contained his wife’s name and their home address. And a sticker that appeared on his chair read: “Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.” The reaction startled Hirsch, the only Jewish teacher in his school building. For the first time in his 14-year career, he considered quitting. He stayed and joined an educators’ advocacy network created by the Anti-Defamation League , a way he saw to make schools more inclusive of diverse viewpoints. “I’ve been a teacher and tried to keep my focus on being the best teacher I could,” he said. Tensions over the Israel-Hamas war have spilled into schools around the U.S., with advocates reporting a rise in antisemitic harassment since the 2023 surprise attack on Israel. While some argue school leaders have failed to take the threat seriously, others warn criticism of Israel and the military campaign in Gaza are interpreted too often as hate speech. The Trump administration has not punished school systems the way it has hit colleges accused of tolerating antisemitism, but schools are still facing pressure to respond more aggressively. Several states have pressed for new vigilance, including legislation that critics say would stifle free speech. Both conservative and liberal states apply more scrutiny Lawmakers in Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Tennessee have passed measures to increase school accountability for complaints of antisemitism, and a law signed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, will provide training to identify and prevent antisemitism in schools. In Arizona, the Democratic governor vetoed a bill on how to deal with reports of antisemitism in schools, calling it an attack on educators. Many of the measures, including one signed by Oklahoma’s Republican governor, call for adoption of a definition of antisemitism that casts certain criticism of Israel as hate speech. “These bills make it clear that Oklahoma stands with our Jewish communities and will not tolerate hatred disguised as political discourse,” said Kristen Thompson, a Republican state senator in Oklahoma who authored the legislation. Dozens of states have adopted the definition promoted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which is also recognized by the U.S. State Department. It lists 11 examples of antisemitic conduct, such as applying “double standards” to Israel or comparing the country’s policies to Nazism. While supporters of this definition of antisemitism say it is necessary to combat evolving forms of Jewish hate, civil liberties groups warn it suppresses pro-Palestinian speech. Trump administration approach contrasts with attacks on colleges The Trump administration has leveraged antisemitism investigations in its efforts to reshape higher education, suspending billions of dollars in federal funding to Harvard, Columbia and other universities over allegations they tolerated hate speech, especially during protests over the Israel-Hamas war . The White House has not gotten as involved at the K-12 level. At congressional hearings, House Republicans have taken some large school systems to task over their handling of antisemitism, but the administration largely has left it to the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights to address complaints. In one of the cases under investigation, a complaint described students at the Berkeley Unified School District in California asking Jewish classmates what “their number is,” referring to numbers tattooed on Jews during the Holocaust. It also said teachers made antisemitic comments and led walkouts that praised Hamas. The district did not respond to a request for comment. In another California case, the family of a 14-year-old girl filed a federal lawsuit last year alleging she had to leave University Preparatory Academy, a charter school in San Jose, in 2023 because of antisemitic bullying. After the Hamas attack, she said students called her names, including “terrorist.” The California Department of Education and the school said they could not comment on pending litigation. Nationwide, the ADL recorded 860 antisemitic incidents in non-Jewish schools last year, ranging from name-calling and swastikas etched on lockers to antisemitic materials being taught in classrooms. The number was down from over 1,100 recorded in 2023, but well above numbers in prior years, according to the ADL. A Massachusetts teachers union pushes back A Massachusetts state commission formed last year to combat antisemitism found it was a “pervasive and escalating problem” in schools. At one meeting, a commission co-chair, Democratic state Rep. Simon Cataldo, said the Massachusetts Teachers Association was sharing antisemitic resources with teachers, including a kindergarten workbook that describes Zionists as “bullies” and an image of a Star of David made of dollar bills. The union said those were singled out among hundreds of images in art and posters about Palestinians, and links to those materials were removed. The union said it has engaged in efforts to confront increases in both antisemitism and Islamophobia and accused the commission of “offensive political theater.” “Those who manipulate antisemitism to achieve political objectives — such as undermining labor unions and public educators — are following the lead of the Trump administration,” the union said in a statement. Margaret Litvin, an associate professor of Arabic and comparative literature at Boston University, said the commission was “deliberately conflating criticism of Israel with prejudice against Jews and bias against Jews.” That approach will be used to justify “heavy-handed” interference by the state in school district affairs, said Litvin, co-founder of the Boston-area Concerned Jewish Faculty and Staff group. Controversy reaches the biggest teachers union The tension reached the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers union, which this summer weighed a proposal to drop ADL classroom materials that educators use to teach about the Holocaust and bias. Backers said the ADL had an outsize influence on school curricula and policy, with an underlying pro-Israel viewpoint. Delegates at the union’s representative assembly narrowly voted to approve the proposal, but they were overruled by the NEA board of directors. Union President Becky Pringle said the proposal “would not further NEA’s commitment to academic freedom, our membership, or our goals.” In the aftermath, the ADL invited K-12 educators to join a new network called BEACON: Building Educator Allies for Change, Openness, and Networks, which it said is intended to help educators learn from each other how to address and combat antisemitism and other forms of hate. Hirsch, the teacher in Colorado, was among hundreds who expressed interest. Some of the blowback he faced stemmed from his online commentary about local activist organizations. After donating money to Black Lives Matter groups and supporting them with a sign in his yard, he expressed feelings of betrayal to see the groups expressing support for Palestinians and not Israel. He said he was surprised by the reaction to the posts in his predominantly Hispanic school community. A former debate coach, he aims through his work with the ADL network to help students share their opinions in constructive ways. “If we’re giving them the opportunity to hate and we’re giving them the opportunity to make enemies of someone, it really is counterproductive to what we’re trying to do as a society,” he said. Previous Next

July 21, 2025 Lawsuit filed against Palo Alto school district over ethnic studies Lisa Moreno Parent Alan Crystal and the Louis D. Brandeis Center, a law firm that works to fight antisemitism, filed a lawsuit against the Palo Alto Unified School District on July 21, alleging that the Board of Education violated the Brown Act by passing an Ethnic Studies graduation requirement. Originally Posted In: https://www.paloaltoonline.com/education/2025/07/21/lawsuit-filed-against-palo-alto-school-district-over-ethnic-studies/ < Back Parent Alan Crystal and the Louis D. Brandeis Center, a law firm that works to fight antisemitism, filed a lawsuit against the Palo Alto Unified School District on July 21, alleging that the Board of Education violated the Brown Act by passing an Ethnic Studies graduation requirement. The Brown Act is the state’s open meeting law that ensures government agencies like school boards meet in public, give notice of those meetings and refrain from gathering a majority outside of meetings to discuss district-related topics, among many other limitations. Districts across the state are grappling with backlash after attempting to follow through on a 2021 state mandate to create an ethnic studies requirement. Palo Alto Unified is no different and for months has endured controversy through social media posts, failed recalls and complaints after adopting the course on January 23. Crystal filed a Brown Act complaint against the board on Feb. 21, claiming it passed the requirement a year early and that board President Shana Segal spoke with a majority of board members about the course outside of the meeting. “I don’t think this should be a legal matter. I think the board should look at this, realize what’s happened and want to rectify it,” Crystal said in a March interview with this publication. He had hoped that the board would pause its ethnic studies requirement or redo the vote, he said. But the complaint was later dropped, according to the District Attorney’s Office. “The DA’s Office determined the available evidence was insufficient to find a violation of the Brown Act as alleged by Mr. Crystal,” Sean Webby, a spokesperson for the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office, told this publication. Now, Crystal, who has raised three kids in the district, filed a Brown Act lawsuit instead. District officials pushed back against the complaint. “The allegations misrepresent the facts, misapply the law, and politicize a local curriculum decision,” Superintendent Don Austin wrote in a message to this publication. “This appears to be the next step in an unsuccessful local attempt to allege Brown Act violations to stop the implementation of Ethnic Studies courses.” The lawsuit makes the same claims as the Brown Act notice, alleging the board of education adopted the course a year early, without telling the public. “They purported to ‘confirm’ that completion of ethnic studies would ‘remain a graduation requirement beginning with the Class of 2029,'” stated a press release from Brandeis. “No such graduation requirement existed at the time of the January 23, 2025, meeting, and, therefore, no such graduation requirement could be confirmed. At a September 12, 2023, meeting, former school board members expressed interest in creating the new Ethnic Studies requirement for the Class of 2028. Ultimately, board members agreed with staff recommendation to create the Ethnic Studies requirement for the Class of 2029. The board did not officially vote at the meeting. “I’d say we would be open to hearing an adjustment to the timeline if you suddenly decide you’re ready to go sooner,” former board member Jennifer DiBrienza said at that meeting. At the next school board meeting on October 10, 2023, the board passed the new requirement through its consent calendar, which means there was no further discussion on the item. The item stated the ethnic studies course requirement would begin with the class of 2029-2030 , a year later than discussed in the previous meeting. The Palo Alto Unified School District said this was a typographical error but the lawsuit claims it intentionally misled the public. “The suggestion that the Board ‘pushed through’ this requirement without proper notice is simply false,” Austin wrote in a statement. “The vote occurred in public, the agenda was posted in compliance with the Brown Act and public input was provided over an extended period of time.” The lawsuit also alleges that the district let specific groups in the room during the Ethnic Studies board meeting and that board members met in private to discuss the course. Crystal and the law firm said they agree that the ethnic studies course has the potential to educate students to “build a more just society,” according to the lawsuit, but argued that Palo Alto’s course may cause discrimination. “PAUSD’s actions are part of a concerning trend emerging in K-12 schools where board members act behind closed doors and without the required public notice in order to approve K-12 curriculum that may be controversial, inflame bigotry, and even be unlawful,” Brandeis Center CEO Kenneth Marcus wrote in a statement. While the complaint was filed in February, the Brandeis Center joined the lawsuit on July 21, filing an amended complaint on behalf of both itself and Crystal. The district believes the lawsuit represents a pattern “across the entire state from those who do not support the course in various formats and configurations,” Austin wrote. “We will vigorously defend against this baseless lawsuit and stand behind both the transparency of our process and the value of the course itself,” he wrote. Previous Next

Information is power. Arm yourself by reading and understanding the core issues we are facing, and then join our advocacy community to help us fight back. RESEARCH & WHITE PAPERS Information is power - arm yourself by reading and understanding the core issues we are facing and then join our advocacy community to help us fight back. California Commission on the State of Hate 2023-2024 REPORT FINDS THAT Ethnic studies FUELS DIVISION & HATE Commission on State of Hate Annual Report Highlighting Ethnic Studies Dangers, Calls for Pause The California Commission on the State of Hate’s 2023-2024 Annual Report provides a critical examination of ethnic studies implementation, education policy, and hate prevention efforts in California schools. The report highlights serious concerns about bias, enforcement failures, and the lack of oversight in ethnic studies curricula, which must be addressed before further educational mandates are pursued. Read the Report Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA) Counter-Terrorism Brief | APRIL 7, 2025 NCRI'S investigation of MECA (Middle East Children's Alliance) has yielded evidence suggesting fiscal and personnel ties to entities associated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which was designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) by the US government in 1997. In addition to its ties to PFLP fronts based in the Gaza Strip, MECA has of late begun facilitating fundraising for a network of extremist anti-government actors based in the United States. As NCRI exposed in an October 2024, report,2 MECA has also penetrated the US public education system via its development of radical curriculum materials through the Teach Palestine project that are being taught in K-12 classrooms nationwide. Read the Report California Commission on the State of Hate 2023-2024 REPORT FINDS THAT Ethnic studies FUELS DIVISION & HATE Commission on State of Hate Annual Report Highlighting Ethnic Studies Dangers, Calls for Pause The California Commission on the State of Hate’s 2023-2024 Annual Report provides a critical examination of ethnic studies implementation, education policy, and hate prevention efforts in California schools. The report highlights serious concerns about bias, enforcement failures, and the lack of oversight in ethnic studies curricula, which must be addressed before further educational mandates are pursued. Read the Report ISGAP Report Exposes Anti-Israel Bias Fueled by Secretive Qatari Influence in U.S. K-12 Classrooms | March 13, 2025 Newly released report by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) uncovers extensive foreign influence and anti-Israel bias infiltrating U.S. K-12 classrooms through Brown University’s Choices Program. The investigation highlights the systematic manipulation of educational materials in the Choices Program within the same units over the last decade plus, gradually shifting its curriculum to present an increasingly anti-Israel perspective. Changes include the removal of key historical documents and the omission of others, the misrepresentation of Israel’s capital in maps, and the exclusion of balanced perspectives on Israeli history and diplomacy. Furthermore, the report reveals that Qatar Foundation International (QFI) has played an undisclosed role in shaping the Choices Program’s curriculum and teacher training, influencing how American students are taught about the Middle East and Israel. This curriculum, used by over 8,000 schools across all 50 states and reaching more than one million students, operates with undisclosed foreign funding and has been found to systematically distort historical facts to delegitimize Israel. The report raises significant concerns about transparency, oversight, and compliance with federal disclosure laws. Read the Report 2023-2024 REPORT FINDS THAT Ethnic studies FUELS DIVISION & HATE Bridging the Divide over Critical Race Theory in America’s Classrooms New survey data shed light on the debate over “woke” instruction in schools The January 2025 report "Bridging the Divide over Critical Race Theory in America’s Classrooms" from Education Next examines the politicization of critical race theory (CRT) in K–12 education. It discusses how CRT has become a focal point in debates over "woke" instruction, leading to legislative actions in numerous states aimed at restricting or banning CRT-related teachings. The authors highlight that while CRT is rarely an official part of K–12 curricula, the term has been broadly applied to various educational content, fueling cultural and political conflicts in education policy. Bridging the Divide over Critical Race Theory in America’s Classrooms: New survey data shed light on the debate over “woke” instruction in schools. Kisida, B., Ritter, G., Gontram, J., Anglum, J.C., Erickson, H.H., Leatherwood, D., and Lee, M.H. (2025). Read the Report U.S. House of Representatives Staff Report on Antisemitism December 18, 2024 In coordination with: Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik Republican Conference Vice Chairman Blake Moore Speaker of the House Mike Johnson Majority Leader Steve Scalise Majority Whip Tom Emmer Education & the Workforce Committee Energy & Commerce Committee Judiciary Committee Oversight Committee Veterans’ Affairs Committee Ways and Means Committee

April 10, 2025 Bay Area high school districts cited, must provide anti-bias training to teachers John Fensterwald Following investigations, the California Department of Education has verified incidents of antisemitism in two neighboring San Jose-area school districts. In separate decisions, the department ordered both the Campbell Union High School District and Santa Clara Unified to provide anti-discrimination training, and in the case of Santa Clara Unified, training in students’ rights against retaliation. Originally Posted In: https://edsource.org/updates/bay-area-high-school-district-cited-must-provide-anti-bias-training-to-teachers < Back Following investigations, the California Department of Education has verified incidents of antisemitism in two neighboring San Jose-area school districts. In separate decisions, the department ordered both the Campbell Union High School District and Santa Clara Unified to provide anti-discrimination training, and in the case of Santa Clara Unified, training in students’ rights against retaliation. In the most recent case, the department ruled on April 4 that lessons in an ethnic studies course at Branham High in Campbell Union discriminated against Jewish students. A parent and Bay Area Jewish Coalition Education and Advocacy filed a complaint and appealed to the department after the district dismissed it. They complained that two teachers in an Ethnic Literature class they had designed presented content regarding the Israel/Palestine conflict that could encourage antisemitism. Not identified by name in the state report, Teacher A acknowledged doing a lesson on the conflict in a “community circle” that was not included in the curriculum. As part of the theme on colonialism, students discussed whether Israel is a settler colonial state, although the students heard only one side. It included a video from a rabbi wearing a Palestinian flag that said “A Jew is not a Zionist” and a reading from Paulo Freire’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed.” “In order for the information to be unbiased, there would have needed to be a video that reflected a pro-Israel perspective. This would have encouraged students to create authentic answers regarding the questions provided in the lesson,” the state report said. The second instance of bias pertained to a student project on “Genocide of Palestinians. The report found that Teacher B didn’t question the students on their report during a class presentation and then posted the presentation to a social media site of class projects. “The legal issue is whether the teacher responded adequately so as to ensure a non-discriminatory and balanced learning environment,” the report said. The failure to comment on the slide presentation” could have been interpreted by the student audience as approval of the presented thesis.” The district, which can ask the department to reconsider the decision, did not respond to a request for a comment. The district must provide at least an hour-long anti-bias training for all English language arts and social studies teachers by the start of the next school year. “We are seeing discrimination against Jews in classrooms throughout the state and hope this precedent will lead to schools taking a more nuanced approach that doesn’t harm Jewish students,” said Miller Saltzman, Ethnic Studies Coalition Director for the Jewish Public Affairs Committee of California. Santa Clara Unified decisions The department issued separate rulings on Jan. 24 in which it verified allegations of bias on two separate incidents that occurred after the October slaughter by Hamas of 1,200 Israelis which led to reprisals and the invasion of Gaza by the Israeli army, with deaths of thousands of Palestinians. One involved a clear violation of the district’s policy on handling controversial issues, although that was outside of the department’s jurisdiction. A teacher assigned students projects on genocide and modeled the conflict in Gaza as an example for the class. It contained a one-sided, politically charged perspective that described Israeli actions against Gazans that “amount to the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution” and used other inflammatory language. The district’s own internal investigation acknowledged the teacher’s presentation was “poorly timed,” “controversial” and “politically charged.” The department went further on appeal , stating it violated the Education Code’s protection against discrimination and intimidation on the basis of ethnicity, religion and nationality. In the second incident , in February 2024, a teacher confronted a Jewish student who was a member of the Jewish Culture Club about a speaker from Israel the club had invited. In front of other students, the teacher tried to persuade the student to disinvite the speaker, whose controversial talk, the teacher said, would provoke antisemitism and reflect badly on the student. Although the district’s own investigation concluded that the teacher’s “conduct was objectively offensive considering the power imbalance between [the Teacher and the Student]” and the student’s identification of Jewish, the district ruled there was no clear discrimination or harassment. On appeal, the state concluded otherwise, noting that under state law, schools should “promote tolerance and sensitivity” and “minimize and eliminate hostile environments.” The unnamed student filed the complaint and the appeal. In its ruling, the department required the district to train all high school staff on students’ right to be free of discrimination, harassment and intimidation base on race, ethnicity, religion and nationality. The District shall also “continue to take appropriate actions to protect (the student) from retaliation for bringing the Complaint/Appeal,” the ruling said. Previous Next

March 19, 2026 The Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), in collaboration with PeerK12, announced on Thursday the launch of the San Diego Jewish American Heritage Month Student Contest. CAM & PeerK12 Staff Submissions Now Open for San Diego Jewish American Heritage Month Student Creative Originally Posted In: https://combatantisemitism.org/cam-news/submissions-now-open-for-san-diego-jewish-american-heritage-month-student-creative-contest/ < Back PRESS RELEASE Thursday, March 19, SAN DIEGO, CA – The Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), in collaboration with PeerK12, announced on Thursday the launch of the San Diego Jewish American Heritage Month Student Contest. The creative competition - full details of which are available HERE - is open to all high school juniors and seniors from San Diego County who plan to attend a two- or four-year college or university. Jews have played an integral role in the great American story for nearly four centuries, richly contributing to the nation’s culture, economy, and civic life. From the early colonial period to contemporary times, Jewish citizens have been at the forefront of advancing and defending American freedom, security, prosperity, and innovation, while maintaining a strong faith-based communal identity. The history of San Diego is no different, with Jewish pioneers arriving in the mid-1800s and quickly becoming an inseparable part of the growing port city’s social fabriC. The San Diego Jewish American Heritage Month Student Contest offers participants an opportunity to explore this history and its lasting influence by submitting essays in three categories: Jewish Individuals Who Shaped America, Jewish Leadership; Partnership in Advancing Social Cause, and Jewish Ideas and Cultural Contributions to Society. “We receive reports every day of antisemitic incidents in K–12 schools across San Diego - it’s a clear call to action,” said Tamar Caspi, co-founder of PeerK12. “This contest gives Jewish and non-Jewish students alike a proactive, educational way to build understanding and take a leadership role countering hate in their schools.” The contest launch comes just two days following the San Diego City Council adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism, which CAM welcomed as a “landmark moment” for the city. “After San Diego took an important stand against antisemitism with the adoption of the IHRA definition, we’re excited to launch this contest to engage students in learning about Jewish American heritage and its impact on our country,” said CAM Jewish American Heritage Director Lenore Zach. “This is an incredible moment - not just to teach history, but to help shape how it’s understood and carried forward by the next generation.” Entries will be accepted through Friday, May 22. Up to $30,000 in scholarships will be awarded. Winners will be recognized at a JAHM reception in San Diego in May. CAM’s partners for the project include PeerK12 and Tikvah Fund. A similar initiative is being led by CAM in Iowa this year, as well as Virginia last year. For more information and to submit an entry, please visit: jahm.combatantisemitism.org/sandiego2026 or peerk12.org/jahmcontest2026 . ### The Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) , whose Global Advisory Board is chaired by former Soviet refusenik Natan Sharansky, is a global coalition uniting more than 850 partner organizations and hundreds of thousands of individuals across diverse backgrounds to fight antisemitism in all its forms. By mobilizing communities, advancing innovative tools, and working with governments and civil society, CAM drives collaborative action to protect Jewish life and uphold democratic values worldwide. PeerK12 (Partners for Equality and Educational Responsibility in K-12) is dedicated to unapologetically fighting institutionalized Jew-hatred in K-12 education. Founded in 2021, the grassroots movement operates on the front lines within school districts by defending Jewish civil rights, confronting extremist agendas, and protecting merit-based education through legislative accountability, policy advocacy, and legal enforcement. Previous Next

