Jewish Community Concerns
Critical Ethnic Studies Approach Leads to Antisemitic Content in Ethnic Studies
Screenshot from Feb 7, 2021 webinar by Samia Shoman, LESMC Leadership Team
Critical/Liberated Ethnic Studies is tightly interwoven with anti-Israel dogma. Falsely considering the existence of Israel as a colonial conquest of Palestine, this politicized brand of ES views Israel as a lingering, intolerable incursion of Western colonialism into “brown” and Eastern (Islamic) territory.
Partners of the Critical/Liberated ES movement, such as the Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC), have announced that their priority is to promote BDS and anti-Israel advocacy in ES classes.
Teach Palestine Toolkit and Ethnic Studies
Based on the initial drafts of the ESMC, the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum, the main curriculum that is now actively promoted, chose its "Teach Palestine Toolkit" as the very first component of its curriculum to publish in August, 2021. This Toolkit erroneously :
refers to “the current apartheid in Israel" and explains that Zionism calls for the “creation and expansion of Israel as a Jewish state” in “historic Palestine" using "any means necessary.”
calls on teachers to “make clear the connections between the struggle for Palestinian rights and the struggles of Indigenous, Black, and brown communities...”
recommends to “Integrate Palestine into your curriculum," by incorporating it into discussions of “gentrification and forced relocation, criminalization of youth, or hip-hop as resistance,” to do “a deep dive into the Native American history in your area and connect that to settler colonialism in Palestine," and to study the "impact of continuing colonial control on water resources at the US/Mexico border and in Gaza, using statistics to look at forced removals in your city and East Jerusalem..."
explains that JCRC, ADL, Jewish Federation, Simon Wiesenthal Center, "and/or other Zionist organizations" may "create problems” and that their "primary goal is to stunt the development of authentic anti-racist curriculum.”
How does BDS end up being promoted as a result of Critical ES Guiding Principles?
Critical ES Guiding Values and Principles specifically direct students to:
“challenge imperialist/colonial beliefs"
“critique empire building”
“critique capitalism”
aspire to “post-imperial… transformative resistance.”
The demonization of Israel is an outcome of these Principles, which come from Education at War - a text that urges teachers to "develop solidarity and create linkages” with BDS and anti-Israel doctrine.
The same authors call for “grappling with ways to connect anti-Zionism in the context of Middle East politics to anti-racist and anti-imperialist movements in the U.S.”
Critical Ethnic Studies Association, BDS, and Antisemitism
All 13 members of the founding board of Critical Ethnic Studies Association (CESA) are BDS movement activists.
The CESA membership passed a “Resolution on Academic Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions,” naming the call to BDS a “political and intellectual project” of Critical Ethnic Studies (July, 2014).
The four past conferences of the CESA each had multiple sessions condemning Israel and promoting BDS. Sample conference workshop: “Critical Ethnic Studies Association Workshop: Intro to Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement.”
Critical Ethnic Studies Ideology, Anti-Zionism, and Antisemitism
Critical Ethnic Studies: A Reader, an introductory Ethnic Studies textbook, includes several essays that demonize Israel with false accusations of “genocide,” “apartheid,” and “ethnic cleansing.” An essay by the volume’s chief editor, Nada Elia, “calls on academics and others to mobilize support within the academy for the BDS Campaign.”
A model curriculum that is based on Critical ES leads directly to Israel demonization in the classroom. (E.g., one of the ESMC's guiding principles has been copied, and later tweaked slightly, from Education at War, a text that encourages teachers to “develop solidarity and create linkages” with anti-Zionism, BDS, and anti-Israel narratives.)
Statistics have shown the direct correlation between this Critical ES anti-Zionist worldview with targeting of Jewish students on college campuses. Ethnic Studies departments with one or more academic BDS-supporting faculty members were 10 times more likely to sponsor events with BDS-supporting speakers than departments with no faculty boycotters.
