The House Education and Workforce Committee’s recent report about Jew-hatred in the Berkeley Unified School District reflects issues in the district that the community has raised for years, Bay Area Jewish groups told JNS.
The report stated that the district, which serves 9,410 students in 20 schools, has collaborated with the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium, which the report described as “an ethnic studies consulting group that promotes politicized curricula.”
The partnership has “resulted in lessons littered with antisemitic resources along with the activist ideology that fuels contemporary antisemitism,” according to the report.
The report also stated that the district has “circulated resources that incite antisemitism” and approved a lesson set whitewashing terrorism, and district staff and students have partnered with and raised money for the Middle East Children’s Alliance, which has alleged ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terror group. (JNS sought comment from the district.)
Oleg Ivanov, executive director of StandWithUs Northern California, told JNS that the report highlights “issues that we have seen in the BUSD for many years, which have led many Jewish families to pull their children from the district.”
The district’s units and resource guides cite the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2007 Holy Land Foundation trial on terror financing.
The units and guides also cite the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, a San Francisco nonprofit, whose executive director has stated that “bringing down Israel really will benefit everyone in the world” and lauded the Oct. 7 attacks, Ivanov said.
CAIR blamed Israel for being attacked shortly after Oct. 7, and the Biden administration removed it as an adviser on the national strategy to combat Jew-hatred after initially listing it.
The district’s citations of CAIR and the center show “that radical antisemitic ideology has penetrated deep into the district’s classrooms,” Ivanov told JNS.
The report “found that district employees collaborated with Middle East Children’s Alliance, which has alleged ties to the terrorist organization PFLP, and used Teach Palestine, which teaches children to glorify terrorism and ‘martyrdom,’” he said.
“This mountain of damning evidence shows that there is much work that needs to be done before antisemitism is rooted out of the district and Jewish families can feel safe sending their children there again,” Ivanov told NS.
Adriana Lombard, director of K-12 education at the Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area, told JNS that the committee’s report reflects “a repeated pattern we’re seeing at schools.”
“The erasure of Israel and Jewish historical connections to the land, minimization of the Holocaust and framing Jews as oppressors all perpetuate antisemitism,” Lombard said. “We are grateful to the Jewish families and educators in Berkeley who raised these concerns and have worked tirelessly to advocate for change.”
“It is critically important we work together to ensure Jews are accurately represented, their identities respected and all students receive an education grounded in historical accuracy and critical thinking,” she told JNS.
Tali Klima, spokeswoman for the Bay Area Jewish Coalition, told JNS that “what the committee’s report highlighted, and the community has been warning about for many years, is that on the topic of Israel-Palestine, BUSD has made no attempt to be even-handed.”
“District and school staff are fully committed to, and indoctrinating in a biased, oversimplified and dangerous ideology—that Israel is the evil oppressor and Palestinians the righteous oppressed,” she said.
“They explicitly promote student activism as young as elementary school, and collaborate with controversial groups—like CAIR and MECA—that have extremist agendas and alleged ties to terrorist organizations,” she said. “It’s no wonder BUSD has captured the attention of Congress for its flagrant and skyrocketing antisemitism.”
“It is time for radical change from the very top and all the way down the line in BUSD elected officials and staff,” she said. “If family complaints cannot make a difference, we hope that federal oversight will.”
The coalition urges Congress to “make the district fully accountable for its decisions and provide real consequences that lead to actionable change, because the practices noted in the report from several years ago continue to this day at BUSD schools,” she said.
Sarah Levin, executive director of the nonprofit Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa, told JNS that the report’s findings are “deeply disturbing.”
The “reported collaboration between Berkeley Unified School District employees and the Middle East Children’s Alliance” is particularly unsettling, according to Levin.
“The involvement of an organization facing serious allegations of connections to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, in educational activities involving California public school students demands immediate intervention,” she told JNS.
“School districts must be held accountable for the organizations they partner with, the materials they present to students and the hostile environments they risk creating for Jewish children,” she said.
Levin called for “an independent investigation into these reported partnerships, full transparency about the development of these curricula and immediate corrective action wherever violations are substantiated.”
