The best way to strengthen a school, a classroom, a library — an entire community — is to ensure that every voice is heard, respected, and invited to join the party.
Jenna Statfeld Harris and Lori Lowenthal Marcus | The Detroit Jewish News | July 4, 2025
As attorneys who fight antisemitism in K-12 schools, we have a front row seat to the rapid growth and spread of bigotry in our nation’s primary educational institutions. Recently, we supported Jewish families in Ann Arbor, Michigan, who faced a unique version of hate. Their story has a strong lesson for us all.
Here’s that story, first with a benign example, and then a historical one:
A teenager is planning a big house party. The host’s parents urge her to invite the new kid. The host looks at all the preparation she has done, reviews the great guestlist of friends, even listens to the playlist she prepared. And then she decides to cancel the party.
Faced with a choice of everyone — plus new kid — coming to the party, or nobody getting to come to the party, the teenager host chooses the latter. No party for anyone.
Think of the hideous versions of this story many of us heard from our parents and grandparents. In April 1960, a small group of Black high school students tried to use the “Whites Only” library in Danville, Virginia. The city responded by closing the library. When a federal court ordered the city to reopen the library, it did — but removed all the tables and chairs. Other towns drained their pools when ordered to integrate. Some cities shut their zoos rather than allowing in children of all races.
In each situation, the people in charge considered their options and, essentially, canceled the party rather than allow in unwanted outsiders. Decades later, those children — who couldn’t swim or couldn’t sit down to read their books — are now grown adults who still recall viscerally that trauma and pain of exclusion.
Fast forward to this school year. Ann Arbor Public School District’s Board of Education made the same type of misguided choice between inclusion and full cancellation.
In October 2023, Ann Arbor Public Schools’ Jewish community applied to become a Board-designated affinity group. According to the Board’s decade-old policy at the time, identity-based affinity groups could apply for Board recognition. Recognized groups — including LGBTQ+, Asian, Pacific Islander, South Asian/American, Black and Arab American groups — received permanent agenda time at Board meetings, visibility on the district’s website, and support for affinity-based learning materials and heritage months. Board recognition provided a critical opportunity for affinity groups — particularly those that were historically marginalized — to ensure that their own voices could be heard by the district community.
The Board’s response to the Jewish community’s application for affinity group designation? First the Board claimed that religious groups could not be Board-designated affinity groups. When the Jewish community explained — as so many of us have had to do — that Jews are an ethnic group, a people, and not only a religious group, the Board stalled.
And then for the next 18 months, the Board ignored the Jewish community’s application, thereby excluding its unique heritage from district programming. Like the new kid, the Jewish community waited to see if it could join its peers at the party.
Finally, in April 2025, the Board made a decision: Instead of approving the Jewish affinity group, it would dismantle the entire Board-designated affinity program.
Instead of including a Jewish voice alongside LGBTQ+, Asian, Pacific Islander, South Asian/American, Black and Arab American voices, the Board silenced them all.
In other words, the Board canceled the party so that the Jews couldn’t come.
When the party is canceled, when the library is gutted, when the pool is drained, there are multiple layers of hurt and trauma. Not only does the new kid miss out, but the new kid is vilified for causing everyone else to miss out. It is that unique injustice that we are witnessing now in Ann Arbor (not to mention in schools and universities across the country).
Jewish students and parents who were already excluded, misunderstood and mistreated are now the ones being blamed for silencing other groups’ voices. Of course, the Jewish community did not want the “party” canceled — quite the opposite. Nevertheless, and with tragic irony, the group seeking inclusion ends up blamed for others’ exclusion.
So, what to do when the party gets canceled? Where do we go from here? By a quick vote, Ann Arbor’s School Board deprived the entire community of a valuable asset. It must immediately reverse course. It must reinstate the affinity group program and include as many of its vibrant and diverse affinity groups — including the Jewish one — as possible.
The best way to strengthen a school, a classroom, a library — an entire community — is to ensure that every voice is heard, respected, and invited to join the party.
Read the full article here .