January 21, 2026 Education Matters: Final findings of San Dieguito human swastika incident Marsha Sutton PeerK12 co-founders Nicole Bernstein and Tamar Caspi responded to the findings in a statement, writing, “The district’s response is riddled with contradictions that defy logic." Originally Posted In: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2026/01/21/education-matters-final-findings-of-san-dieguito-human-swastika-incident/ < Back The San Dieguito Union High School District fulfilled my Public Records Act request for the final investigation results of the “human swastika” incident that happened last May at a district high school and found that three of the four allegations against the district had merit. Yet the family of the targeted student and the organization that filed the complaint on the family’s behalf remain unsatisfied. The incident occurred when eight San Dieguito Academy students formed the shape of a swastika on the school’s athletic field. The display was timed for an SDA Jewish student to see as he was taking a flying lesson over the field. The SDA principal and assistant principal, Cara Dolnik and Charles Adams, did not report the incident to the district superintendent, Anne Staffieri. Instead, PeerK12 , a civil rights nonprofit organization, reported it immediately after learning of it in late August last year. As a result of the SDA administrators’ failure to report the incident when it occurred, the district accepted a resignation letter from Dolnik and reassigned Adams to the district office for unspecified duties. Unconfirmed reports suggest the eight students may have been suspended. On Sept. 11, 2025, PeerK12 filed a complaint with the district through the Uniform Complaint Procedures process which alleges violations of state laws or regulations. Specifically, the complaint was filed on behalf of the student and family for “the failure of the district … to respond to, report, and remedy a targeted antisemitic hate incident that occurred on May 30, 2025” on the SDA campus. The complaint alleges discriminatory religious harassment, timed as it was to be viewed by a fellow Jewish student. The district’s internal investigation was coordinated by Evelin Medina, SDUHSD’s director of community resolution and compliance, and Tracy Olander, SDUHSD’s director of human resources. Although some of the findings have been redacted to protect the identity of the student, the district substantiated Allegation 1 – that “a group of [redacted] deliberately formed a human swastika on school grounds timed to coincide with a planned [redacted].” According to the findings, “The preponderance of the evidence established that a majority of the [redacted] involved knew they were forming a swastika” and that “one [redacted] was primarily responsible for coming up with and organizing the shape …” The evidence, according to the district, supports that “many of the [redacted] involved were peer-pressured to participate, and at least [redacted] sat up at one point during the [redacted] when they realized what shape they were forming.” Second allegations Allegation 2 was divided into three parts, with 2a entirely redacted except to note that the finding was not substantiated. According to PeerK12, 2a alleged that the incident was a hate crime, but the district did not find evidence to support the charge. Allegation 2b – that the school’s administration did not promptly investigate or discipline those involved – was substantiated. It was found that the delayed response of the school’s administration to investigate the May incident was “a failing of their professional responsibilities” and that the response to the incident “was substandard and fell below the professional expectations for administrators of their experience and training.” However, the 2b findings did note that the evidence was “insufficient to establish that the delay was due to discriminatory reasons,” citing the timing of the incident which took place on the last day of the 2024-2025 school year and the start of the summer recess. Allegation 2c – that administrators did not implement measures to protect [redacted] from further harm or retaliation following the May incident – was substantiated. However, the findings state that “appropriate supportive measures were put in place” following the family’s meeting with district officials on Aug. 28. Corrective actions According to the final findings, corrective actions are being taken, one being that the district “publicly acknowledged the incident, recognizing the failure in response and protocols, and committed to addressing the situation moving forward.” In addition, appropriate personnel action was taken to address the school administrators’ response to the incident. The district states that it is working “to develop community restoration activities and public acknowledgement of the harm the May incident has caused” … by engaging in “ongoing professional development and education to provide a greater understanding to district students, staff and community.” The district is working with a number of organizations – including the National Conflict Resolution Center and the local branch of the American Jewish Committee – to train staff and implement stronger standards. The district also plans parent engagement nights, “staff listening circles,” and ongoing lessons for “students on the topic of antisemitism, hate language and symbols.” Reaction PeerK12 co-founders Nicole Bernstein and Tamar Caspi responded to the findings in a statement, writing, “The district’s response is riddled with contradictions that defy logic. It publicly labels the conduct a hate crime, then denies that finding in its own report. It claims the investigation was impartial, yet assigns it to its own attorney. Administrators are removed or reassigned, then the district insists no policy was violated.” That the district needs to bring in outside consultants to explain to students and staff that swastikas are hate symbols, Bernstein and Caspi said, “If that lesson still needs to be taught, it raises serious questions about the district’s judgment and culture – and helps explain why these incidents keep escalating instead of stopping.” The complaint was based on SDUHSD board policies 5131.2 addressing bullying, 5145.3 addressing discrimination and harassment, and 5145.9 which states in part, “The Governing Board is committed to providing a respectful, inclusive, and safe learning environment that protects students from discrimination, harassment, intimidation, bullying, or any other type of behavior that is motivated by hate.” Hate-motivated behavior, as defined by the district’s board policy, “is any behavior intended to cause emotional suffering, physical injury, or property damage through intimidation, harassment, bigoted slurs or epithets …” The complaint also cited violations of four California state education codes:— 201 (All pupils have the right to participate fully in the educational process, free from discrimination and harassment) – 220 (prohibits discrimination in educational programs receiving state funds based on protected characteristics) – 234 (mandates that local school agencies prevent and address discrimination, harassment, intimidation, and bullying …) – 234.1 (prohibits discrimination, harassment, intimidation, and bullying based on the actual or perceived characteristics …). Ed Code 234.1 also specifically states that there is a requirement that “if school personnel witness an act of discrimination, harassment, intimidation, or bullying, they shall take immediate steps to intervene when safe to do so.” Family statement Peer K12 provided the following statement from the Gordon family whose son was targeted: “We lost trust in the district when it chose to investigate itself through its own attorney. That decision made clear to us that minimizing liability mattered more than accountability for an antisemitic act and examining how school leadership handled – and then mishandled – what occurred. It has felt less like a genuine effort to understand what went wrong and more like an attempt to explain it away. As a result, the findings were not surprising … and reflect a process that has felt dismissive of the harm done and insulting from start to finish. Because the district’s so-called corrective actions amounted to recycling the same failed responses it previously claimed were working,” the family said “there’s no reason to expect change. The worst part," according to the Gordons, "is that the district consulted outside organizations who excluded our family, our child, and PeerK12 who has advocated for us throughout this entire ordeal. That eight students formed a human swastika targeting a Jewish student and the school administration failed to protect that child … raises serious concerns about leadership, training, and culture,” stated the Gordon family. The appeal PeerK12 appealed the district’s findings on Nov. 19 and received confirmation of receipt from the state on Dec. 5. The California Department of Education issued a decision of the appeal on Jan. 5, the subject of which is titled “discrimination based on religion” and found that “the appeal has merit in part.” The conclusion states that “the school failed to adequately respond to peer-to-peer discrimination based on religion once it became aware of it.” The CDE determined that additional and more specific corrective actions are required by the district for “a proper remedy.” Because the family is considering options for next steps, this is not over and word is the district “is not off the hook.” Marsha Sutton is an education writer and investigative opinion columnist and can be reached at suttonmarsha@gmail.com . Previous Next

April 24, 2025 The Ethnic Studies to Antisemitism Pipeline: Pajaro Valley Edition Mika Hackner The ideological lens of Ethnic Studies, with its obsession over systems of power and its binary moral structure, aligns all too easily with antisemitic conspiracism. Originally Posted In: https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/opinion/380976/the-ethnic-studies-to-antisemitism-pipeline-pajaro-valley-edition/ < Back On Wednesday night, often to cheers and applause, school board members of the Pajaro Valley Unified School District (PVUSD), in Santa Cruz County California, berated and accused the Jewish community of using its wealth and privilege to maintain power at the expense of black and Hispanic communities. The comments were made during a PVUSD meeting centered on whether to renew its contract with Community Responsive Education (CRE), an organization led by Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales, to provide professional development for Ethnic Studies. Tintiangco-Cubales is a member of the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium (LESMCC) and an original author of the California State of Education’s model Ethnic Studies curriculum. The curriculum had to be revised after widespread concerns over antisemitic content. As a result of those changes, Tintiangco-Cubales subsequently removed her name from the finished product. PVUSD had a previous working relationship with CRE when they developed PVUSD’s Ethnic Studies framework and helped with curriculum development and teacher training. This relationship was severed after Tintiangco-Cubales’ public rejection of California’s model ethnic studies curriculum. Since then, activists have fought for PVUSD to reinstate its contract with CRE. Thanks to California’s AB 101 legislation, Ethnic Studies will soon become a graduation requirement for California’s high schoolers. As activists were quick to point out in last night’s meeting, Ethnic Studies is not Multicultural Studies; it is not the study of different communities and their contributions to the United States. As it is written and applied, Ethnic Studies is about identifying systems of power and oppression and learning how to dismantle them. Systems do not materialize out of thin air. They are built. They are designed. If our liberal society is a “system of oppression” then it must have been purposefully designed by oppressors to maintain power. Ethnic Studies teaches a Manichean worldview of good and bad, oppressor against oppressed, powerful and powerless. That kind of simplistic thinking has always been a happy hunting ground for the antisemite and the conspiracist. It is no surprise, then, that as Ethnic Studies gets adopted in K-12, there is a rise of antisemitism in schools. And this was perfectly displayed by the school board members who voted to approve the CRE contract last night. Trustee Joy Flynn, for example, assured the Jewish community that there was no hint of antisemitism in CRE’s work while simultaneously claiming that the Jewish community has economic power and white privilege that they are not using to benefit the wider community. Trustee Gabriel Medina went further, addressing Jewish community members in the audience: “You only show up to meetings when it’s beneficial for you, so you can tell brown people who they are…the lies that you spewed here tonight were insane … if you want to continue to be segregationists like you have in the past …” A teacher in PVUSD said, in regard to antisemitism in the CRE curriculum, “It would be disrespectful to me, to every teacher who has been in this training, to every student, if you were to say ‘We don’t believe you, we believe this one minority’ and maybe the fact they gave money to certain campaigns helps.” He went on to say “Turns out I’m part Ashkenazi Jew, so if that ups my favoritism, please renew CRE.” This last remark was met with jovial laughter. This wasn’t just offensive — it was revealing. Open antisemitism like this may shock, but it shouldn’t surprise. The ideological lens of Ethnic Studies, with its obsession over systems of power and its binary moral structure, aligns all too easily with antisemitic conspiracism. Tragically, it seems that PVUSD has adopted this worldview wholesale. Let’s hope other districts don’t follow their lead. Dr Mika Hackner is Senior Research Associate at the North American Values Institute. She has been published in Times of Israel, The Jerusalem Post, the Washington Post, Quillette and the Jewish Journal. Previous Next

May 6, 2026 DC JCRC calls out ‘significantly’ elevated antisemitism in Montgomery County, Maryland schools Haley Cohen ‘Too many Jewish students and educators at too many MCPS schools continue to face too many threats,’ said COO Guila Franklin Siegel Originally Posted In: https://jewishinsider.com/2026/05/montgomery-county-public-schools-d-c-jcrc-antisemitism/ < Back The leading Jewish advocacy group representing the Washington, D.C., area is raising the alarm on a uniquely high rate of antisemitic incidents in Maryland’s Montgomery County public school system. Guila Franklin Siegel, chief operating officer at the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, said Tuesday that the JCRC is receiving “significantly higher” reports of antisemitism out of MCPS, located just outside of Washington, than others in the region. Montgomery County’s public school system is the largest school district in the state and hosts a sizable Jewish student population. The statement comes amid a new report from the Anti-Defamation League showing that Maryland ranked ninth in total antisemitic incidents nationwide in 2025, two-thirds of which occurred in Montgomery County. Among the top ten states with total incidents, Maryland ranked first in the percentage of incidents occurring at K-12 schools, at 34%. “While the details vary, these incidents reveal a harsh truth: too many Jewish students and educators at too many MCPS schools continue to face too many threats,” said Franklin Siegel, whose statement came the day after JCRC leadership met with MCPS Superintendent Thomas Taylor and his senior management team. Incidents in recent months include anti-Jewish and anti-Israel graffiti on school walls, most recently at Greenwood Elementary School last weekend; inflammatory anti-Israel messaging at Olney Elementary School’s recent cultural night; “Heil Hitler” gestures and speech occurring at middle school events; and, according to JCRC, “physical threats and harassment directed toward Jewish students at multiple schools.” Franklin Siegel said MCPS and JCRC leadership discussed “progress on the steps MCPS needs to take to protect Jewish students, educators, and staff.” “Our messages were simple: MCPS must establish a zero-tolerance policy on antisemitism and other forms of hatred and bias; train and empower administrators and teachers to correctly identify and respond to antisemitism; and rigorously enforce disciplinary codes, making it clear that anyone who engages in antisemitic or other hateful behavior will face meaningful consequences,” Franklin Siegel said. MCPS said it “will be in compliance with recently adopted state law requiring anti-bias training for school educators and staff” starting in August, according to Franklin Siegel. The school district also committed “to improv[ing] school participation rates in JCRC’s gold-standard Student to Student and Holocaust speakers’ programs” and to “drafting specific guidelines for culture and international nights. The district must ensure these events are safe and educational for all students and families, not political battlefields,” she added. But Franklin Siegel called on the school district to go further in protecting Jewish students. “MCPS should follow the lead of other schools in our area by incorporating specific antisemitism training as well,” she said. “More lessons about Jewish history beyond antisemitism and the Holocaust should be included in its curricula. And given that bias incidents are so often connected to the proliferation of hate speech online, MCPS also needs to discipline students who harass and bully Jewish students on social media accounts, even when those accounts are not formally affiliated with schools. The district has that authority, and principals must enforce it.” MCPS, which serves over 156,000 students, did not respond to a request for comment from Jewish Insider . Previous Next

April 23, 2026 Jewish San Leandro high schooler sues for ‘pervasive’ antisemitic harassment Niva Ashkenazi A Jewish student at San Leandro High School has sued her principal and two teachers, alleging “pervasive and unrelenting” antisemitic harassment and discrimination over two years, leading to panic attacks and a precipitous drop in her GPA. Originally Posted In: https://jweekly.com/2026/04/23/jewish-san-leandro-high-schooler-sues-for-pervasive-antisemitic-harassment/ < Back A Jewish senior at San Leandro High School is suing the school and the San Leandro Unified School District, alleging she endured a “pervasive pattern of antisemitic harassment and illegal retaliation” throughout her sophomore and junior years. The lawsuit alleges the discrimination occurred in the school’s Social Justice Academy, a series of electives geared toward creating “positive change” in their communities. The Deborah Project, a Jewish civil rights law firm based in suburban Philadelphia, filed the initial complaint Tuesday in Alameda County Superior Court. The Deborah Project specializes in representing Jewish students in anti-discrimination cases; it collaborated with global law firm Ropes & Gray. Attorneys for the student told J. Wednesday that while the harassment stemmed from student bullying, the school’s teachers and administrators failed to mitigate and at times exacerbated it. “The teachers not only failed to do anything” about the antisemitic abuse alleged in the lawsuit, said attorney Ryan Weinstein, but “joined in and fueled it. And then, when it was raised to administrators, principals, and district officials, rather than addressing it, they retaliated.” After the appeals were either ignored or failed to stop the harassment, Weinstein said, Horwitz and her mother sought legal help, though initially not with the intent to sue. Over the past year, attorneys from the Deborah Project and Ropes & Gray attempted to reach a resolution with the district but were ignored, according to Weinstein. “At that point, we just decided there was no choice but to proceed with litigation,” Weinstein said. The complaint alleges that shortly after the Hamas attack in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Jewish student Eden Horwitz, then a sophomore new to the school’s Social Justice Academy, began facing isolation from students and teachers that quickly escalated to harassment. The academy “provides 10th- to 12th-grade students with a forum to become the catalysts of social, political, and environmental change,” the school district website says . According to the complaint, teachers frequently led classroom discussions about the war in Gaza “in which students expressed support for Hamas while disparaging the State of Israel and the Jewish people.” These discussions led students to single out Horwitz as a target for bullying and harassment, the lawsuit alleges. “Her classmates reduced her to [the academy’s] token Jewish student, demanded she answer for her entire people, wielded ‘Zionist’ as a slur, and held her personally responsible for ‘genocide,’” the complaint read. The harassment persisted throughout the school year, despite Horwitz’s attempts to report it to the social justice academy’s coordinator and administrators at the high school, the lawsuit alleges. When in January 2024 Horwitz brought her complaints to the academy, its coordinator “dismissed the report, suggesting the absence of proof of physical threats or harassment rendered the complaints meritless” and questioned Horwitz’s suitability for the academy, “implying that her Jewish identity and beliefs were incompatible with the cohort,” the complaint read. By spring, the harassment moved online, the lawsuit claims. Horwitz received anonymous messages on social media in April 2024 calling her a racist and accusing her of “funding genocide,” repeating similar taunts she had been facing in the classroom, according to the complaint. As a result, Horwitz suffered from severe anxiety and depression, according to the lawsuit, and sought an “intensive outpatient program.” She also asked for academic and other accommodations, but the request was ignored, according to the complaint. “This included failing to provide mandated academic extensions, omitting required counseling services, and persistently failing to implement the staff-awareness measures designed to mitigate the ongoing harassment,” the complaint read. The lawsuit claims the academy’s anti-Israel bent extended outside of the classroom in the form of school assemblies, walk-outs and protests. These demonstrations often included chanting of the slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free ,” including at a December 2023 assembly . The complaint said the slogan is a “call for the elimination of the State of Israel and the displacement or eradication of its Jewish population.” When Horwitz’s mother expressed her concerns about the slogan and an upcoming protest to the school’s administrators, the associate principal suggested that Horwitz stay home, a decision that later compromised her position within the academy, the complaint alleges. “When Eden didn’t participate, she was chastised for her lack of participation and showing a lack of ‘solidarity’ with her peers. This led to a chain of events in which Eden was pressured and eventually expelled from the program,” attorney Weinstein said. “She was clearly in a situation where she was damned if she did, damned if she didn’t.” The associate principal officially removed Hurwitz from the program in March 2025, according to the complaint. The lawsuit asks the court to recognize that San Leandro High School administrators and the teachers in its Social Justice Academy violated Horwitz’s constitutional rights. Plaintiffs are also making significant demands, including that the district adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Association definition of antisemitism when investigating allegations of harassment against Jewish students, appoint an independent investigator to monitor those cases and hold antisemitism trainings with all of its students, faculty and staff. In an email to J. Thursday, San Leandro Unified School District Spokesperson Keziah Moss acknowledged the lawsuit but declined to provide comment “because it is an active legal matter.” Updated: This story was updated to include a response from the San Leandro Unified School District. Previous Next

