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October 26, 2025 The ADL’s Medicine Is Causing the Disease Joel Finkelstein Frames that divide the world into the oppressors and the oppressed create 15 times more antisemites while reinforcing sectarian division and hate on both the left and the right. The cure is a return to the universalist values on which America was founded. Originally Posted In: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/adl-medicine-causing-disease < Back Oct. 7 is behind us, but the moral wreckage it revealed is not. On campuses and in newsrooms, moral clarity has dissolved into factional reflex. The speed of that collapse has exposed something long in the making: a society trained to sort every question through the logic of identity and power. In recent years, Americans have been told that justice lives in the arithmetic of oppression. We built institutions around that belief. It promised fairness but produced suspicion. When real moral tests arrived, those suspicions split the country into tribes instead of citizens. What began as a language meant to protect the vulnerable hollowed out the Democratic Party itself, wrenching Jews from a coalition that once defined liberal America. The same moral logic now corrodes the right, where a counterfeit version of patriotism exalts grievance politics and sectarian resentment. Across both extremes, identity has replaced citizenship. The Anti-Defamation League has become the most visible symbol in the Jewish world of that shift. In schools across the United States, students are now taught to “challenge bias” and “explore identity” through the Anti-Defamation League’s No Place for Hate curriculum. The program asks children to examine their “unconscious prejudice,” map their place in “systems of oppression,” and reflect on how “intersecting oppressions” shape their worldview. Middle schoolers complete assignments such as the “Identity Iceberg,” which invites them to reveal the parts of themselves that lie “below the surface.” What was once a movement to fight antisemitism has evolved into an educational framework built on the language of DEI. Its central lesson is not moral conviction but self-classification within hierarchies of power. In two national studies, participants exposed to the ADL’s anti-oppression messaging grew more defensive and in fact expressed more antisemitism than they had prior to being “educated.” Those results mark more than the failure of one organization. They signal the exhaustion of an era. The frameworks that claimed to cure bias are now being proven by data to deepen it. If we want to rebuild moral coherence, we need a new paradigm rooted not in grievance but in shared human values, the same ideals that helped shape the American experiment and long sustained Jewish moral life in this country. For more than a decade, schools and corporations have adopted what they call the anti-oppressive framework, the belief that morality lives in the struggle between the oppressors and the oppressed. The goal of this approach was ostensibly to eliminate bias. The result has been rising suspicion and hostility and the fracturing of the once-robust American middle into warring sectarian tribes. Our research tested how the framework of oppressed and oppressors works in practice to reduce bias. Partnering with Rutgers Social Perception Lab, in a study titled “Instructing Animosity,” we exposed thousands of participants to training materials drawn from anti-racist, anti-Islamophobia, and anti-casteist curricula. Across all three domains, the pattern was the same. People who read those texts became more likely to believe that racism or prejudice had occurred when there was no evidence of it. Perceptions of microaggressions in neutral situations rose by roughly 30%, and willingness to punish others for imagined offenses increased sharply. The interventions reproduced the same psychological profile found in people who score high on measures of authoritarianism: suspicion, intolerance, and punitive impulse. The effect was not tied to any group or cause; it was tied to the frame itself. When we applied the same method to the ADL’s antisemitism curriculum, the results were even clearer. Participants who read ADL materials reported much higher irritation and stronger feelings of being attacked than those who read neutral or values-based text. Their written responses contained 15 times more antisemitic statements than those in the control conditions. Both studies revealed the same underlying process: Exposure to anti-oppressive rhetoric increased defensiveness and moral reactivity. However, the direction and expression of hostility differed greatly between the anti-racism and the antisemitism studies. While exposure to anti-racist materials led subjects to reproduce the moral and political orientation of the materials themselves - condemning racism, even when it wasn’t there - exposure to the ADL’s materials produced the exact opposite effect, rendering subjects 15 times more hostile to Jews than they had been before. Why do materials structured in the same way produce such radically opposite effects when the “oppressed” group is Jewish? One plausible interpretation of their differences draws on Jonathan Haidt’s moral-foundations theory. Anti-oppressive interventions may cue a coalitional mode of moral reasoning, shifting the question from What is good? to Who are the good people? . In this frame, moral emotion is directed toward identity rather than principle, and the language of justice becomes a search for the righteous and the condemned. In anti-racism contexts, where the narrative clearly identifies an oppressor and where public sanction reinforces that boundary, hostility finds a sanctioned outlet. Condemnation of the “bad group” is socially rewarded and even expected, while reproducing “racism” results in social sanction and even the possibility of being targeted with violence. However, in the case of antisemitism, that same moral circuitry operates in a very different social and political context. Jewish life, historically organized around education and civic participation rather than mob politics, lacks a stable coalition capable of enforcing moral standing through collective power. No one is actually afraid of being punished by Jews—or being physically confronted by them. The mob logic never coheres into protection but instead amplifies vulnerability. Each round of moral accusation deepens the perception of instability and, paradoxically, blames Jews for the precarity itself. These hypotheses remain tentative but suggest that where moral sanction is unstable, anti-oppressive frames do not resolve into coherent moral conflict; they multiply it, producing a self-reinforcing cycle of reactivity and blame. The same moral logic that governs DEI programs has filtered into national institutions and street movements. It teaches people to read conflict as oppression, disagreement as violence, and identity as destiny. Once that logic takes hold, it spreads suspicion through every social bond, whether on the left or on the right. The ADL did not create this framework, but it amplified it. While hostility toward Jews and other groups escalated, its own programs continued to describe “whiteness” as privilege and to problematize mainstream organizations like Turning Point USA with accusations of extremism. This year, the FBI ended its partnership with the ADL, stating that it would not work with political fronts posing as watchdogs. That decision confirmed what the data already suggest. The old paradigm has exhausted itself. The public no longer trusts it, and the evidence shows why. The data show the medicine is worse than the disease. The same science that exposes the damage done to American Jews and the wider society by the ADL’s bias education programs also points toward a remedy: a moral vocabulary rooted in the universal ideals that once anchored both Jewish and American life. The founders of this country made a discovery so simple and so radical that it still startles the modern mind. They declared that human beings are endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights. It was a moral revolution that broke every hierarchy of power and taught that dignity does not come from ancestry or position but from the soul itself. From that truth flows not only moral right but also moral responsibility, the duty to see that same dignity in others. We tested what happens when people are reminded of that principle. In our experiment, participants read a short essay titled “Universal Human Values. ” It spoke of fairness, honesty, conscience, and the shared duty to act with integrity. It argued that goodness does not come from fear or ideology but from conviction. Compared with those who read anti-oppressive or DEI-based texts, participants exposed to this values-based message showed no rise in defensiveness, antisemitism, or toxicity. They rated the message as 20% more meaningful, 19% less exaggerated, and 17% less biased. They were also 12% less likely to describe Jews as racist. The difference was visible in their words. “It reminded me that compassion is a shared duty as well as a personal decision,” one participant wrote. Others described feeling hopeful and inspired to act with integrity. The same science that revealed how anti-oppressive messaging breeds resentment now shows that shared moral language restores connection. The evidence points to one conclusion: Moral education must return to universal American values. That means rebuilding the institutions that teach it. The same voices that sold identity politics cannot credibly offer its cure. It is not believable that Black Lives Matter can now deliver moral coherence, or that the ADL is the best candidate to undo the divisions it helped create. Their frameworks were built around hierarchy and guilt. They cannot now lead a movement based on equality and responsibility. The challenge ahead requires constructing new institutions rooted in both data and moral truth, institutions that see the human being before the category. America’s original moral discovery still waits for completion. It begins with the same conviction that founded the nation and animated its prophets: that we are created equal and are therefore accountable to one another. ---- Joel Finkelstein is the co-founder and chief science officer of the Network Contagion Research Institute, which innovates methods in social cyber sciences to better meet threats in the information age. He is a graduate of Princeton University, where his doctoral work focused on the Psychology and Neuroscience of addiction and social behavior. He currently directs the Network Contagion Lab, at the Miller Center for Community Protection and Resilience at Rutgers University. 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

November 10, 2025 The Elephant on Bruin Walk: UCLA Can’t Curb Campus Antisemitism While Ignoring Faculty-Led Anti-Zionism Tammi Rossman-Benjamin At UCLA, faculty and departments have moved anti-Zionist activism from the margins into university life, becoming a core engine of campus antisemitism. Originally Posted In: https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/opinion/384866/the-elephant-on-bruin-walk-ucla-cant-curb-campus-antisemitism-while-ignoring-faculty-led-anti-zionism/ < Back On Thursday, UCLA’s Consortium for Palestine Studies will host a lecture entitled “Revisiting Zionism as a Form of Racism and Racial Discrimination” given by Rutgers professor Noura Erakat, an outspoken anti-Zionist who compares Zionism to Nazism and white supremacy . The event is co-sponsored by a wide roster of UCLA academic units, most led by faculty who have publicly endorsed the academic boycott of Israel — a campaign that seeks to delegitimize Israel and turn the country and its supporters into pariahs within academic life. Last month, on the two-year anniversary of the October 7th attack, UCLA’s Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP) chapter co-hosted an on-campus rally celebrating Hamas’ massacre as “the people of Palestine righteously engaged in decolonial struggle” and demanded that the university “END [its] academic and financial complicity,” explicitly tying protest goals to academic-boycott demands. These are not isolated incidents. At UCLA, faculty and departments have moved anti-Zionist activism from the margins into university life, becoming a core engine of campus antisemitism. At least 115 faculty have publicly endorsed academic BDS, many while holding administrative roles. Dozens of departments and programs issued statements praising or defending last year’s illegal encampment and endorsing protester demands — including academic boycott and divestment — under official banners that signal institutional approval. From late 2023 through spring 2025, more than 20 Israel/Palestine events co-sponsored by numerous academic departments featured only BDS-supporting speakers; none offered a balancing view. Making matters worse, UCLA’s Faculty for Justice in Palestine, formed shortly after the October 2023 Hamas massacre for the express purpose of advancing academic BDS’s anti-normalization goals on campus, has organized teach-ins and events like the recent rally celebrating the Hamas massacre, and pursued legal efforts that marginalize Zionist students and deny Jewish identity. Even more troubling, FJP’s anti-Zionist mobilization is now being formalized through the faculty-initiated Consortium for Palestine Studies, founded in fall 2024 by five FJP-affiliated supporters of academic BDS. Branded as “at UCLA” but not approved by the Academic Senate, the Consortium uses UCLA’s name and infrastructure to legitimize anti-Zionist research and teaching and to co-sponsor events, including the upcoming “Zionism is Racism” lecture, effectively institutionalizing anti-Zionism without academic oversight. As these faculty- and department-led anti-normalization campaigns rapidly expanded, antisemitism surged: from July 2023 through June 2025, incidents at UCLA targeting Jewish members of the campus community for harm — including assaults, vandalism, and bullying – rose by nearly 3,000% compared with the prior two years. In the same period, rhetoric glorifying violence against Israel or Jews, and calling for or justifying the elimination of the Jewish state, increased by nearly 1,000%. This surge in antisemitic incidents is what triggered federal scrutiny. Earlier this year, the Department of Justice pursued a civil‑rights probe of UCLA, found the university in violation of federal law and transmitted to the UC Regents a proposed Resolution Agreement that was publicly released last week. While that proposal carries sweeping requirements and major financial exposure, it does not address the real institutional driver of the problem: faculty and academic units using official university channels to delegitimize Zionism and advance academic‑boycott anti‑normalization campaigns that incite antisemitic harassment and curtail Jewish and Zionist students’ participation in campus life. This is not a question of academic freedom; it is about institutional conduct and professional standards. When departments and faculty initiatives use UCLA’s name and platforms to label Zionism as racism or to praise Hamas’s October 7 attack as “righteous,” they weaponize academic authority, delegitimize a core part of many Jewish students’ identity, and incite hostility and harm towards them on campus. The message to Jewish and Zionist students is unmistakable: you are unwelcome and unsafe. If UCLA is serious about addressing campus antisemitism, it must bar faculty from using official titles and university resources for political advocacy and activism. It must end departmental partnerships with faculty advocacy groups that promote discriminatory boycotts and bar those groups from receiving university funds or using university facilities. And it must restructure or discipline departments that have materially contributed to a hostile environment for students. Even under DOJ’s sweeping proposal, UCLA can satisfy new requirements and still miss the heart of the problem if it refuses to acknowledge and address how faculty and departments use the university’s name and platforms for political ends. Jewish and Zionist students deserve to learn without fear. If UCLA declines to act, campus antisemitism will continue, and no fines or compliance plans will fix it. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tammi Rossman-Benjamin serves as executive director of AMCHA Initiative, a non-profit antisemitism watchdog, and was a University of California faculty member for twenty years. Previous Next

February 8, 2026 'Israelis steal kidneys': Teacher gets fired in California after sharing antisemitic video Lara Sukster Mosheyof “There’s no chance we would allow such a person to enter classrooms,” a local Israeli told N12. Originally Posted In: https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-885891?fbclid=IwZnRzaAP1t_dleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAo2NjI4NTY4Mzc5AAEepWru < Back A teacher was fired in San Diego, California, after uploading an antisemitic video saying that “Israelis steal kidneys, livers, and eyes,” N12 reported on Saturday. A former member of the San Diego Unified School District in California , the teacher, identified as Nasreen Atassi, was removed from the staff after the Jewish community pressured the authorities. “There’s no chance we would allow such a person to enter classrooms,” a local Israeli told N12. According to StopAntisemitism, Atassi was a special education teacher. In the shared video, the teacher claimed that Israel “stole the protests, like they always steal from people – including body parts such as kidneys, livers, and eyes.” The declaration came as a reference to American Jews ' support for demonstrations by Iranians in the US. Jewish community responsible for official complaint In a declaration to N12, Dr. Halevi Feldman, a board member representing House of Israel – Balboa Park, shared the information that the House's community has a person responsible for collecting data regarding antisemitism cases. This source, who prefers to remain anonymous, documents the antisemitic acts and "passes them on to the relevant authorities.” Feldman noted that the community's actions were mostly responsible for getting Atassi punished. By sharing the case online, responding to posts, tagging the authorities, and sending complaints to the body employing the former teacher, the complaint against the antisemitic video ended in the firing decision. Atassi was removed from the education body less than a day from the time the video was shared online, said Feldman, explaining that "additional steps were taken behind the scenes" for it to happen. He added that the House of Israel community was not surprised to encounter the video, “We’re no longer shocked when we see things like this, but we absolutely do not intend to give up or remain silent, and certainly not to allow such a person to be part of San Diego’s education system.” Previous Next