Schools with instances of student-produced anti-Zionist expression, including BDS promotion, are seven times more likely to have incidents that target Jewish students for harm than schools with no evidence of students’ anti-Zionist expression. A 2019 report of 238 antisemitic incidents on college campuses notes that the vast majority were incited by BDS and anti-Israel sentiment. Even with mention of BDS and Israel removed, if the ESMC underlying framework is based on Critical Ethnic Studies ideology, the curriculum is a very short step away from targeting Jewish K-12 students in a similar manner.
Connection between ESMC principles and Anti-Zionism
The ESMC aggressively focuses on the elimination of colonial/imperialist/empire building, rather than on the elimination of racism and discrimination. For example The Guiding Values and Principles specifically direct students to: “challenge imperialist/colonial beliefs,” “critique empire building,” and aspire to “transformative resistance.” This postcolonial focus is essential to the Critical ES approach.
The Critical ES approach paints Israel as Western colonial villains (despite Jewish indigenous roots to the land), and Jews as white imperialists (despite Jews of color from Middle East and North Africa, who actually are the majority population in Israel).
Edward Said, a founder of postcolonial studies, was a Palestinian-American academic who equated Zionism and Israel with colonialism, erasing 3,000 years of Jewish history, identity, and rights in their ancestral home. (He was also an advisor to the PLO and Yasser Arafat.)
Said is one of many anti-Zionist and antisemitic figures celebrated in the newest draft of the ESMC. Also included in the newest draft is a list of role models that are known for their antisemitic rhetoric.
How to Minimize BDS in the Classroom
With anti-Zionism "baked into" the Critical ES framework, the only way to minimize the chances of Israel demonization in the classroom is to change this foundation to the Constructive ES approach that is already being taught in LAUSD and schools throughout California. Constructive ES teaches empathy for other ethnic groups' history, cultures, obstacles and contributions, while addressing problems of racism. Constructive ES classes do not demonize Israel or teach BDS, as there is no place for it in the curriculum.
Confronting racism involves building bridges of understanding, identifying discriminatory behaviors, teaching empathy, and fostering respect; it should not require teaching BDS or anti-Zionism.
ARTICLE: Critical Race Theory and the ‘Hyper-White’ Jew
“In the critical social justice paradigm, Jews, who have never been seen as white by those for whom being white is a moral good, are now seen as white by those for whom whiteness is an unmitigated evil.”
– Sapir Journal | Pamela Paresky
ARTICLE: My Cheshbon HaNefesh for Cowardice in the Face of Wokeness
“At the altar of woke ideology, not only have some made a mockery of the deliberative tradition, some have even ditched their moral compass. In the name of racial justice and ‘Jewish values,’ Jews, even rabbis, bully other Jews. These ‘kindly inquisitors’ shame and ostracize others for daring to think differently. Some proclaim that we need ‘to get everyone on the same page on racial justice.’ They accuse white Jews of having ‘privilege’ for uttering non-woke perspectives. The normal laws of civility don’t apply.”
– Jewish Journal | David Bernstein
ARTICLE: Critical Race Theory Should Not Have the Only Seat at the Table
"Even those who fight on behalf of what’s labeled as CRT are not necessarily fighting for the Black voices that push back against some of its tenets. They are fighting instead to maintain the simplistic idea of the oppressor and the oppressed as the foundation for our society. And in this model, people of color are the oppressed and those who are white (or “conditionally white” or “white adjacent,” terms often applied to Asians and Jews) are always the oppressor no matter how hard they work against oppression.”
– Jewish Journal | Monica Osborne
ARTICLE: Ethnic Studies, the Third World Liberation Front and my Grandmother
"Ethnic studies focuses on critiquing the many biases and blind spots of American institutions. Yet what is happening as ethnic studies integrates itself into our institutions of public education? Ironically, it is institutionalizing its own set of uncritical narratives and biases… Ethnic studies should help students see complex reality, instead of simply replacing one set of biases with another."