September 19, 2023 The Cult of ‘Antizionism’ Izabella Tabarovsky American progressive ideologues have formed a new ideology based on the negation of an all-powerful phantasm they call ‘Zionism.’ To fight them, we need to understand the origins of their beliefs in the Soviet academic propaganda apparatus. Originally Posted In: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/cult-of-antizionism-icsz < Back A group of anti-Israel academics and BDS activists have taken a new step toward rebuilding the long-forgotten Soviet discipline of “scientific antizionism” on American campuses. The “founding collective” of 10 has established an Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism, which aims “to support the delinking of the study of Zionism from Jewish Studies” and “to reclaim academia and public discourse for the study of Zionism.” The new institute defines Zionism as a “political, ideological, and racial and gendered knowledge project, intersecting with Palestine and decolonial studies, critical terrorism studies, settler colonial studies, and related scholarship and activism.” This October, ICSZ will hold its inaugural conference titled “Battling the ‘IHRA Definition’: Theory and Activism.” The ICSZ’s website presents a vision of an overtly academic institution that will churn out politically motivated “research” designed to move the American public toward the idea of doing away with American support for Israel and, ultimately, with Israel itself. Coming at a time when American Jews and Jewish identity are under comprehensive attack within mainstream institutions, ICSZ sounds like bad news—and it is. American progressives have scored numerous successes in recent years by using the power of tenured academic positions, in-class bullying, and threats of physical intimidation to enforce anti-Zionist culture at American universities and within the elite cultural spaces that employ American liberal arts graduates. Now, they have taken opposition to Zionism a step further, by transforming their hatred of “Zionists” and rejection of the historical dynamics of Jewish self-identification and national self-determination into its own free-standing ideology, which is politically aligned with, but not dependent on, the wider progressive movement. Anti-Zionists, as part of the broader far left, are eerily reproducing elements of the cultural deformations that once defined the lives of the citizens of the communist bloc: They have introduced Americans to the practices of collective demonization, blacklists, and denouncing friends and colleagues. They have injected political reeducation and oversight committees into workplaces and academic institutions as part of a new cultural revolution that overtly targets “Zionists” as present-day villains and boogeymen, on a par with “white supremacists” and “fascists.” And they have forced colleagues and coworkers who don’t agree with them to either hide their true opinions, or, more often, to stop having opinions at all, in order to keep their jobs. Within academia, progressives who primarily derive their personal and professional identity from expressing extreme loathing of Israel have notched additional victories. They have reorganized the missions of entire academic disciplines, including Middle Eastern, Jewish, and Israel studies, around demonization of the Jewish state. They have pushed states to introduce radical “liberated ethnic studies” maligning Jews and Israel in K-12 schools. They have coopted countless academics into signing defamatory anti-Israel petitions that are of questionable academic validity and, word has it, are now working to place signatories on the synagogue lecture circuit, as part of their strategy of legitimizing the openly racist, and even genocidal, views at the heart of anti-Zionist ideology by co-opting wealthy Jewish institutions and funders who seek to buy protection from progressives, despite the radical unpopularity of their views among ordinary American Jews. The establishment of ICSZ marks a new stage in the relentless regressive march of this bizarre progressive movement. How delighted would the institute’s forebears in the Soviet security and propaganda apparatus have been to witness the spectacle of Americans, including Jews, coming together of their own free will to provide academic legitimacy and a Jewish institutional imprimatur to conspiracy theories about Zionism that they spent their entire careers developing, and then inculcating with sympathetic audiences around the globe? The ICSZ’s founders are known figures in the BDS movement and the movement for the academic boycott of Israel. They include Rabab Abdulhadi of San Francisco State University, who tried to bring convicted PFLP terrorist and airline hijacker Leila Khaled to SFSU; Lau Barrios, who has served as campaign manager at Linda Sarsour’s MPower Change and as a co-organizer of the “No Tech for Apartheid” campaign geared at pressuring Google and Amazon to end their work with Israel; and Emmaia Gelman, ICSZ’s founding director, who serves as a trustee of the Sparkplug Foundation, a funder of IfNotNow and Palestinian Youth Movement, and also a co-sponsor of the ICSZ conference. ICSZ’s advisory board, which has grown from 16 to 29 members as of this writing in less than two weeks, now includes the UC Berkeley professor Judith Butler, an academic superstar of the American BDS movement who famously described Hezbollah and Hamas as progressive social movements that are “on the Left” and are “part of a global Left,” and New York University’s Lisa Duggan, who defended Rasmea Odeh , a PFLP operative who helped organize two deadly bombings inside Israel. ICSZ claims it has the backing of well-funded pro-BDS NGOs like Jewish Voice for Peace and American Friends Service Committee , both listed as co-sponsors of the conference, and that it plans to grant “annual fellowships for students and academics, conferences, [and] publications.” The ICSZ’s apparent affiliation with the NYU and University of California at Santa Cruz, which the founders have claimed will be hosting their first conference, furthers its veneer of academic legitimacy, though both the NYU and UCSC have denied affiliation with the conference or providing space for it but remain listed on the site. Those who are tempted to dismiss ICSZ as fringe today need only to remember that it is part of a network of NGOs that also began on the margins before raising millions of dollars and going mainstream on campuses like NYU and UCSC. The rapid expansion of ICSZ’s advisory board and the inclusion on it of celebrity BDS activists such as Butler, suggests that ICSZ is already capturing the imagination of the anti-Israel crowd. ICSZ presents the clearest articulation yet of the philosophy, goals, and methods of the anti-Israel hard left as it breaks free from conventional modes of progressive analysis and coalition-building and becomes its own self-contained ideological universe. The first thing that an examination of ICSZ’s website makes clear is that, contrary to their claims, ICSZ’s founders are not, in fact, anti-Zionists. ICSZ describes Zionism as “a broad set of colonial and repressive work and solidarities, efforts to curate knowledge and identities, and to dismantle movements that resist it.” It views it as a “political ideology tightly enmeshed with racism, fascism, and colonial dispossession” and intends to demonstrate “how the critical study of Zionism is deeply and essentially connected to the study of global forces including contests over power, race, colonialism, capital, militarism, and violence.” This deeply contrived view of Zionism bears no relationship to how the founders of Zionism framed their beliefs, nor how Jews have historically perceived and experienced Zionism. Jews who argued against Zionism as the answer to the “Jewish question” in the run-up to World War II (an entirely legitimate debate until the war proved Zionism right in the most terrible way possible) would not have recognized in this description the Zionism that they opposed. Calling ICSZ founders anti-Zionists, then, is a profound misnomer. To find a better term for them, let’s turn to the work of British scholars David Seymour and David Hirsh. In a 2019 paper , Seymour argues that the philosophy of those who oppose an imaginary, rather than real, Zionism should be framed not in opposition to Zionism but as a free-standing ideology and should be spelled, akin to antisemitism, as “antizionism”—i.e., without the hyphen. Just as “the ideology of antisemitism tells us nothing about Jews” but everything about antisemites, writes Seymour, “the ideology of antizionism tells us more about itself” than it does about Israel or Zionism. Expounding on this, Hirsh notes in his essay in the forthcoming The Routledge History of Antisemitism that the “‘Zionism’ against which antizionism defines its ideology” is “something conjured by the anti-Jewish imagination.” The antizionist conceives Zionism as “colonialism, apartheid, racism, the surveillance state, as being like Nazism, and as everything else that good people oppose”—in other words, as a phenomenon that is “profoundly different” from the Zionism embraced by Jews. Just like antisemites do battle against a fantasy of “the Jews” that exists in their own heads, the new antizionists battle a “Zionism” that exists nowhere on earth, and is instead conjured up by their own fevered imaginations. Dropping the hyphen may not seem like the radical step this moment calls for, but just like changing the spelling of anti-Semitism to antisemitism, it has important conceptual implications, and helps us view the phenomenon from new angles. While most American Jews understand why it is important to know the history of Nazi Germany and its antisemitic ideology, even though Nazi Germany has ceased to exist and its ideas are widely discredited, few American Jews can identify the provenance of ideas espoused by today’s antizionist left. As I have noted here , here , here , and here , today’s antizionists reproduce, with extraordinary fidelity, the tropes, the motifs and the explanatory logic of Soviet antizionism. But Soviet history vanished from Americans’ curricula as though that vast totalitarian empire never existed. Americans’ understanding of communism today seems limited to opposing McCarthyism, resulting in a deeply provincial perception of communists as a powerless minority of well-meaning idealists standing up to a bigoted, nativist American establishment. It is no wonder, then, that American Jews are unable to trace the kind of demonizing antizionism that ICSZ’s founders preach to its source. Nor do they know that ICSZ’s language associating Zionism with racism, fascism, capitalism, colonialism, and militarism was once monotonously weaponized against millions of Soviet Jews, who suffered exclusion, professional and educational discrimination, and severe limitations on their Jewish identity as a result. Only a fraction of Soviet Jews were openly Zionist (these were tried in kangaroo courts and given lengthy sentences in prison colonies), but the antizionist campaign put a mark on every Soviet Jewish citizen. A million and a half Jews left the country the moment they could. What American Jews are experiencing today, as the ideology of antizionism spreads in left-of-center spaces, looks eerily familiar to anyone who came of age in the 1970s-80s USSR. American Jews increasingly find themselves under pressure to disavow their connection to Israel and lower their Jewish profiles. They are excluded from progressive groups. They are losing professional and educational opportunities. Some were physically attacked during the 2021 flare-up of the Israel-Hamas conflict. Nearly 60% of American Jewish college students report being targeted by antisemitism directed against them, personally. Even more alarming than this explosion of anti-Jewish bigotry is the blanket silence with which it has been greeted by institutions whose reactions to even a handful of such incidents targeting other social groups is easy to imagine. The fact that there is no formal apparatus of state repression behind American antizionism offers only a measure of relief. If there is anything the last few years have shown, it’s that the radical left is capable of imposing its norms on society without directly capturing institutions of the state. One implication of viewing antizionism as a standalone philosophy with a distinct historical and political lineage, then, is that it gives the lie to ICSZ’s claim that it is not anti-Jewish (we’ll come back to this in a moment). Another is that there is nothing remotely organic about contemporary antizionist language. Far from being an outgrowth of grassroots activism on behalf of Palestinians or an attempt to speak truth to power, this language is imposed from the top down, by antizionist ideologues and activists whose own views are the products of professional Soviet Cold War propagandists such as Yuri Ivanov and Yevgeny Yevseyev (for more on them see here and here ), Vladimir Bolshakov , Valery Yemelyanov , and others like them—right-wing antisemitic conspiracy theorists employed by an authoritarian regime that perceived Zionism and Israel as its biggest ideological enemies. Contemporary antizionists should ask themselves whether this is a political tradition they want to associate themselves with. What American Jews are experiencing today, as the ideology of ‘antizionism’ spreads in left-of-center spaces, looks eerily familiar to anyone who came of age in the 1970s-80s USSR. ICSZ leads with the bizarre proposition of supporting “the delinking of the study of Zionism from Jewish Studies.” Doing that is as weird as, say, attempting to describe Armenian or Basque nationalism outside the context of the history of Armenians or the Basque. “Zionism’s project,” on the other hand, ICSZ informs us, “extends beyond the borders of Palestine,” and so the study of Zionism needs to be spread “across multiple fields ,” to include “Asian American studies, Asian studies, critical race and ethnic studies, feminist studies, queer studies, Palestinian studies and beyond.” This idea could be dismissed as silly if it weren’t so malicious. The point being that Jews are the universal oppressor, and so the Jewish story can be maimed as the haters please. There is a reason, of course, why ICSZ’s founders are so keen on amputating Zionism from its Jewish context, and that is to avoid being labeled as antisemitic. If you can convince the gullible that Zionism is not related to Jews, then you can demonize the former with impunity: Accusations of antisemitism will not apply. Here, too, the founders walk firmly in the footsteps of their Soviet predecessors. Soviet propagandists cannibalized the history of Zionism to underscore its supposedly inherent evil nature, ripping Theodor Herzl and Max Nordau quotes out of context and presenting Zionists as the Jewish people’s greatest enemy. For ICSZ to cut Zionism off conceptually from its roots in the Jewish faith, Jewish history, and Jewish collective popular memory is an obnoxious attempt to undermine the integrity of the Jewish story, and to propagandize its followers. What draws the antizionist left’s special ire is the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism. Alone among several existing definitions, the IHRA definition, which has now been adopted by over 1,100 global entities and 43 countries and numerous other political entities, provides tools to distinguish between legitimate criticism of Israel and demonization. ICSZ’s upcoming conference intends to help out those battling the definition, which, it claims, “both amplifies and hides repressive power and state violence.” The conference also plans to address IHRA’s “enabling conditions,” which range from the “neo-liberal university” to “the ways that the idea of antisemitism has been constructed,” to “student organizing,” to “the DEI as a cooptable and abusable format for leveraging demands for rights and attention” (presumably, by Jews and Zionists). ICSZ intends to center the work of “activists and communities whose lives are shaped by Zionist institutions’ political work” through “points of unity” that all academics will be expected to sign onto, in order to continue engaging in academic work. Zionist Jews, obviously, will not be part of the conversation. ICSZ’s “points of unity” are the most obvious proof that ICSZ’s academic mission is a fiction. “Is it even legal to impose loyalty oaths on a college campus?” asked Jarrod Tanny, a Jewish history professor and founder of the Jewish Studies Zionist Network with reference to its upcoming conference. In a letter to UCSC, David Bernstein and Marcy Braverman Goldstein of the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values argued that ideological litmus tests go against university policy and urged it to “immediately withdraw sponsorship from this event.” The “points of unity” betray ICSZ as a political project in search of academic legitimacy. What kind of scholarship a project like this might produce is, once again, apparent from the history of “scientific antizionism” in the Soviet Union. One of its emblematic products is Mahmoud Abbas’ dissertation , which the Palestinian leader defended in 1982 at the Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies—the linchpin of Soviet “Zionology.” The dissertation is shot through with factual errors, decontextualizations, distortions, and outright falsifications of sources. It is a safe assumption that ICSZ’s “scholarly” output will be of similar quality. When it comes to conceptualizing Zionism, ICSZ’s founders think big—very big. In their minds, Zionism is a global, powerful, and malevolent entity. It needs to be studied “transnationally” because of its “direct work for the Israeli state and its ‘other work,’” ICSZ informs us, leaving unexplained the insinuating quotes around “other work.” Not only is Zionism central to such societal ills as “racism, colonialism, ethnic cleansing, and the appropriation of liberatory rhetoric by repressive political forces, among other harms,” but it is impeding numerous crucial “political pursuits” animating the good people of the earth, ranging “from democracy to decolonization.” It doesn’t end here, however. “The study of Zionism,” we learn from the institute’s FAQ page , “extends to Zionist institutions and logics, their role in the production of racial and gendered knowledge, their function in naturalizing and reproducing structures of militarized colonial violence, and the ways that Zionism interplays with, and relationally shapes, bigger spheres including politics, culture, the movement of capital, and ways of thinking about the world.” ICSZ’s vision further incorporates “research on the role of Zionism in the development of U.S. hate crimes policy and homonationalism , the linkages between Zionist and Hindutva politics, the ties between Zionist institutions, the Israeli state, and the evangelical Christian right , the Zionist surveillance technology deployed at the U.S.-Mexico border , the destruction of Indigenous agriculture in Guatemala, the centrality of Zionism in the opposition to and attempted cooptation of ethnic studies in the United States, and the fostering of post-9/11 interventionist human rights politics with regard to North Korea .” As if this were not enough, critical study of Zionism, we’re told, is “deeply and essentially connected to the study of global forces including contests over power, race, colonialism, capital, militarism, and violence.” In a Mondoweiss op-ed, Abdulhadi and Heike Schotten, another ICSZ co-founder, tell us that new and “exciting” work on Zionism is being done in “seemingly unexpected domains” such as “surveillance, education, farming, and critically analyzing how Zionist logics are reproduced and utilized in ideas and arguments about race, policing, land usage and climate change, and neoliberal capitalism.” Cue in cartoons of hook-nosed octopuses and spiders holding the world in their tentacles. It’s unsurprising that contemporary antizionists trade in the tropes of right-wing antisemitic conspiracy theory, replacing the word “Jew” with the word “Zionist.” Soviet Zionology grew out of the right-wing Russian nationalist movement that emerged in the USSR after Stalin’s death and was nurtured on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion . ICSZ founders may hide behind contemporary academic jargon, but they are reproducing eliminationist antisemitic conspiracy theory under the guise of progressive language. The fact that some antizionists may not be entirely aware of the origins of their ideas doesn’t diminish the damage that they are doing. Peeking through the lines of ICSZ’s web pages is a deeply dismal vision of society that is as anti-Jewish as it is anti-democratic. The complaint about DEI councils as a “cooptable and abusable format for leveraging demands for rights and attention” hints at a desire to put an end to all the democratic nonsense of discussion and compromise. The intention to keep “Zionist” Jews—i.e., the majority of American and Israeli Jews—out of discussions about Israel, Zionism, antisemitism and other topics crucial to the well-being of the community—reveals a vision that is dangerous not only to Jews but to any other minority that gets in the way of the hard-left manifesting its utopia. The founders think nothing of trashing a fundamental aspect of the academy—academic freedom—while arrogating to themselves the right to decide who has a right to speak. ICSZ is the latest product of the growing anti-Jewish sentiment on the left, but it most certainly won’t be the last. The confusion that has greeted its establishment is symptomatic of the failures of the Jewish leadership, which has for decades looked exclusively to the right for sources of danger to the community. In the current environment, it is entirely possible that ICSZ will manage to secure a valid academic base and respectable sources of funding and start churning out anti-Jewish propaganda couched in the language of antizionism. Unfortunately, American Jewish institutions are three decades too late coming into this fight, and it is still not clear that they fully grasp the landscape in which they are operating. We need to recognize that teaching about the dangers of Nazi antisemitism does nothing to prepare the next generation of American Jews to defend themselves against antizionist antisemitism. Along with German Nazism, American Jews need to be learning about Soviet communism and the disasters that the left visited on the Jews in the 20th century. Young American Jews in particular need to be inoculated against the siren song of woke antizionists seeking to usurp their Jewish identity and draw them into fighting their own people, before it is once again too late. Previous Next