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

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

November 18, 2023 The Inside Story of How Palestinians Took Over the World Gary Wexler The brilliant Palestinian plan to capture the pliable minds of American college students was laid out in front of me 25 years ago, during a very sinister business meeting in Israel. Originally Posted In: https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/columnist/365220/the-inside-story-of-how-palestinians-took-over-the-world/ < Back The brilliant Palestinian plan to capture the pliable minds of American college students was laid out in front of me 25 years ago, during a very sinister business meeting in Israel. It was around the time of the Oslo Accords. I had been hired by the Ford Foundation to create a marketing institute for their grantees in the country. Ford was funding the operations of both Jewish and Arab organizations within the Israeli green line, in an effort to help build a vibrant liberal civil society. Ford put me in partnership with a young Israeli woman, Debra London. (Debra, now one of my closest friends, has just been selected to head up fundraising for the rebuilding of Kibbutz Be’eri.) She and I drew up a plan to interview each of the grantees, as well as Israeli ad agencies and media firms. While we wanted to learn about the grantees, we also planned to secure free marketing work and media to be an essential part of the institute. When we interviewed the Jewish organizations, the atmosphere was almost giddy with hope, possibility and belief in Shimon Peres’s new Middle East. Each organization we interviewed talked excitedly about peace and co-existence, a flourishing economy among both the Jews and the Palestinians, collaborative projects and interchanges. But when we interviewed the Arab organizations, the word “peace” never passed their lips. They spoke of independence, dignity, self-rule, a state. One person even told me she would never use the word “du-kiyum ” (co-existence). “There is no such thing as co-existence,” she stressed. “We are just the tenants living on the property that the Jews now own. That’s not a balanced co-existence.” I tried to explain to my fellow Jewish liberals that we — the Jews and the Arabs — were having two very separate conversations. We were talking “peace.” They were talking “independence.” But as the weeks of interviews progressed, I found the Arab organizations were talking about a whole lot more. I asked hard questions of both the Jews and Arabs in the interviewing process. With the Arab organizations, when I brought up any sensitive, and not-so-sensitive, issues—like terrorism, cooperation and even budget—the interviewee would slam on the brakes. And then from each organization, the same words were spoken: “When you are in Haifa meeting with Itijaa, you can ask that question to Ameer Makhoul.” Itijaa was an Arab civil rights organization. Ameer Makhoul was its executive director. It became clear to me that Ameer Makhoul had some type of control over all the Arab NGOs I was speaking to. Finally, Debra and I arrived at the offices of Itijaa. Skinny, bespectacled, young Ameer Makhoul emerged from his office, took a look at me and said, “So this is the Gary Wexler who has been asking all the questions.” And then he ticked off every question I had asked along with the name of each person I had posed the question to. He brought us into his office and began pacing. “So, Gary Wexler, let me answer your questions in the following way. One: Gary Wexler, who is sitting in front of me now, went to Los Angeles City College for two years where you were an Israel activist and editor of the school newspaper. You wrote a lot about Israel. And continued to do so at California State University, Northridge. You spent five summers as a volunteer on Kibbutz Ayelet Hashachar. Through your marketing agency, Passion Marketing, you service the following clients of the Jewish world and in Israel.” He named every one. I knew this guy was trouble. “And now, Gary Wexler,” he sat down, “let me give you more direct answers.” He looked me straight in the eye. “Just like you were a Zionist campus activist, we will create, over the next years, Palestinian campus activists in America and all over the world. Bigger and better than any Zionist activists. Just like you spent your summers on the kibbutz, we will bring college students to spend their summers in refugee camps and work with our people. Just like you have been part of creating global pro-Israel organizations, we will create global pro-Palestinian organizations. Just like you today help create PR campaigns and events for Israel, so will we, but we will get more coverage than you ever have.” He stood again this time, right over me. “You wonder how we will make this happen, how we will pay for this? Not with the money from your liberal Jewish organizations who are now funding us. But from the European Union, Arab and Muslim governments, wealthy Arab people and their organizations. Eventually, we will not take another dollar from the Jews.” Then he approached real close. “What do you think of this?” I took a breath. I remained professional. “Nothing. I’m here on behalf of the Ford Foundation collecting information for a planned marketing institute.” He came even closer. “I am asking what does Gary Wexler think of what I just said. You, Gary Wexler.” I repeated my answer. He came even closer. “I ask again. What does Gary Wexler think of what I just said.” Debra and I got up. I took my writing pad. “I feel that you are threatening me and we are leaving.” The next morning I received a call from the program officer at the Ford Foundation. “Gary, we have a problem. We received a call from Ameer Makhoul and we understand you spewed out all sorts of Zionist propaganda and he felt very threatened by you.” I told him it was a lie. The program officer continued to press me as to what I had said. I related the conversation word for word. He repeated what Ameer Makhoul had said. I told him to call Debra London who was with me through the entire interview, and verify it with her. I also told him that they better check their funding to these Arab organizations, because Ameer Makhoul appeared to be controlling all of them with some very hateful behaviors. He backed down. Debra and I wrote up our recommendations for how they needed to build the marketing institute, including a recommendation for using the pro bono work, worth nearly 1 million shekels, that we had secured from the ad agencies. The program officer, a former academic focused on the nonprofit sector, couldn’t understand the value of businesses being involved and rejected it out of hand. A few weeks later, he told Debra and me that he had hired an NGO consulting team to finish the work. They would be giving several hours of consultation to each organization. Several years later, I learned Ameer Makhoul had been arrested by the Israelis as a spy for Syria. As the years went on, I began to see what Ameer Makhoul had laid out to me taking shape. The PR coverage was first: The Muhammad al-Durrah incident in Gaza, when a 12-year-old boy was shot to death on the second day of the Second Intifada, capturing global headlines. The Mavi Marmara, the Turkish Flotilla to Gaza that the Israelis stormed, killing several Palestinian activists, grabbing global headlines. I knew the Mavi Marmara was manufactured for the exposure it would gain. Then the campuses: The creation of Apartheid Week worldwide. The growth of BDS. The student volunteers who began by the thousands to work in the Palestinian territories and its refugee camps. The shocking creation of anti-Zionist Jewish student groups. As an award-winning copywriter and creative director in ad agencies and a professor of Communication at USC, I have developed an intuitive antenna to detect similarities between writing styles, idea styles and conceptual creation. In the early years of this pro-Palestinian campaign, I could see the commonalities of excellence, style and manipulation across all their platforms. Teaching on a university campus gave me a front-row seat at this theater of darkening skies. People of color, particularly antisemitic Black groups like BLM, were organizing to identify with the Palestinians. Many organizations representing people seen as oppressed were moved to identify with the Palestinians. Students of every variety were swayed. People of color, particularly antisemitic Black groups like BLM, were organizing to identify with the Palestinians. Many organizations representing people seen as oppressed were moved to identify with the Palestinians. Students of every variety were swayed. I could see the commonalities of language creation and transfer — my field — being applied to the Jews. Many of them were old antisemitic tropes into which new life was being breathed: Israel and Jews are colonialists just like other white oppressors around the world. Israel is an apartheid society, the same as South Africa was. Jews have white privileg e, even though more than 50% of Jews are dark-skinned people from the Arab world, Iran and Africa. Jews hold power in media and banking, making them the enemy. Jews center themselves as capitalists and donors. Jews don’t hold space for anyone but themselves. Jews need to be held accountable for the pain they are causing. If you challenged any of this you were a racist, the worst thing you could possibly be accused of. (Except if you are racist against Jews. Then you prove you are a true ally of the oppressed.) Our enemies have had a real success. They have formed a winning international communication army with trained troops everywhere. Israeli writer, producer and former antisemitism envoy Noa Tishby recently said that students, particularly Jewish ones who are protesting against Israel, have been “played,” but I don’t know if even she understands the background and extent of it. They haven’t just been played, they’ve been turned. Many of them are alumni of Jewish day schools and camps. Those students believe they have joined the other side because they were the victims of a propagandized Zionist education and have now seen the light. No, they are the victims of a propagandized, slow, well-crafted plan, laid out to me by Ameer Makhoul. And what has been the Jewish world’s response to all of this? Funders are now putting up pro-Jewish and pro-Israel billboards in American cities. As if a clever one-line message can combat all these brilliant, strategized organizing efforts on behalf of our enemies. Others are organizing TikTok and Twitter troops. But that work is in response to the playing field that has been established and won by the enemies of the Jewish people. We show ourselves in a defensive mode. We are playing on the field they have drawn. We need to draw our own, in a very big way. There are many good organizations being funded and working on our behalf, but their work, alone, is not the answer. It is imperative we have overall strategizing and coordinating. Right now, it is every organization for itself. It’s an uncoordinated battlefield where each squadron is moving in its own direction, rather than toward the same hill—the only way for victory. It is imperative that we create big, brilliant, creative ideas of engagement. We must view this as a pervasive Jewish community organizing effort for communication purposes, in collaboration with the Israelis. American Jews are sending cans of food and socks to Israel while the Palestinians are conceptualizing bigger and better worldwide actions. We’re still fighting and demonizing one another. Many organizations have not yet woken up that it is no longer business as usual. In the last three weeks I have received no fewer than 200 solicitations for 200 separate efforts. American Jews are sending cans of food and socks to Israel while the Palestinians are conceptualizing bigger and better worldwide actions. We’re still fighting and demonizing one another. Many organizations have not yet woken up that it is no longer business as usual. I’m on the board of one that I’ve had to rattle, saying, “No, we cannot position what we are doing just as we always have. Everything now has to be repositioned against the background of this war on Israel and the Jewish people.” In the propaganda war, we could be learning a lot from our enemies, who have learned a lot from us. Maybe we need our own Ameer Makhoul and all his buddies? Is any leadership team, that we can all get behind, going to step forward? --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gary Wexler was recently honored by the National Library of Israel with the creation of The Gary Wexler Archive, a 20 year history of Jewish life told through the advertising campaigns he created for Jewish organizations in the US, Canada and Israel. Previous Next

