After the names and faces of members of the Jewish Student Union at East Brunswick High School were replaced with pictures of Muslim students, the New Jersey public school district hired a law firm to investigate, CNN.
Victor Valeski, superintendent of schools for East Brunswick, wrote that he is “devastated and frustrated” and that he and the entire board of education “sincerely apologize for the hurt, pain and anguish this event has caused our Jewish students, their families and the impact this continues to have on the entire EB community.”
An “initial internal investigation” indicated “at a minimum, gross [negligence] in the proof review procedure before going to print,” Valeski told CNN.
Brad Cohen, the mayor of East Brunswick, wrote that the oversight was a “blatant antisemitic” act.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) claimed that there was anti-Muslim backlash to the incident too.
Sometimes these antisemitic incidents hit close to home, including at my alma mater East Brunswick High School, where the names and photo of the Jewish Student Union—which I was once part of—were removed from the yearbook.@EBPublicSchools needs to investigate how this happened pic.twitter.com/EkNbolmTuo
— Dan Granot (@_DanGranot) June 5, 2024