July 24, 2024 Wikipedia’s Jewish Problem Izabella Tabarovsky The site seems to be intentionally trafficking in disinformation related to Jews, Israel, and Zionism Originally Posted In: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/wikipedia-jewish-problem < Back In June, a group of Wikipedia editors and administrators rated the Anti-Defamation League as “generally unreliable” on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and “roughly reliable” on antisemitism “when Israel and Zionism are not concerned.” They also evaluated the ADL’s database of hate symbols, deeming it as “reliable for the existence of a symbol and for straightforward facts about it, but not reliable for more complex details, such as symbols’ history.” The anonymous editors, with unknown backgrounds or academic credentials, accused the ADL of “conflating” anti-Zionism with antisemitism and relying on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, which, they claimed, brands all criticism of Israel as antisemitic and stifles pro-Palestinian speech. They also accused the ADL of “smearing” Students for Justice in Palestine by calling on universities to investigate whether the group provided material support to Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. All of these critiques are assertions not of fact but of leftist dogma, designed to create the impression that left-wing antisemitism does not—indeed, could not—exist. “Wikipedia’s leadership are clowns,” tweeted Larry Sanger, Wikipedia’s co-founder, in response. Sanger had earlier declared Wikipedia’s neutrality—on all issues—effectively dead . But the general public has yet to catch up. With 6.6 billion visits in June, Wikipedia ranked the fifth-most-visited site worldwide, outranked only by Google, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. For many students and scholars, it serves as a starting point for research—a source of sources to be investigated further. Closer to home, what’s clear is that Wikipedia’s articles are now badly distorted, feeding billions of people—and large-language models that regularly train on the site, such as ChatGPT—with inaccurate research and dangerously skewed narratives about Jews, Jewish history, Israel, Zionism, and contemporary threats to Jewish lives. Wikipedia was launched on Jan. 15, 2001, as a single English-language edition at www.wikipedia.com by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. Sanger announced the launch on the mailing list of Nupedia, Wikipedia’s predecessor, which he and Wales had also created. Whereas Nupedia was a peer-reviewed online encyclopedia with a seven-step approval process, Wikipedia, as stated in its name, is a wiki: a collaboratively edited site managed directly by its users through a web browser. The site is operated by the Wikimedia Foundation, a U.S.-based nonprofit organization, but is a “self-governing project,” whose largely anonymous volunteer editors—referred to internally as Wikipedians—are subject to a set of “policies and guidelines .” Wikipedia’s key principles are codified in “five pillars,” which include writing from a neutral point of view and using reliable sources to document key arguments. Another pillar urges editors to treat each other with respect and seek consensus on contentious topics. Disputes are resolved by volunteer administrators and can be escalated all the way to the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee (aka Wikipedia’s “Supreme Court”). Punishment can include bans varying in severity and length of time. Today, Jewish people and the Jewish story are under an unprecedented global assault, and Wikipedia is being used as a weapon in this war. Wikipedia also prides itself on radical transparency: Every edit can be seen by everyone on a specially designated page. Discussions related to each article are documented on “talk” pages and publicly available. Today there are some 330 language editions of Wikipedia hosting over 60 million articles. In theory, Wikipedia’s model of self-governance sounds unimpeachable: a crowd-sourced, transparently run project democratizing knowledge and empowering every person on the planet to participate in its creation. Yet problems started to emerge from the beginning. Civility quickly went out the door. Conflict-resolution mechanisms proved increasingly byzantine, and mechanisms meant to assure neutrality proved easy to manipulate. Hierarchies formed, as old-timers acquired greater clout and wielded it to prevail in increasingly bitter edit wars. Newcomers found it difficult to break through old-timers’ “fortress mentality.” “Wikipedia is amazing, but it’s become a rancorous, sexist, elitist, stupidly bureaucratic mess,” observed one writer in 2014. Structural problems soon translated into content related ones, including on Jewish topics. In 2004, a spokesperson for the Polish branch of Wikimedia Foundation created an article in English describing an extermination camp in Warsaw, where the Nazis gassed 212,000 Poles. The story—a fiction—remained on the site for 15 years before the Israeli newspaper Haaretz revealed the problem in 2019. By then, the article had been translated into multiple languages, and its claims incorporated into multiple other Wikipedia articles. An estimated half a million people got exposed to the lie. Last year two historians published a bombshell paper demonstrating how a group of ideologically driven editors spent years systematically distorting Polish Jewish history across multiple Wikipedia articles to align it with far-right Polish nationalist preferences. Working in concert, the group falsified evidence, promoted marginal self-published sources, created fake references, and advanced antisemitic stereotypes. It whitewashed “the role of Polish society in the Holocaust,” “minimize[d] Polish antisemitism, exaggerate[d] the Poles’ role in saving Jews,” blamed Jews for the Holocaust, and generally steered “Wikipedia’s narrative on Holocaust history away from sound, evidence-driven research, toward a skewed version of events,” wrote the authors, Jan Grabowski and Shira Klein. Wikipedia’s mechanisms proved entirely inadequate in the face of this motivated, organized assault. Working “as a monolith,” the group manipulated the procedures, coordinated edits, and rallied to each other’s support when challenged. Users seeking to correct the group’s edits found themselves outnumbered and outmaneuvered. “Challenging the distortionists takes a monumental amount of time, more than most people can invest in a voluntary hobby,” wrote Grabowski and Klein. The distortionists exhausted their opponents with endless debates, aggressive “battleground behavior,” rudeness, and “mass deletions,” leading some to simply give up on editing the topic. Volunteer administrators called upon to resolve conflicts were unqualified to adjudicate content issues and unwilling to invest the hours required to sort through sources. Another case involved Croatian-language Wikipedia. There, a right-wing group of “real-life friends, ideological sympathizers and political allies” captured the entire site and proceeded, among other things, to whitewash the history of World War II-era Croatian fascist organization Ustaše, its Nazi puppet Independent State of Croatia(NDH), and the Jasenovac extermination camp where tens of thousands of Serbs, Roma, and Jews were murdered. Interlinked articles created a “web of deception” whose goal was “to influence the reader’s final moral or value judgment” of events, wrote an independent consultant Wikimedia hired in 2021 to evaluate the situation. The distortionists learned how to “dynamically” adjust “their behavior in order to avoid raising too many alarms or triggering reaction by the global community.” They established sock-puppet accounts to undermine voting procedures, and obstructed discussion with the help of “well-known disinformation tactics” such as “relativization of facts, whataboutism, discreditation of other participants and outright bullying.” So complete was the capture that local press began to refer to Croatian Wikipedia as “Nazi Wikipedia” and “NDH-pedia.” The most incomprehensible part about this is that it took Wikimedia Foundation 14 years from the time the first complaints began to surface to do something about it. The report apportioned much of the blame to Wikimedia’s failure to act in a timely and forceful manner. It warned that the entire situation gave a green light to other bad actors to come in and do the same and that “a more resourced and better-organized attempt could be harder to detect and eventually reverse.” Sounding a similar alarm in their paper on the Polish Jewish Wikipedia capture, Grabowski and Klein noted, on the basis of a leaked email, that the Polish government had “picked up” on “Wikipedia’s weakness” and was making plans to hire an adviser to introduce changes to the Hebrew-language Wikipedia. “We need to be super discreet on this score,” wrote a Polish government official and noted that the adviser “will need a larger budget to cover this expense. It can be arranged if the Foreign Office allocates more money.” And that was all before Oct. 7, 2023 These days, Wikipedia ranks its “perennial ” go-to sources—The New York Times , The New Yorker , NPR, MSNBC, and BBC—as “generally reliable” and extends the ranking to the openly partisan far-left outlets like Haaretz , The Intercept, The Nation , and The Guardian . Al Jazeera and the NGO Amnesty International (both known for their anti-Israel bias) are rated as “generally reliable” as well. The far-left Israeli NGO B’Tselem isn’t included on this list, but, as Aaron Bandler notes in Jewish Journal , Wikipedia editors have staunchly defended its reliability and referenced it in articles. On the other hand, conservative sources such as Fox News, The New York Post , Washington Examiner , and Washington Free Beacon are coded various shades of unreliable, with the Beacon getting the “generally unreliable” grade—one notch above “deprecated.” The Palestinian leader’s scholarly abstract sheds light on the crude deformations of Soviet Zionology and how they are reflected in today’s universities This ranking tells us what kind of slant we can expect in Wikipedia’s articles about Israel, Zionism, and anti-Zionist antisemitism. In the wake of Oct. 7, “generally reliable” sources have trafficked in disinformation, as when The New York Times splashed the Al Ahli hospital bombing hoax over its front page, helping spark violent anti-Jewish riots across the world; or when The New Yorker legitimized Holocaust inversion—a long-running staple of anti-Zionist propaganda originating in the 1960s USSR. Conservative outlets, on the other hand, have produced reporting that tells Israel’s side of the story and have looked far more critically at the anti-Israel campus protests. The “generally unreliable” Washington Free Beacon has arguably produced the most extensive reporting on the protests. Wikipedia editors, however, are warned against using the Beacon as a source, which is why of the 353 references accompanying Wikipedia’s article on the pro-Palestinian campus protests, the overwhelming majority is to liberal and far-left sources plus Al Jazeera. One-sided sources are just one among a host of problems in Wikipedia articles related to Oct. 7 and the war that followed. In a World Jewish Congress report released in March, Dr. Shlomit Aharoni Nir documents numerous ways in which relevant Wikipedia entries have become de facto anti-Israel propaganda. From biased framing to omissions of key facts to stressing anti-Israel examples while ignoring the Israeli side of the story, to promoting fringe academic perspectives on Zionism—Wikipedia’s editors and administrators have actively worked to subvert the site’s neutrality policy on this topic. As in other instances, conflicts and bullying behavior predominate, with Israeli editors describing uniquely “hostile and disrespectful” treatment. Israeli users, who are most knowledgeable about the Oct. 7 events, often found themselves locked out of editing key articles, which were open for editing only to users who’d made over 500 edits. Several editors told Aharoni Nir that there were a number of activists who operated anonymously and were “responsible for the anti-Israel tone.” Among some of the most troubling instances Aharoni Nir documented were calls for deletions of crucial articles. These included articles describing individual massacres on Oct. 7, such as those at Netiv HaAsara, Nir Yitzhak, Yakhini, and other kibbutzim and moshavim, as well as articles describing Hamas beheadings. Some of the calls succeeded. So did the call to erase the article about Nazism in Palestinian society (a “documented historical and sociological phenomenon,” notes Aharoni Nir). By contrast, the article normalizing equations between Israel and Nazi Germany—a propagandistic concept that has been weaponized against Jews for decades––remains on the site. Meanwhile, Wikipedia’s Arabic site openly abandoned the principle of neutrality last December when it temporarily went dark in solidarity with the Palestinians, then added the Palestinian flag to its logo and posted a pro-Palestinian statement at the top. Israel’s Wikipedia community protested. Wikimedia Foundation—you guessed it—did nothing. Many, undoubtedly, will note the irony of the ADL being attacked by the Wikipedia woke, given the criticism the organization and its head Jonathan Greenblatt have faced from the Jewish community for their progressive tilt and failure to focus on left-wing antisemitism. But the ADL has long been in social justice warriors’ crosshairs. In 2020, 100 hard-left groups signed an open letter demanding that the left “ drop the ADL ” as an ally. Ten days after Oct. 7, the director of the pernicious Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism attacked the ADL for daring to stand up against anti-Israel hate. And in January, The Nation published a piece whose title, “The Anti-Defamation League: Israel’s Attack Dog in the US,” read like a Pravda headline circa 1970. The Wikipedia editors who won the battle over downgrading the ADL used this piece to back up their arguments, along with articles in the hard-left Guardian and Jewish Currents , further confirming that the action had been driven not by an honest consideration of sources but political bias. In response to a letter by 43 Jewish organizations requesting it review the decision, Wikimedia issued a press release referring to Wikipedia’s supposedly inviolable mechanisms that must be preserved to keep it “neutral and free from institutional bias.” All content decisions are made by “Wikipedia’s volunteer community” in a transparent manner, with clear processes in place, and Wikimedia dares not interfere in the magic of that process. The brush-off, however, reads like an evasion so crude, it borders on deception. It’s true that Wikipedia’s old-timers tend to resent interventions from the foundation, but the foundation isn’t as powerless as it claimed in the release. In fact, Wikimedia’s senior management says something else entirely in its other communications. See, for example, this blog Maryana Iskander, Wikimedia’s CEO, published three weeks after Oct. 7. There she extolled Wikimedia’s crucial role in fighting “mis/disinformation, censorship and other threats,” listing them among the four top things the foundation does “to make sure Wikipedia can get closer to its vision of representing the sum of all knowledge.” Whatever Wikimedia does to combat mis/disinformation and censorship, when it comes to Jewish topics it is nowhere to be found. Meanwhile, there are troubling signs that in the recent battle over the ADL, Wikipedia’s editors used some of the techniques we’ve encountered already—combativeness, manipulation, and taking advantage of administrators’ ignorance—to edge out their opponents and push through their own agendas. One Wikipedian who opposed the new ADL classification quit editing, having become “fed up ” with bias among the administrators. Editors told the Jewish Journal that Wikipedia’s existing system is “overrun by political actors who are running circles” around volunteer administrators. One editor said it would be easy for anti-Israel activists to make a case that everything the ADL does relates to Zionism and ultimately squeeze its content off the site completely. Another suggested that Wikipedia must shift from an all-volunteer oversight system to one based on “paid, vetted experts in each field that also have a strong grasp on the nuances of debate, mediation, and arbitration to ensure that Wikipedia policy and principles are actively enforced.” With Zionism, Israel, and antisemitism at the heart of the global disinformation endeavor, we may already be witnessing a concerted effort to capture these areas of Wikipedia and turn them into anti-Israel propaganda. The people doing this could be domestic zealots or state actors like Iran or China—or all of the above. What’s clear is that Wikipedia’s vaunted decision-making transparency aside, the anonymity of its editors and administrators is a major obstacle to understanding who produces content and for what purpose. Meanwhile, Wikimedia’s Croatia report notes that when it comes to ideological capture, time is of the essence. The longer Wikipedia audiences are “exposed to disinformation and bias while being assured by the Wikipedia community’s decades-long built reputation that they are reading neutral, fact-based information,” the greater and more irreversible the effects. Rewriting a subverted part of the site after 15 years does nothing to change the minds of those who had previously fed off of the propaganda. Today, Jewish people and the Jewish story are under an unprecedented global assault, and Wikipedia is being used as a weapon in this war. Yet there are no signs that Wikimedia—which washes its hands of any decision-making responsibility with regard to Wikipedia’s content yet raises millions off its back—recognizes its role and responsibility at this moment. Would it like to wait 10-15 years, the way it did with the Polish Jewish and Croatian projects, to see how bad things get before it intervenes? Or is it brushing off the Jewish community’s concerns because, like its editors, it, too, conflates left-wing bias with neutrality? Whatever the answer, it’s a terrible look for an organization that seeks to provide free access to “the sum of all human knowledge.” It’s crucial that we understand that the attack on the ADL in this case is actually an attack on any source of unbiased information about Jews or Israel. Zooming out, ideological capture of critical information resources is a threat to American society as a whole. If one of the world’s most influential conduits of knowledge decides it wants to turn itself into the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, that’s its prerogative. The rest of us need to get informed, warn the world about it, and demand accountability. ----------------------- Izabella Tabarovsky is a scholar of Soviet antizionism and contemporary left antisemitism. She is a Senior Fellow with the Z3 Institute for Jewish Priorities and a Research Fellow with the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and ISGAP. Follow her on Twitter @IzaTabaro . Previous Next

December 18, 2021 BVH experiences hate speech, SUHSD responds with resolution Carina Muniz The anti-Semitic post created by students and directed towards IB Environmental Systems and Societies, and AP Environmental Science teacher Jennifer Ekstein is currently under investigation by BVH administrators. In Principal Roman Del Rosario’s statement addressing the hate speech at BVH, he made clear that, with support from SUHSD, BVH would not stand for hate speech. This photo was one of the two attachments in Del Rosario’s statement. Originally Posted In: https://bonitavistacrusader.org/8252/news/bvh-experiences-hate-speech-suhsd-responds-with-resolution/ < Back In light of the recent series of hate acts against Jewish and Black communities at Bonita Vista High (BVH), the Sweetwater Union High School District’s (SUHSD) adoption of Resolution No. 4761 aims to address anti-Semitic and other hate acts at a district-level. On Dec. 14—the day after SUHSD adopted the resolution—BVH Principal Roman Del Rosario officially issued a statement to the BVH community addressing the hateful acts committed on campus. “Bonita Vista High stands with our board of trustees in affirming the rights of Jewish students, staff, and families and will continue to work with the community and other organizations dedicated to addressing anti-Semitism,” Del Rosario’s statement read. “We will continue to investigate all issues related to hateful language, rhetoric and/or actions.” Since the hate-vandalism that took place on Oct. 31, a series of independent hateful acts have ensued in the following months. BVH staff and students alike have become victims of hate speech in and out of campus. As a result of these actions, Del Rosario held a faculty meeting on Dec. 8 addressing the hate speech occuring on campus and allowing teachers to share their own experiences and thoughts regarding these situations. “I thought it was important that I raise the level of consciousness of staff, students and parents. I had these teachers that were impacted share their first hand account of the incidents, and read an article by Dr. [Mica] Pollack from UCSD regarding hate speech in classrooms and our duty to confront it when it happens,” Del Rosario said. “I thought it was very good timing for us to bring more attention to that resolution and to also give out a statement that we do not tolerate any manifestation of hate, and [show] the respect we have towards our Jewish community.” Previous Next

November 23, 2025 Qatar's Got Talent Eve Barlow Essentially Hosier is in the business of identifying who the next big thing will be. He is on the hunt for future anti-Israel, anti-America, anti-West political superstars, and he is urging pro-Israel networks to come together to mitigate these rises. If Qatar produced a reality talent contest for upcoming American insurgent politicians, Hosier would be the one spotting the winners. Originally Posted In: https://evebarlow.substack.com/p/qatars-got-talent?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web < Back The week of Zohran Mamdani’s election, I met a really interesting guy at a Shabbat dinner. Not Jewish. He kept making sure that was understood, but to me he was as comfortable at a Shabbat table as most Jews. Turns out since graduating college, he has worked in and around the State of Israel in public affairs in various capacities. Dillon Hosier has now turned his time to his brainchild ICAN (Israeli-American Civic Action Network. He is CEO. At the dinner, the topical concern of what Mamdani’s election “means” and “what now” took precedence. Hosier indicated that he had identified Mamdani as a very real threat in 2023 because he has been monitoring emerging political dangers at local levels across the United States. Essentially Hosier is in the business of identifying who the next big thing will be. He is on the hunt for future anti-Israel, anti-America, anti-West political superstars, and he is urging pro-Israel networks to come together to mitigate these rises. If Qatar produced a reality talent contest for upcoming American insurgent politicians, Hosier would be the one spotting the winners. He whipped out his iPhone and showed one of the tech tools ICAN has initiated. I was blown away. Here was a live map of America, featuring red and green spots according to the most precarious areas for future Mamdanis. Alarmingly there is an incoming “Mamdani Strip” (Hosier’s term) in New York, full of more and more copycat candidates. Many are members of the DSA: Democratic Socialists of America, which is not officially tied to the Democrats but which works within its electoral system and runs candidates in their primaries. You know the story of AOC, right? Tonight onstage in West Hollywood, Hosier gave a presentation of ICAN’s objectives, before he was joined by three incredible voices I am proud to call friends: John Mirisch (former Mayor of Beverly Hills, now city council member), Loay Alshareef (Saudi-born, UAE-based reformed Muslim, and Abraham Accords activist) and Dr Sheila Nazarian (Persian Jewish activist, Fox news contributor, and plastic surgeon). Mirisch is an Ashkenazi Jew who has always been confounded by antizionism, and has tied his mast to Israel since he was growing up in LA. Nazarian fled Iran with her parents via Pakistan then Vienna, before they received papers to come to America. Alshareef is a would-be posterchild for a new Middle East. He is based in the UAE, was radicalized as a child to hate Jews and Christians but had his own awakening about Islamism. He prays, he fasts, and he believes that there is a way to modernize Islam so that those who practice can not only co-exist in the Western world, but so that the Middle East can evolve out of its past, normalize relations with Israel and cease to demonize America and the West. Alshareef is a really exceptional human. To be in his presence is to feel a sense of calm about the future. All three were together tonight to discuss Mamdani, who promotes radical Islamist ideals, preaches the genocide lie about Gaza, and the Apartheid lie about Israel, and has often been found supporting the screams of “From the river to the sea.” “Mamdani has never been to Israel,” opens Alshareef, who says he would accept an invitation to sit down with New York’s incoming Mayor. Whether he will receive one or not is another question. I don’t believe Mamdani to be a good faith actor. Neither does Alshareef, who has visited Israel more than a handful of times, and says that almost immediately everything that an Arab Muslim has been indoctrinated to hate about Israel is shattered completely by the experience of going there. Dr Nazarian noted that Congressman Richie Torres once said about the DSA that they ask only two foreign policy questions in order to secure funding and support for a prospective candidate. The first is that any candidate must promise to support the BDS movement against Israel. The second is that they must promise to never visit Israel. No wonder AOC doesn’t know where the Jordan river is. And yet, so many play along. The motivation cannot possibly be integrity but opportunism. For money, for political power, for fame and instant success. And yet what is the cause of this unholy marriage between leftists and Islamism? According to Alshareef it’s two-fold. First, the American Left suffer from the same guilt that the Europeans experience, and they believe that to support the radicals is to support the “right cause”. “What they don’t realize,” he says, “is that they are the first sheep to the slaughter.” Second, they are totally ignorant to – and don’t understand –the Middle East. They have handed human rights to extremists and radicals who only seek to misuse the liberal freedom that America is giving them. The idea is to destroy democracy through democracy itself. “Listen to those of us who know,” says Alshareef. “This is so dangerous.” Alshareef, as mentioned, is a reformed Muslim, and makes a distinction that he insists is not a majority position. He doesn’t waste time denying that the majority position in the Muslim world is not yet shared by him, but were Saudi Arabia to join the Abraham Accords it could change everything. Saudi’s leader Mohammad Bin Salman according to Alsharif is earnest and honest, and does want to commit to the peace deal, and yet his hesitation is due to the position of Saudi among the Muslim world, and the pressure on him from other Arab nations to insist upon some recognition for the Palestinians in advance of signing. Saudi is a key piece of the puzzle. If and when they join the Abraham Accords, many other Muslim countries will follow. The issue is that Mamdani and his ilk are also yet to meet Alshareef in his evolved peaceful state. “He is not peaceful,” says Alshareef. “He is dishonest.” He explains that there are two types of Muslims; those who fled their countries to start anew, and those who believe that Muslims like Alshareef should not be tolerated, and that America should be turned into a caliphate, where eventually Muslims will wind up murdering other Muslims. Case in current point: Sudan. According to Alshareef, too many moderate Muslims are silent. “Speak up. Distance yourself from the radicals!” he says. It’s worth watching this 8-minute clip of Alshareef explaining his viewpoint after Dr Nazarian pushed back with her own reality-based fears of Islam, due to her experiences fleeing the Islamic Regime of Iran. Upon coming to America, Dr Nazarian studied at Columbia University, and took classes on Islam, only to read the Quran and discover the verses detailing the Muslim impression of Jews as a sworn enemy who need to be eradicated. Alshareef’s response is so sensible it should be the real radical approach. Essentially, for him it comes down to moving away from a politicized interpretation of the Quran that is completely irrelevant in the modern day. If only Alshareef had run for the New York mayoral position, yet he has more important things to do. Today, President Trump announced that he is going to ban the Muslim Brotherhood, and label it a foreign terrorist organization. A great move. “But the devil is in the details,” says Mirisch. Indeed. How will this be enforced? And the question still looms large about Qatar’s tentacles on US soil, and the already seismic damage of decades and billions of dollars infiltrating not just university education with its anti-American ideology, but high school programs too. Alshareef believes that Qatar could join the future map of the Middle East, but only if it does two things. Separates itself from Muslim Brotherhood, and eradicates Al Jazeera. “Al Jazeera made many of us believe Bin Laden was a hero,” he says. “They were the exclusive outlet for his videos. They made us feel indifferent to 9/11. In Arabic, AlJazeera is the official spokesman for Hamas. In English, it’s the official spokesman for the LGBT community.” Maddening, and the exact distortion that the Islamists are so brilliant at. It’s as though we live in a parallel universe. The useful idiots who know nothing about the Middle East are being led blindfolded by regressive radicalized Arab Mamdanis who will discard of them the instant they no longer serve a purpose, while those of us who have been pushed out of the so-called “liberal” room are sitting alongside the warriors of progress in the Arab world who have more reverence for America, Israel, President Trump, Christianity and Judaism than a questionable proportion of our white majority neighbors. Last week I had the honor of witnessing Omer Shem Tov, released Israeli hostage, speak at Sinai Temple in Beverly Hills. Shem Tov was captured from the Nova festival. He paced the stage for an hour uninterrupted, seamlessly recalling the “light” version of the story of his 505 days in captivity. Shem Tov’s mother Shelly was one of my first interviewees in Israel in the months after October 7. She left an enormous impression on me, and her determination to bring her son back from hell stayed with me. I remember she told me she could not even brush her teeth without the guilt of knowing her son may not be able to do the same. When he was released, I cried. I could barely hold back tears as he walked out to a standing ovation of hundreds last Thursday. He recalled how he was held in a cage underground in pitch black darkness for 50 successive days of those 505. He received one pita or less per day. He found faith in the tunnels. He wraps teffilin every morning now. He talks to G-d every day. He believes in miracles. The way Shem Tov spoke, and the way Alshareef speaks, is light years away from the victim-orientated, power-hungry, truth-avoiding gang of progressive Western elites and wannabes. They have worked overtime to shut them out, but these voices cannot be repressed. They refuse. They defy intimidation. They are brimming with a purpose that cannot be faked. We must uplift them. ICAN too is providing an essential service. Here is Hosier with his presentation . You can see four local California politicians, and on the left hand column is how JPAC (Jewish Public Affairs Committee of California) is scoring future Mamdani’s. It’s marking them according to housing, environment, policing, social policies etc, but crucially it doesn’t pick up where they’ve voted on issues surrounding Israel and the Middle East. ICAN does factor these in, and scores them accurately. If they’re red it means they’re future Mamdani’s. If they’re green, they’re not. Not only does ICAN identify where the problem candidates are, it’s identifying where the wrongly maligned candidates are. This analysis then becomes crucial for killing bills, such as the Ethnic Studies bill in California, because accurate intelligence is available for who to target. We cannot afford more Mamdanis. We cannot afford any more successes for any political candidates in America who would support what happened to Omer Shem Tov in Hamas captivity, or who would refuse to protect the vision for the Middle East that Loay Alshareef so passionately wants to help actualize. To find out more about ICAN, visit their website . Photos by Joseph Pal @palphotography on Instagram. Previous Next