June 24, 2024 The Child Soldiers of Ethnic Studies Neetu Arnold How American students are radicalized against the West Originally Posted In: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/child-soldiers-ethnic-studies < Back Shortly after the start of the organized pro-Palestinian student riots on campuses across the country last fall, the Rutgers University chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) issued a set of demands that followed a standard template now evident at multiple universities. In addition to divestment from Israel, incorporating “anti-Palestinian racism“ into all mandatory DEI training and race-based curricula for faculty and staff, and the creation of an Arab Cultural Center, the students demanded that Rutgers “hire additional professors specializing in Palestine and settler-colonial studies and institute a department of Middle East studies.” Since then, Rutgers and other universities have caved to the demands of the mob. Middle East and Islamic studies centers became avenues for foreign governments to purchase influence and prestige a long time ago. But today, these centers play a much broader role in national politics, law, scholarship, and culture. And the drivers are no longer just foreign political actors, but increasingly domestic ones, too. In this context, student activists’ apparently spontaneous demands to establish more Middle East studies departments, to hire more Palestinian and Middle East faculty, and to integrate Palestine into DEI and ethnic and race-based curricula should be viewed instead as the intentional expansion and consolidation of leftist institutional power. This has meant the creation of jobs and patronage for a new phalanx of progressive sectarian foot soldiers under the umbrella of ethnic studies. Many of these programs aim to create a reserve of activists who cover a wide array of ethnic and identity grievances and causes that extend beyond the halls of academia, with recruitment beginning in grade school. From a young age, an increasing number of American students are being fed anti-Western and anti-Israel material funded and distributed by a constellation of dark money, left-wing groups and foreign governments. Worse, their success to date can largely be attributed to backing, financial and otherwise, from our own federal government. The nuclei of Middle East education at American universities are the Middle East and Islamic studies centers. There are around 50 such centers distributed across the country, depending on how you count them. Columbia University alone hosts three: the Center for Palestine Studies, the Middle East Institute, and the Sakip Sabanci Center for Turkish Studies. These centers are no strangers to controversy. For at least two decades, scholars and policymakers alike have decried the centers’ whitewashing of Islamic extremism and anti-Israel bias. Yet the centers have remained mostly untouched, and a few new ones have even appeared. Throughout their history, these centers have taken money from both the federal government and foreign governments. For instance, archived documents retrieved by the National Association of Scholars show that Georgetown’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS) relied heavily on foreign countries in its early days during the 1970s. Arab countries contributed two-thirds of the funding needed to help Georgetown leaders reach their $6.1 million fundraising goal for CCAS. During this same time, the foreign governments of Oman, Libya, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) contributed more than $1 million for various professorships at CCAS. Today, the center is one of about a dozen Middle East National Resource Centers (NRC) that receive more than $3 million in funding from the federal government. Harvard University’s Center for Middle East Studies started in the 1950s with funding from the Ford and Rockefeller foundations and then-American-owned oil company Aramco. Soon thereafter, it received funding from the federal government as an early NRC. Beginning in the 1980s, the center helped secure tens of millions of dollars in funds primarily from Turkey and Saudi Arabia both for its own faculty and for affiliated programs at Harvard. The original purpose for the centers, established in the 1950s, was to produce policy-relevant information that the government could use to develop sound Middle East foreign policy. Relatively little expertise on the region existed in the United States at the time, which made getting up to speed a national security priority. But it’s hard to see that purpose in what passes through the centers and their affiliated faculty today. Today, the old foundations have combined with new ones to push for more ideological education on the Middle East not only on college campuses, but also in K-12 education. While it’s easy to dismiss the centers as too niche or academic to have any real influence, this would be a mistake. For one, these centers have long produced area experts that populate U.S. government agencies and the foreign service. The degeneration of the education provided by these programs into its current activist form tracks with the increasing activism of government bureaucrats, such as the political appointees and staff members of several government agencies who signed a letter objecting to the administration’s Israel policy, and the various State Department officials who have resigned in protest. But the toxic influence extends beyond government bureaucracy. Federally funded Middle East centers produced more than 2,500 instructional materials between 2000 and 2020, of which over 60% were intended for use by K-12 educators. Content matter ranged from climate justice to Islamophobia to youth activism. These centers also conducted over 22,000 outreach programs throughout the same time period, of which over 20% were intended for K-12 educators. Both the instructional materials and outreach programs are part of the centers’ mandate from the federal government, so our taxpayer dollars directly fund these programs. The University of Texas at Austin’s Center for Middle East Studies, along with other NRCs at the school, used federal funds in 2021 to host a critical race literacy workshop, where K-12 teachers “(Un)learn[ed] patterns of whiteness in literacy teaching.” The university claims on its website that the event supported “instructional goals for literacy standards for the State of Texas.” Or consider a toolkit on “Women and Gender in the Middle East” produced by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies. Their set of readings directs students to a YouTube video of an overview of Edward Said’s Orientalism, produced by a channel called “Invictapalestina.” For those students who prefer a book, the toolkit points them to an anthology of Arab feminist writing, including by Columbia University professor Lila Abu-Lughod, who, ironically, in the past has criticized the “focus on gender-based violence” in Arab and Islamic countries as it “leave[s] aside the violence of states … like Israel.” Middle East faculty at top universities train the next generation of anti-Israel and anti-American activists by training K-12 teachers. For instance, New York University’s Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies partners with Jordan-based nonprofit Global Nomads Group to host an annual fellowship program for grades 7-12 teachers. During the fellowship, teachers create curricula to teach students about the Middle East. New Utrecht High School teacher Nathan Floro’s curriculum, to take one example, would ensure students have a “basic understanding of orientalism and be able to critique various media through a post-colonial lens.” NYU also funded Newton Public Schools teacher David Bedar, whose fellowship at NYU focused on redeveloping college-level content for high school students on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA), throughout 2018 and 2019, acquired Bedar’s curriculum materials and found in a detailed analysis that the course favored the Palestinian over the Zionist narrative of the conflict by distorting and omitting facts. Global Nomads Group offers its own series of “youth courses” promoting similar messages. In a lesson plan within their “Human Rights” course, Global Nomads claims students will learn the difference between equity and equality and why “marginalized people are denied human rights.” They also offer courses on “Art in Action,” “Ocean Health,” and in a twist of irony, “Overcoming Bias.” On its website, Global Nomads discloses that its Student to World program “is supported by the Stevens Initiative, which is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, with funding provided by the U.S. Government, and is administered by the Aspen Institute. The Stevens Initiative is also supported by the Bezos Family Foundation and the governments of Morocco and the United Arab Emirates.” Other donors listed on the group’s website include Qatar Foundation International. In 2021, Yale University’s Council on Middle East Studies hosted a summer conference for New Haven Public Schools teachers where they received free access to films featuring former Women’s March co-chair and antisemitic activist Linda Sarsour, and a list of books, many of which advocate for looser immigration policies. The event primarily featured Palestinian and other Arab speakers and panelists. The one session that featured an official from the American Jewish Committee consisted of a discussion about centering the Mizrahi and Sephardic Jewish experience—in other words, challenging what the Columbia School of Social Work orientation guidebook calls “Ashkenormativity.” Foreign governments also support these programs, whether directly or indirectly by funding the Middle East centers themselves. Some centers, such as the Saudi-funded King Fahd Center at the University of Arkansas, were started with funding from foreign governments. Others have received periodic funding from foreign governments, such as the United Arab Emirate’s funding to UCLA’s Center for Near Eastern Studies. Still others work in partnership with foreign governments to host teacher workshops. Qatar Foundation International (QFI), the American arm of the Qatar Foundation, is a common collaborator for these programs. QFI funds professional development workshops for Arabic language teachers through Arabic Teacher Councils. The councils are hosted by schools such as George Washington University, Georgia State University, and the University of Chicago. In their early days in the 1950s and 1960s, Middle East studies centers were beneficiaries of funding by large private foundations, such as the Rockefeller Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, and the Ford Foundation, which, in turn, enjoyed close relationships with the government. Today, the old foundations have combined with new ones to push for more ideological education on the Middle East not only on college campuses, but also in K-12 education. Left-wing organizations such as the Open Society Foundations and the Tides Foundation actively fund efforts to bring K-12 education in line with progressive dogma and socialize American kids into its politics. This same network of organizations funds many of the pro-Palestinian student demonstrators who have taken over elite campuses. George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Westchester People’s Action Coalition (WESPAC), and the Tides Foundation are just a handful of the organizations that have financially supported the student protests. For instance, the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights has received at least $355,000 from Rockefeller Brothers Fund and $300,000 from Open Society Foundations, according to The New York Post. U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights member Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA) hosts a project called “Teach Palestine,” where educators disseminate instructional materials and teaching strategies on the Middle East. Teach Palestine is coordinated by two educators affiliated with the Liberated Ethnic Studies initiatives nationally and in California. Between 2017 and 2023, the Open Society Foundations and Rockefeller Brothers Fund cumulatively gave MECA $1.3 million. Teach Palestine includes testimonials from educators who actively teach about the region in their classrooms. Once students arrive on campus and are exposed to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in further detail, little is needed to radicalize them. One teacher goes beyond the third grade curriculum standards by fitting “lessons about the Middle East into the nooks and crannies of our day.” Her description of Israeli history is that it is a “European colony” for the Jewish people that has been continually committing ethnic cleansing since its founding. A librarian brought MECA members to teach children about the “similarities between Israeli and US settler colonialism.” A sixth grade teacher had her students write acrostic poems on settler colonialism as part of a curriculum that focused on “centering Palestinian youth voices” and connected the Palestinian youth experience to Black Lives Matter. She proudly states that “some strong activism and advocacy could come” if students were pushed to the “next level” when engaging in her lesson activities. The Proteus Fund, which connects “philanthropy with the frontlines of social justice,” is another key player. Since 2016, the Proteus Fund and its lobbying arm Proteus Action League have received $16 million from the Open Society Foundations. Aside from Open Society Foundations, Proteus lists nearly 40 funding partners, which includes the Tides Foundation and Rockefeller Brothers Fund. One of Proteus’ recent initiatives, the RISE Together Fund, claims to oppose intolerance against “Black, African, Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian (BAMEMSA) communities.” As part of this initiative, they offer organizations immediate and flexible grants through its Rapid Response Fund. Since Oct. 7, Proteus has focused on K-12 advocacy, coordinating legal support, and connecting attorneys with those who have lost educational opportunities due to protests. In the latter half of 2023, Proteus gave a cumulative $700,000 to 35 organizations for flexible spending grants. The beneficiaries of these recent grants include pro-BDS organizations such as the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, Adalah Justice Project, and the Palestinian Youth Movement. Some of these organizations have been tied to the recent wave of demonstrations among high school students. New York City’s Community Education Council for District 14 partnered with several groups, including the Palestinian Youth Movement, to encourage a 700-student protest. The Arab Resource and Organizing Center hosted walkouts for Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) students. BUSD teachers covered for protesters by marking these students as legitimately “excused,” even though school policy said otherwise. Last month, hundreds of NYC school kids staged a pro-Palestinian walkout and protested at the Department of Education in Lower Manhattan. The walkout was organized by Teachers Unite and the Palestine Youth Movement, along with NYC Educators for Palestine, Al-AWDA: The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, Movement of Rank-&-File Educators (MORE), and Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM). Similar movements in New Jersey, Oregon, and elsewhere in the country also involve mushrooming “educators for Palestine” organizations that are contracted to develop curricula and organize student action. It would be one thing if this educational infrastructure simply resulted in American school kids learning a biased set of facts about Israel and Palestine. But simply teaching even skewed history is not the goal, as evidenced by the many “Free Palestine” student protesters who apparently didn’t even know what they were protesting. The goal, rather, is to teach school students a framework of values that they can apply blindly to every social and political issue. To see how this looks in practice, consider one teacher’s comment at a March QFI-funded Arabic Teachers Council workshop. Attendees were asked how they enact social justice education in their classrooms. The teacher responded: Instead of asking them [students] “what do you think about this topic,” we talk more about principles and values and structures. Right, like I asked them last week “Do you think we have freedom of expression here at [inaudible] about any social, political, or religious topic?” So, we talk about structures versus the topic itself specifically because some of them are afraid that if they speak specifically about the topic that something might happen. Later in the workshop, teachers were presented a social justice rubric they could use in classrooms. One of the rubric components assesses how well students produce “insights from social justice theme(s).” Students who want to exceed expectations must demonstrate their understanding of social justice themes by incorporating evidence, such as observing and applying power structures. This “education” is indistinguishable from so-called protest “toolkits” that “teach Palestine” groups put together for school kids, which is made up of “talking points,” “chants,” and “demands”—that is, material designed to develop “activists” or foot soldiers to be deployed on the streets at will. Unsurprisingly, the talking points and “demands” grade school kids are taught to recite are identical to those of their college counterparts and mentors, serving the same purpose of recruitment and consolidation of institutional power. In NYC, for instance, the demands were to “Support Palestinian-led curriculum initiatives about Palestinian culture and history. Mandate education about Palestine in history curriculums that centers Palestinian perspectives and experiences. Redirect city funding away from policing and into our public schools, prioritizing low-income Black and Brown communities.” Once students arrive on campus and are exposed to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in further detail, little is needed to radicalize them. As an organizer for SJP told The New Yorker in December: “S.J.P. is oriented in a special way. The idea is to appeal to people who know nothing.” As we deal with the fallout of the anti-Israel protests over the coming months, it will be tempting to look for easy solutions. Perhaps universities can rework their policies to prevent future disruptions. Maybe even some programs can be defunded. But the process that led to this was years-long, requiring the coordination of dozens of organizations and millions of dollars in funding. Undoing it will require reversing the proliferation of sectarian fake disciplines and leftist identitarian studies programs, and replacing activist curricula with fact-based lessons that promote critical thinking—a tall order, to be sure. Middle East education at all levels needs a complete overhaul. It has gone from an attempt to help inform our geopolitics and augment our security posture against the various threats facing the United States in the region, to a factory of apologists for America’s enemies and advocates on their behalf. Now, they have brought the threat home. Previous Next

October 3, 2025 California Teachers’ Union Ruins an Earnest Effort to Confront Antisemitism Will Swaim And in so doing, has helped demonstrate why California’s schools, once among the best in the nation, are now among its worst. Originally Posted In: https://californiapolicycenter.org/unions-ruin-antisemitism-effort/ < Back California has a problem with antisemitism in its public schools, but the proposed remedy — a massive new regulatory agency outlined in a bill on the governor’s desk — will do approximately nothing to end the madness. But not exactly nothing: If you’re a leader of the state’s powerful teachers’ union, debating “settler colonialism” in Israel, the plight of Palestinians in Gaza, genocide, the virtues of Hamas, and whether American Jews are “white” or “white-adjacent” (and in either case equally “privileged”) is far better than confronting the union’s role in the 40-year decline of public education in California. In February, months before it arrived on Governor Gavin Newsom’s desk, Assembly Bill 715 started life as a laser-focused response to the problem of antisemitism in the state’s schools. Approved unanimously in the state assembly, it seemed certain to move through the state senate with a standing ovation, ticker tape falling from the gallery, and a college drumline. Instead, the bill ran into the state’s powerful California Teachers Association (CTA). Lengthy negotiations followed. By the time the state senate approved the bill and moved it to the office of Governor Newsom, AB 715 had become something different and even malign : a blueprint for the creation of a massive new office of civil rights attached loosely to California’s education department — an office charged with policing “violations” of the civil rights of all of the familiar racial, ethnic, and gender-fluid identities favored by the far left . . . plus antisemitism. It’s small comfort that, among its new employees, AB 715 “would also require the Office of Civil Rights to employ the Antisemitism Prevention Coordinator to be appointed by the Governor and confirmed by the Senate” — all of whom benefit magnificently from CTA political campaign activities. The legislation even helpfully provides a job description for that employee: “to, among other things, develop, consult, and provide antisemitism education to school personnel to identify and proactively prevent antisemitism and to make recommendations, in coordination with the executive director of the state board, to the Legislature on legislation necessary for the prevention of antisemitism in educational settings.” That’s a lot of developing, consulting, and recommending in the proposed law. But there’s little — if any — obvious authority. And that’s one reason to bet that Gavin Newsom will sign the bill: In this fight between his allies in the state legislature’s Jewish Caucus and the California Teachers Association — itself a kind of fourth branch of government — AB 715 is the perfect political solution: a do-nothing law that promises to do everything. But there is a silver lining. In blocking real reform, AB 715, the California Teachers Association has revealed why California’s schools, once among the best in the nation, are now among its worst. * * * In its July letter opposing the assembly measure, the CTA makes it clear that its highest priority isn’t the education of students. It’s about progressive politics. The letter opens with a prefabricated declaration that the union is (of course) “firmly committed to schools that are free of racism, sexism, religious and gender discrimination.” The implied “but” arrives promptly: “We are also concerned with academic freedom and the ability of educators to ensure that instruction include perspectives and materials that reflect the cultural and ethnic diversity of all of California’s students.” The union tips its hand immediately, and all of its cards are political. Supporting the assembly version of AB 715, the union says, would offer comfort to the real enemy — “a regime [a regime! ] in Washington D.C. that sows division at all levels of academia and seeks to drive a wedge between communities that should be working together to address hate and discrimination.” To make matters worse, the CTA says, the assembly version “would unfortunately arm some others” — “ill-intentioned people” — with the tools they “seek to weaponize public education.” The CTA knows this will happen because, it says, these “extremists” have already filed “meritless” complaints “meant to disrupt or challenge policies that support LGBTQ+ inclusivity or to target LGBTQ+ students and staff.” But the CTA’s biggest concern about the antisemitism bill is that it might “privilege” Jews over other groups, and that would undo the union’s primary political objective of advancing the rights of some groups above others — not of eliminating “privilege,” in other words, but of granting privilege to the people CTA believes deserve it. The letter allows us to watch as the CTA performs a magic trick in reverse, stuffing a rabbit back into a top hat, turning the problem of antisemitism into merely one problem among many. As approved in the assembly, the CTA asserts, AB 715 would “impose limits and define standards for course instruction regarding Israel, Palestine, Zionism, or the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, something that we don’t do for any other active conflict in the world, e.g., conflicts in Ukraine, Rwanda, Congo.” Union “members have expressed concerns about lifting these experiences of inequity above those of other groups,” the letter claims. “Focusing on antisemitism alone might be seen as prioritizing one form of discrimination over others, potentially alienating groups facing other forms of systemic discrimination, such as racism, Islamophobia, or anti-LGBTQ+ bias.” The bill’s key provision, the creation of a state Antisemitism Prevention Coordinator, would “not address any other forms of hate or discrimination, something that is equally needed.” “Equally needed”? Equating the very real problem of antisemitism in public education with other “forms of hate or discrimination” ignores reality. There is, thank God, no pedagogical effort in California schools — no curriculum, no program, no courses, no teacher, no third-party vendors or nonprofits — working to resuscitate the Ku Klux Klan, marginalizing Muslim children, forcing young women into a handmaid’s tale of barefoot early motherhood, or campaigning to vilify gay kids. None of that exists. On the other hand, the CTA and its hundreds of local affiliates — and the thousands of state and local officials, from the governor to every local school board member, whose political campaigns those unions fund — have indeed run a very well-organized campaign to bash Jews. * * * The strange fruit of the teachers’ unions’ formalized antisemitism is evident everywhere in the state’s public schools. Following Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israelis, the Oakland Unified school board backed Hamas. “We want to make sure Palestinians have the liberation they so rightfully deserve in their own land,” said board member Valarie Bachelor, switching seamlessly between singular and plural first-person pronouns . “I want to make sure we stand on our progressive organizing history and we don’t just sit on it. We stand on it and we say we need to do more and we need to do this now.” Leaders of the city’s teachers’ union, the Oakland Educators Association , amplified the board’s declaration with their own statement calling for the elimination of Israel. More than 30 Jewish families left the district. “I just felt that there wasn’t a path forward for Jewish families because I had reached out to OUSD and asked them to have a conversation about how they were going to keep Jewish families feeling safe and included,” one parent explained . “When there were lesson plans that were being taught that said, ‘Draw the Zionist bully,’ or ‘I for Intifada, J is for Jesus,’ to me, it felt like – honestly – we were being targeted and singled out and alienated.” In February 2024 , the Louis D. Brandeis Center and the Anti-Defamation League filed a federal complaint against nearby Berkeley Unified, alleging “severe and persistent” antisemitic harassment of Jewish and Israeli students. The complaint cited students being taunted with such slurs as “You have a big nose because you are a stupid Jew,” asking what their “number is” (an apparent reference to Holocaust tattoos), a teacher posting “messages of anti-hate” targeting the district’s only Jewish teacher, and antisemitic imagery in art classes. Some students have departed the district. Anti-Israel teachers marched students in Berkeley’s middle school and high school out of classes in 2024 protests — in one case to celebrate the one-year anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 attack. Across the Bay, immediately following the October 7, 2023, attack, the San Francisco Unified School District hired the Arab Resource and Organizing Center to run student and teacher trainings “related to leadership development and cultural empowerment.” AROC describes itself as a group of “abolitionists, feminists, and internationalists who believe that the liberation of SWANA (South West Asian and North African) people is inextricably tied to the liberation of all oppressed people.” Meanwhile, the district’s antisemitism training for teachers ran into organized resistance from teachers’ union activists. By contract, the district could require teachers to attend the training — but not to listen. Members of the American Jewish Committee asked to run that training say that as soon as their training began, a leader of United Educators–San Francisco stood up and described “at great length” his own take on the problem of antisemitism: it’s an exclusively right-wing phenomenon, the union leader asserted. He then led most of the teachers out of the room for a separate conversation. By then, the clock on the formal training had nearly run down. We could go on and never exhaust the catalog of formalized antisemitism. In July 2024, federal officials concluded that Jewish students in the central coast town of Carmel were “subjected to pervasive, antisemitic harassment over a three-year period, exposed to repeated swastika graffiti in bathrooms and on desks, a Hitler reference and a verbal threat targeting Jewish people.” California officials say two ethnic studies teachers in the nearby city of Campbell violated state law by presenting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a “one-sided anti-Zionism” lesson. In Los Angeles, teachers at an August 2024 United Teachers of Los Angeles Leadership Conference were caught on video training their colleagues to “advocate and leverage your positionality” in the classroom in order to “globalize the intifada” — that is, to help Los Angeles students understand the putative link between the war in Gaza and their own struggles in California. In April, officials at a meeting of the Pajaro Valley Unified School District upbraided Jewish parents for their objections to an ethnic studies curriculum that singled out Jews for their white privilege. “I’ve been a little bit taken aback by the lack of acknowledgement of the economic power historically held by the Jewish community,” said board member Joy Flynn. “I don’t see you people at protests against immigration,” said board member Gabriel Medina. “I don’t see you at protests when people are being taken away right now. I don’t see you advocating to bring back Abrego Garcia or Mahmoud Khalil. I don’t see you guys doing that. You only show up to meetings when it’s beneficial for you, so you can tell brown people who they are.” Days later, the district’s superintendent offered the usual anodyne explanation that, their Jew-bashing notwithstanding, Pajaro Valley “stands firmly against all forms of racism, antisemitism, and hate.” The most prominent case erupted in Southern California’s Santa Ana Unified, where that district, the eighth largest in the state, settled a lawsuit in February 2025 over its ethnic studies courses. The highlight in that showdown came when district officials offered the defense that they were merely relying on guidance from the California Department of Education. The department’s 2019 draft Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum condemned Israel and otherwise omitted mention of Jewish Americans. The compromise version released a year later still allowed districts to include materials linked to the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement. * * * It’s much easier to opine on the plight of the Palestinian people and to assert what’s simply not true about Israel than to defend the 40-year decline of public education in California. And what a trajectory: Data emerging from the most recent national student testing shows that all U.S. students continue to fall behind their global counterparts in math, writing, and science . The decline has been especially steep in California. Despite spending more per student than any other state in the union, California consistently ranks among the nation’s worst states for public education . Some California teachers’ union leaders deny they’re running a political campaign with children as their targets. Others admit that’s the plan — and accept any learning loss as a necessary trade-off. Cecily Myart-Cruz, president of United Teachers of Los Angeles, famously told a reporter , “It’s OK that our babies may not have learned all their times tables...They know the difference between a riot and a protest. They know the words insurrection and coup .” It was Myart-Cruz who, confronted with a parent rebellion over lousy teacher performance, launched a UTLA “research project” to track the ethnic identity of the union’s public critics. Like most teachers’ union websites in California, the United Teachers of LA website looks like an advertisement for the Democratic Socialists of America: it’s a visual cacophony of demonstrations, bullhorns, protest signs, and clenched fists. To paraphrase the old joke, those who can’t do, teach — and those like Myart-Cruz who can’t teach fall back instead on controversial political ideologies they half-learned as college sophomores in order to lecture California K–12 students about the evils of Israel. It’s time to end that sort of pedagogical sleight-of-hand — to stop bashing Jews. Terminate teachers who, misunderstanding the actual job for which they’ve been hired, prefer to use their classrooms as indoctrination camps. California could follow that with a classic California practice: the burning of sage in every school and government building in the state, after which, having banished all bad spirits, it could return to the teaching of math, English, and science along with the classroom practices that once made a California education the envy of the world. Will Swaim is president of the California Policy Center and co-host with David Bahnsen of National Review’s “Radio Free California” podcast. 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

