The president of the Long Beach Unified School board apologized Monday for failing to intervene when a speaker made Islamophobic and xenophobic remarks at a recent board meeting.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no place for language or actions that undermine the dignity, safety or sense of belonging of any member of our community,\u201d school board president Diana Craighead said. \u201cI personally will be more proactive, more vigilant about hate speech because it has no place where our students are concerned,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Her comments came immediately after Khalid Hudson, advocacy manager of the Council on American-Islamic Relations of Greater Los Angeles, urged the school board to establish policies to act in the moment to prevent hate speech \u2014 and violence \u2014 in the future.<\/p>\n
Hudson referenced three men who were killed at the Islamic Center of San Diego on Monday in a shooting currently being investigated as a hate crime<\/a>. \u201cThe rise of Islamophobic attacks nationally has also impacted us locally,\u201d he said, referencing an increase in reported civil rights violations<\/a> against Muslims as well as recent hate-fueled incidents in the Greater Los Angeles Area<\/a>.<\/p>\n CAIR recently singled out an incident that occurred in Long Beach. On April 15, a man who identified himself as Rudy Kraus attended an LBUSD board meeting and used his public comment period to speak about Islam<\/a>, claiming the district was \u201cputting false ideas in the minds of children.\u201d He falsely claimed that Muslims teach pedophilia and violence and said that \u201cthe greatest crime of the mind ever perpetrated in the history of the world is Islam.\u201d He proposed forcing imams to testify in congressional hearings, what he called the \u201cMuslim ideology trials.\u201d<\/p>\n Board members allowed him to use his full three minutes before reminding him that his time was up and continuing with the remaining speakers during the public comment period.<\/p>\n Following the meeting, the executive director of CAIR-LA sent an open letter<\/a> to LBUSD school board members calling on them to take stronger action. \u201cAt the bare minimum, the Board President owed the audience (and the broader community) a clear, unequivocal statement condemning the hate speech that had just been delivered,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThe silence that followed was deafening,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n