July 9, 2024 StopHateInSchools: Ethnic studies in K-12 Staff Writer Lessons learned and a roadmap for protecting the rights of Jewish students and teachers Originally Posted In: https://www.stophateinschools.org/blog/ethnic-studies-in-california-lessons-learned < Back A big thank you to the PeerK12 team (Nicole Bernstein, Tamar Caspi and Eveie Schwartz) for sharing their research, insight and practical experience confronting the individuals, organizations and ideologies that are either contributing to or actively promoting systemic anti-Jewish hate in K-12 schools. We also want to thank everyone who attended the webinar and contributed great questions to the discussion. PeerK12 is a San Diego-based, grassroots, non-profit that works across public, charter and private schools to champion the rights of Jewish students and teachers. They've been at it for several years and have learned a lot along the way. Their approach, detailed in the video below, provides a pragmatic model for parents and community leaders to follow. VIDEO CLIP ONE The webinar also covered the long history of geopolitical events and cultural shifts from the advent of the Cold War through the end of the 20th century that laid the groundwork for the emergence and, later, the widespread adoption of ethnic studies. Ideological differences like capitalism v. communism and democracy v. totalitarianism have, over time, been intentionally transformed into promoting conflict, for example, between those labeled as oppressors and those identified as oppressed or colonizers v. indigenous. This lens through which events are interpreted and people are sorted, which has become embedded into our educational system, now also uses words like "apartheid" and "genocide" to assert (false) moral authority and pressure Jewish students and teachers to declare for one side or the other with Jews and Israelis identified as on the "bad" side. (For example, this incident from a Bellevue Washington elementary school .) With this backdrop, PeerK12 drilled into the specifics of how ethnic studies entered the education system in California (video below). These slides also include a number of details regarding the emergence of ethnic studies in Washington State. VIDEO CLIP TWO. One of the webinar attendees asked the central question, "given the scale and embedded nature of this content on every level of our education system, what actions should we be taking and what has proven to be most effective?" PeerK12 detailed a number of critical steps including: Thorough and ongoing research. Understand the perspectives, intentions and organizational relationships of the decision makers whether those are elected officials or professional educators (teachers and administrators). Build trust based relationships with principals, superintendents and school board members. Whether you align with their political views or not, there are many well-meaning individuals who are simply less-well educated on this topic or may be navigating difficult waters with their staff and peers. And, because this topic is nuanced and hard, you're going to find yourself across the table from someone who has a different perspective and you need to be open minded enough to learn and understand why they hold their beliefs. Be a reliable resource for these people. Pay attention and speak up. People behave differently when they know they're being watched carefully and when the tone of the dialogue is respectful, positive and solutions oriented. Know and use the school or school district's rules and policies. Follow them with regard to who to contact, how to escalate, etc. Cite specific, documented policies and hold schools accountable to adhering to their own rules. Show up when people do the right thing. Thank people when they take positive actions. Don't only attend school board meetings or send emails to complain. Acknowledge the good work and efforts that educators are doing along the way. Be nimble and able to mobilize quickly when action is needed. This short video offers a high-level roadmap for what you can do in your community and school district: VIDEO CLIP THREE. Please contact us if you are interested in watching a recording of the full webinar or would like to be notified of upcoming webinars. Thank you. Previous Next

November 20, 2025 The Union Behind California’s Ethnic Studies Antisemitism Problem Tammi Rossman-Benjamin California’s AB 715 was a well-intentioned effort to curb antisemitism in K–12 classrooms, especially ethnic studies. But the bill passed only after teachers’ unions, including the California Faculty Association (CFA) - a politically powerful union representing faculty on all 23 California State University campuses - pressed for changes that stripped key safeguards. Originally Posted In: https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/opinion/385098/the-union-behind-californias-ethnic-studies-antisemitism-problem/ < Back California’s AB 715 was a well-intentioned effort to curb antisemitism in K–12 classrooms, especially ethnic studies. But the bill passed only after teachers’ unions, including the California Faculty Association (CFA) — a politically powerful union representing faculty on all 23 California State University campuses — pressed for changes that stripped key safeguards, reducing it to one broad standard: that instruction be “factually accurate…rather than advocacy, personal opinion, bias, or partisanship”. An early sign that AB 715 would face serious obstacles came just days after the governor signed it. That’s when the CFA sent politicians a questionnaire asking whether they had received donations or endorsements from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) or the Jewish Public Affairs Committee of California (JPAC), insinuating these groups “harm working people” and that the union would not support any candidate who had accepted their backing. Framed as a way to “get to the bottom” of whether politicians supported AB 715 — and to punish those who did — the CFA’s questionnaire not only echoed familiar antisemitic tropes about Jewish money and influence, it revealed something even more telling: a strategy for using the union’s political muscle to promote a “liberated” ethnic studies hostile to Israel and its Jewish supporters, and to block any effort to restrain it. That strategy is being driven by three CSU ethnic-studies faculty who sit atop the CFA’s most consequential levers and the state’s ethnic-studies infrastructure. They also lead influential movements that center anti-Zionism and can supply the grassroots mobilization needed to keep “liberated” ethnic studies in California classrooms. A closer look at who they are and how they operate underscores the significant challenges awaiting AB 715. Start with Melina Abdullah, professor of Pan-African Studies at CSU Los Angeles and chair of CFA’s Political Action & Legislative Affairs committee, which sets the union’s legislative agenda and was responsible for circulating the controversial questionnaire. In a September class , Abdullah called AB 715 a “terrible” and “racist” bill and its supporters “antisemites.” She falsely accused JPAC of heavily funding the bill’s “Zionist” authors and buying legislators’ votes in its favor, and she directed students to sign a “veto AB 715” petition. Abdullah is also co-founder of Black Lives Matter and leader of its LA chapter, which mounted an aligned campaign opposing AB 715. Then there is Theresa Montaño, professor of Chicano Studies at CSU Northridge, former CFA executive board member and a leader of CFA’s Teacher Education Caucus, key advocates within the union for an activist-oriented approach to K-12 teaching, particularly in ethnic studies. Her “commitment to union activism” in opposing AB 715 was recently commended by the CFA. Montaño co-founded the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium after the State Board of Education rejected the model curriculum she helped draft, which was considered antisemitic by state legislators and the governor. Her group has produced curricular materials that smear Israel, vilify Jewish organizations and mobilize K–12 educators to fight “Zionist backlash.” It also spawned a national movement – the Coalition for Liberated Ethnic Studies – that launched its own campaign in opposition to AB 715. Finally, consider Rabab Abdulhadi, founding director of the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas program at San Francisco State’s College of Ethnic Studies. She heads the union’s Palestine, Arab and Muslim Caucus, which drives the union’s anti-Israel positions, including its adoption of an academic boycott of Israel, and actively opposed AB 715. Abdulhadi’s university program runs a steady stream of classes and events that promote anti-Israel activism and platform individuals tied to U.S.-designated terrorist organizations. Abdulhadi is also a co-founder of the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, a branch of the international BDS movement that aims to delegitimize Israel and its supporters on American campuses. It is the intersection of union influence, university authority, and grassroots political organizing that has made CFA a driving force behind every major piece of ethnic studies legislation in the state, including the development of a model curriculum, the establishment of high school and college graduation requirements, and setting teacher certification standards. Though presented as critical for students, these legislative campaigns have been undeniably self-serving — preserving and expanding ethnic-studies departments and jobs by building a guaranteed K-12 pipeline for coursework, teacher training, and professional development. In the face of CFA’s entrenched campaign to institutionalize “liberated” ethnic studies and resist all efforts to curb the antisemitism it engenders, the real issue isn’t the strength of AB 715’s safeguards; it’s the state-mandated high school graduation requirement, AB 101, that made such safeguards necessary in the first place. That law was enacted in 2021 without any state standards or clear definition of the subject, and without any reliable evidence of academic benefit. Most legislators couldn’t say what the course was or why it should be required. Passing a costly, polarizing mandate under those conditions wasn’t just irresponsible. It handed control to the same union activists that now train teachers, develop curricula, and shape how ethnic studies is taught in K-12 classrooms. California still has choices. Districts can offer ethnic-studies electives that families select and communities evaluate on their merits. What the state cannot do is maintain a mandate with no standards or clear definition and entrust its implementation to a union–department–movement alliance committed to a “liberated” ethnic studies. AB 101 is currently unfunded and inoperative. It should remain that way — and be repealed as soon as possible. Rossman-Benjamin is the executive director of AMCHA Initiative, a non-profit organization that combats antisemitism on college campuses across North America. She was also faculty at the University of California for nearly two decades. Previous Next

December 8, 2025 CDE Files Lawsuit Against OUSD (Oakland Unified School District) Zara Quiter Department of Education ruled Oct. 20, 2025 that OUSD had created a discriminatory environment for Jewish students and staff. Originally Posted In: https://tphnews.com/23152/news/cde-files-lawsuit-against-ousd/ < Back Over the last two years, Piedmont Unified School District has seen an influx of Jewish students transferring from Oakland Unified School District citing anti-semitism, with over 30 families transferring to PUSD after the first semester of the 2023-24 school year. The California Department of Education ruled Oct. 20, 2025 that OUSD had created a discriminatory environment for Jewish students and staff. A Bay Area attorney Marleen Sacks submitted the complaint on May 6, 2024, according to the CDE’s decision. Sacks is also suing OUSD for anti-semitism. The complaint to the CDE focuses on district material for Arab-American History Month which had maps that did not include Israel. The lawsuit, filed by the Oakland Jewish Alliance (OJA) and Sacks, focuses on OUSD not fully investigating anti-semitic incidents in the 60 days after they were reported, as mandated by California law. “[Sacks] is a lawyer who’s been stepping up to kind of aggregate all of the different complaints and put it into one larger document. It shows the extent of what’s happening with this discrimination,” said an anonymous OUSD employee and mother of two OUSD students. OJA is an organization founded after Oct. 7, 2023, a time when there was an increase in Jewish hate in Oakland, and around the country, according to OJA member JT Mates-Muchin, who works on issues of anti-semitism within schools. “There were two main incidents that are large factors in the lawsuit,” Mates-Muchin said. “One was that they were flying a Palestinian flag at Fremont High School and another one was in Nov. or Dec. of 2023, when the union called a teach-in, which is essentially taking class time to divert the lesson to teach about Palestine, in a way that is completely one-sided and did not consider Israel at all.” OJA originally started at the Beth-Jacob Congregation in Oakland, but has grown to include members from various local synagogues and members of the Jewish community to advocate for Israel’s right to exist and to fight against anti-semitism. “[The flag and the teach-in] are the big pieces of the lawsuit. The school district should have been investigating and finding out who did this and why they did this, and then doing things to make sure that that kind of thing does not continue to happen in the school,” Mates-Muchin said. Some families felt that these incidents were not being treated seriously by the district, and submitted inter-district transfer (IDT) forms to be released from OUSD, including PHS freshman Naomi Levy’s family. “I left Edna Brewer at the end of my seventh grade year because the school district had been making a lot of claims and putting out a lot of things that were pretty anti-semitic,” Levy said. “Say one of the teachers at your school is somebody who has their own biases around Jewish people or is anti-semitic, agrees with the things that the district is saying, and teaches that in their lesson. It can be scary.” Levy left at the end of the 2023-2024 school year. Approximately 30 families left OUSD earlier, in Jan. 2024, because of anti-semitism in the district, according to Mates-Muchin. Families are still considering leaving OUSD because of anti-semitism. “I think [people leaving OUSD] has to do with teachers wearing keffiyehs to showcase their support for the Palestinians, and taking it so far that it becomes anti-Israel and anti-Jewish. There is a way to be pro-Palestinian people and pro-Israeli people and pro peace, instead of pro the destruction of Israel,” said PMS math teacher and OJA member Karen Bloom. “The destruction of Israel, which is the only homeland for the Jewish people, means the destruction of the Jewish people.” PHS alumnus Dahlia Saffouri said that wearing keffiyehs had become a symbol of solidarity for Palestine, which is where her grandfather immigrated from. “I think there needs to be a distinction: someone being pro-Palestine does not mean they’re being antisemitic or anti-Israel,” Saffouri said. “I think that being Palestinian does not make you antisemitic.” Bloom said that a significant number of students are experiencing anti-semitism in ethnic studies courses in OUSD schools. “Students are experiencing anti-zionism in Liberated Ethnic Studies specifically, where they’re talking about a bunch of different libels or false statements about Israel, and turning it into a worldview,” Bloom said. “That anti-zionism turns into anti-semitism because it delegitimizes Israel and it delegitimizes every Jew who is connected to Israel.” PHS does not use the Liberated Ethnic Studies curriculum, or Constructive Ethnic Studies, which is another curriculum that Bloom said does not follow an anti-semitic and anti-zionist narrative. “I left Montera because of an [English] teacher who put up anti-semitic posters,” said freshman Aodhan Brubaker, who transferred after seventh grade into PUSD schools. “It took forever for the school to actually do anything about it, and I had to be in the office during my English period. I didn’t feel welcomed.” The teacher Brubaker mentioned was no longer working at Montera Middle School as of Dec. 6, 2023. The posters put up by that teacher was the type of action that the OEA would have protected, according to their Nov. 6, 2023 resolution, which said that OEA leadership will support teachers that are “reprimanded for teaching about Palestinian liberation in their classrooms.” It also resolved to publicize educational materials for teachers, like the resource Teach Palestine. “Major incidents such as the “teach in” and hard-copy materials that were shared with teachers, were done by the Oakland Education Association without authorization by the District, and in fact, they were expressly disallowed by the District,” OUSD Director of Communications John Sasaki said. According to its website, the mission of Teach Palestine is to support educators bringing in curriculum about Palestine into the classroom. The OEA (teacher’s union) continues to promote an anti-Israel narrative, which trickles down to the classroom. Teachers and administrators are resistant to really unpack their role in cultivating an environment that’s leading to Jewish families feeling unwelcome and unsafe,” said Pamela Schwartz, a mother of two OUSD students. The anonymous employee said both she and her children feel unsafe in OUSD. “I think there’s been a lot of systemic anti-semitism in OUSD. It’s been blatantly obvious since Hamas’s attack on Israel how a lot of teachers feel about Israel, and then how that translates to how they feel about Jewish students,” the anonymous employee said. “I felt like it was so unfair to have to go to work somewhere where your identity was put on trial every single day.” Both Levy and Schwartz said that they were concerned about OUSD teachers that were a part of OEA promoting their own bias. “I think a lot of people in the teachers union just had their own biases against people,” Levy said. “At the time, and even now, I feel like it was trending to kind of say that you supported Free Palestine, but nobody knows what that means. A lot of people that were uneducated think that means Jewish people are bad because they think Israel’s bad, even though there’s no correlation.” Both Levy and Brubaker said that their transfer to PUSD was positive. “We’re really happy that we’re considered a district that our Jewish families feel safe to bring their students to, and we want to continue to hold that,” said PUSD Director of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging Jean Takazawa. “The families and the students [that have transferred] that I talk to have been having positive experiences. Saffouri said that supporting Palestine and not the Israeli government does not have to be anti-semitic. “We need to remember that Hamas and the Israeli government are separate from the people, and the people are not in charge of what the governments do,” Saffouri said. “There are definitely people that support those political organizations, but that is not the whole of people who are Jewish, or people who are Arab or Palestinian.” According to Mates-Muchin, anti-semitism in OUSD has often gone unnoticed by people who are not connected with Israel or Palestine. “For the non Jewish people and people who don’t understand or don’t have a relationship to either Israel or Palestine, I feel like they can go through without being affected [by anti-semitism] at all,” Mates-Muchin said. Despite the CDE complaint and lawsuit, parents of students in OUSD are not optimistic about change happening in OUSD. “I have been deeply questioning whether OUSD is a place where we belong and the rise of antisemitism is just one part of it,” Schwartz said. In a statement shared by Sasaki, OUSD has said it will begin training in Dec. to respond to anti-semitism. Previous Next

