A prominent national private schools group has apologized for remarks some speakers made at a conference about diversity and inclusion earlier this month, after leaders of several Jewish organizations condemned the comments as antisemitic.
The speakers, whose remarks were recorded, characterized Israel’s war in Gaza as a genocide and the establishment of the state of Israel as a racist project. They were addressing an annual gathering of students and educators held by the National Association of Independent Schools, which includes about 1,700 private schools across the United States, including 60 Jewish day schools. The event, known as the People of Color Conference, has been held for nearly four decades and focuses on helping schools create inclusive communities.
Some of New York City’s most prestigious private schools sent delegations to the conference, including the Dalton School on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, which sent 48 administrators, faculty and staff members, according to its website.
The leaders of several Jewish groups, including the Anti-Defamation League, denounced the remarks in an open letter to the association sent last Wednesday. Citing complaints from attendees, the letter described the atmosphere at the conference, held in Denver from Dec. 4 to Dec. 7 and attended by about 8,000 adults and students, as “toxic.” Some Jewish students were frightened, the letter said, to the point that some who were wearing Star of David jewelry felt compelled to hide it.
“No student should ever be made to feel this way because of their identity,” said the letter, which was signed by the A.D.L.’s chief executive, Jonathan Greenblatt, as well as three chief executives of prominent Jewish groups, Paul Bernstein of Prizmah: Center for Jewish Day Schools; Ted Deutch of the American Jewish Committee; and Eric Fingerhut of the Jewish Federations of North America.
In response to the criticism, Debra Wilson, the association’s president, issued an apology and said that future speakers’ addresses would be vetted. “That any student would feel the need to conceal their identity at our conference is antithetical to our mission and our values,” Ms. Wilson wrote.
Ruha Benjamin, a professor of African American studies at Princeton University and one of the speakers mentioned in the letter, was critical of the organization’s decision to apologize and defended her language.
“The weaponization of the charge of antisemitism is a disservice to everyone,” she wrote in an email on Sunday. Such accusations, she said, are “watering down its meaning and wielding it against anyone who dares name the reality that Palestinians are living.”
The clash comes at a fraught moment for schools. Outrage has flared among Jewish students and educators and supporters of Israel over the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, in which about 1,200 Israelis were killed and scores were kidnapped, and among critics of Israel over its ensuing war in Gaza, which has killed nearly 50,000 Palestinians. Administrators have struggled to respond to accusations of Islamophobia and antisemitism and questions over when free speech veers into hate speech.
Such ideological skirmishes have played out in both public and private schools, but private schools have unique concerns in navigating political expression by both students and staff members as they seek to placate parents who are often paying tens of thousands a year in tuition.
Concerns about the Denver conference centered on remarks by the keynote speaker, Dr. Suzanne Barakat, an Arab American physician and former executive director of the Health and Human Rights Initiative at the University of California, San Francisco. She emerged as a prominent voice on the topic of anti-Muslim violence after her brother, his wife and his wife’s sister were killed by a neighbor in Chapel Hill, N.C. in 2015, in what Dr. Barakat has described as a hate crime.
Some conference attendees took exception to Dr. Barakat’s characterization of the establishment of the Israeli state as colonialist and Zionism as based in “racist” principles. She also characterized the war as a “genocide,” to applause from attendees, according to recordings of portions of the speech.
Dr. Barakat did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Sarah Shulkind, the head of school at the Milken Community School in Los Angeles, a Jewish private school, said that immediately after Dr. Barakat’s remarks, she received a call from one of her staff members who was in attendance and was distressed. The staff member then sent Dr. Shulkind a video recording of the speech.
“Even if this was her perspective,” Dr. Shulkind said of Dr. Barakat, “what was she doing talking about this at an educational conference?”
During a subsequent talk for students, Dr. Benjamin presented a virtual reality project called “The Phoenix of Gaza” and referred to dead Palestinians as “martyrs” and victims of a “genocide,” according to recordings. The four Milken students in attendance stood up and left, Dr. Shulkind said. They felt so threatened, they told the head of school later, that they hid their Jewish stars.
The students’ response, Dr. Benjamin said on Sunday, “reflects a failure on the part of their teachers and administrators to equip them with the ability to wrestle with difficult realities.”
In an interview, Mr. Greenblatt, the head of the A.D.L., said that his group would work with the schools association on future conferences. After the Oct. 7 attacks, he said, “we have seen a demonstrable, empirical, indisputable correlation between anti-Jewish rhetoric leading to anti-Jewish harassment.” He added, “Free speech, which we all believe in — there is still a time and a place.”
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