The U.S. House Committee on Education & the Workforce named Berkeley Unified School District in a report released Wednesday which concludes that antisemitism and political activism have made their way into K-12 classrooms.
The California Department of Education has previously overruled the findings of BUSD’s internal investigations multiple times and has concluded that antisemitism took place in BUSD schools.
Audra McGeorge, the House committee’s spokesperson, noted in an email that the prior allegations of antisemitism in BUSD, including concerns raised by parents and students, “warranted further examination.”
The committee investigated the School District of Philadelphia, Fairfax County Public Schools and the National Education Association as well as BUSD. The Wednesday report focuses on BUSD’s “liberated” ethnic studies curriculum, among other topics.
“Parents send their children to school to learn reading, writing, and math — not to be taught to hate Israel or embrace radical political causes,” said Committee Chairman Tim Walberg in a press release. “Yet that’s exactly the kind of material our investigation uncovered.”
The report notes that BUSD has repeatedly collaborated with the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium, allegedly resulting “in lessons littered with antisemitic resources along with the activist ideology that fuels contemporary antisemitism.”
The report includes evidence such as BUSD’s ninth-grade Arab American studies unit, which “teaches students that resistance is a form of ‘cultural wealth’” and references individuals and organizations, such as cultural critic Edward Said, that the committee alleges are connected with antisemitism.
The report also notes BUSD’s fourth-grade ethnic studies unit, which introduces the terms “colonization,” “decolonization” and “settler.”
“Teachers in this school district make a real effort to do their job — to do it well,” said Corey Wade, a math and data science teacher at Berkeley Independent Study. “They’re not trying to indoctrinate, they’re trying to educate about difficult issues and they’re willing to bring forth different perspectives. And just because one person finds a perspective offensive, it doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be included.”
The committee also released more than 1,000 pages of files from its investigation of BUSD. The files include instructional materials, as well as BUSD staff email communications regarding Palestine, curricula and other topics.
Several first and last names of BUSD staff members are visible in the emails included in the files, although it appears that their email addresses have been redacted. Yvette Felarca, a member of the Equal Opportunity Now/By Any Means Necessary Caucus, emphasized that the inclusion of these names leaves the individuals “open to further harassment.”
“I can tell you that teachers who are making the choice to be supportive of Palestine don’t let things like this stop them,” Wade said. “I think what it does is it forces teachers to kind of recalibrate and think about it.”
Several slideshow presentations are included in the files on BUSD. One slide, for example, includes a colorful illustrated image of a woman holding a globe, surrounded by nature, and includes the phrase “Tikkun Olam.”
The slide describes this saying as “a powerful Jewish value that means, to heal the world” and asks students how people with different perspectives within the Jewish community might interpret or enact this value.
“There’s been a longstanding tradition of mobilization to the school board or other venues at moments like this, and I’m sure that will continue,” Felarca said in an email regarding community mobilization.
The files also include a message from BUSD Superintendent Enikia Ford Morthel that offers teaching resources for Arab American and Southwest Asian and North African Heritage Month.
One page of the message includes “beautiful books” to teach, as well as “local organizations & programs to learn about,” such as the Middle East Children’s Alliance. The committee’s report alleges that the Middle East Children’s Alliance “has been tied to a U.S.-designated terror group.”
“Parents and activists in our community have been warning for years of what this Congressional report now makes clear: Berkeley schools teach biased, politically charged material that undermines Jewish students’ identity and can fuel antisemitism,” said Itamar Landau, founder of the Jewish Coalition of Berkeley, in an email. “District leaders have been unable or unwilling to recognize the harm caused by this curriculum, not only to Jewish students but to every student.”