August 12, 2025 The Mamdani Index Dillon Hosier How to spot the next anti-Israel political star before it’s too late. Originally Posted In: https://www.jns.org/the-mamdani-index/ < Back The victory of New York state assemblyman Zohran Mamdani in New York City’s mayoral primary surprised many observers. He was outspent and lacked the traditional power brokers. He still won. A well-organized and politically extreme movement is beginning to reshape national politics, fostering anti-Israel positions early in the careers of state and local officials. For the pro-Israel community, the mission is urgent and clear: Build nimble and effective state and local pro-Israel networks. And do it now. That work is beginning through a collaboration that pairs Israeli-American Civic Action Network’s (ICAN) state and local monitoring and research with the Jewish Leadership Project’s network of activists. Guided by ICAN’s analysis, this network can focus on emerging threats and begin responding in key communities, laying the groundwork for coordinated and effective action before anti-Israel figures get too entrenched. Mamdani’s record did not appear overnight. We at ICAN first took notice of Mamdani in July 2023, when he introduced the “Not on Our Dime ” Act as a state legislator, targeting pro-Israel nonprofits while promoting rhetoric and alliances that signaled extreme radicalism. Unfortunately, in that pre-Oct. 7 summer, our warnings never had the chance to be acted upon. For several years, our organization has been building a framework for state and local political research to monitor and report on the public affairs activities of elected officials. Mamdani’s candidacy underscores the need for such a system. It operates as a political threat index—focusing on state and local officials - and identifies, tracks and scores anti-Israel positions before they mature into national influence. State and local politics are often a game of musical chairs, where political careers are made. Today’s city council member becomes a state legislator. Today’s state legislator becomes a member of Congress or the mayor of a major city. We can now track these officials, assessing the direction, pace and substance of their political trajectory in real time. The scale is significant, but quantifiable. At the state level, there are 7,383 legislators, and at the local level, a little more than 19,000 city councils, 16,000 school boards and 3,000 county governments. Anti-Israel coalitions understand this math and have targeted these offices for years. Our index distills years of research and analysis into five areas: First, substance: what officials say about Israel, Gaza, the BDS movement and antisemitism in speeches, interviews and written statements. Second, volume: how often anti-Israel messaging appears and whether it spikes around crises. Third, policy: votes, sponsorships and amendments that target Israel or Israeli-American civil society. Fourth, coalitions: links to groups such as the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Students for Justice in Palestine (SPJ), as well as participation in related events. Fifth, patterns: how positions escalate over time and how networks reinforce those shifts. This index goes beyond a scorecard. We examine the whole official, including social-media activity and engagement patterns; constituent newsletters and press releases; event attendance; and endorsements, given and received. The aim is to identify leading indicators that voting records alone will hide. Just two weeks after the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in Richmond, Calif., after hours of public testimony, Mayor Eduardo Martinez advanced a resolution accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing and collective punishment and urging a ceasefire. Richmond became the first city in the United States to adopt a ceasefire resolution - a symbolic yet influential move that was repeated by dozens of municipalities in the weeks that followed. Earlier this year in Massachusetts, State Representative Erika Uyterhoeven filed H.2984 to direct the state pension fund to divest from companies supplying military equipment to Israel unless those firms pledge to stop. The measure singles out Israel in statute and gives advocates a nationwide test case in a mainstream legislature. In Maryland, State Delegate Gabriel Acevero introduced the “Not on Our Dime ” Act. The bills would expose Maryland-registered nonprofits that support Israel to civil suits and penalties, including loss of charitable status. These are names you’ve likely never heard before, and these three officials are just the beginning. There are many more like them around the country. Officials build an Israel-centered brand, align with national advocacy networks and replicate a familiar package of policies and phrases. By the time the wider public notices, the infrastructure is in place. These are the proof points used to tune the model. Early detection allows engagement where education is still possible and organized opposition where it is not. Previous Next

February 3, 2026 ZOA Settles Antisemitism Lawsuit With Cherry Hill School District Mia Resnicow In June 2024, the ZOA filed a complaint on behalf of a Jewish student at Cherry Hill High School East and his parents relating to the conduct of the school and the school district in response to alleged harassment, intimidation, bullying and free speech violations of said student. Originally Posted In: https://www.jewishexponent.com/zoa-settles-antisemitism-lawsuit-with-cherry-hill-school-district/ < Back The Zionist Organization of America announced on Jan. 20 that it reached a settlement in its lawsuit against Cherry Hill Public Schools in New Jersey. In June 2024, the ZOA filed a complaint on behalf of a Jewish student at Cherry Hill High School East and his parents relating to the conduct of the school and the school district in response to alleged harassment, intimidation, bullying and free speech violations of said student. “I think one important aspect of this resolution, that I think applies to other cases, is the importance of educating your school community about the problem of antisemitism, helping the community understand how antisemitism can be expressed today, making it clear to your school community that the district or the university will have zero tolerance for antisemitism, however it’s expressed, and that is going to hold wrongdoers accountable,” Susan B. Tuchman, the director of ZOA’s Center for Law and Justice, told Philadelphia Jewish Exponent. The complaint alleged that school officials retaliated “harshly, undeservedly and outrageously” against the student for making complaints of bullying and harassment. “The antisemitic threats, harassment and intimidation were so offensive, severe and pervasive that they created a hostile environment for [the student] limiting his ability to participate in and benefit from High School East’s programs and activities,” the ZOA stated in the filed complaint. After Oct. 7, 2023, students at Cherry Hill High School East allegedly came to school wearing keffiyehs, waving Palestinian Arab flags, and shouting “Free Palestine.” The Jewish student took two short videos of the other students, expressing his opinion that the students were endorsing Hamas. According to the complaint, the videos did not violate any of the school’s rules or policies. The complaint also alleged that the Jewish student’s friend overheard Arab Muslim students in the school bathroom discussing a plan to jump the student for taking the videos. After reporting the incident to school officials, the school officials allegedly failed to address the threats. Another incident described in the filing involved the Jewish student being harassed in the school’s cafeteria by other students, and then being taken to speak with school officials, who allegedly threatened the student, telling him, “If you post any more videos, you’re out of here.” A day later, the student was suspended for four days in October 2023. The complaint also alleged that school officials publicly blamed the student for one of the incidents, saying that someone was putting misinformation on social media, causing problems at school. According to the complaint, no actions were taken against the other students. Under the settlement, which was executed in May 2025, the school district is required to expunge any information and evidence relating to disciplinary action taken again the Jewish student, continue to provide education on antisemitism as part of its mandatory Holocaust education, commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Day annually, and during the week of Holocaust Remembrance Day starting on April 21, 2025, maintain a table of books in the district’s libraries that commemorate Jewish history. Additionally, the settlement required the school district to issue a statement on its website promising that all perpetrators of antisemitism would be held accountable in the district and include data about the rise in antisemitic incidents in New Jersey. The statement also included the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism. According to Tuchman, after the settlement was executed, the ZOA and the school district disagreed on one of the terms of the settlement. The settlement agreement stated the school district was required to issue a statement and post the statement on its website. “When we said that, it was with the knowledge that the district regularly issues statements to the community, whether it’s by email or by letter,” she explained. The ZOA brought the matter to court in June 2025, and then the court’s decision was released last month, and, Tuchman explained, “determined that simply posting the antisemitism statement on the website was a fair reading of the party settlement agreement.” Overall, Tuchman said the ZOA is very pleased with the outcome of the settlement agreement. “It shouldn’t have to take a settlement agreement to get the district to educate the community about this area’s problem of antisemitism, which infected its own district,” Tuchman added. “But overall, yes, we are very pleased with the outcome.” Cherry Hill Public Schools did not respond to a request for comment from Philadelphia Jewish Exponent prior to publication. Previous Next

May 20, 2025 To Protect Zionism, We Must Reject Ethnic Studies | Algemeiner Nicole Bernstein When a movement tells you — clearly and proudly — that it opposes everything you stand for, the most self-respecting thing you can do is believe them. Originally Posted In: https://www.algemeiner.com/2025/05/20/to-protect-zionism-we-must-reject-ethnic-studies/ < Back There are two hard truths at the core of the ethnic studies mandate debate currently raging across California, which continue to generate intense division and a growing number of lawsuits. For those of us in the Jewish community, acknowledging these truths is urgent. Wherever ethnic studies — and its ideological sibling, DEI — are implemented , Jewish students have faced some of the most egregious violations of Constitutionally protected civil rights our country has experienced in recent times. The first hard truth is that to teach “authentic” ethnic studies (as its architects intended), one must categorically reject Zionism. That’s not a flaw in the system — it’s the point. The second point follows with painful clarity: you cannot fight antisemitism while embracing the very ideological framework that perpetuates it. Zionism is inseparable from the Jewish people — it is our identity, our origin story, our homeland, and our essence. And yet, across California classrooms — and increasingly across the country — Zionism is being smeared, redefined, and dismantled by the purveyors of “authentic” ethnic studies. And it’s showing up in the vast majority of school districts, classrooms, and colleges across America. Ethnic studies teaches that Zionism — and even Israel’s existence — is something to be rejected. But the vast majority of Jews worldwide believe Zionism simply means that the Jewish people have the right to live freely and safely in their own homeland. Calling Zionism “racist” isn’t education — it’s hate dressed up as justice. This isn’t a misunderstanding, or the fault of “a few bad teachers.” Hostility to Zionism is not incidental — it is central to the ethnic studies project . By its own definition , ethnic studies is not about cultural understanding. It is a radical ideological framework born out of revolutionary Marxism and the Third World Liberation Front. It’s about dismantling systems it views as oppressive — “white supremacy,” settler colonialism, and capitalism. From its inception, ethnic studies was designed to “decolonize ” the world — which in practical terms, means the dismantling of Western democracies, including the United States and Israel. This is not my interpretation. It is, nearly word-for-word, how ethnic studies scholars describe their own discipline. One ethnic studies professor, Dr. Marcelo Garzo Montalvo, describes the curriculum as rooted in a “fundamental critique of power,” with the explicit goal of “engagement” with “white supremacy, settler colonialism, racial capitalism, and other global structures of power.” He explicitly states that California’s high school ethnic studies requirement “has no other origin besides [Third World Studies] and their relevant demands.” The curriculum’s origins lie in revolutionary movements, not multicultural education. Those familiar with the origins of the Third World Liberation Front know this: Zionism was never going to be recognized as the Jewish liberation movement. Ethnic studies would never portray it as progressive, aspirational, or worthy of respect . Ironically, Zionism is the only real-world example of the very “decolonization” ethnic studies claims to pursue. And yet, rather than celebrate it, ethnic studies revives a familiar tactic: taking whatever society deems the ultimate evil and projecting it onto the Jews. That’s the danger: ethnic studies packages ancient hate as modern “social justice.” And in ethnic studies, it’s not just present — it’s institutionalized . At this point, any effort to add “balance” to ethnic studies through Holocaust education or occasional references to Sephardic Jewish diversity is utterly futile. And still, some major Jewish organizations continue to try and reform ethnic studies from within — offering feedback, drafting addendums, proposing lesson plans. Why? Out of fear, or perhaps the belief that being “at the table” means having a say? The answer is a cocktail of fear, ignorance, wishful thinking, and institutional groupthink. Many hoped ethnic studies could be tamed — turned into a tool for inclusion, maybe even used to elevate Jewish identity alongside others. They believed that by having a seat at the table, they could influence what’s on the menu. But the truth is: we were never meant to be at that table . Not as equals. Not when Zionism — central to Jewish identity — is framed as part of the problem. And so long as we continue to assert our right to self-determination in our ancestral homeland (Zionism), we will always be portrayed as the villain. The more we try to sanitize the ethnic studies movement as a plea for inclusion, the more legitimacy we give to the latest iteration of Jew-hatred that seeks to destroy us. We cannot protect Jewish students while endorsing a curriculum that teaches others to hate Jews. And we cannot defend Zionism while legitimizing an ideology that slanders it as oppression. The solution to ethnic studies is not reform, it is rejection. Zionism is the civil rights movement of the Jewish people. It deserves to be taught with truth, not twisted into a caricature. Not reduced to a slur. And if defending Zionism means standing alone, so be it. It wouldn’t be the first time. It won’t be the last. When a movement tells you — clearly and proudly — that it opposes everything you stand for, the most self-respecting thing you can do is believe them. Previous Next

