When the radical Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) mandates corrective action to remedy antisemitism, you know it must have been bad.
The district’s Office of Student Civil Rights conducted an investigation into the school-based activism of multiple teachers at Canoga Park High School, ultimately concluding that at least three instructors had violated Title VI of the federal Civil Rights Act in addition to a state law prohibiting one-sided teaching, creating a “hostile environment” for Jewish and Israeli students at the school.
The district’s probe “found that teachers used instructional time, classroom displays, school-sponsored performances and extracurricular activities to promote what it characterized as a one-sided political agenda concerning Israel and the Palestinians,” reports The Jewish Insider.
The Jew hatred and antisemitic bias on display in Canoga Park classrooms was extreme and pervasive. One dance teacher used classroom time to instruct students on “Palestinian resistance” and held a dance recital dedicated to the “children of Gaza.” The teacher was warned not to promote politics in future performances but held another tribute to Palestine disguised as a “Cultural Dance.” She also ordered children to watch content from a YouTube channel promoting the “martyrs of Gaza”—that is, Hamas terrorists—as part of their final exam.
Teachers at Canoga Park were also found to have displayed pro-Palestine political posters and materials in their classrooms, worn keffiyehs (widely recognized as a symbol of anti-Israel terrorism) while lecturing students on Israel’s alleged “genocide” in Gaza, and made comparisons between the deaths of Palestinians in Gaza and the Jewish Holocaust—another clear manifestation of Jew hatred.
The educators were also found to have violated rules outlining their roles in supervising student organizations. Instead of allowing students to run the clubs, which included a chapter of the Hamas-linked Students for Justice in Palestine, the teachers reportedly used the organizations to recruit students to the anti-Israel cause and promoted anti-Israel messages through affiliated social media accounts.
Watchdog group North American Values Institute (NAVI) helped launch the investigation by filing a complaint together with Jewish Teaches Los Angeles and Emet Legal. Ultimately all eleven of the allegations reported by these organizations were substantiated during LAUSD’s investigation.
Longtime LAUSD middle school teacher Scott Mandel commented to the Jewish Insider on the growing antisemitism within his school district. “You have a bunch of younger teachers who [anti-Israel activism] is their cause célèbre nowadays and they’re abusing their teaching status by pushing personal prejudice towards Israel without giving a balanced viewpoint,” he said. He laid the blame partly on United Teachers Los Angeles — the teachers’ union representing most LA teachers — which he stated was “deeply antisemitic.”
“This determination establishes a national precedent for holding public school educators accountable when political activism replaces objective instruction,” David Bernstein, founder and CEO of NAVI, commented on the school district’s determination. “LAUSD’s findings demonstrate that one-sided political advocacy in the classroom is not protected speech — it is a violation of civil rights law. School districts across North America now have a clear roadmap to keep political agendas out of public education.”
While school districts clearly know what should be done to rid our nation’s classrooms of Jew hatred and anti-Israel bias, the larger question is whether they have the political will to do it.