February 26, 2026 ‘Jewish Students Are Segregated’: Parents Sue California State Education System in First-of-Its-Kind Complaint Over ‘Anti-Semitic Propaganda’ and Harassment Adam Kredo One parent alleged that a ninth-grade teacher organized a walkout that featured chants of ‘f— the Jews,’ while others said schools punished their children for reporting anti-Semitism Originally Posted In: https://freebeacon.com/california/jewish-students-are-segregated-parents-sue-california-state-education-system-in-first-of-its-kind-complaint-over-anti-semitic-propaganda-and-harassment/ < Back A group of Jewish parents sued the California state education system on Thursday, alleging that the state’s public schools have become antisemitic cesspools in which "Jewish students are segregated and pulled out of classes so that teachers can spew anti-Israel and antisemitic propaganda without pushback," according to a copy of the first-of-its-kind lawsuit shared with the Washington Free Beacon . The California State Board of Education, the California Department of Education, and state superintendent Tony Thurmond fostered a hostile environment throughout all of California, ignoring numerous reports from parents whose children had been targeted solely for being Jewish, according to the complaint. In one case, a teacher punished a 12-year-old student "because he was a Jew who dared to wear Jewish and Israeli symbols." In another, a ninth-grade art teacher organized a walkout "in support of Palestine" that featured chants of "f— the Jews." When one parent spoke up about the issue during a school board meeting, faculty members mocked her and called her a "Zionist Nazi bitch." State officials responsible for protecting students from discrimination allowed "California’s schools to indoctrinate children, from the earliest ages, to believe that Jewish Americans and Israelis - including Jewish and Israeli classmates - are racists, white supremacists, and oppressors who should be shunned," the lawsuit states. The case documents numerous anti-Semitic incidents across the state, according to the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, which is handling the lawsuit alongside the pro-Israel advocacy group StandWithUs. It marks the first time legal advocates have sued an entire statewide system over pervasive anti-Semitic harassment and could set a precedent for those in other states to follow suit. Antisemitism in California schools, though, has been particularly prevalent since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack against Israel. The San Francisco teachers’ union, for instance, endorsed a curriculum that claimed many allegations of antisemitism are "fabricated" and used to silence pro-Palestinian activists. The public school system in Berkeley received a federal complaint in 2024 over its alleged failure to stem an escalating series of anti-Semitic incidents that culminated in hallway chants of "kill the Jews." Even before Oct. 7, the state’s proposed ethnic studies curriculum included a lesson that described Jews as having "experienced conditional whiteness and privilege." The California State Legislature passed a bill in late 2025 acknowledging "well documented" cases that "Jewish and Israeli American pupils across California are facing a widespread surge in antisemitic discrimination, harassment, and bullying." Gov. Gavin Newsom (D.), though, was silent on a coordinated bomb plot that a radical anti-Israel group had planned before federal law enforcement foiled the operation, and is facing a lawsuit from a former California National Guard commander who says Newsom "facilitated" an antisemitic campaign that resulted in the former commander’s wrongful termination. The Brandeis lawsuit implicates at least one individual vying to replace Newsom in this year’s gubernatorial election: Thurmond, the state superintendent, declared his candidacy back in September 2023, though polling averages have him with 2 percent of the primary vote. The Jewish families who collectively filed "hundreds of formal" complaints with their respective schools and the California Department of Education maintain that state school administrators were aware of antisemitic harassment but either recommended segregating Jewish students from the rest of the class or swept the reports under the rug. The alleged behavior violates California’s constitution, which provides protection for minority groups, as well as federal and state civil rights laws, according to the lawsuit. Plaintiff Melissa Alexander, for instance, said a teacher repeatedly punished her 12-year-old son solely because he wore clothing that could identify him as Jewish and a Star of David necklace. The teacher, whose name is not included in the filing, "openly proclaimed that Zionists are the enemy" and "had a public social media account filled with virulently antisemitic and anti-Israel content." When Alexander presented this evidence to school administrators and reported that the teacher had mistreated her child, the officials "actively chose to ignore it." Instead, the school put the student "into new classes in the middle of the school year." A similar incident occurred in the weeks after Oct. 7 at Berkeley High School, where plaintiff Ilana Pearlman’s ninth-grade son endured anti-Israel diatribes from an art teacher who "boasted to the class about his latest artwork: an image of barbed wire fences in the shape of a Star of David with a giant fist punching through it," according to the complaint. The same instructor allegedly used his classroom to promote a walkout "‘in support of Palestine,’ spending time and resources to advertise the demonstration." The event that followed "was filled with chants that included, ‘Fuck the Jews.’" When Pearlman reported this behavior to school administrators, those officials allegedly pulled her son from the class and sent him to learn separately in the school’s library and student health center. "The school’s decision to punish the targets of antisemitism rather than the perpetrators made a lasting impression on" Pearlman’s son, who now hides his Jewish identity in fear, the filing states. At Daniel Pearl Magnet High School in Los Angeles - named after a Jewish journalist slaughtered by Islamists in 2002 - a teacher repeatedly subjected a student to alleged pro-Hamas activism inside the classroom. Plaintiffs Dawn and Michael Rosenthal said that their son’s honors chemistry teacher littered the classroom with anti-Israel propaganda. The Rosenthals reported the conduct to Los Angeles Unified School District, which responded with a statement that "the teacher was refusing to remove" anti-Israel posters, according to the complaint. By Oct. 7, 2025 - the two-year anniversary of the Hamas attacks - the chemistry teacher allegedly wrote on the blackboard, "‘Oy vey, it’s free’ with an arrow pointing to ‘FREE PALESTINE.’" As in other cases, the school pulled Rosenthal’s son from the class and ordered him to take a "remote online chemistry course," as well as "additional academic burdens to accommodate his chemistry teacher’s antisemitism." The teacher in question was only removed from the classroom after stapling a student’s arm in an unrelated incident that carried felony charges. The lawsuit also included examples of anti-Israel teaching materials used in California classrooms. A curriculum for kindergarten through third grade, for instance, includes links to a read-aloud book called "P Is for Palestine." It states that "I is for Intifada ," defining it merely as "rising up for what is right, if you are a kid or a grownup ." Teachers in Oakland, meanwhile, used an unauthorized December 2023 "teach-in" to have students draw "The Zionist leaders of Israel receiv[ing] money and support to conduct [a] two-tiered (unfair) system where Palestinians are mistreated and attacked." Neither the California Department of Education nor the California State Board of Education responded to requests for comment. Previous Next

November 18, 2021 San Dieguito board passes resolutions denouncing antisemitism, discrimination Karen Billings On Nov. 18, the San Dieguito Union High School District passed a resolution addressing antisemitism and affirming the value of Jewish students, faculty, staff, and families. Originally Posted In: http://sandiegouniontribune.com/2021/11/23/san-dieguito-board-passes-resolutions-denouncing-antisemitism-discrimination-4/ < Back On Nov. 18, the San Dieguito Union High School District passed a resolution addressing antisemitism and affirming the value of Jewish students, faculty, staff, and families. The resolution denounced the rise in antisemitic rhetoric and hate-motivated crimes and incidents that denigrate members of the Jewish community served by San Dieguito. A second resolution affirmed the protection of students against discrimination, harassment, intimidation and bullying, aiming to make changes in district procedures that could help identify and address acts of discrimination. Both resolutions were brought forward by Trustee Michael Allman. “Many parents and students in our community feel that we are failing to adequately provide a safe and nurturing environment free from discrimination, harassment, intimidation and bullying,” Allman said. “We owe it to our students and our families to minimize discrimination in all its forms.” President Mo Muir said she wanted to send a clear message that bullying and harassment of any kind is unacceptable and the board as a whole supported that schools should be an environment where all students feel welcomed and loved. The resolution on antisemitism was in response to a letter to the board from 250 students from San Dieguito’s Jewish community, pleading for a resolution against the rise in antisemitism: “We deserve to feel safe on campus,” the student wrote. “We’ve had enough of the swastikas we’ve seen tagged everywhere, enough of the hateful memes and enough of the ugly side comments and texts. We should not be afraid to wear a Jewish star necklace or post about being Jewish on social for fear of being bullied,” read the letter. “After being blindsided by standardized testing during Rosh Hashanah in September, we were reminded how little representation we have.” During public comment, parents said Jewish families are suffering due to a rise in hatred directed at their faith, identity or historical roots. Two parents said they removed children from district or Encinitas schools due to antisemitic acts. There have been reports of students being beaten up for being Jewish at Carmel Valley Middle School and San Dieguito Academy has been vandalized with anti-semitic imagery—just last week a racial slur was graffitied on the campus. (At the meeting, Superintendent Cheryl James Ward said they were able to review camera footage from campus and determined that the offenders were not district students.) Miri Ketayi, an Israeli-American parent, said her Jewish son felt uncomfortable at school during the last conflict between Israel and Hamas in May. The students’ letter referenced how teachers allowed anti-Israel and anti-Zionism rhetoric in the classroom and said they were silenced when they spoke up about it. “We are in pain because of the antisemitism in the community,” said parent Rakefet Benderly, who said her daughter does not wear her Jewish jewelry at school because she is afraid of verbal attacks and said that Holocaust jokes and hatred of Israel is showing up in her classroom. “I can’t believe this is happening again in our Jewish history and it needs to stop.” In addition to testing during Rosh Hashanah, a board meeting was also scheduled this year on Yom Kippur but later canceled—Muir said she wants to ensure those scheduling errors never happen again. The resolution condemning antisemitism passed 4-0 with Trustee Katrina Young abstaining. With her abstention, Young said it was a very nuanced and complex matter. She said she loved the premise of the resolution but did not feel that she had the adequate information and wanted to do it right, to approve a resolution that was “worthy of these kids and their request.” Newly-sworn in Trustee Julie Bronstein and Vice President Melisse Mossy understood Young’s concerns and suggested the inclusion of the words “anti-Zionism and anti-Israel bias.” Ward suggested the addition of language used in San Diego Unified’s recently passed resolution, which states that “anti-Zionism and anti-Israel bias can descend into antisemitism when they promote demonization and discriminatory double standards.” Allman agreed to the edit but Young still abstained, as she said she needed more information and wanted more student and community voices to be considered for the language. Muir and Allman had strong feelings that the resolution be passed that day. “The students have said ‘we want you to hear us’ and I heard them,” Muir said. “This is important to them.” During the Nov. 18 special meeting, the board also passed the resolution affirming the protection of students against discrimination, harassment, intimidation and bullying. It denounces discrimination, sexism, racism, xenophobia, antisemitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia and ableism that not only generate heated rhetoric, but can also result in vandalism, physical assaults and emotional trauma. The resolution has some teeth as it gives the superintendent 90 days to bring back to the board for consideration a new centralized position that will be tasked with carrying out the resolution’s intent. The new district-level position will be responsible for investigating and addressing allegations of discrimination and harassment. Bronstein questioned the original language of the resolution which listed the title of the new position as an “Anti-Discrimination Diversity Equity and Inclusion Officer”. She had hoped the position with that title would be less about investigations and more about bringing people together. She also requested that school principals be consulted on any new position like this. Ward suggested the alternative title of an ombudsman, an independent official that students could go to without fear of retaliation. Ward shared that she went to an ombudsman in college when a professor told her that Black students didn’t deserve better than a C. Ward said this position could be an existing staff member and not necessarily a new hire and part of the ongoing organizational review of the administrative positions in the district office approved last month. Young said she appreciated the focused intention on creating a safe and secure environment for students but wanted the resolution to include systemic inequity. Allman refused to add the word equity as he said it was not the purpose of the resolution. “Let’s call for the vote and vote no,” he said when Young continued to ask for equity to be added. Allman became frustrated that when Muir calls for a vote, he said Young reopens further debate. Bronstein said she didn’t see it as debate but Young explaining her point of view with her vote. “I would like this to be a little more civil,” Young said. “I feel like I got pushed into a corner and I don’t like how I had to vote last time…My heart really breaks with the last vote and it’s breaking with this one.” Young ended up voting in favor of the “imperfect” resolution because she wanted to show that she does care about this topic but said often when she offers an idea or suggestion, the discussion is cut off or others on the board take a hard line and do not offer to compromise. Muir said no one is pressuring her and told Young to just vote the way she wants to. Muir said she heard what Young had to say but she was making the same argument without any progress: “It’s nothing against you, I have to push the meeting forward,” Muir said as the special meeting had already gone an hour over its allotted time. After the two-hour special meeting ended, the board met for another six hours for its regular meeting. Student board representatives took notice of the exchange, mentioning it during the student reports at the regular meeting that followed. “We are very disappointed in the way the board members conducted themselves,” said Olivia Pacheco, the La Costa Canyon representative. “The way the board acted would not be allowed on our campuses.” During her board report, Muir responded to Olivia’s comments on the board’s discussion. “Everybody on this board is passionate about what goes on with our children…we want all kids to succeed,” Muir said. “Sometimes that comes across as not what we’d like but everyone has what’s best for children at heart.” After a summer of activism following the death of George Floyd, groups of SDUHSD students have been protesting since August 2020 demanding that the school board address racial inequities and diversity. Students made it onto a board agenda in January 2021 to talk about their efforts with Diversify our Narrative— encouraging the district to incorporate more texts by BIPOC authors in English and literature courses and to have more classroom discussions on identity bias and race. A board policy on equity was approved in September 2020, including strategies to promote equity in district programs such as adopting curriculum and instructional materials that accurately reflect the diversity among student groups, building a positive school climate, promoting the employment and retention of a diverse staff and ongoing professional learning with the San Diego County Office of Education. Superintendent Ward thanked students for speaking out. Since coming on board last month she has connected with multiple student groups across the district. “We hear all of you. I want you to know that we do hear you,” Ward said, adding they are committed to the DEI work to ensure all “kiddos” feel loved and are able to put their best foot forward at school. “It’s an all-hands on deck effort that we need to have. This is a work in progress, we will continue to grow. Our goal is to continue to get better and better at serving our community.” Previous Next

November 4, 2023 Union-Tribune Community Advisory Board member resigns due to repost on personal Facebook Staff Writer Members volunteer their time and talents, and agree to adhere to guidelines, including a prohibition on hate speech or targeting of other people or communities Originally Posted In: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2023/11/04/union-tribune-community-advisory-board-member-resigns-due-to-repost-on-personal-facebook/ < Back Last weekend, The San Diego Union-Tribune learned that Lallia Allali, one of the emeritus members of our Community Advisory Board and a contributor to our Community Voices Project, had reposted a graphic and deplorable antisemitic image on her personal Facebook page. Several people shared it on X, formerly Twitter, tagging national organizations and calling for her removal from various posts, including those with the Union-Tribune. Once we had the opportunity to confirm that Allali had reposted it, we accepted her resignation and removed her from the list of board members and contributors on our website. We received several related letters and emails from individuals and community leaders, to which we responded. Our Community Advisory Board, created in 2017, is comprised of people from all walks of life with the purpose of creating connections and offering insight to a range of ideas and experiences to help the U-T better serve the region. Similarly, the Community Voices Project, created in 2020, is made up of a mix of voices, including various genders, religions, political affiliations, ages and races, from neighborhoods throughout the county, with the goal of offering thoughtful, thought-provoking and civil discussion. Members volunteer their time and talents, and agree to adhere to guidelines, including a prohibition on hate speech or targeting of other people or communities. Those who violate those standards, as was the case with our emeritus board member, are disqualified from serving. Among the criteria for participation on the advisory board is being committed to advancing civil discourse on critical issues. While we seek out people who will amplify the perspectives in their own communities, the overarching purpose is to bring people together “to tap into the experiences, knowledge and perspectives of our diverse community in order to serve and improve the greater San Diego region.” Our goal through these projects is to promote civility, build understanding and contribute to the betterment of our community. We will continue to pursue this goal. Previous Next

