There is “deep concern” about activities at a National Association of Independent Schools event that “normalized antisemitism,” the Anti-Defamation League, American Jewish Committee, Jewish Federations of North America and Prizmah: Center for Jewish Day Schools wrote to the membership association of private nonprofit schools.
The more than 60-year-old association, which represents 2,149 schools, held a “people of color conference” in Denver from Dec. 4-7. The association calls the event “the flagship of NAIS’s commitment to equity and justice in teaching, learning and sustainability for independent schools” and selected “meeting the moment: anchoring and enriching our education futures” as the theme for the 2024 event.
On Dec. 5, Suzanne Barakat, former executive director of and current adviser to the University of California, San Francisco’s initiative on health and human rights, addressed a general session at the event in what the Jewish groups described as a keynote. In a speaker bio, NAIS describes Barakat as a “practicing physician, humanitarian and prominent advocate for inclusion and social justice.”
Barakat and others “used their platforms, meant for elevating equity and justice for people of color in the independent school community in the United States, to traffic in extreme, biased and false anti-Zionist and anti-Israel rhetoric,” the Jewish leaders wrote to Debra Wilson, the president of the National Association of Independent Schools.
Speakers, including Barakat, also called Israel’s establishment a “racist” endeavor, accused the Jewish state of genocide and made efforts to “downplay the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas terrorist attack,” the Jewish leaders wrote. “The pervasiveness of this rhetoric and the absence of any alternate perspectives created an atmosphere that was hostile for many Jewish students and faculty members in attendance.”
The “vast majority” of Jews are Zionists, and “anti-Zionism fuels antisemitism,” the Jewish leaders wrote. “Since Oct. 7, 2023, many people claiming to be ‘solely’ anti-Zionists have verbally and physically attacked Jews, protested in front of Jewish religious and communal institutions and attacked Jewish-owned businesses.”
“Moreover, because the vast majority of Jews identify as Zionists, attacks on and exclusion of Zionists ultimately mean attacks on and exclusion of Jews,” they wrote. “In addition to contributing to the hostile atmosphere for Jewish community members, the speakers fostered an atmosphere of ahistorical bias that is antithetical to the values of NAIS.”
Barakat was guilty of a “patent erasure of the millennia-old connection between the Jewish people and the land of Israel and a flattening of Jewish identity,” when she defined “Zionism” as “some European Jews decided that the solution to solving antisemitism in Europe and Russia was the establishment of a state in Palestine,” the Jewish leaders wrote.
In so doing, she excluded Jews from the Middle East and North Africa “who also yearned to return to their ancient homeland,” the leaders wrote.
Barakat and other speakers, including Ruha Benjamin, professor of African American studies at Princeton University, “used the term ‘genocide’ in relation to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, a grossly inaccurate and misleading use of a well-defined legal term,” the Jewish leaders said. “Independent schools should champion nuanced and fact-based teaching of history and current affairs.”
“Jewish students and faculty attending PoCC were forced to hear this damaging and antisemitic rhetoric repeated time and again and watch as their peers applauded,” the leaders added. “These occurrences, along with others reported by Jewish attendees, display a fundamental undermining of the principles of inclusivity and equity that NAIS stands for, and a marginalization of Jewish students and educators at a time of skyrocketing antisemitism.”
In addition to directing the association to live up to its values and being more careful in selecting speakers, the Jewish leaders called on its leaders “to issue a full and direct apology for the pervasive antisemitism at PoCC.”
“Perhaps the most heartbreaking report we received from the conference was from a Jewish student, who stated that he and his peers ‘felt so targeted, so unsafe, that we tucked our Magen Davids (Jewish stars, a historic symbol of Jewish peoplehood) in our shirts and walked out as those around us glared and whispered,’” the leaders wrote. “No student should ever be made to feel this way because of their identity.”
JNS sought comment from NAIS, Princeton and UCSF. After JNS published, Myra McGovern, vice president of external relations at the association, told JNS that “NAIS strongly condemns antisemitism.”
On Thursday, Wilson, the president of NAIS, wrote back to the Jewish leaders “to express my profound remorse over the divisive and hurtful rhetoric expressed on stage at last week’s NAIS People of Color Conference in Denver.”
“There is no place for antisemitism at NAIS events, in our member schools or in society. Your willingness to offer your perspectives speaks to your commitment to education and dialogue—commitments we share,” Wilson wrote, per a copy of the letter shared with JNS. “Your letter was particularly affecting in describing Jewish students compelled to hide their Stars of David. That any student would feel the need to conceal their identity at our conference is antithetical to our mission and our values.”
NAIS has “already begun implementing meaningful changes to our speaker selection and content review processes,” the association president wrote. “Going forward, all keynote presentations will be submitted in advance, including detailed outlines or full remarks, along with slides and materials. No last-minute changes will be permitted without explicit review and approval.”
“We understand that antisemitism is one of history’s oldest and ugliest hatreds. It manifests not only in obvious acts of violence and discrimination but in subtle erasures and exclusions,” she added. “In this regard, we recognize the particular importance of acknowledging Jewish people of color—including educators—who have too often been rendered invisible in discussions of both Jewish identity and racial justice.”
Wilson added that NAIS “gratefully” accepts the offer of the Jewish groups to “serve as resources to help us address these issues.”
After JNS published, University of California, San Francisco told JNS that “antisemitism stands in stark contrast to UCSF’s fundamental belief in respecting and including all people regardless of their identity, beliefs and background.”
“We stand with the Jewish members of our community and remain committed to maintaining a culture of academic inquiry that welcomes and values all people,” the university said.
Richard Sandler, a lawyer and chair of the board of the Milken Community School, a private Jewish day school in Los Angeles, told JNS that “our school, like most Jewish day schools, develops proud, educated and intellectually curious Jewish students.”
Milken students, Sandler told JNS, “are not afraid to stand up for themselves, Israel and the Jewish people based upon knowing the truth about who they are, the proud tradition they come from and why it matters.”
“The fact that an organization such as NAIS would allow such offensive misinformation at an educational conference attended by thousands of students and educators, including Jewish students and educators, demonstrates the failure of the K-12 system to properly educate students about critical thinking and discrimination when it comes to Israel and the Jewish people,” he said.
“It is no wonder that students are so misinformed when they get to college and that the message to Jewish students is that diversity and inclusion does not apply to them,” Sandler added. “The message to the Jewish community is that we cannot stand by and allow educational institutions to continue to spread these dangerous lies, and I applaud JFNA, ADL, AJC and Prizmah for taking the first step in this situation.”