March 20, 2025 Anti-Israel ethnic studies unfunded in California - Is the fight over? | JPost Op-Ed Tamar Caspi "As parents, we expect our children’s education to promote truth, critical thinking, and understanding—not to serve as a breeding ground for political activism." Originally Posted In: https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-846892 < Back The 2025–26 California state budget presented by Governor Gavin Newsom last month notably fails to allocate funding for Assembly Bill 101 (AB101) - yet another glaring reminder of the rushed and ill-conceived nature of the requirement for districts to offer Ethnic Studies courses. As spelled out in the bill – without funding, it is not mandated – which means districts do not need to implement it. Ethnic Studies, as it stands, is an attempt to implement a divisive, politically charged curriculum under the guise of promoting diversity. The absence of funding in this year’s budget is just one of many problems with the state’s approach to Ethnic Studies. Instead of forcing schools to implement this controversial program, we should pause the push for Ethnic Studies as a graduation requirement. Newly proposed legislation AB1468 includes the addition of standards, but the lack of oversight as to who will set those standards and who will impose those standards means the same bad actors can and likely will take over. The last time we trusted the state to create a committee of “experts,” the Governor ended up vetoing the Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum three times. Ethnic Studies Includes Anti-Israel Indoctrination The rushed rollout of the statewide Ethnic Studies model curriculum in 2019 led to a document that faced significant criticism, particularly from the Jewish community, for containing elements of antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment. For example, “Zionism” was used in a negative context as it was associated with oppression, colonialism, and apartheid. Palestinian struggles were framed through the lens of “liberation,” which positioned Israel as an oppressive force. Further, it was an unbalanced narrative as the unique Jewish historical experiences of the Holocaust, the Jewish diaspora, and the importance of Israel to the Jewish people were excluded. Far from being a tool for unity, Ethnic Studies is a vehicle for activism, often pushing ideologies that have no place in our schools. The so-called Liberated Ethnic Studies curriculum has come under fire for promoting rhetoric that encourages students to view each other through the lens of identity politics, pitting one group against another. This type of curriculum fosters resentment and division, rather than the mutual respect that should be the foundation of any educational experience. This is not education; it’s indoctrination. And the worst part? Parents are being kept in the dark about what is being taught in these courses. In many districts, repeated requests for transparency about the content of Ethnic Studies lessons are ignored, and what we have found is deeply troubling: a curriculum full of inaccuracies, bias, and discriminatory content. This practice is a violation of AB101 (if it were funded) as well as the existing CA Education Code regarding new materials. As parents, we expect our children’s education to promote truth, critical thinking, and understanding—not to serve as a breeding ground for political activism. Yet, that’s exactly what Ethnic Studies has become. It is not teaching our children to think critically about history, culture, and society; it is teaching them to see the world through a divisive and narrow ideological lens. California’s Education Quality – 41st Out of 50 States Meanwhile, California’s public education system is already struggling. Though one of the largest in the United States, its enrollment has declined by 14% in the past decade, currently serving 5.5 million students across 9,000 schools. According to 2024 data from the US Department of Education, though California has the 5th largest economy in the world, it ranks 19th in the nation for per-pupil spending. It is ranked 41st in the country for overall educational quality, with students performing below the national average in key subjects like math and reading. As the recently released 2024 National Education Report Card showed, a full 72% of California’s 4th and 8th graders cannot read at grade level. Furthermore, according to the Public Policy Institute of California, the University of California and California State University both report that incoming students are not adequately prepared in key subjects. Rather than add yet another unfunded mandate to our struggling school system, we should focus on fostering critical thinking, mutual respect, and an understanding of our shared history within our current approved course catalog - without the political baggage that Ethnic Studies bring to the table. Previous Next

October 27, 2021 San Diego School District Commits to ‘Fighting Antisemitism,’ Citing Rise in Hate Crimes Dion J. Pierre The San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) adopted a resolution Tuesday denouncing antisemitism and promoting education about the Holocaust, citing a rise in recent years in anti-Jewish harassment on its campuses. Originally Posted In: https://www.algemeiner.com/2021/10/27/san-diego-school-district-commits-to-fighting-antisemitism-after-debate-citing-rise-in-hate-crimes/ < Back The San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) adopted a resolution Tuesday denouncing antisemitism and promoting education about the Holocaust, citing a rise in recent years in anti-Jewish harassment on its campuses. “The Board of Education denounces the rise in antisemitic rhetoric and hate-motivated crimes and incidents that denigrate Jewish students and staff in the communities served by SDUSD,” said the resolution, passed at Tuesday night’s board meeting. It also “affirms the rights” of Jewish students, staff and families to work to revise school materials “to ensure they are inclusive and reflective of best practices and the full diversity of Jewish people including those in California and San Diego.” The second largest district in the state, SDUSD serves over 120,000 students from pre-school through 12th grade. Jewish groups cheered the resolution’s passage, with the local Anti-Defamation League office calling it “an important message to the community that antisemitism has no place in our schools.” “With the rise of antisemitism across the country, SDUSD and other school districts cannot ignore the reality that Jewish communities face. According to the FBI’s most recent hate crimes report, 57 percent of reported religious-based crimes were directed against Jews — even though Jews make up only 2 percent of the country’s population,” Kelsey Greenberg Young, ADL San Diego Education Director, told The Algemeiner. “While the purpose of this Resolution is to demonstrate that SDUSD is committed to fighting antisemitism and all forms of hate, there are those who attempt to wield forums like these as a political tool in advancing the agenda of fringe activists who sought to derail the true intent of the Resolution, which is to ensure safe and welcoming classrooms for our students,” Greenberg Young commented. The heated debate at Tuesday’s board meeting included testimony from Jewish students, according to a local CBS affiliate report, including one current student who told of seeing posters at school that “labeled Jews ‘colonizers.'” An opponent of the measure who also spoke charged the district with working with “proven Islamophobic organizations.” The resolution specifically rejected the notion “that Jewish students or the Jewish population are somehow responsible for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” It also directs the district’s Superintendent to work with Jewish groups and the recently-created Governor’s Council on Holocaust and Genocide Education, to develop and promote a speaker’s bureau on genocide. Previous Next

December 15, 2023 A different perspective Destiny Avila Ramirez BVH student meeting marks first steps to ensuring a safe community Originally Posted In: https://bonitavistacrusader.org/15897/opinion/a-different-perspective/ < Back On Dec. 5, Bonita Vista High’s (BVH) student-run publication’s the Crusader ’s Editorial Board members and Opinion Editors met with three BVH Israel Club members to discuss a recent editorial cartoon that had sparked conflict within the BVH community. For the Crusader, our goal was to take the first step towards creating a safe environment for the vulnerable individuals in our community—as stated in a Staff Editorial published on Nov. 13 by the publication. An editorial cartoon depicting a student’s view on the current Israel-Palestine conflict was published on the publication’s online website on Oct. 23 and featured in the third issue print of the Crusader which was distributed on the BVH campus on Nov. 3. After reading out a prepared message regarding the editorial cartoon in a Sweetwater Union High School District meeting (SUHSD) board members addressed the unintended harm the editorial cartoon may have caused and discussed the first step to meet with the Israel Club members; in hopes to listen to their personal experiences and insights regarding the Israel-Hamas war, and its impact on them. The meeting included BVH principal Lee Romero, the Crusader ’s advisor Eric Helle, Israel Club advisor Jennifer Ekstein and former journalist Tamar Caspi—who was given the role of mediator by SUHSD. After taking part in a provided lunch, we settled in our seats and took in the environment. Caspi opened the discussion assessing that the meeting was a safe space for all and a place for understanding. Before any comments and input, Caspi prioritized context in regards to the graphic and the publications editing and publishing process. As the meeting progressed comments and various voices were heard as attendees commented from various sides of the room. The meeting was to ensure Israel Club members could voice their opinions, stories and concerns in regards to the Crusader’s published editorial cartoon and impacts of the current Israel-Palestine conflict. The Israeli Club members shared their stories regarding the extreme danger and fear that they feel, experienced or notice. I felt the room’s atmosphere shift as students shared their true emotions, stories of the past and their current reality—involving loved ones in Israel or companions in tragedy. These stories have some common components: closeness to death, living in fear and cultural repression. Hearing voices from another perspective truly opened my mindset and the understanding I had prior to the meeting. As I listened to them, I began to greatly empathize with the students and their fears. The editorial cartoon is to be left upon interpretation, but hearing the interpretations from another view allowed me to understand the new information to uncover and provide the publication with another outlook. I recognized the impacts of the conflict and how previously I had exposure to only one side of the conflict. In relation to the self reflection I had during and after the meeting, Caspi emphasized how one sided one’s algorithm on social media can be. She described the power social media holds and how specific content may be concealed to be aligned with a user’s interest and opinions. Several attendees expressed their experiences with social media algorithms, me being one of them. Over a period of time I have come to realize the power of social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram when it comes to filtering the content I see. Understanding the huge impact one’s social media algorithm has, I have realized the importance of understanding and researching all perspectives. Following the meeting, I hope for a growth of understanding within the community and for all students to feel safe to do things such as share their fears and thoughts. As I was exposed to new information, I was given the opportunity to reflect upon my own beliefs and understanding of students around me. Moreover, as the meeting opened a safe platform for the jewish students on campus to share their stories and voices, our publication fulfilled a needed step towards creating a safe community. Previous Next

October 19, 2023 Opinion: Don’t Be Fooled - ‘Free Palestine’ Is a Call for Ending Israel Brad Bernstein Don’t just take my word for it. Do your own research: search the internet for sources where “Free Palestine” is used to protest in favor of the establishment of a Palestinian State side-by-side with a Jewish State. Go ahead, I’ll wait… Originally Posted In: https://timesofsandiego.com/opinion/2023/10/19/dont-be-fooled-free-palestine-is-a-call-for-ending-israel/ < Back There has long been a debate if anti-Zionism is the same as antisemitism. This is not a new debate, but recent events prove why it is most certainly the same. The practice of Jew-hatred goes back millennia, and has manifested in many ways, but it has always been the same Jew-hatred our ancestors experienced. The widely accepted definition of antisemitism, as defined by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and adopted by more than 40 United Nations member states including the U.S. Government, includes “the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity.” This definition is important because Jew-haters use the term “Zionism” and “Israel” interchangeably, when in reality they are referring to the Jewish people as a whole . For example: anti-Zionists justify their sentiment as “anti-colonialism,” “anti-oppression,” and “anti-racism.” On the surface, all of those might seem like prudent social justice causes (depending on your nuanced political opinion), however they are all lies rooted in antisemitism and all with one common: hatred. More specifically: Jew-hatred. Each of these baseless claims against Zionism and Israel is a one-to-one copy/paste from ancient antisemitic tropes that have been used generation after generation to justify and legitimize the persecution and murder of Jews. It serves as their proof for why it’s actually necessary to exterminate Israel (ie. Jews) in order to keep the world safe for all non-Jews; and, in fact, these heinous acts of atrocities must not even be questioned by their followers. In 2017, we were collectively appalled when we witnessed neo-Nazis marching in Charlottesville where white nationalists chanted, amongst other vile epithets: “The Jews will not replace us.” There was broad condemnation of what happened in Charlottesville as racist and unacceptable, and again in Poway and Pittsburgh , and that same condemnation should be applied to the Free Palestine marches. Through some perverted twist of reality that we’ve unfortunately seen in previous iterations throughout history, Israel is being blamed for the massacre of its own civilians by the pro-Palestinian movement, cloaked under the social justice phrase of “Free Palestine.” At rallies taking place on college campuses and in cities around the world we hear chants of “From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free!” This is not a rallying cry for a two-state solution and it is not about freeing an oppressed group to live peacefully in the world order. Otherwise, a more appropriate slogan would be: “Free Palestine from Hamas,” a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization that has profited to the tune of billions of dollars in aid from the US, Europe, and the Gulf States while their citizens live in squalor. No, it’s about a one-state solution that is free of Jews. The chant specifically calls to rid the land of Israel from the Jewish people . The Hamas charter explicitly states to “fight Jews and kill them” and to “obliterate” Israel “in the name of Allah.” Their mission became as clear as ever this past week when terrorists raped women and children, murdered parents in front of their children and murdered children in front of their parents, and burned and decapitated babies. The murder spree was so indiscriminate that they killed Palestinian peace activists, Thai and Filipino workers, and Arabs. The terrorists also kidnapped and took hostage innocent babies and children, young adults at a peace concert, the handicapped, the elderly (including Holocaust survivors), and Israeli soldiers. Don’t just take my word for it. Do your own research: search the internet for sources where “Free Palestine” is used to protest in favor of the establishment of a Palestinian State side-by-side with a Jewish State. Go ahead, I’ll wait… And while you are researching, find one source that will even simply denounce the barbaric atrocities committed by Hamas last week. Again, I’ll wait… So when you hear the chant “Free Palestine” you are hearing people supporting these brutal and inhumane, racist, Jew-hating, murderers who have done some of the most horrific acts ever documented. “Free Palestine” might sound like a simple resistance movement. But to me it’s the same as “the Jews will not replace us.” ---- Brad Bernstein lives in Carmel Valley where he works in the technology sector. He is the son of immigrants who left South Africa during apartheid. He is also a former IDF soldier who lived in Israel for 10 years. Previous Next