October 31, 2024 The Kindergarten Intifada Abigail Shrier There is a well-coordinated, national effort between teachers, activist organizations, and administrators to indoctrinate American children against Israel. A Free Press investigation. Originally Posted In: https://www.thefp.com/p/abigail-shrier-the-kinderfada-revolution < Back In August, the second largest teachers union chapter in the country—there are more than 35,000 members of United Teachers Los Angeles —met at the Bonaventure Hotel in L.A. to discuss, among other things, how to turn their K-12 students against Israel. In front of a PowerPoint that read, “How to be a teacher & an organizer. . . and NOT get fired,” history teacher Ron Gochez elaborated on stealth methods for indoctrinating students. But how to transport busloads of kids to an anti-Israel rally, during the school day, without arousing suspicion? “A lot of us that have been to those [protest] actions have brought our students. Now I don’t take the students in my personal car,” Gochez told the crowd. Then, referring to the Los Angeles Unified School District, he explained: “I have members of our organization who are not LAUSD employees. They take those students and I just happen to be at the same place and the same time with them.” Gochez was just getting warmed up. “It’s like tomorrow I go to church and some of my students are at the church. ‘Oh, wow! Hey, how you doing?’ We just happen to be at the same place at the same time, and look! We just happen to be at a pro-Palestine action, same place, same time.” The crowd burst into approving laughter. Seated at a keffiyeh-draped table, Gochez said, “Some of the things that we can do as teachers is to organize. We just have to be really intelligent on how we do that. We have to know that we’re under the microscope. We have to know that Zionists and others are going to try to catch us in any way that they can to get us into trouble.” He continued: “If you organize students, it’s at your own risk, but I think it’s something that’s necessary we have to do.” He told the audience of educators that he once caught a “Zionist teacher” looking through his files. Gochez warned the crowd to be wary of “admin trying to be all chummy with you. You got to be very careful with that, even sometimes our own students.” John Adams Middle School teacher and panelist William Shattuc agreed, a keffiyeh around his neck. “We know that good history education is political education. And when we are coming up against political movements, like the movement for Zionism, that we disagree with, that we’re in conflict with—they [Zionists] have their own form of political education and they employ their own tools of censorship.” What are the “tools of censorship” employed by Zionists? Apparently, they include accusing teachers who rail against Israel in the classroom of antisemitism. "They try to say antisemitism, which is really ridiculous, right ?” said Guadalupe Carrasco Cardona, ethnic studies teacher at Edward R. Roybal Learning Center in Los Angeles. Cardona recently received a National Education Association Foundation Award for excellence in teaching . “What they do is they conflate. Part of that is by putting the star on their flag ,” Cardona said, referring to the Jewish Star of David. “Religion has nothing to do with it.” But, she insists, that the course she teaches, and whose curriculum she helped develop—ethnic studies—is fundamentally incompatible with supporting Israel. “Are you pro-Israel—are you for genocide?’ And if anybody were to say, ‘Okay, sure,’ that’s really not ethnic studies.” (Gochez, Shattuc, and Cardona did not return requests for comment.) It’s tempting to dismiss this as one more bull session among radical teachers leading a far-left public-sector union. If only. Four years ago, I was among the first journalists to expose the widespread incursion of gender ideology into our schools. Once-fringe beliefs about gender swiftly took over large swaths of society partly thanks to their inclusion in school curricula and lessons. Today, extensive interviews with parents, teachers, and non-profit organizations that monitor the radicalism and indoctrination in schools convinced me that demonization of Israel in American primary and secondary schools is no passing fad. Nor is it confined to elite private schools serving hyper-progressive families. As one Catholic parent who exposes radicalism in schools nationwide on the Substack Undercover Mother said to me: “They’ve moved on from BLM to gender unicorn to the new thing: anti-Israel activism. Anti-Israel activism is the new gender ideology in the schools.” Parents who watched in alarm as gender theory swept through schools will recognize the sudden, almost religious conversion to this newest ideology. And very few educators are standing against it. Much of the anti-Israel vituperation slides into classrooms through a subject called ethnic studies. In 2021, California became the first state to adopt it as a requirement for receiving a high school diploma. Legislatures of more than a dozen states have already followed suit, incorporating ethnic studies into K–12 curricula. In principle, these laws require schools to teach the histories and cultures of African Americans, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, Latinos, and Native Americans. In practice, they grant teachers license to incorporate lessons that often divide civilization into “oppressed” and “oppressor.” A primary fixation of ethnic studies is demonizing Israel . Activist-led organizations readily supply instructional materials. Arab Resource & Organizing Center (AROC ), Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA ; creators of the Teach Palestine Project ), Teaching While Muslim , Jewish Voice for Peace , Unión del Barrio , and the Zinn Education Project regularly furnish distorted histories with eliminationist rhetoric against Israel. Especially in the year since the Hamas massacre of Israelis on October 7, 2023, the anti-Israel materials have become pervasive. It’s not surprising that they are found in world history and current events lessons. But demonization of Israel is now taught in art, English, math, physics, and social-emotional learning classes. Anti-Israel activism spreads through online curricula that are password protected, eluding parental oversight. It is pushed by teachers unions, furnished by activist organizations, and communicated to children through deception. (“We just happen to be at the same place at the same time.”) Anti-Israel radicals willingly stake their jobs for their cause. “So how do we do all this without getting fired?” Gochez asked his assembled audience of public school teachers. “That’s the million-dollar question. And I don’t know how in the hell we have not been fired yet because I know for sure they have tried, but we have to organize. That’s the bottom line. If they come after one of us, the district has to know that it will be a bigger headache for them to try to touch one of us than it would be to just leave us alone.” All for the sake of indoctrinating other people’s children. Jewish Students Fend for Themselves Last year, Ella Hassner was a senior at Fremont High School in Sunnyvale, California. In the weeks and months after October 7, she says, her school erupted with anti-Israel propaganda. To combat the anti-Israel posters that appeared in classrooms and hallways, the school’s Jewish club received approval from the principal to put up posters of the hostages. Within thirty minutes, the posters were torn down, Ella, who has U.S.-Israeli citizenship and is now 18 years old, told me. Another Jewish student I spoke to, “Benny,” confirmed this, adding that he and his friends had witnessed one teacher tearing the posters down. Teachers regularly pushed the idea to students—in class and on social media, where they were followed by their students—that “Zionists” were committing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza. A large majority of American Jews, 85 percent , support the State of Israel. Zionism refers to the movement that established a modern Jewish state in the Jewish people’s ancestral homeland. Given the quantity of anti-Israel propaganda flooding American K–12 schools, it’s perhaps unsurprising that children would turn against their Jewish classmates. This past year saw a sharp rise in antisemitic incidents in K–12 schools. Students verbally attacked Jewish classmates in terms that echoed the very charges laid by their teachers against the State of Israel. “Baby killer” and “Violent Zionist” became popular epithets. Two girls in Ella’s class began to harass her, she told me. A subsequent school district investigation report, obtained by The Free Press , confirms her account. The girls said to her: “Your people are terrorists.” The girls created posts on social media that claimed “Israeli babies are not real humans,” and attacked Ella’s family, tagging Ella’s younger brother. Ella filed a “bullying report” with the school in February. Although the principal had personally witnessed some of the behavior, he and the associate superintendent consulted the school district’s legal counsel and decided “that the complaint would not be investigated by the district,” according to the investigation report. In February, the school hosted the annual district-wide vocal talent show. Several students sang songs celebrating their ethnic heritage. Ella and a female friend sang their approved song, “Someone Like You” by Adele, and then added another: a Hebrew pop anthem, “Yesh Bi Ahava,” which translates to “There’s Love Inside Me.” They announced the song was “dedicated to their families in Israel.” Ella says the associate superintendent pulled the duo aside after the performance and said the staff and other students were greatly upset and offended by the Hebrew song and the dedication. According to the district investigation report, the associate superintendent also informed the girls that “she would be following up with the principal the following week to discuss the matter.” The investigation found that the district did not take disciplinary action against Ella. (In response to request for comment, a spokeswoman from the district stated that the district could not discuss specific cases. She also wrote that staff was “made aware of several allegations of antisemitism. We took each complaint seriously and responded with great care to make sure our community of students, staff and families felt safe.”) In March of 2024, Ella stood at a town hall with U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna and recounted many of these incidents to get them on record. (Khanna said there should be “zero tolerance” for what Ella described and offered to help if the district did not respond to her complaints.) Ella ended her town hall speech with the advice that she gives her younger siblings: If anyone mistreats them for being Jewish, “they should come to me, not to the school.” Conversations with seventeen Jewish parents whose children attend public school in Northern California suggest that that is an understandable reaction. Since October 7 of last year, hundreds of incidents involving the harassment of Jewish K–12 students have been reported to Act Now K12, a grassroots effort to catalog and combat antisemitism in Northern California schools. Ilana Pearlman of Berkeley, Viviane Safrin of San Francisco, and Maya Bronicki of Santa Clara County—all mothers of Jewish children in public schools—helped spearhead the effort to track the escalating antisemitism tearing through school districts in Northern California. Bronicki says two hundred incidents were reported last school year in Santa Clara County alone. Jewish families reported incidents like this one: An Israeli American girl walked into her first period French class at Cupertino High School to find that many of the other students and the teacher were wearing a Palestinian flag or keffiyeh in solidarity with the Palestinian resistance, on the occasion of the Middle Eastern club’s pro-Palestine day. The club handed out a map of Israel labeled only as “Palestine.” In another incident, a 12-year-old middle school student at a charter school in San Jose arrived visibly upset on the first school day following the October 7 Hamas massacre. According to a complaint against the school district later filed by her parents in federal district court, the girl had close family members in Israel whose whereabouts were unknown. The girl asked her world history teacher if she could go to the bathroom to collect herself. The history classroom “was decorated with maps of the modern Middle East in which Israel was erased.” The history teacher knew the girl was Israeli American because she had identified herself as such at the start of the year during an icebreaker exercise. He told her she could not go “until she read aloud to the entire class a passage he had selected to the effect that in the past, Palestinians and Jews had gotten along,” according to the complaint. “The requirement to publicly espouse a position that was at odds with present reality was overwhelmingly oppressive and humiliating.” She read the passage aloud, as directed. The next day at lunch, two female classmates wearing hijabs approached her, according to the complaint, “and demanded ‘What do your people think about the conflict?’ ” When the girl tried to answer, they screamed, “You’re lying—Jews are terrorists.” One demanded: “Do you know that your family in Israel is living on stolen land?” A few days later, two boys chased her around the school yelling, “We want you to die.” Kids began to refer to her as “Jew.” They would say, “Hi, Jew” or “Hey Jew.” If she protested, they said they thought it was funny. The rest of the kids isolated and ignored her when they weren’t whispering about her, the complaint alleges. She lost all but one friend. Her parents met several times with school faculty; according to the complaint, they did nothing to ensure her safety or improve the girl’s situation. A Jewish ninth grader, “Sam,” attends a Bay Area high school where, after October 7 of last year, posters declaring, “Ceasefire Now!” and “Free Palestine” began appearing on the walls. Because Sam’s family considers itself very progressive, Sam was not bothered by the posters. Then one of Sam’s friends sent him a long diatribe that read in part (spelling from the original), “I would just like to say that u are an ignorant ass white ass privileged boy u are so privileged to not b one of those children being killed rn in Gaza…solidarity and indigenous solidarity is something you could never understand as you have grown up your whole life with no culture and money and you been brainwashed by isreali and western media the world stands with Palestine and frankly it’s embarrassing to be anything different, when mostly all people of color stand with Palestine and you stand with ISREAL, that’s how yk ur in the wrong bud oppressed people stand with oppressed people in solidarity SOMETHING YOU COULDD NEVER UNDERSTAND.” T he text concluded: “FREE PALESTINE TILL ITS BACKWARDS BITCH !!!!” I spoke to Sam’s mother, and her perception was that the message didn’t sound like her son’s friend. The jargon and gist appeared to come from adults. Only the self-righteous fury and the message’s abusive conclusion belonged to the boy. I also spoke to the mother of “Dana,” a sixth-grade girl at a Bay Area elementary school. In a social studies unit on ancient civilizations last year, the teacher encouraged students to share their “feelings” about “Israel and Palestine.” Students shouted: “Fuck Israel !” and “Israel sucks! ” Dana was the only Jewish child in the class . When Dana told her mother what had happened, her mother drove back to the school and asked the teacher, who admitted that the classroom exchange had occurred. Dana’s mother asked the teacher what “Israel and Palestine” had to do with the sixth-grade curriculum. The teacher claimed she couldn’t teach ancient civilizations without talking about the Palestinians. Dana’s mother knew the lesson offered neither historical nor archaeological evidence to tie the modern Palestinian national identity back to antiquity. But teachers today often consume and regurgitate anachronistic propaganda uncritically. I spoke to a San Francisco middle schooler, “Zoe,” who told me her ethnic studies teacher so relentlessly preached anti-Israel sentiment, and the school was so engulfed in anti-Israel propaganda, that it changed how students treated her. Zoe told me one classmate came up to her and said: “A Zionist is someone who wants Palestinians dead .” Zoe replied, “That is actually not what it means at all. ” Ilana Pearlman of Berkeley is a midwife who has three Jewish children. Her son “Danny,” who was a student at Berkeley High School, told her that after October 7, a teacher used the school’s printing press to make “Free Palestine” T-shirts that were then distributed to students. One of Danny’s teachers posted a running tally, in the front of the classroom, of the number of Palestinians allegedly killed by the IDF. She says, “So every day, when my son came into class, it would say how many people Israel has killed today.” (The Free Press has confirmed this with photographic evidence.) Danny, who is black, said to her, “If there was an image of a noose, we would not hear the end of it. There would be protests, people would be going crazy. But it’s always okay if it’s anything anti-Jewish.” One mother reported to grassroots organizers that her seven-year-old daughter came home from elementary school in Marin County last year and asked: “Mommy, if someone asks me if I’m Jewish, do I have to tell them?” Learning to Hate Israel Los Angeles Unified School District is failing its students . In the 2023–24 school year, fewer than half the students met reading proficiency standards, and less than 33 percent were proficient in math. But instead of a laser focus on how to educate kids, teachers are coming up with ever more ways to attack the existence of Israel. It’s hard to imagine what U.S. arms sales to Israel has to do with the district’s core educational goals, but recently, the L.A. teachers union voted in opposition to it. They spend considerable union time and resources on organizing opposition to Israel. In the union’s recent Motions Report from October 10 of this year, half the measures put to a vote related to Israel. One motion, which passed unanimously, endorsed a discussion about “how to organize your workplace to support the Palestine Liberation Movement” and against “the ongoing genocide in Palestine.” The First Amendment protects teachers’ political advocacy in union meetings. But public school teachers have no First Amendment right to express their political viewpoints in the classroom. “When it comes to K–12 education, the precedents are pretty clear that the school district or legislature or the principal or whoever the political process leaves in charge can set the curriculum and can require the teachers to go along with it,” Eugene Volokh, First Amendment scholar and distinguished professor of law at UCLA, told me. But while the school board or legislature sets the agenda for what must be taught in schools, it can also choose not to police teachers who skirt those rules or even brazenly violate them. Curriculum decisions, Volokh said, are “subject to the political process and not the legal process ,” generally speaking. If the school district doesn’t object to teacher speech—or in fact encourages it—parents’ only recourse is through the political process: voting out state legislators or school board members. Dillon Hosier, Chief Executive Officer of the Israeli-American Civic Action Network, explained that for generations, the Jewish community has poured its resources into nonprofits, which are not legally permitted to lobby. “Our opponents,” he said, referring to organizations like Council on American-Islamic Relations, “are putting people in public office and getting bills passed.” That strategy has paid off. School boards and state legislators are reluctant to confront the growing problem in their schools. In Brooklyn, teachers led third graders at PS 705 in Prospect Heights in a chorus of “The Wheels on the Tank,” which encouraged them to despise Israel and the Israel Defense Forces, according to the New York Post : “The wheels on the tanks go round and round, all through the town. The people in the town they hold their ground, and never back down .” The rhyme continued: “Free Palestine till the wheels on the tanks fall off .” The book was illustrated with Palestinian kids hurling rocks at Israeli tanks. In Portland, pre-K lesson plans included the story of Handala, a fictional Palestinian cartoon character who symbolizes the resistance. “When I was only ten years old, I had to flee my home in Palestine,” the boy tells readers. “A group of bullies called Zionists wanted our land so they stole it by force and hurt many people, ” it continues, according to a piece in City Journal . At a Fort Lee, New Jersey, high school, world history teachers confiscated students’ cell phones before giving a lesson that presented Hamas as a “resistance movement” rather than an internationally designated terrorist organization. Teachers also showed a map of Israel that falsely presented Palestinians as the sole indigenous natives of Israel. (The Free Press has obtained a copy of the presentation. Click here to see it .) The Black Lives Matter Week of Action is a standard program at thousands of schools across the country. It now routinely shifts from a focus on white racism against black Americans to the “other brown people” allegedly subjected to apartheid in the West Bank at the hands of the “white” settler colonialist Israelis, according to several grassroots organizers I spoke to who track radicalism in America’s public schools. (A majority of Israeli Jews are from non-white, non-European heritage.) Three years ago, Nicole Neily founded Parents Defending Education , a nonprofit that exposes radicalism in schools, largely in response to the race and gender ideologies she saw coursing through public schools. This year, when her organization reached out to school districts to inquire whether they planned to include the war in Gaza in their BLM Week of Action instruction, the president of a school board in Rochester, New York, wrote back to confirm that they did. The school board president added, “I would ask that you study the history of the Jewish nation and their involvement in slavery–financing the slave ships to bring Africans into the Americas and the Carribbeans,” referring to a spurious canard associated with Nation of Islam leader, Louis Farrakhan. Last spring, millions of Americans watched in disbelief as university students, particularly at our most elite schools, vandalized buildings, set up illegal encampments, and cheered for Hamas. But there was far less attention paid to the parallel dramas unfolding at K–12 schools across the country. Aware of their ability to shape young minds, teachers encouraged schoolchildren to join “Walkouts” for Palestine, don keffiyehs, chant the eliminationist slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” and tell their Jewish classmates, “It is excellent what Hamas did to Israel,” according to a complaint filed to the U.S. Department of Education by the Brandeis Center and the Anti-Defamation League on behalf of Jewish students. “We had been tracking a lot of antisemitic incidents in school even prior to October 7. Obviously, in the wake of October 7, we saw things explode,” Neily told me. “This had sort of been simmering below the surface for a long time. You look at everything that happened on college campuses, and it’s not that kids turn 18, go to college campus, and think, ‘I’m going to underage drink and hate the Jews.’ So much of this was baked into the curriculum before.” Neily, who is Catholic, has now become a national leader in the grassroots effort to expose antisemitism in schools. Her team regularly submits hundreds of FOIA requests, wrangling with schools that hide behind copyright law to avoid disclosing materials taught to American school children. And what she has found is that radical anti-Israel NGOs are training teachers and supplying materials used in thousands of American classrooms.“This stuff is really going viral, coast to coast,” Neily said. Federal law gives parents the right to inspect their children’s educational materials. But schools routinely decline to turn over lessons on the grounds of copyright law. “So long as a parent isn’t asking for the material to duplicate it and sell it, there is no copyright violation in providing that material to parents,” Lori Lowenthal Marcus told me. Marcus is the legal director at The Deborah Project , which protects the civil rights of Jews in education. She added, “It is a bullshit excuse that takes advantage of parents who aren’t lawyers.” Online textbooks are easily supplemented with material from Al Jazeera or other radical sources. Smartboards allow teachers to display fraudulent histories of Israel and outright propaganda. This video , shown to tenth to twelfth graders in the Sequoia Union school district in Northern California as part of the mandatory ethnic studies curriculum, was produced by the virulently anti-Israel Turkish News site, TRT World . It ignores 3,000 years of Jewish history in Israel and instead frames Jewish connection to Israel as illegitimate or what is often called “settler colonialism.” The video omits mention of Jews’ historic connection to the West Bank—called Judea and Samaria in the Hebrew Bible—and ignores the fact that the State of Israel accepted several peace proposals throughout its 76-year history that would have created a Palestinian state. It also omits that the Second Intifada and its 138 Palestinian suicide bombings of primarily civilian Israeli targets was the impetus for Israel erecting a security barrier. An Undercover, Front-Row Seat Dr. Brandy Shufutinsky, director of education and community engagement at the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values , first noticed an uptick in antisemitic K–12 materials in 2018, when she was getting her PhD in education. “What I saw was what seemed to be a very well-coordinated effort between activist teachers, activist organizations, and administrators that were trying to do a lot of kowtowing to progressive social ideology through programming and bringing that programming into their schools ,” she said. “ There is just this insidious idea that it is okay to hate Jews or attack Jews if they feel any connection to the Jewish homeland—to Israel; if there’s any expression of Jewish pride, especially when that pride is Zionism ,” she said. “I think that antisemitism, like the Jew hatred, isn’t the end goal. I think it’s the symptom of a bigger anti-Western illiberalism that has taken over a lot of our institutions ,” Shufutinsky told me. Curious to learn more about the goals of these anti-Israel educators, Shufutinsky began hanging out in their virtual meetings. As a grad student at the University of San Francisco, she spent almost two years, she says, “undercover” in chat rooms where educators were developing a new curriculum: “Liberated Ethnic Studies.” This would eventually become the mandatory California Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum. In discussions about the need for ethnic studies, educators were uniquely fixated on promoting an anti-Israel agenda. “The whole goal for pushing ethnic studies, making it a requirement, was so that they could teach Palestine, ” she said. When in 2021, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law a requirement that schools make completion of ethnic studies a condition of graduation, he effectively made antisemitism a formal feature of California schooling. The original curriculum, “Liberated Ethnic Studies,” was so outrageously antisemitic , it was officially abandoned. In The Free Press , Shufutinsky called it “a Trojan horse to institutionalize antisemitism in California schools.” But even the successor course—implemented by many of the same educators who had proposed the Liberated Ethnic Studies curriculum in California—has provided a vehicle for anti-Israel indoctrination of American schoolchildren. Shufutinsky told me that the reformed curriculum teaches that “ Israel is something that it isn’t. That it’s the ultimate evil. That it is apartheid. That it is a settler colonial state that deserves to be dismantled. That Zionism is racism .” Elina Kaplan, a former manager in Northern California’s tech sector and self-described “lifelong Democrat,” was quick to recognize the problems posed by ethnic studies in the classroom. A childhood spent as a Jew in the former Soviet Union taught her to recognize state-sponsored antisemitic propaganda. She formed a nonprofit to organize against the inclusion of politicized ethnic studies in California schools and maintains an archive of the antisemitic materials promulgated in American classrooms. While her organization helped defeat the worst excesses of the original curriculum, the broader effort to keep antisemitism out of the schools failed. Since 2021, she has seen the antisemitism once confined to ethnic studies sprout in virtually every subject. Kaplan says, “In math class, they can be studying charts and are told, ‘Look at this pie chart of the number of Palestinians murdered. This slice shows the number of Israelis that were killed .’ ” That example was actually presented to elementary school students in New Haven Unified School District, California. The chart is labeled “People Killed Since September 29, 2000” divided into Palestinians and Israelis and asks: “What information is this pie graph showing us? ” The obvious answer: Far more Palestinians have been killed than Israelis. Another mother sent me an example of an assignment used in a physics class at Cupertino High School, which asked students to consider the “Effect of Israel’s Bombing of Gaza” on climate change. At schools where anti-Israel propaganda is promulgated, schoolchildren are turning against their Jewish classmates. Dozens of interviews with parents, teachers, and people at nonprofits revealed that discussions of Israel quickly become personal, and American Jews—even children—are the inevitable targets. “Tammy” is a Jewish substitute teacher in Oakland who asked not to be identified. She said in the past year, she’s been astonished by the sheer volume of anti-Israel messaging to school kids across Oakland. She says only the Jewish families object. Where there are no Jewish students, the material goes entirely unopposed. “We’re raising a generation of antisemites,” she told me. “I have a necklace that says my name in Hebrew. And I wear it every day and I don’t take it off. It’s pretty small,” Tammy told me. One day last year, when she was substitute teaching in middle school, a boy saw her necklace and said, “Oh, I’m Jewish too.” The boy went and got his backpack and pulled from it a necklace with a Star of David pendant. She remembers thinking, “Why is it in your backpack? Why aren’t you wearing it?” Previous Next

