Antisemitism in K–12 public schools may not be as prevalent as in higher education, but it’s still disturbingly commonplace.
It may not be as prevalent in K–12 public schools, but it’s still disturbingly commonplace.
A now infamous joint statement from several Harvard student groups deemed Israel “entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” When students at the University of Wisconsin–Madison chanted “glory to the martyrs” and “by any means necessary,” the school struggled to craft a response, opting to call these abhorrent proclamations “respectful dialogue.”
If only such loathsome views were confined to higher education. Alas, antisemitism is alive and well in American public schools.
In the wake of Hamas’s recent pogrom, a school superintendent in Massachusetts shared a resource from Learning for Justice, which claimed that “Israeli terrorism has been significantly worse than that of the Palestinians,” leaving Israel without the “moral legitimacy . . . to negotiate” with organizations such as Hamas. Learning for Justice, formerly Teaching Tolerance, is a publication of the Southern Poverty Law Center — the same organization that deemed Moms for Liberty a hate group — that boasts a circulation of 450,000; through its resources, guides, and curriculum influence, the SPLC reaches an untold number even greater.
Such antisemitic views are not isolated — many curriculum-design modules seem to have a real problem with Jews. While, at face value, they criticize the Israeli state rather than Jews in general, these critiques are underlined by something far more sinister.
Criticism of Israeli policy is one thing. A person or curriculum can attack Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank, the country’s increasing desecularization, or its general military posture without being antisemitic. Questioning the Israeli state’s existence with slogans such as “make Israel Palestine again,” as one Los Angeles teacher did, is fundamentally antisemitic. It would subordinate the very idea of liberal statehood in favor of violent expulsion and ethnic rage. And Jews, both historically and today, always seem to be the first target of such efforts.
For example, the Zinn Education Project, which develops history curricula used by 155,000 teachers, declared that the terror, violence, murder, and rape we’ve seen in the past week “is the direct result of decades of Israeli occupation.” Their X account also shared a post declaring that we cannot mourn the lives of the innocent Jews slaughtered by Hamas unless we politically mobilize in favor of “Palestinian liberation.” In other words, Jews are not even allowed to grieve without being lectured about power and positionality. Similarly, many ethnic-studies programs are ingrained not so subtly with antisemitism, inextricably linking Israeli statehood to oppression. What is behind a view of the Jewish state as intrinsically oppressive other than antisemitism?
This anti-Jewish bent isn’t new. Rethinking Schools, whose products are used by 200,000 teachers and make it onto university reading lists, insists that educators have a “moral and educational responsibility” to join and teach about “the movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel,” which openly flouts the 3D test that the U.S. State Department formerly used to determine whether an act or belief is antisemitic. The teachers’ unions in Seattle passed a resolution in 2021 in support of the same movement. In Virginia, a school-board member in Fairfax County has, under the banner of culturally responsive pedagogy, pushed for an explicitly anti-Israeli curriculum. She also voted against a resolution to commemorate 9/11 victims, canvassed for a blatantly antisemitic group, and in a graduation speech asked students to remember “jihad.”
When influential curriculum developers, unions, district leaders, and publications share such views, it’s unsurprising that subtly antisemitic views come into vogue. Researchers at the University of Arkansas found that, while they deny outright racist comments, highly educated people were more likely to apply double standards relating to religious attire or public gatherings during the pandemic, being more critical of Jews than of other groups. Moreover, adults who attended private schools have significantly warmer feelings toward Jews than adults who attended public schools.
Even before the war, antisemitic harassment was a common specter in American schools. In March, a Jewish middle-school teacher in Massachusetts resigned after enduring repeated antisemitic insults from a twelve-year-old student. Similar outbreaks of antisemitic bullying have occurred in New Jersey, New York, and Oregon.
To their credit, not every institution in American public education peddles these grotesque views. The American Federation of Teachers released a resolute statement in support of the Israeli people. After public condemnation, the California Board of Education revised its ethnic-studies curriculum in 2021 to excise its uncritically anti-Israeli messaging.
With enrollment in K–12 over twice the size of that in higher education, we shouldn’t be surprised that there’s a mix of views. But consider the outcry that would rightfully ensue if a textbook implied that blacks benefited from slavery or if a superintendent called for the eradication of Mexico and its people. What does it say, then, when these antisemitic views meet little to no resistance?
Thankfully, the violent rhetoric against Israel and in support of Hamas has been muted in public education compared with the same in our universities. But a subtle wasting disease kills just as surely as a gunshot. It’s the quiet rhetoric of the Zinn Education Project, after all, that inculcates the worldview of a college protester chanting “glory to the martyrs.” They’ve disgraced themselves and should be treated accordingly.
While antisemitism is not as ubiquitous in K–12 education as it is on colleges and universities, we cannot afford to let our guard down. This type of behavior is not acceptable in classrooms, whether it be toward Jews or any other group.
Daniel Buck is a former teacher and a policy and editorial associate at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Garion Frankel is a Ph.D. student in PK–12 educational leadership at Texas A&M University. He is a Young Voices contributor and formerly an education journalist.