March 5, 2025 EXCLUSIVE: DOJ Opens Antisemitism Investigation Into the University of California System Gabe Kaminsky The Department of Justice says one of the largest public university systems in the country may be discriminating ‘against employees who are or are perceived to be Jewish or Israeli.’ Originally Posted In: https://www.thefp.com/p/exclusive-doj-opens-antisemitism < Back The Department of Justice has opened a civil rights investigation into the sprawling University of California system over concerns about antisemitism, The Free Press has learned. In a letter sent Monday evening to the UC system and seen by The Free Press , the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division informed UC president Michael Drake of its investigation. “Our investigation is based on information suggesting that since at least October 7, 2023, the University of California may be engaged in certain employment practices that discriminate against employees who are or are perceived to be Jewish or Israeli,” wrote DOJ officials Mac Warner and Michael E. Gates in the letter. “Accordingly, the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division has authorized a full investigation to determine whether the University of California is engaged in a pattern or practice of discrimination as set forth above.” “We were recently notified of the Department of Justice’s decision to initiate a civil rights investigation in the University of California system,” a spokesperson for the UC system told The Free Press . “We want to be clear: the University of California is unwavering in its commitment to combating antisemitism and protecting everyone’s civil rights. We continue to take specific steps to foster an environment free of harassment and discrimination for everyone in the university community.” The investigation comes on the heels of the DOJ forming a task force in February made up of representatives from the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services to combat antisemitism. That follows the executive order President Donald Trump signed in his first days in office allocating federal resources to address “the explosion of antisemitism” on college campuses. The order, moreover, directed the DOJ to take immediate action to “quell pro-Hamas vandalism and intimidation, and investigate and punish anti-Jewish racism in leftist, anti-American colleges and universities.” The antisemitism task force is being led by Leo Terrell, a civil rights attorney and recent Fox News contributor. It is under the auspices of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, an office that Trump tapped attorney Harmeet Dhillon, who has not yet been confirmed by the Senate, to lead. This UC investigation comes less than 48 hours after the Trump administration announced a review of federal funding to Columbia University, which had been a hotbed for anti-Israel activism since October 7, 2023, and where dozens of students were arrested last spring for participating in encampments and taking over a campus building. As The Free Press reported yesterday , Trump’s antisemitism task force is looking into more than $5 billion in federal grant commitments to Columbia as part of the review—led by the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Education, and the General Services Administration. The investigation follows a “Dear Colleague” letter sent by the Department of Education’s Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights two weeks ago which warned universities that the department “will no longer tolerate the overt and covert racial discrimination that has become widespread in this Nation’s educational institutions.” The letter states the department will “vigorously enforce the law on equal terms” to any K-12 or higher education institution which receives federal funding. -------------------------------------- Gabe Kaminsky is a reporter at The Free Press. Send him tips: gabe@thefp.com . Additional reporting by Frannie Block. 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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December 8, 2025 Students form human swastika on Calif. high school football field - call for ‘annihilation of Jews’ in Hitler-themed Instagram post Joe Burn Eight San Jose high school students formed a human swastika on their school’s football field in a horrifying display of antisemitism that has sent shockwaves through the Silicon Valley community. Originally Posted In: https://nypost.com/2025/12/08/us-news/human-swastika-formed-by-students-at-bay-area-branham-high-school/ < Back Eight San Jose high school students formed a human swastika on their school’s football field in a horrifying display of antisemitism that has sent shockwaves through the Silicon Valley community. The disturbing scene was photographed and shared in a since-deleted Wednesday social media post that featured an antisemitic 1939 quote from Adolf Hitler. “If the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevization of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe,” read what appeared to be an Instagram caption. Branham High School announced Friday that an investigation has been launched, as first reported in the J. The Jewish News of Northern California. The eight students have been identified, but their names will not be revealed due to federal law. “Our message to the community is clear: This was a disturbing and unacceptable act of antisemitism. Actions that target, demean, or threaten Jewish students have no place on our campuses,” school principal Beth Silbergeld said in a statement to the Los Angeles Times. Silbergeld, who is Jewish, refers to herself as “Educator, conscious eater, mama, urban hippie, sneakerhead, NJ to CA,” according to her Instagram. Maya Bronicki with the Bay Area Jewish Coalition (BAJC) told NBC Bay Area that a fellow student at Branham High School came across the shocking photo and alerted his parents and other families. BAJC spokesperson Tali Klima condemned the human swastika display in a blistering statement. “To have children echoing Hitler’s words is frankly just shocking and heartbreaking, and the entire community has been rocked by this,” Klima said in a statement, according to The Guardian. “This bold and premeditated display has really shaken everyone.” State Sen. Scott Wiener, who shared a photo of the human swastika on Facebook, applauded the school’s swift response but raised concerns over the incident. “We need to ask ourselves why these students believed it was ok to do this — not just the swastika but linking it to extermination of Jews due to ‘international financial Jews,'” the Democrat wrote . “Antisemitism is pervasive & growing. It’s leading to harassment & violence against Jews. Yet, there’s an orchestrated campaign to deny its existence. We see this in the lies spread in opposition to the Jewish community’s work this year to pass state legislation on school antisemitism,” he added. Wiener’s post, however, elicited a wave of troubling responses in support of the eight students, including one that read: “This gives me faith in the next generation.” Another Facebook user wrote, “The youth are healing.” The hateful act has been reported to San Jose Police Department, and the district also stated it will work with Anti-Defamation League, the Bay Area Jewish Coalition and the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Bay Area. The human swastika episode marks at least the second time this year that Branham High School made headlines in connection to antisemitism allegations. Back in April, the California Department of Education (CDE) ruled that an ethnic studies course discriminated against Jewish students, according to The Times of Israel. The formal complaint was lodged by the Bay Area Jewish Coalition, and accused teachers of presenting biased information about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a 12th-grade ethnic literature course. According to the state DOE ruling, a teacher showed students a pro-Palestinian news explainer “The Israel-Palestine conflict: a brief, simple history,” but not a pro-Israel perspective. “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 CDE report said. 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

March 10, 2025 The Ethnic Studies Battlegrounds: Political Ideology, Teacher Unions, and a Divided Jewish Community Nicole Bernstein Subversion and “othering” have proven to be disturbingly effective, contributing to an increasingly fractured Jewish community. This division has made it difficult for us to unite and recognize the external threats we face. Originally Posted In: < Back Education is no longer just about reading, writing, and arithmetic; ideological battles now shape classrooms across the United States. One such battle centers on ethnic studies—originally intended to highlight marginalized voices and foster historical understanding. However, ethnic studies was hijacked right from its inception by political operatives aiming to reshape our nation’s core values. The surge in antisemitism, particularly in K-12 and college settings, underscores the success of these divisive strategies. Subversion and “othering” have proven to be disturbingly effective, contributing to an increasingly fractured Jewish community. This division has made it difficult for us to unite and recognize the external threats we face. The Ethnic Studies Origin Story: Hero or Villain? Ethnic studies began in the late 1960s at San Francisco State University and the University of California, Berkeley, with the goal of offering diverse perspectives and reconciling historical truths, though it quickly became a Trojan Horse for radical, anti-American ideology—eroding our nation’s Judeo-Christian, pro-democracy foundations in favor of collectivism, violent revolution, and Marxist totalitarianism. Rather than foster unity, it divides students into categories of oppressors and oppressed, fuels resentment, legitimizes Jew-hatred (including anti-Zionism), and glorifies violent social upheaval. The Data Behind the Concerns Jewish organizations initially dismissed concerns about systemic antisemitism in education, attributing incidents to isolated cases. However, a December 2023 Harvard-Harris Poll revealed disturbing trends: a 900% increase in reported antisemitic incidents in the U.S., with 30% of young Americans under 24 believing Jews caused the Holocaust, 60% believing Hamas was justified in its October 7 attacks on Israel, and 67% viewing Jews as oppressors. These statistics point to a broader educational shift that prioritizes political activism over academic rigor. California’s Ethnic Studies Mandate Controversy Governor Gavin Newsom’s 2025 budget excluded funding for the ethnic studies mandate (AB101), preventing its enforcement as a graduation requirement. While seemingly a victory for opponents, the battle is far from over. Ethnic studies advocates are entrenched among faculty and administrators while school board meeting confrontations confirm a determination to teach ethnic studies regardless of state funding. Moreover, external funding from activist groups and foreign entities shields these programs from financial constraints, allowing them to spread unchecked. Teachers’ Unions: America’s Most Powerful Monopoly Teachers’ unions control nearly every aspect of public education. According to Americans for Fair Treatment, unions allocate twice as much funding to political campaigns as they do to services for members. Teachers’ unions, which dominate oversight mechanisms at the local, county, state, and national levels remain deeply invested in advancing ethnic studies, strategically infiltrating school boards over the past fifty years, and redirecting their focus from teacher advocacy to political activism. At the 2019 National Educators Association (NEA) conference, for example, they rejected a proposal to prioritize “centering student learning” in favor of a resolution mandating Critical Race Theory (CRT) in K-12 schools. Activist educators have embedded themselves in school systems, promoting antisemitic rhetoric and radical political views. Groups like the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Coalition equate Israel with apartheid and promote figures like Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) member Leila Khaled, Huey P. Newton, and Angela Davis, while the Marxist-Leninist group Union del Barrio, which calls for the decolonization of Southwestern USA, is influencing school board elections. When Ideologies Become Reality PeerK12 has exposed many incidents which illustrate the extent of the issue locally. The San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) Equity & Belonging Department has repeatedly distributed anti-Israel and antisemitic propaganda as resources to thousands of teachers; they later retracted and apologized but the damage is done. SDUSD was also forced to remove their District English Learner Advisory Committee Chair for sharing violent anti-Israel imagery. Unfortunately, she also served on the district’s Ethnic Studies Advisory Committee, and currently does teacher training for the Liberated Ethnic Studies Consortium. In San Dieguito Union High School District, a middle school teacher proudly displayed a picture of Adolf Hitler as an example of “great leadership skills.” She vehemently refused to remove the photo but was finally forced to after PeerK12’s mobilization efforts. That incident also resulted in the district creating the Superintendent’s Jewish Parent Committee. In Poway Unified School District, a PTA president and DEI VP was removed, and that DEI committee was dismantled, after we exposed her promotion of extreme antisemitic rhetoric while leading diversity efforts across the K-12 district. Another district enacted new policies for “Multicultural Day” after we exposed anti-Israel paraphernalia being distributed under the guise of a Palestinian heritage display. A history teacher at High Tech High International publicly undermined a Jewish student’s presentation on Israel’s 1948 War, replacing it with a pro-“Nakba” narrative while exempting other students from such scrutiny. After many meetings the teacher was forced to publicly apologize for the incident in front of the entire class. At Francis Parker School, a history class provided heavily anti-Israel biased materials with inflated casualty stats. PeerK12 was allowed to audit the history department curriculum, resulting in removal of biased materials and the restoration of factual lesson plans. Groups like ours are fighting back through monitoring curricula for biased content, advocating in school board meetings and parent coalitions, using legal action including Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to challenge antisemitic discrimination, and engaging with school board candidates to restore educational integrity. A Fight for the Future of Education The ethnic studies battle extends beyond education—it represents a battle for the ideological future of America’s youth. It is also a crucial issue for the American Jewish community, which faces the risk of further division or, alternatively, the opportunity for unity in the fight against this radicalization. Teachers’ unions and activists have spent decades embedding their agenda in public schools. We must act to undo this damage by reclaiming school boards, holding unions accountable, and advocating for objective, non-politicized curricula. Until this is achieved, education will remain a battleground for the ideological hearts and minds of Americans. Previous Next

October 15, 2024 What are your children being taught? Lindsey Burke Look at schools’ websites, their trainings, mission statements, textbooks, curricula, and yes, even your child’s homework assignments. Corporate America is beginning to turn away from institutional DEI. It’s time schools got back to basics, too. Originally Posted In: https://www.stripes.com/opinion/2024-10-17/what-are-children-being-taught-crt-15538356.html < Back In the 1984 horror film “Children of the Corn,” a mysterious entity lures children to turn against their parents to guarantee an abundant corn harvest. Fast-forward 40 years, and a mysterious entity in Montgomery County, Md., is enticing children to turn against the Western world. Nestled just north of Washington, D.C., Montgomery County is among the nation’s wealthiest. Parents tend to earn a living as lawyers and lobbyists, as doctors and defense analysts. They are think-tankers and journalists, and of course, many are bureaucrats entrenched in high places in federal agencies. It’s as “inside the beltway” as you can get. Their progeny are the Children of the Swamp. It matters what this next generation is taught. It matters what children from anywhere in America are taught, of course, but what this next potential crop of federal workers and business and industry leaders learns in school could have an outsized effect on our nation’s future. That may help explain why Montgomery County Public Schools went out of its way to caveat its promotion of the toxic ideology of critical race theory. The district — the 14th largest in the country with more than 160,000 students — put out a statement on CRT in which, as the kids would say, the words “established legal theoretical framework” are doing all the work. The statement reads in part: “While Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) does not teach students the established legal theoretical framework known as Critical Race Theory, our school system does not shy away from its longstanding commitment to providing students with the tools to explore the evolution of our nation … ” Clever. Because while the district may not offer a pre-law class on CRT or critical legal studies, the destructive ideology of CRT has made its way into core subjects in the district’s catalog. Take the honors English course at one MCPS school. While the course description reads like a standard English honors class — students read drama and epic poetry, historical literature, imaginative literature, etc. — class assignments seem to have gone off the critical theory rails. In a lesson on “Literary Theory and Criticism” we obtained, students are provided with six lenses through which to examine books they’ve read: Marxist; gender studies & queer theory; critical race theory; psychoanalytical; feminist; and historical/biographical. Other frameworks like formalism, structuralism and reader-response are deemphasized in favor of the more radical flavors of literary criticism. Why are 10th-graders being encouraged to analyze “Catcher in the Rye” through a Marxist lens? Andy why are honors English students learning Marx rather than Milton? The Montgomery County example is but one in the entrenched CRT infrastructure built into many K-12 schools today. Whether it’s CRT itself or newer vintages like California’s ethnic studies graduation requirement , critical theory has permeated the ivy walls of academia and firmly cemented itself in elementary and secondary education. Colleges of education have played a huge role in its dissemination. Paulo Freire’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” is among the most assigned texts in colleges of education. As the American Enterprise Institute’s Rick Hess and I found, up to one-third of education school faculty who study race do so through a critical theory lens . In colleges today, there are, on average, 3.4 diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) employees for every 100 tenured faculty. And K-12 districts nationwide are replicating this bureaucracy. Nearly 80% of the country’s largest K-12 school districts employ chief diversity officers, mirroring the trend in higher education, according to research by my Heritage Foundation colleague Jay Greene. Parents should feel confident voicing their opinions about the content being taught in their children’s school. When they have concerns that an honors English class, for example, is emphasizing critical theory and Marxist analysis, they should not hesitate to speak up to their school principal or at school board meetings. Public schools are taxpayer-funded entities, and as such, parents should not shy away from expressing their opinions about what these institutions are teaching the next generation of Americans. Are they teaching that America is a force for good in the world, or that it is systemically racist and must be dismantled? Are they teaching that all men are created equal, or that children are born as either an oppressor or oppressed? Are schools teaching that truth is relative or that it is knowable and worth pursuing? Look at schools’ websites, their trainings, mission statements, textbooks, curricula, and yes, even your child’s homework assignments. Corporate America is beginning to turn away from institutional DEI. It’s time schools got back to basics, too. Previous Next

