Republicans in the House of Representatives will question school leaders from three politically liberal parts of the country this morning during a hearing that will for the first time look into allegations of anti-Semitism at primary and secondary schools since Hamas's attack on Israel on October 7.
The House of Representatives has already held two controversial hearings on anti-Semitism in higher education, which helped topple the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania. Sharp questions from Republicans also forced Columbia's president to promise a crackdown on anti-Semitism on campus, leading to a wave of student activism following the arrest of more than a hundred pro-Palestinian protesters at Manhattan University.
Now members of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce will question David Banks, the chancellor of New York's schools; Enikia Ford Morthel, the superintendent in Berkeley, California; and Karla Silvestre, the school board president in Montgomery County, Maryland, on the handling of several incidents in their districts.
Here are the details:
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The three districts all serve diverse student bodies and have significant numbers of Jewish students. Their schools also embrace a number of practices that Republicans oppose, from diversity, equity and inclusion programs to ethnic studies classeswhich have sometimes become sites for deeply contested lessons on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
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School leaders are expected to face questions about a wide range of allegations made by some Jewish and pro-Israel organizations, which have filed complaints with the U.S. Department of Education saying the districts have violated federal civil rights laws through a hostile climate for Jewish students.
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Among the incidents likely to be raised by committee members are allegations of students shouting, “Kill the Jews”; lesson plans that referred to Israeli 'apartheid'; and a class map of the “Arab World” that did not include a label for “Israel,” calling the country “Palestine.”
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There is great disagreement in the three districts about when criticism of Israel turns into anti-Semitism. Before the hearing, a group of 150 members of the Montgomery County Jewish community called on Ms. Silvestre to defend the rights of students and teachers to free speech. Several teachers were suspended there after criticizing Israel or supporting Palestinian rights.
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Emerson Sykes, an attorney and First Amendment expert with the ACLU, will also testify at the hearing at the invitation of Democrats, who have said they want to hold schools accountable for anti-Semitism while protecting free speech.