– Jewish Journal | Max Samarov (StandWithUs)
ARTICLE: Speaking out on Critical Ethnic Studies as a Sephardic Jew
“It is the antisemitism propagated and encouraged by professors, by campus groups, by student governments and tossed aside by administrations [that scares me most]… which vulnerable students are internalizing and accepting… the one which politicians and activists are supporting, the one that is allowed to thrive and that now has inevitably seeped into our lower education system with California’s Critical Ethnic Studies Curriculum Model.
College campus antisemitism has become a hot topic, but one so many wrongfully isolate. The push for a Critical Ethnic Studies is a consequence of this, a natural ending point to a toxic cycle forming. It is all part of the growing movements in American society attacking… foundational values this country… the fact that we are all created equal and our worth is not placed on limiting racial hierarchies.”
– The Times of Israel | Isaac de Castro
ARTICLE: A Call Not to Ratify California’s Ethnic Studies Curriculum
“Classrooms are microcosms of society and offer golden opportunities for teachers to facilitate positive and productive relationships among their students as they develop their cultural competence… It involves inviting students to explore their own complex identities and family histories as a means to develop a strong sense of identity and an ethno-relative perspective on the world—a foundation for identifying with the life experiences of those around them. It does not mean dictating what it means to be black, or Hispanic or Jewish, as California’s Ethnic Studies Curriculum seeks to do.”
– Algemeiner | Melissa Landa PhD
ARTICLE: Where things stand with California’s ethnic-studies curriculum
“The threat [of hatred and one-sided political agendas in Ethnic Studies] is amplified by the fact that a significant faction in the field of ethnic studies, represented by the Critical Ethnic Studies Association, institutionally promotes anti-Zionism and discriminatory boycotts against Israel. Too often, this faction engages in outright anti-Semitism by framing Jews as “white, privileged, colonial oppressors.”
– Jewish News Syndicate | Roz Rothstein (StandWithUs)
ARTICLE: Protesting the Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum
“The reason why the third version of the ESMC still venerates Jew-haters is because it was built by anti-Semitic architects. It is also dangerous because it embraces an idea that leads to anti-Semitism, the idea of people who are innately “oppressors” and people who are the victims of those oppressors. For centuries, anti-Semitism has largely been a conspiracy theory about “all powerful, nefarious” Jews who seek to oppress people. Any curriculum that embraces these concepts is inherently dangerous for Jews.”
– The Jewish Journal | Micha Danzig
ARTICLE: The California ethnic studies antisemitism firestorm is far from over
“Our work is not done…. wished-for changes, along with the alterations made so far, are only the start of the process. Regardless of the contours of the final draft in California, it is not the end of the issue. For instance, many of the activists responsible for the antisemitic and anti-Israel content that plagued the first draft remain intent on indoctrinating rather than educating. They seek to marginalize mainstream Jewish voices under the false banner of ‘saving Ethnic Studies.’”
– The Forward | Seth Brysk (ADL)
ARTICLE: California’s ethnic studies curriculum is a serious issue for all of us
“Painting Jews as part of the ‘oppressor class’ erases Jews as a minority, and is an erasure of our ongoing battle against anti-Semitism. The cornerstone of these arguments is one that completely nullifies Israel’s right to exist. This makes sense in the misinformed world of intersectionality: If you paint the Jews as white, privileged ‘oppressor’ colonialists, then you can successfully align with the anti-Israel (and BDS) activist narrative that says Israel has no legitimacy.”
– Jewish News Syndicate | Rabbi Steven Burg
ARTICLE: Jews Have Until Thursday to Influence Ethnic Studies Curriculum
“There ought to be no discussion about Jews and privilege that doesn’t begin by talking about the historically enacted and repeated genocidal ideology that revolves around Jews and privilege. For an ethnic studies curriculum to go traipsing through that discourse without a single mention of its ugly and bloody history is not a lesson about anti-Semitism. It is a repetition of it. By itself, that should effectuate a vote of no confidence in the entire franchise.”
– Jewish Journal | Pamela Paresky PhD and Joel Finkelstein PhD