Explore PeerK12's comprehensive resources on Ethnic Studies in K-12 education. Understand its ideological origins, potential impacts, and learn how communities can advocate effectively protect their students from radical ideologies, ensure transparency in their school districts, and provide unbiased curriculum for their children. WELCOME TO THE ETHNIC STUDIES LEARNING HUB The Ethnic Studies Origin Story Uncovering the History Behind Education’s Most Controversial Discipline Whether you're a seasoned expert or simply curious, this session will challenge your assumptions, equip you with new insights, and leave you better prepared to engage in one of America's most critical and ongoing debates. Discover hidden connections between historical activism, controversial educational mandates, and today’s fierce ideological battles unfolding inside classrooms nationwide. After you see this video, y ou'll understand precisely how concepts such as intersectionality , decolonization , land acknowledgements , and dismantling systems of power have quietly reshaped curricula—and why this matters profoundly, even if you don't have kids currently attending K-12 schools. CA ethnic studies violations & lawsuits New February 24, 2026 First ever lawsuit by Jewish parents against a US State : The coalition of Jewish parents in this lawsuit are suing the California government of failing to protect Jewish students from a surge of antisemitic harassment, violence, and propaganda in the state’s public schools. ETHNIC STUDIES related LAWSUITS in california Berkeley USD Hayward USD Los Angeles USD Mountain View–Los Altos UHSD Palo Alto USD San Diego USD Santa Ana USD Sequoia Union High School District JEWISH PARENT COALITION SUES STATE OF CALIFORNIA, THE CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION & STATE SUPERINTENDENT TONY THURMOND INVESTIGATIONS: California Department of EDUCATION The California Department of Education (CDE) has investigated and found that the following three school districts are guilty of violating the civil rights of their Jewish students, teachers, and faculty with their ethnic studies curriculum: Campbell Union High School District Santa Clara Unified School District ( USD) Tamalpais Union High School District (home district and alma mater of California Governor Gavin Newsom ) federal office of civil rights investigations Title VI - National Origin Discrimination Involving Religion Berkeley USD Fullerton USD Lammersville USD Los Angeles USD Oakland USD Placentia-Yorba Linda USD Roseville City School District San Francisco USD West Contra Costa USD California department of justice California Department of Justice: Office of the Attorney General Legal Alert to School Districts on Curriculum January 9, 2024 California’s Education Code also requires that curricula and instructional materials used in public schools: Reflect the diversity of the State by including a study of the role and contributions of protected groups (Ed. Code, § 51204.5); Accurately “portray the cultural and racial diversity” of society (Ed. Code, § 60040); Not contain any matter reflecting adversely on persons because of their race, sex, color, national origin, or ancestry. (Ed. Code, § 51501); Not teach or promote religious doctrine (Ed. Code, § 51225.3, subd. (a)(1)(G)(v). Download the Legal Alert PDF California Commission on the State of Hate 2023-2024 REPORT FINDS THAT Ethnic studies FUELS DIVISION & HATE CALIFORNIA Commission on THE State of Hate Annual Report Highlighting Ethnic Studies Dangers, Calls for Pause February 2025 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 2023-2024 State of Hate Report debunked studies on positive outcomes Studies Fail to Support Claims of New California Ethnic Studies Requirement A law mandating the course for all public high school students is based on two unreplicated studies that distort the data. RICHARD SANDER & ABRAHAM WYNER Last fall, when California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law a measure that could require every California public high school student to take an “ethnic studies” course to graduate, he alluded to two studies commonly cited by advocates to justify the measure, claiming the research shows that ethnic studies courses “boost student achievement over the long run—especially among students of color.” But the experiment on which these conclusions are based is so muddled, and the data reported is so ambiguous, that in fact they support no conclusion, either positive or negative, about the effects of this particular ethnic studies course in these particular schools and times. Far from demonstrating the value of ethnic studies courses, these studies merely demonstrate how easy it is in our overheated political environment to subvert statistical analyses for political purposes. Debunking the myth that ethnic studies promotes educational outcomes "The work they present fails many basic tests of scientific method, and it should not have been published as written, much less relied upon in the formulation of public policy." Read the Article March 28, 2022 WEBINARS & VIDEOS ON ETHNIC STUDIES Ethnic Studies All Categories Play Video Play Video 04:37 UNDERSTANDING ETHNIC STUDIES IN 5 MINUTES OR LESS Hey Everyone, I finally made a short explainer video onto the subject of Liberated Ethnic Studies. This is a good one to share with friends who don't see the concern. Please like share and if you haven't subscribe! All of the in-depth videos are on the live page. The subject is heavy and nearly every parental advocate is covering it because it is that urgent. Music Ben Sound License code: O0CETJWKOQ7YK6GO Play Video Play Video 13:13 Ethnic Studies: Education or Indoctrination? California is proposing a mandatory ethnic studies class that is so far-left, that even California’s liberal media are expressing concern. It will teach California high school students that capitalism is an oppressive system akin to white supremacy, and word like Misogynoir, Positionalities, and cis-hetero-patriarchy. And YouTube decided to instantly demonetize this episode before it had a title, tag, description, or was even made public. I wonder what Google felt was too controversial? How did the bots read this episode? SUPPORT US: Patreon.......►https://www.patreon.com/americauncovered SOCIAL: Facebook...► https://www.facebook.com/America-Uncovered-1819821761677650/ Instagram..► https://www.instagram.com/chinauncensored Twitter........► https://twitter.com/USUncovered us news red pill gender equality president trump political news Play Video Play Video 02:06 Mother Testifies Against Ethnic Studies Bill: “Not Everything That Sounds Good IS Good” Kofi Montzka, a Minnesotan attorney and mother of three, testified against H.F. 1269 on March 21, 2023. "We used to have a race-based system. We got rid of it, and now you all are trying to bring it back.” For more information on this legislation and how to contact your legislators, go to www.americanexperiment.org/bait-and-switch/ Play Video Play Video 05:40 What Students REALLY Learn in Ethnic Studies Classes? Curious about what students REALLY learn in ethnic studies classes? Watch this video to find out the eye-opening insights shared by students themselves! What Students REALLY Learn in Ethnic Studies Classes? Play Video Play Video 02:31:03 California Forum on Ethnic Studies in Public Schools Are ethnic studies classes giving students a broader perspective—or pushing ideological agendas? The California Forum on Ethnic Studies in Public Schools is your chance to speak up. This live-streamed, citizen-hearing style event brings students, parents, and educators together to share their real-world experiences—directly with policymakers—fostering honest dialogue about what’s happening in classrooms across California. Join us as we tackle the tough questions: 🔹 Are ethnic studies courses meeting ed code standards? 🔹 How can we keep education free from political bias and discrimination? 🔹 What should parents, teachers, and lawmakers do next? This is your opportunity to take action and be heard. Whether you’re a concerned parent, a passionate educator, or a student with firsthand experience, your voice matters. Play Video Play Video 01:15:56 Ethnic Studies: From Radical Roots to Government Mandate Join the Institute for Liberal Values with the Coalition for Empowered Education livestream discussing the problems with Liberated Ethnic Studies and what the coalition is doing about it. Play Video Play Video 01:03:07 4. Teach Ethnic Studies - The Racist Roots and History of Critical-Liberated Ethnic Studies Understand the racist roots and history of Critical-Liberated Ethnic Studies and the ideologies and structures that guide and inspire the DEI efforts in today’s educational institutions. 1. Ideological Subversion: Increase your understanding of the process of ideological subversion in social justice education. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucjhIilHoYw 2. Guiding Principles: Infuse the Empowered Social Justice Guiding Principles into social justice teaching and learning. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtRG3iPK8Dg 3. Standards and Resources: Use the Empowered Social Justice framework and resources to teach ethnic studies in grades 9-12. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rD1DD10RtIw 4. Teach Ethnic Studies: Use the Empowered Social Justice framework and resources to teach ethnic studies in grades 9-12. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghES0tnAWuA Download the free Empowered Social Justice Resources and learn more: https://tinyurl.com/DrLeeESJR Play Video Play Video 01:08:11 1. Ideological Subversion: Empowered Social Justice Resources Video Series about the Empowered Social Justice Resources: 1. Ideological Subversion: Increase your understanding of the process of ideological subversion in social justice education. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucjhIilHoYw 2. Guiding Principles: Infuse the Empowered Social Justice Guiding Principles into social justice teaching and learning. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtRG3iPK8Dg 3. Standards and Resources: Use the Empowered Social Justice framework and resources to teach ethnic studies in grades 9-12. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rD1DD10RtIw 4. Teach Ethnic Studies: Use the Empowered Social Justice framework and resources to teach ethnic studies in grades 9-12. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghES0tnAWuA Download the free Empowered Social Justice Resources and learn more: https://tinyurl.com/DrLeeESJR LATEST PEERK12 BLOG ARTICLES ON ETHNIC STUDIES 1 2 3 frequently asked questions about ethnic studies What is ethnic studies, and how is it different from multicultural education? ETHNIC STUDIES: "Ethnic studies is the interdisciplinary study that centers Asian Americans & Pacific Islanders, Chicanx/Latinx, American Indians/Native Americans, and Africana/Black/African Americans who have experienced, survived, and resisted settler colonialism, racism, and hegemonic systems of oppression. Using ethnic studies epistemology, content and pedagogy, ethnic studies aims to educate students to be socially, politically, and economically conscious of their personal connections to local and (trans)national histories. Students study topics through the intersectional lenses of race, ethnicity, culture, gender, sexuality, ability, language, immigrant status, and class. They analyze indigeneity, white supremacy, oppression, privilege, and decolonization, and work toward empowering themselves as anti-racist leaders in social justice activism." MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION: As established in California SB 48— includes the contributions of all ethnic, religious, LGBTQ+, and disabled communities to California and U.S. history. What does CA's AB 101 entail? AB 101, signed by Governor Gavin Newsom in 2021, mandates a one-semester ethnic studies course for high school graduation starting with the class of 2030. High schools were supposed to offer this course beginning in the 2025–26 school year. However, this mandate was contingent on state funding, which was never allocated, rendering the mandate null and void. Is ethnic studies currently a graduation mandate in California? No: • Although AB 101 mandated ethnic studies for high school graduation by the Class of 2030, the law’s implementation is contingent on state funding, which was estimated at roughly $276 million. • As of early 2026, California's AB 101 ethnic studies requirement (https://www.google.com/search?q=AB+101+ethnic+studies+requirement&oq=AB+101+funding+needed&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOdIBCDQxMDRqMGo3qAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&mstk=AUtExfDjAvLyMP8nkidLkmHm-8k-q-4s6riW1e2JWLrrbjdK6--IzuNrUJJ1v9PqoA3nFvhU83we-Q4Fmd6D7ajfblcFXwxlBKWnrXbbNjioBmwXqbtIUarKpSkKCoNAG0CitfOmmFgYwZ5gosCH93biBCkRoKwRxpIoDIJCZK3r9Wbht8A&csui=3&ved=2ahUKEwio-tDPqJGTAxUx4skDHfeBO50QgK4QegQIARAB)remains largely unfunded, with no new funding included in the 2025-26 budget. • Since AB101 remains totally unfunded, the mandate is not active, yet many districts are already implementing courses anyway, often with little public transparency (and multiple resulting lawsuits statewide). • Funding Status: The mandate is technically inoperative or paused in many districts due to a lack of state funding. • Budget Shortfall: Governor Newsom did not include funding for the 2025-26 fiscal year, citing a $2.9 billion state budget shortfall. • Impact on Districts: Without state funds, districts are struggling to cover costs for teacher training and curriculum development, leading some to pause implementation. • Future Outlook: The requirement is contingent upon future funding appropriation, with observers looking to future budget revisions for updates. LAST UPDATED: March 2026 What are the legal requirements for ethnic studies courses? Ethnic studies courses must not promote bias, bigotry, or discrimination, must be appropriate for all students, and cannot include or promote religious doctrine. All curriculum must be fact-based, and not promote communism as a preferred ideology over democracy and capitalism. These requirements are outlined in Education Code §§ 51225.3(a)(1)(G) (https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=51225.3.&lawCode=EDC)and Article 4 Section §§ 51530.(https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=EDC§ionNum=51530.&article=4.&highlight=true&keyword=communism) Do schools have to use the state’s model ethnic studies curriculum? No. Districts can choose from four options: • A course based on the state’s model curriculum. • An existing ethnic studies course. • An A–G approved ethnic studies course (meeting UC/CSU requirements). • A locally developed course, approved by the school board at a public meeting. However, any course used must have ethnic studies as its primary content and comply with anti-bias laws; and: By law, ethnic studies courses: • Must not promote bias, bigotry, or discrimination. • Must be appropriate for students of all backgrounds. • Cannot include or promote religious doctrine. These rules are outlined in Education Code §51225.3(a)(1)(G). Why is there so much concern about antisemitism in ethnic studies? Hundreds of incidents and lawsuits have documented antisemitic content or behavior in ethnic studies programs. • Jewish and Israeli-American students have been excluded or vilified in some lessons. • After October 7, 2023, many of the leading PhD experts in ethnic studies glorified Hamas and minimized Jewish perspectives. • In Oakland, more than 30 Jewish families had to transfer their children out of the public school district due to the hostile and dangerous environment that ethnic studies had created inside classrooms. • In May 2024, the Congressional House Ed & Workforce Committee held a hearing to investigate the rise of antisemitism in K-12 and found a direct link to Ethnic Studies as one of the root causes. • The 2024 California Commission on the State of Hate found that these issues are widespread and unmonitored. • The California Department of Education (https://jweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/CUHSD-Investigation-Report-2025-0008-1.pdf)has investigated and found that the following three school districts are guilty of violating the civil rights of their Jewish students, teachers, and faculty with their ethnic studies curriculum: • Campbell Union High School District(https://jweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/CUHSD-Investigation-Report-2025-0008-1.pdf) • Santa Clara Unified School District (U(https://edsource.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/EthnicStudies-SantaClara-ruling2-041025.pdf)SD)(https://edsource.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/EthnicStudies-SantaClara-ruling2-041025.pdf) • Tamalpais Union High School District (https://edsource.org/updates/state-finds-marin-district-erred-in-investigation-of-teachers-alleged-antisemetic-remark) (https://edsource.org/updates/state-finds-marin-district-erred-in-investigation-of-teachers-alleged-antisemetic-remark)(home district and alma mater of CA Governor Gavin Newsom) • Ethnic studies related lawsuits in CA school districts: • CA Department of Education • Berkeley USD • Hayward USD • Los Angeles USD • Mountain View–Los Altos UHSD • Palo Alto USD • San Diego USD • Santa Ana USD • Sequoia Union High School District • Federal Office of Civil Rights Investigations due to ethnic studies implementation (Title VI - National Origin Discrimination Involving Religion): • Berkeley USD • Fullerton USD • Lammersville USD • Los Angeles USD • Oakland USD • Placentia-Yorba Linda USD • Roseville City School District • San Francisco USD • West Contra Costa USD Why did AB 1468 (ethnic studies "content standards") fail to pass the CA legislature? AB 1468 (Feb 2025) would've created official content standards, curriculum frameworks, and state compliance monitoring for ethnic studies by 2028. It also included: • A mandatory advisory committee made up mostly of scholars in the four “core” disciplines. • A statewide mandate for districts to submit all ethnic studies curricula to the state by June 30, 2026 (which would have been before the proposed state standards would have been adopted). • A new role for the CA Dept. of Ed to monitor compliance, but without clear mechanisms for enforcement. The bill faced tremendous negative pressure from teachers unions due to the curriculum transparency requirement. The bill also faced negative pressure from organizations (including PeerK12 and our coalition partners) due to the dangers of elevating ethnic studies to the same level as math, English, Science, etc. and would have resulted in it becoming an admissions requirement for UC and CSU. Read more about this bill here: https://www.peerk12.org/post/a-new-ethnic-studies-bill-in-california-overview-of-ab-1468(https://www.peerk12.org/post/a-new-ethnic-studies-bill-in-california-overview-of-ab-1468) Who decides what gets taught in ethnic studies classes? Currently, local school boards approve the curriculum—but there are no specific guidelines in place, outside of the guardrails in AB101 - added to ensure school districts would not include any of the removed bigoted, antisemitic, and biased content that previously made the model curriculum unusable. Dozens of lawsuits sprang up across California as school districts failed to implement any of the guardrails or protections, especially around the Jewish American experience and the Israel-Palestinian Wars. Doesn’t California already require inclusive and diverse education? Yes. • SB 48 (2011) requires inclusive instruction on the contributions of all cultural groups, including LGBTQ+, religious, and disabled people. • Ed Code § 51204.5 and § 60040 mandate inclusive and bias-free materials. • These laws already allow multicultural education without ethnic studies-specific mandates. Is there effective oversight for ethnic studies courses? No, there is no effective oversight. While AB 101 prohibits bias and discrimination, there is no enforcement mechanism. The State Board of Education does not vet local curricula unless districts adopt the state model. The Attorney General’s 2024 legal alert reiterates anti-bias obligations but admits no active enforcement. Ethnic studies remains largely unregulated, with unvetted and often divisive materials being introduced into classrooms. Submit a Question on Ethnic Studies Didn't find the answer you were looking for? 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June 24, 2025 Ramona Unified postpones high school ethnic studies course for 2025-26 Julie Gallant Ramona Unified School District high school students will continue to be offered the traditional English II course only while plans to pilot an “English 2/English 2 Honors: Ethnic Perspectives in Literature” course are put on hold. Originally Posted In: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2025/06/24/ramona-unified-postpones-high-school-ethnic-studies-course-for-2025-26/ < Back A proposed ethnic studies literature course for high school students in the Ramona Unified School District is being postponed because funding has not been provided for its implementation. Starting with the 2025-26 school year, all districts in the state were required to offer the course following a state framework that provides an opportunity for students to learn about the histories, cultures, struggles and contributions of historically marginalized groups in America. But the district’s Education Services Department announced last month that ethnic studies is not currently a required course because funding was unavailable. The current state budget doesn’t include funding — estimated at $276 million — that would trigger the ethnic studies graduation requirement, said H.D. Palmer, a spokesperson for the state Department of Finance. He attributed it to “limited available ongoing resources.” Beginning this fall, Ramona Unified students entering ninth grade would have been the first class required to pass a one-semester class at some point during their high school years. Daryn Drum, president of the school board, said the state provided funds to the district to develop the curriculum but not to implement the course. “RUSD staff chose to develop a curriculum that is specific to Ramona and this community instead of just adopting a curriculum that was developed elsewhere,” Drum said in a June 20 email. “Our staff did an admirable job in the creation of the curriculum and they are to be commended. “This is the first time that RUSD staff has taken on a task like this and they put in many long hours to produce a thought-provoking experience for our students.” Drum said if and when the legal requirement to offer and/or require an ethnic studies course is confirmed, Ramona Unified will take steps to implement the course. To be ready, staff will continue refining the course’s instructional units, he said. Trustees had discussed plans to pilot the new ethnic studies curriculum by trying it out in classrooms this fall. It was scheduled to be reviewed for approval by trustees in May 2026, according to a staff report. After discussions, the board in January 2024 approved a course titled, “English 2/English 2 Honors: Ethnic Perspectives in Literature.” Several staff members were involved in writing the curriculum for the course, including Julia Shotwell, Nicole Del Castillo and Laura Nelson. Trustee Maya Phillips said she believes the district is taking the correct action to reverse its decision to require high school students to participate in ethnic studies during the next school year. “The course had been presented as a pilot program, but in practice, it would have made participation mandatory,” Phillips said in a June 15 email. “The district has also acknowledged what I have been stating since February … in the absence of state funding, there is no requirement to offer the course.” Phillips, who has stated her opposition to the ethnic studies curriculum in the past, said she believes it violates federal law. “In my view, the Ramona Unified School District’s ethnic studies units are deeply rooted in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) ideology and promote racially discriminatory frameworks,” Phillips said in the email. “DEI frameworks have been directly addressed and prohibited under President Trump’s executive orders.” Phillips said she is concerned that if the district was to continue with the curriculum it could jeopardize the district’s eligibility for federal funding. At the April 22 school board meeting, trustees discussed the value of an education on topics such as race, heritage and culture and debated the merits of teaching high schoolers about social activism. At the time of the discussion, Ramona Unified’s course was still being crafted. Trustee Rodger Dohm said it may be healthy for students to talk about their heritage, backgrounds and perceived injustices. “For some, it’s going to be a relief to talk about it and an opportunity for healing,” said Dohm, who favors students celebrating ethnicities and culture through their traditional food and clothing. “It’s important we do talk about it. People can come together and unite as one and become one Ramona family. “The curriculum should not be saying, ‘I am a victim,’” he added. “It should be the other way around. It should say, ‘Here’s our heritage. How can I persevere through the challenges I have.’” Trustee Dan Summers said he was “uncomfortable” with material that encouraged students to act on social justice. Summers said he also thought the content negatively portrayed America, particularly regarding its description of slavery and treatment of Native Americans. “I don’t think we should encourage people of this age group to become social activists,” said Summers, who is also chair of the American Liberty Forum of Ramona. Until an official appropriation is made and the requirement is triggered, the district will continue to offer its traditional English II course only, according to the May 20 memo. The decision was made “to ensure that teachers and students are not placed in a position of division or uncertainty around a course offering that is not yet mandated,” it states. ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE Previous Next

