In its article, “How Politics Is Changing the Way History Is Taught,” The New York Times (NYT) used partisan politics to distort legitimate concerns about the hate and discrimination Jewish students face in far too many California classrooms.
California’s Assembly Bill 715 (AB 715) was aimed at addressing a very real and ongoing crisis. Despite the bad faith arguments made by its opponents, AB 715 had nothing to do with politics in Washington, D.C.
Across California, Jewish students have reported being subjected to hate, bullying, discrimination, death threats, and even physical violence. Far too often, school administrations have done little or nothing to address rampant antisemitism.
StandWithUs K-12 Fairness Center and legal teams know this all too well — we receive constant requests for help from students, parents, and teachers experiencing bias and hate in their schools.
Thankfully, California’s elected officials heard enough stories and saw enough data to understand that this is a problem that requires urgent action. We were proud to be part of this effort, together with the largest coalition of Jewish groups to ever support a bill in the California state legislature.
In this context, the NYT also politicized a basic fact about K-12 education — school teachers do not have the type of academic freedom that university professors do. This is not merely a viewpoint espoused by conservative activists. According to Supreme Court precedent, teachers simply cannot teach or say whatever they want in classrooms. They have to abide by state standards and policies, as well as decisions made by their school district.
California’s Education Code has numerous provisions prohibiting discrimination in schools on the basis of race, gender, sexuality, religion, ethnicity, nationality, and other characteristics. Most school districts in the state have policies to address how controversial issues should be taught, including that teachers must not promote personal viewpoints or political bias.
In California’s K-12 education system, “academic freedom” concerns are often driven by “liberated” ethnic studies groups that seek to promote the elimination of Israel and other extremist agendas in classrooms. It is entirely reasonable for state and local education agencies to prevent students from being subjected to such indoctrination. This in no way prevents open and honest discussion about these topics, nor does it limit teaching about the struggles and contributions of various ethnic and racial groups in the United States.
The Jewish community has been laser focused on working to remove ideologically biased and factually incorrect material about Jews and Israel from K-12 classrooms. The graphic in the New York Times article, taken from the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Coalition, is a perfect illustration of both of those problems. It erroneously portrays all land in the region that was not privately owned by Jews as “Palestinian land.” More broadly, it erases over 3,000 years of the Jewish people’s history by framing them as “colonizers” in Israel.
Removing this content has nothing to do with politics — it is simply about telling the truth in California’s classrooms.
David Smokler is the Executive Director of StandWithUs’ K-12 Fairness Center, an international nonpartisan education organization that supports Israel and fights antisemitism.
