(Washington DC – May 8, 2024) – StandWithUs applauds efforts by the United States House of Representative to highlight pervasive antisemitism in K-12 schools, by holding a hearing with leaders from New York City Public Schools, Berkeley Unified School District, and Montgomery County Board of Education on May 8, 2024.
“The Congressional hearing helped expose the hate we’ve been helping students fight on the ground every day,” said Kate Chavez, Executive Director of High School Affairs at StandWithUs.
David Smokler, Director of K-12 Educator Outreach, attended the hearing and reflected that, “it was deeply disturbing to hear the Superintendent of Berkeley Unified School District testify in defense of Liberated Ethnic Studies. This is a coalition of extremists who glorified the genocidal atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7th. They belong nowhere near our classrooms, yet Berkeley USD is proudly partnering with them.” For more on Liberated Ethnic Studies, click here.
StandWithUs is on the front lines of addressing antisemitism and anti-Israel bias in K-12 schools across the United States. Since October 7th, we’ve handled 260 K-12 cases, including bullying and threats, physical assault, teachers politicizing lessons and indoctrinating students, and lacking responses from administrators.
Lauren, a StandWithUs Kenneth Leventhal High School Intern and student in the Montgomery County Public School system, said: “After October 7th, I felt like I had to hide my Judaism, Zionism, and shy away from speaking about Israel. I did not feel like I had support in my school. I am frustrated with this lack of action. I know there is more work that we can be doing to support Jewish students every day. This is now a national conversation, and we should all commit to fighting antisemitism.”
Moving forward, we urge K-12 schools to comprehensively fight antisemitism by committing to:
Antisemitism training for all teachers and administrators
Including accurate educational materials about Jews in curriculum and broader efforts to address hate and bias in schools
Providing equal treatment for Jewish, Israeli, and Zionist students when handling cases of harassment, bullying, vandalism, and other types of bias and bigotry in schools.
To our incredible Jewish, Israeli, and Zionist students, teachers, and administrators: Know that we are here for you. Now is the time to come together, uplift one another, and stand strong in the face of ignorance and hate. Right now, we are the living embodiment of Never Again.
We are committed to supporting our community through legal action and teen and parent education and training. Should you need resources, educational materials, legal support, or anything else, reach out to highschool@standwithus.com or legal@standwithus.com. Find additional resources at:
About StandWithUs
StandWithUs (SWU) is an international, nonprofit and nonpartisan education organization that works to inspire and educate people of all ages about Israel, as well as challenge misinformation and fight against antisemitism.
Through university fellowships, high school internships, middle school curricula, conferences, materials, social media, educational films and missions to Israel, StandWithUs supports people around the world who want to educate their schools and communities about Israel.
Founded in 2001 and headquartered in Los Angeles, the organization has chapters and programs throughout the U.S., in Israel, the UK, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, the Netherlands and Australia.
For the last eleven years, SWU has consistently received the highest possible ratings from Charity Navigator and Guidestar, two charity watchdog groups that assess hundreds of thousands of charities in the United States.
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