Explore PeerK12’s Resource Center - a comprehensive hub for blogs, research, videos, ethnic-studies analyses, Holocaust and Jewish-heritage education, action alerts, and educational tools to help parents, educators, and students navigate K–12 school policy, antisemitism, and curriculum issues. Welcome to our LEARNING CENTER resources news podcasts blog ETHNIC STUDIES research & REPORTS VIDEO COLLECTIONS HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE COMMEMORATE OCT 7TH Petitions & ACTION ALERTS jewish american heritage month Jewish American Heritage Month, celebrated in May, is an opportunity to learn about the history, contributions, and experiences of Jewish Americans. Click through to our curated list of unbiased, educational resources appropriate for students in grades K-12 that highlight Jewish American history, culture, and contributions. JAHM RESOURCES Featured blog post & webinars Is the San Dieguito Union High School District (SDUHSD) System Officially Broken? Is the San Dieguito Union High School District (SDUHSD) Officially Broken? PEER K12 Sep 21, 2025 CA AB 715: Governor Newsom Signs Antisemitism "Civil Rights" Bill That Protects Absolutely No One What began as a promising civil-rights bill to protect Jewish and Israeli-American students in California’s public schools has been gutted beyond recognition. Nicole Bernstein Oct 9, 2025 PeerK12 Webinars & Podcasts Play Video Play Video 01:27:11 California’s Antisemitism Bill Explained plus Hostages Release Breaking News In this episode of The Israeli-American Podcast, we begin with breaking news — President Trump’s newly brokered agreement to free Israeli hostages held by Hamas terrorists. We examine what’s known about the deal’s first phase, its implications for Israel’s security and deterrence, and how it underscores renewed American leadership in the Middle East. Then we turn to California, where Governor Gavin Newsom has signed AB 715, legislation originally introduced to combat antisemitism and anti-Israeli discrimination in public schools. While we appreciate the bill’s intent, ICAN remains deeply concerned that lawmakers stripped the legislation of real enforcement power before passage. During the September 10 Senate Education Committee hearing, legislators removed the antisemitism definition, investigative authority, and civil-rights enforcement mechanisms, leaving only a coordinator who can provide “technical assistance” but no authority to investigate or enforce protections. We break down what this means for Jewish and Israeli-American students, how AB 715 was positioned as legislative cover for advancing the Ethnic Studies mandate, and why ICAN is urging Californians to stay engaged ahead of the 2026 legislative session. Governor Newsom has already promised follow-up legislation — and ICAN will work to ensure it delivers real accountability and genuine protections, not symbolic politics. Play Video Play Video 01:02:13 PARENT POWER: Depoliticizing the Curriculum Moderator: Mika Hackner, Director of Research, NAVI Panelists: Tamar Caspi, PeerK12; Kofi Montzka, Attorney and Laura Zhiss, co-founder of SHIELD (Supporting Honest Instruction & Equitable Learning for our Diaspora) Across the country, curricular standards are increasingly embedding politicized content that portrays America and the West as inherently oppressive. Under the banner of ethnic studies and related labels, activist networks are advancing political activism in the K-12 classroom, shutting out dissenting views and undermining student learning. Learn what you can do to counter the politicization of education and advocate for a renewed focus on academics, critical thinking, and civic development in your local schools. Play Video Play Video 01:59:20 PeerK12 Advocacy after October 7th w/ Nicole Bernstein & Tamar Caspi [Part 2] In this episode Tamar Caspi and Nicole Bernstein discuss the aftermath of the October 7th attacks and the surge of antisemitism in K-12 schools. They share their experiences mobilizing parents and educators to combat hate, the challenges of school responses, and the role of social media in spreading antisemitic sentiments. The conversation highlights the need for strategic political and legal actions to protect Jewish civil rights in educational settings. Chapters 00:00 Introduction to PeerK12 and Recent Events 01:11 The Impact of October 7th on Jewish Students 05:04 Mobilizing Against Antisemitism in Schools 10:09 The Challenge of School Responses to Hate 12:04 The Role of Social Media in Antisemitism 16:26 Confronting Hate Speech and Accountability 23:21 Strategic Responses to Antisemitism 29:49 The Broader Implications of Indoctrination 35:45 Political and Legal Strategies for Change 41:22 Building a Cohesive Strategy Against Antisemitism About PeerK12 Co‑founders of PeerK12: Partnering with Nicole Bernstein, Tamar co‑founded the organization in 2021. PeerK12 works to counteract institutionalized Jew-hatred in K‑12 education by mobilizing communities for legal protections, policy reform, and curriculum transparency. Website -https://www.peerk12.org/ Keywords #PeerK12, #antisemitism, #ethnicstudies, #Jewisheducation, #communityactivism, #AB101, #Jewishidentity, #educationpolicy, #K12schools, #Jewishhistory, #education, #antisemitism, #communityadvocacy, #schoolpolicies, #misinformation, #Jewishidentity, #ethnicstudies, #parentinvolvement, #activism, #socialjustice Play Video Play Video 01:55:31 Ethnic Studies Live Webinar 9 4 25 On September 4, 2025, Courageous Conversations about our Schools and Braver Angels hosted a "fishbowl" conversation about California's Ethnic Studies course for high school students. Four people who support the course spoke first, followed by 4 people who have concerns about it. The 8 panelists were asked to share concerns they had about their own positions. Chapters: 0:00 - 8:40 Welcome and discussion overview 8:40 - 18:15 EdSource Journalist provides background on California's Ethnic Studies Course 18:15 - 40:28 Panelists in support of Ethnic Studies 42:00 - 51:50 Q&A with panelists in support of Ethnic Studies 51:50 - 1:17:20 Panelists concerned about Ethnic Studies 1:17:20 - 1:34:25 Q&A with panelists concerned about Ethnic Studies 1:34:25 - 1:53:50 - Takeaways from panelists 1:53:50 - 1:55:31 - Acknowledgements and closing comments Note: Audience members submitted their takeaways in the chat window. Those comments and additional information about this event are available at www.schoolconversations.org/ethnic-studies-event. Play Video Play Video 01:50:26 PeerK12 Moms Fight for Jewish Civil Rights w/ Nicole Bernstein & Tamar Caspi [Ep 5 Part 1] Nicole Bernstein & Tamar Caspi, co-founders of PeerK12, speak about their mission to combat Jew hatred in K-12 education. They discuss their backgrounds, the emergence of ethnic studies, and the implications of AB 101 on Jewish students. The conversation highlights the complexity of ethnic studies curriculum, the importance of community mobilization, and the need for resolutions condemning antisemitism. They also explore how current events influence activism and the experiences of antisemitism in schools, emphasizing the importance of unity within the Jewish community. The conversation delves into the challenges faced by Jewish communities in the context of education, particularly regarding the spread of misinformation and antisemitism. They discuss the importance of community mobilization, the role of parents in advocating for their children's rights, and the need for accountability within school districts. They reflect on past experiences and the lessons learned, emphasizing the necessity of proactive engagement and collaboration with other communities to address these issues effectively. About PeerK12 Co‑founders of PeerK12: Partnering with Nicole Bernstein, Tamar co‑founded the organization in 2021. PeerK12 works to counteract institutionalized Jew-hatred in K‑12 education by mobilizing communities for legal protections, policy reform, and curriculum transparency. Website -https://www.peerk12.org/ Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Peer K12 and Its Mission 09:57 The Emergence of Ethnic Studies and Its Implications 19:06 The Controversy Surrounding AB 101 26:00 The Role of the Liberated Ethnic Studies Consortium 34:00 Real-Life Impacts of Antisemitism in Schools 39:58 Mobilizing the Community Against Antisemitism 43:15 The Importance of Nuanced Resolutions Against Antisemitism 44:39 Community Response to Antisemitism in Schools 46:51 Inclusion of Jewish Heritage in Education 49:10 Understanding Anti-Zionism and Its Implications 50:19 The Role of Student Advocacy in School Policies 54:18 The Impact of Immigrant Values on Community Support 57:10 The Complexity of Jewish Identity and Community Dynamics 01:01:11 The Challenge of Addressing Antisemitism in Education 01:06:22 The Need for Jewish Community Self-Care 01:09:07 The Role of Parents in Combating Antisemitism 01:13:05 Case Study: Addressing Classroom Incidents of Antisemitism 01:20:28 The Principle of Accountability 01:21:49 Going Public for Change 01:23:10 Navigating School Board Procedures 01:24:59 Community Support and Solidarity 01:26:12 Mobilizing Diverse Communities 01:28:04 The Power of Collective Action 01:29:19 Activating Parental Involvement 01:30:47 The Role of Transparency in Education 01:32:35 Curriculum and Accountability 01:34:29 Consequences of Inaction 01:35:18 The Importance of Community Engagement 01:39:15 Lessons from the Past 01:40:53 Ongoing Advocacy and Support 01:45:01 Challenges with Legacy Organizations 01:47:38 The Need for a New Approach #PeerK12, #antisemitism, #ethnicstudies, #Jewisheducation, #communityactivism, #AB101, #Jewishidentity, #educationpolicy, #K12schools, #Jewishhistory, #education, #antisemitism, #communityadvocacy, #schoolpolicies, #misinformation, #Jewishidentity, #ethnicstudies, #parentinvolvement, #activism, #socialjustice Play Video Play Video 01:25:23 Exclusive Briefing for Parents & Educators: Israel’s Operation Against the Islamic Republic of Iran Join ICAN for an urgent community briefing on the latest developments regarding Israel's operation against Iran. Specifically tailored for parents, educators, and school board members, this session will provide essential information, expert insights, and practical tools for navigating discussions in schools and homes. Ensure you're informed, prepared, and equipped to support our students during this critical time. Play Video Play Video 06:44 CTA oppose efforts to stop their hate speech in classrooms Dillon Hosier and Nicole Bernstein break down the bizarre rational behind why the California Teachers Association (CTA) - represented here by an LA Unified elementary school teacher and infamous UTLA (extreme anti-Israel activists), David Goldberg (a JINO - Jew In Name Only) - opposes CA AB 715 - a bill that aims to protect Jewish students in K-12 from unlawful discrimination, hate speech, intimidation, harrassment, etc. due to their religion or national origin. Play Video Play Video 07:38 School Board Association Opposition to Accountability Dillon Hosier and Nicole Bernstein break down the insanity behind why the California School Boards Association (CSBA) - represented here by their lobbyist, Carlos Machado - opposes CA AB 715 - a bill that aims to protect Jewish students in K-12 from unlawful discrimination due to their religion or national origin. K-12 Extremism tracker Our partners at NAVI Values maintain a substack called " The K-12 Extremism Tracker " - a collection of verified and impeccably researched, up-to-date evidence and visual proof of the kinds of extremist, anti-Western values, anti-liberal, antisemitic ideology currently found in classrooms and schools across the country. PeerK12 regularly partners with NAVI Values to track, research, and document these examples. NAVI Values K-12 Tracker Substack our trusted partners To play, press and hold the enter key. To stop, release the enter key.

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

April 30, 2024 PeerK-12 Official Statement Expressing Strong Objections at the Politicization of San Diego Unified School District’s Jewish American Heritage Month Proclamation PeerK12 It is deeply concerning that the school district has chosen to politicize Jewish American Heritage Month, just as they did Arab American Heritage Month with the inclusion of Edward Said and Doris Bittar, by endorsing figures who polarize and detract from the celebration of a rich and diverse heritage. Originally Posted In: < Back We express our profound disappointment and disapproval regarding the inclusion of individuals like Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, and others in the proclamation for San Diego Unified School District's Jewish American Heritage Month, as posted in the agenda for Tuesday, April 30th school board meeting . These individuals are known for their divisive and politically motivated stances that are starkly anti-American and anti-Israel. Their controversial views are Marxist and are not representative of the Jewish community and undermine the purpose of this observance. It is deeply concerning that the school district has chosen to politicize Jewish American Heritage Month, just as they did Arab American Heritage Month with the inclusion of Edward Said and Doris Bittar, by endorsing figures who polarize and detract from the celebration of a rich and diverse heritage. These decisions are not only a significant oversight but also a severe misjudgment that politicizes and tarnishes the intent of such commemorations. By doing so, the district has regrettably used both heritage months as political pawns, which is unacceptable and deserving of strong condemnation. This proclamation is the antithesis of the Resolution Condemning Antisemitism that SDUSD adopted on October 26, 2021 in both spirit and content as it is not "inclusive and reflective of best practices and the full diversity of the Jewish people and Israeli-Americans." PeerK-12 is committed to values that foster unity, respect, and understanding across all communities - therefore, we demand immediate correction and oversight to ensure that such missteps are not repeated. We urge the school district to uphold the spirit of this heritage month by celebrating figures who unify rather than divide, reflecting the true values of our community and country. Materials, appropriate figures, videos, curricula, and additional resources for Jewish American Heritage Month can be found here: https://jewsinschool.org/jewish-heritage-month and here: https://jewishamericanheritage.org/for-educators . * * * PeerK12 For all media inquiries, please contact info@peerk12.org 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

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