October 27, 2025 San Dieguito District sets plan for healing in motion following antisemitic act on SDA campus Karen Billing Lucia Gordon, the mother of the student victim of the antisemitism incident, was critical of the district’s response. Gordon said when the incident was brought to light last month, no one ever reached out to her son or family. Originally Posted In: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2025/10/27/district-sets-plan-for-healing-in-motion-following-antisemitic-act-on-sda-campus/ < Back San Dieguito Academy High School has undergone numerous changes since the district learned about an incident this spring in which eight students formed a human swastika on the school field for a Jewish student to see while flying in a plane overhead. As outlined in the San Dieguito Union High School District board’s Oct. 16 meeting, the district has developed a community supportive plan to strengthen respect and belonging in the wake of the antisemitic act. The plan included partnering with the National Conflict Resolution Center and American Jewish Committee to host staff listening circles, a guest speaker, a parent engagement night and ongoing professional development for staff and students. At the meeting, SDA student board representative Jonah Lupien addressed some of the “growing pains” on campus, which have included an administrative staff shakeup, letting go of a principal and two assistant principals and new interim leadership, a student walkout, and a forum on hate speech. Jonah also organized an event in which 600 students formed a giant heart on the school field, an image in direct contrast to the swastika, sending a message that hate will not be tolerated. Board President Jodie Williams said it was an uplifting act in a moment of darkness. “We are in the midst of a lot of difficult issues,” remarked Superintendent Anne Staffieri. “2025 has been and continues to be a challenging year for so many. I am truly very, very sorry for what is happening and for any students or families who are feeling that they are harmed. We hear you and we want to hear you more fully to understand where that harm is coming from so that we can best adjust, educate and improve our culture. I think this is a continuous improvement that we cannot ignore and we really cannot choose to do anything but place it as a top priority.” As an example of some of her recent advocacy, she referenced San Dieguito students being impacted by immigration and the uptick of ICE activity. Staffieri was one of 24 San Diego school districts and the County Office of Education to send a letter to the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Department of Education to ask for extended safe spaces on or around campuses. “We fully recognize the important role of the Department of Homeland Security in enforcing immigration laws and securing our borders,” stated the letter, also signed by local superintendents in Cardiff, Encinitas, Del Mar and Solana Beach. “However, we believe that these responsibilities can and must be carried out in ways that do not compromise the safety or learning of children. Ensuring that every child has the opportunity to learn in an environment where they can dream big, learn fully, and know that they are safe, is a responsibility we all share.” During public comment, the board heard about a lot of hurt being felt in their school community, including concerns that the plan doesn’t adequately address every group facing hate and marginalization, which includes Hispanic, Arab, Muslim, Black and LGBTQ students. One parent shared how the incident at SDA was not an isolated one - when her daughter was called the n-word on campus in January, she said her complaints were dismissed by SDA staff and the students who inflicted the harm were never held accountable. Other parents expressed concerns about the district’s guest speaker, who has publicly questioned the International Association of Genocide Scholars’ declaration that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. As part of the community supportive plan, Sara Brown, the regional director of the American Jewish Committee’s San Diego office, led four staff training sessions about the historical significance of the swastika and the recent usage of it as a symbol for neo-Nazis, white supremacists and Hamas terrorists. “The incident that precipitated this training was completely unacceptable and it is always my preference to work proactively with educators and administrators ahead of an incident rather than in response to one,” said Brown, who only agreed to do the training as she believed it was not a “one and done” performative effort but an ongoing commitment to create change. “The delay in reporting has had a lasting, negative impact. Mistakes were made but I do appreciate the response of the district leadership once they were made aware of this incident. They have modeled accountability, taking immediate action to address the situation and investigate where necessary.” Two years ago, the district entered a multi-year partnership with the National Conflict Resolution Center in hopes of building a more supportive and inclusive learning environment and improving district communication and culture. The One San Dieguito initiative was formed in response to a heightened level of hate-based incidents at the time, including a swastika graffitied in a Torrey Pines High School bathroom, and leadership changes precipitated by the former superintendent’s controversial comments about Asian students. Staffieri said the district is being vulnerable and is having a lot of tough conversations. She said the community plan is about creating safer campuses for every student, not just Jewish students. Lucia Gordon , the mother of the student victim of the antisemitism incident, was critical of the district’s response. Gordon said when the incident was brought to light last month, no one ever reached out to her son or family and the only people who took action were the children, like Jonah. “We trusted this school, this district, to help us teach the same lessons we try to live by: to be kind, to be brave, to speak up when something is wrong, to protect others even when it’s hard. But the wrong came from the very place that should’ve modeled what’s right,” Gordon said. “We watched our child, who once felt proud of who he is, begin to doubt himself, to wonder if being Jewish made him the very problem the school would rather not have to deal with. We watched him ask us to let it go, to stop seeking justice because he no longer believed in the adults to do what’s right.” She asked for a public apology not only for the district’s procedural failure but for its failure of “failure of empathy, courage and integrity.” While the presentation to the board that day was centered on an antisemitic act, board President Williams said the district’s intolerance for hate goes across the board. Trustee Michael Allman said that the worst thing they can do is sweep incidents like this under the rug. He had hoped that protocols were in place to investigate and respond to any incident with expertise and empathy when the district hired a community outreach director last year to serve as an ombudsperson, “an impartial dispute resolution practitioner.” Trustee Rimga Viskanta said she has heard for years that when incidents occur, there isn’t a quick response and when hurt or harm happens, it’s left to the victims to report: “We are trying to shift this culture rapidly.” In her comments, Viskanta said she was deeply sorry for what happened at SDA and acknowledged that the district still has a lot of work to do. Previous Next

September 19, 2025 SDA family says antisemitism incident handled improperly Leo Place The San Dieguito Union High School District is addressing an incident from the end of the previous school year in which students allegedly made the shape of a swastika on a field at San Dieguito Academy, with reports that the school’s principal has been placed on administrative leave. Originally Posted In: https://thecoastnews.com/sda-family-says-antisemitism-incident-went-unaddressed-by-district/ < Back ENCINITAS — The San Dieguito Union High School District is addressing an incident from the end of the previous school year in which students allegedly made the shape of a swastika on a field at San Dieguito Academy, with reports that the school’s principal has been placed on administrative leave. In a Sept. 18 statement , SDUHSD Superintendent Anne Staffieri said that in May, a group of students used their bodies to create the formation of a swastika. The image was seen and captured by a Jewish student while flying a plane overhead at the time. While the student’s family reported the incident to school administrators that same day, district leaders said it was not brought to their attention until months later. “Unfortunately, the incident was not brought to the attention of the San Dieguito Union High School District administrators until late last month. I share this point not to deflect responsibility but to clarify that there was a clear and unacceptable breakdown in communication between the school and the District,” Staffieri said. Larry Gordon, the father of the student who captured the image, spoke about the incident at the district board of trustees’ Sept. 11 meeting. He stated that the district’s overall delay in addressing the situation was a breach of duty and urged the district to take responsibility. “On May 30, my son was the direct target of an antisemitic hate crime,” Gordon said. “But the greater hate crime is what followed — silence and delay. No timely report to law enforcement, no prompt investigation, no discipline, no safety plan. By failing to act, this district turned a student act of hate into an institutional act of racism.” Gordon also said the district asked his son to “sit on a panel about how to be nice to each other” before they had publicly acknowledged the incident. The district sent a message to San Dieguito Academy families about the situation last week, followed by a public statement to the community on Thursday. The boy’s family enlisted the help of PeerK12 , an advocacy group for Jewish civil rights in education run by the Israeli-American Civic Education Institute. The organization issued a statement regarding the incident, stating that as of Thursday, San Dieguito Academy Principal Cara Dolnik has been placed on leave pending the outcome of an investigation. District spokesperson Edwin Mendoza said Dolnik remains the principal of the school, but declined to comment on whether she had been placed on administrative leave. The incident allegedly took place on the last day of the school year. According to PeerK12, the 10th-grade student flying overhead thought he was going to be taking a picture of students making a formation of a smiley face, but instead saw the swastika. “Administrators were notified immediately by the family – but declined to report the incident, saying it would be ‘handled next year.’ And then for nearly three months, nothing happened,” PeerK12 said. The organization stated that once they were contacted by the student’s family, they immediately reached out to Trustee Michael Allman, who claimed he was not aware of the incident and escalated it to district leadership immediately. District administrators then contacted the family and initiated an internal investigation. The family has also filed a uniform complaint with the district. San Dieguito Academy, and the wider San Dieguito Union High School District, has contended with multiple hateful incidents targeting Jewish people and other marginalized groups over the years that have sparked community outrage. In 2021 and 2022, San Dieguito Academy was hit with racist and homophobic graffiti on two separate occasions just months apart. In 2019, law enforcement also investigated graffiti of swastikas and homophobic language in school bathrooms. Graffiti of swastikas was also found at La Costa Canyon High School and Torrey Pines High School in 2021. The school district adopted a resolution addressing antisemitism in 2021 to show support for families. Some families said that while the district has made progress in addressing and dealing with hate crimes, they still have a lot of work to do. “The human swastika incident at SDA is only one example. Reports of racial slurs continue, and I question what the district is doing to meaningfully address them. Covering them up only deepens the harm,” parent Janice Holowka said at the Sept. 11 board meeting. Editor’s note: This story and the headline was updated to clarify that San Dieguito Union High School District administrators were not made aware of the incident at San Dieguito Academy until months after it happened due to a lack of communication from the school, and responded to the incident once they were made aware of it. Previous Next

September 19, 2025 Swastika incident at SDA goes unreported; principal placed on leave Steve Puterski Eight students allegedly formed a human swastika at San Dieguito Academy in May. The principal is now on leave amid accusations of delayed reporting and policy violations. Originally Posted In: https://ncpipeline.substack.com/p/students-form-swastika-at-sda < Back Note: School, district and board officials were asked to respond by noon today. Due to unforeseen factors, the deadline was pushed up. Any statements from those officials, should they comment, will be included as an update and in a follow-up story. Two board members declined to comment, and one of them referred questions to the superintendent. ENCINITAS — The principal at San Dieguito Academy has been placed on paid administrative leave after allegedly failing to report an alleged antisemitic act immediately after the incident was caught on camera in May. Cara Dolnik was recently placed on paid administrative leave by the district pending the results of the investigation, according to sources and PeerK12 , a local non-profit fighting against antisemitism and extreme agendas in schools. According to a letter from the district to parents, Robert Shockney will be working in the school’s administration. He is currently the district’s coordinator of College Readiness and Testing. Eight students, all freshmen, were reportedly caught on an aerial photograph forming a human swastika on one of the school’s athletic fields on May 30, an act the family, who are Jewish, and its representatives, are calling a hate crime. The alleged victim told his parents, who informed school administrators, who then allegedly told the parents “people were already on vacation” and the school would deal with it during the 2025-26 school year, sources said. “That image was aimed at him, a Jewish child,” the victim’s father, Larry, told the SDUHSD Board of Education this week. “But the greater hate crime is what followed. Silence and delay. No timely reports to law enforcement. By failing to act, this district turned a student act of hate into an institutional act of racism.” The San Dieguito Union High School District administration and Board of Education were not immediately informed, as required by law and district policy. The district and board members learned of the alleged incident in late August after being informed by Trustee Mike Allman, according to a statement from PeerK12 , which is representing the family. The parents of the eight freshmen students, meanwhile, were also not immediately informed and did not know of the alleged incident until this school year, sources added. “Our school community is shocked and appalled by a hateful situation that took place on the San Dieguito Academy’s campus at the end of last school year,” Superintendent Anne Staffieri said in a letter to the parents on Thursday. “Once I became aware of the image, we took action to work with the families of the students involved and immediately launched an investigation, which is still ongoing.” On May 30, a freshman student was taking a flying lesson out of Palomar-McClellan Airport and was passing over SDA to take a picture of their P.E. class, sources said. The student cleared the activity with the P.E. teacher, who organized for students to position themselves in a human smiley face, according to a source. Previous Next

May 4, 2026 Brandeis Center files Title VII complaint against the National Education Association Haley Cohen The leading Jewish legal group alleges that the country’s largest teachers’ union has repeatedly discriminated against its Jewish members Originally Posted In: https://jewishinsider.com/2026/05/brandeis-center-national-education-association-title-vii-complaint/ < Back A leading Jewish legal group has filed a bias complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against the National Education Association, alleging the country’s largest teachers’ union violated civil rights law by discriminating against its Jewish members, Jewish Insider has learned. The complaint, filed Monday by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, highlights several incidents in which the NEA - which represents over 3 million educators - allegedly breached Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which protects employees, resulting in the spread of antisemitism in K-12 public schools. “Students are arriving to college much of the time already having antisemitic views,” Marci Miller, Brandeis Center’s director of legal investigations, told JI. “We needed to look at the K-12 space to see where this was originating, and we saw that a lot of the false narratives and antisemitic tropes were originating from local teachers’ unions - and in a lot of cases it came from the top, the NEA, which is the umbrella union.” Last summer, the NEA’s Representative Assembly passed a resolution to boycott the Anti-Defamation League’s Holocaust education materials after union delegates complained the ADL’s definition of antisemitism was too strong. While NEA’s board of directors unanimously voted to reject the measure that would’ve ceased relations with the ADL, Jewish educators and parents continue to remain uneasy about rising antisemitism within the union. The 297-page complaint highlights several concerns in the NEA’s 2025 handbook , a 434-page report outlining the organization’s “visionary goals” and “strategic objectives.” Among these examples is official handbook language for International Holocaust Remembrance Day that removed Jews as the primary targeted victims of the Holocaust, reframing the genocide as a generalized tragedy, the Brandeis Center said. The handbook stated that the “NEA shall promote the celebration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27 annually on its website and through other appropriate media to recognize the more than 12 million victims of the Holocaust from different faiths, ethnicities, races, political beliefs, genders, and gender identification, abilities/disabilities, and other targeted characteristics. ” Although the language was later revised following public backlash, the NEA did not issue an apology for the erasure of Jewish history from its handbook materials and provided no corrective guidance to members or affiliates. On Oct. 8, 2025, one day after the two-year anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks, the NEA sent a mass email to its membership celebrating Indigenous lands and distributing a “Native Land Digital” map that erased Israel entirely, labeling the territory solely as Palestine and linking to materials associated with organizations that have expressed support for Hamas’ attacks. After public backlash, the NEA removed the resource and issued a statement that the external resource did not meet its standards, but it did not advise members to stop using the materials or issue an apology to Jewish members. According to the complaint, Jewish members reported facing harassment at the NEA’s 2025 Representative Assembly, a convening of the organization’s top leaders from around the country - the same group that voted to censure the ADL. Allegations included Jewish delegates being physically surrounded and shouted at by anti-Israel advocates; delegates laughing after a Jewish delegate referred to the murder of an 82-year-old Holocaust survivor in the Boulder, Colo., antisemitic firebombing attack; and delegates physically intimidating and disrupting the Jewish Affairs Caucus when the executive chair tried to speak. The complaint also alleges that the NEA engages in systematic discrimination by utilizing discriminatory racial quotas and preferences, a practice that harms Jewish members who are excluded from preferred racial groups, denying them equal access to opportunities and full participation in union governance. “NEA is not taking enough steps to make Jewish teachers, Jewish members feel comfortable in the NEA,” said Miller. “They may have taken some minimal steps but haven’t really responded to complaints from members.” The complaint comes as NEA is under investigation by the House Committee on Education and Workforce, as well as the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, following allegations that its policies and materials have fostered an environment conducive to antisemitism in K-12 schools. Previous Next

June 13, 2024 How Public Schools Became Ideological Boot Camps Robert Pondiscio In nearly every public school in the country, children are given curriculum materials that have no official oversight or approval. Originally Posted In: https://www.thefp.com/p/how-public-schools-became-ideological-boot-camps < Back A pair of teachers at New Jersey’s Fort Lee High School recently taught students that Hamas is a peaceful “resistance movement” and Israel is committing genocide. Teachers at California’s Berkeley Unified School District are “indoctrinating students with antisemitic tropes and biased, one-sided anti-Israel propaganda disguised as education,” according to a complaint by the Anti-Defamation League. Meanwhile, students recently chanted “from the river to the sea” at college campus “tentifadas” —but when pressed could identify neither. Why does this keep happening? And how can public schools at once be hotbeds of radicalism and “woke” indoctrination, yet produce students who are so poorly informed about the radical causes they ostensibly espouse? The answer has a lot to do with one of American education’s dirty little secrets: on any given school day in nearly every public school in the country, curriculum materials are put in front of children that have no official oversight or approval. It’s true that schools might have a state- or district-adopted curriculum, but that doesn’t mean it’s getting taught. Nearly no category of public employee has the degree of autonomy of the average public school teacher—even the least experienced ones. Teachers routinely create or cobble together their own lesson plans on the widely accepted theory that they know better than textbook publishers what books kids will enjoy reading and which topics might spark lively class discussions. Not your child’s school or teacher? Wanna bet? A 2017 RAND Corporation survey found that 99 percent of elementary teachers and 96 percent of secondary schools use “materials I developed and/or selected myself” in teaching English language arts. The numbers are virtually the same in math. But putting teachers in charge of creating their own lesson plans or scouring the internet for curriculum materials creates an irresistible opportunity for every imaginable interest group that perceives—not incorrectly—that overworked teachers and a captive young audience equal a rich target for selling products and pushing ideologies. This ungoverned mess is how the majority of high-profile curriculum controversies happen. Earlier this year, The Free Press ’s Francesca Block broke news that PS 321 in Brooklyn, New York, sent kids home with an “activity book” promoting the tenets of the Black Lives Matter movement, including “queer affirming,” “transgender affirming,” and “restorative justice.” The book was not authorized for classroom use either by the NYC Department of Education or Brooklyn’s Community School District 15. It appears to have begun its journey into students’ backpacks at the massive “Share My Lesson” website run by the American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s second largest teachers union. The site claims 2.2 million members—more than half of all U.S. public school teachers—and hosts “more than 420,000 resources” that have been “downloaded more than 16 million times.” Lee & Low Books, the publisher of What We Believe, the BLM activity book, is a Share My Lesson “partner ” and includes the book in its “anti-racist reading list for grades 3–5.” Other Share My Lesson partners include Amnesty International, the ADL (the Anti-Defamation League), GLSEN , and the Southern Poverty Law Center—all producing free lesson plans and materials for classroom use. The advocacy group Parents Defending Education has documented over a thousand incidents of schools teaching lessons on race, gender, or other hot-button issues that parents deemed inappropriate or upsetting. They are seldom traceable to formally adopted school curriculum. But there are 75 different lesson plans and resources for conducting “privilege walks ” and more than 100 lessons and resources on “preferred pronouns” at Teachers Pay Teachers, another lesson sharing megasite . Prior to legislative efforts to ban the teaching of critical race theory in public schools, there were only three school districts in the country known to have expressly authorized teachers to use the New York Times 1619 Project in lesson plans: Chicago, Buffalo, and Newark, New Jersey. However, the Pulitzer Center, which partnered with the Times to produce 1619 Project classroom materials , claimed to have “connected curricula based on the work of [Nikole] Hannah-Jones and her collaborators to some 4,500 classrooms”—another illustration of the yawning chasm between curriculum that is officially adopted and what actually gets taught. Teachers putting controversial material in front of children, either naively or to pursue an agenda, isn’t even the worst of it. When they hunt for materials to engage students, teachers shoot low. A 2019 study published by the Fordham Institute rated most of the materials on Share My Lesson and Teachers Pay Teachers as “mediocre” or “probably not worth using.” A similar report from The New Teacher Project found that students “spent more than 500 hours per school year on assignments that weren’t appropriate for their grade and with instruction that didn’t ask enough of them—the equivalent of six months of wasted class time in each core subject.” Disadvantaged students were the hardest hit. Choose-your-own-adventure lesson planning inevitably results in gaps and repetition when there’s no coherent blueprint for what students should learn, or when those plans are disregarded by schools and teachers. Which river? Which sea? It was never covered. All of this should be sobering to parents and policymakers who think “curriculum transparency” is the solution to classroom controversies. Knowing the curriculum or programs a school district has “adopted” is a cracked lens. Absent regulations specifically requiring teachers to post all lesson plans and materials online on a daily basis, including material they create or find on the internet, it’s nearly impossible to say with any certainty what occurs inside the black box of the public school classroom. Robert Pondiscio is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of How the Other Half Learns . Follow him on Twitter at @rpondiscio . Previous Next