The silent Intifada in American schools - opinion

Although anti-Israel activists have been vocal post-October 7, their extreme views do not represent those of most Americans. And yet, their voices are being amplified throughout our children’s classrooms within the American K-12 educational system.

Many parents, students, and teachers are determined to get the K-12 system back on track after malicious actors have hijacked the system to indoctrinate students with false information about the United States, Israel, Jews, and society in general.

After Hamas’ October 7 massacre, many were left afraid and devastated, but what followed left others confused. It was almost unfathomable that K-12 students, teachers, and administrators would excuse terrorism, with adults encouraging children to take the side of those terrorists who committed crimes against humanity. The pro-Hamas stance taken by many, post-October 7, exposed the deep rot within the K-12 education system in the United States.

Activists use ethnic studies programs to further their ideological agenda based on a critique of settler-colonialism using an oppression binary lens. 

Before October 7, this battle was being waged in the shadows, with activists organizing and pushing for academic requirements that would further their agendas, like the newly adopted ethnic studies requirement in California, Boston, and Minnesota. More reasonable people welcomed classes that were representative of the ethnic and cultural diversity of our pluralistic society and worked towards ethnic studies classes that would do what their title implies - teach about the experiences and contributions of various ethnic groups and individuals in the US.

Unfortunately, many ethnic studies academics and activists have been determined to define ethnic studies by radical activism and the oppression binary, rather than the study of communities and individuals. 

California’s Ethnic Studies War

Come fall of 2025, California public and charter schools are mandated to offer an ethnic studies class for all students as part of their required high school curriculum. There is a very real war being waged in California and other states and districts that have implemented ethnic studies requirements over what students should learn. Radical ethnic studies activists are using this opportunity to justify terrorism as a legitimate form of resistance and rewrite history and current events while eroding our children’s morality.

The ethnic studies program is not the only vehicle bringing hateful ideology into K-12 classrooms. Other initiatives like Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), culturally responsive education (CRE), and teacher professional development (PD) are used to further the idea that “resistance is justified when people are occupied.”

Since the October 7 Hamas massacre, the “liberated” ethnic studies radicals have staged walkouts, encouraging students to demonstrate support for Hamas, demonstrated at school boards, calling for a ceasefire in Gaza that would see Hamas remain in power and the 120 Israeli hostages remaining in captivity, developed entire curricula that distort history and current events and demonizes Jewish self-determination, and taught teachers and students materials rooted in historical erasure of Jewish indigeneity. 

Parents and Educators Fighting Radical “Liberated” Ethnic Studies Together

To foster empowered Ethnic Studies and fight radical activists, multi-ethnic parents, educators, and students from across the US came together in a new initiative called the Coalition for Empowered Education (CEE). The coalition opposes the implementation of politicized agendas across K-12 education.

In October, CEE will host a unique conference in Sacramento , where parents, students, educators, and community members will learn about how activists politicize K-12 classrooms and promote their ideological agendas. The goal of this conference is to provide tools and resources to understand the situation and push back against the weaponization of the classroom.

With the antisemitic, anti-American, and anti-Israel teachings in the ethnic studies curriculum, we should not be surprised when Jewish students and professors are pushed out of their schools or when national teacher unions endorse policies calling for the destruction of the world’s only Jewish state. This is just the beginning, as the students who are being taught to hate today will shape the political, economic, and social landscape of America in the coming decades.

If we sit idly by and allow the indoctrination of our children in our schools against liberalism and democracy under the guise of ethnic studies, we will see even more rioters chanting for the genocide of an entire ethnic group - the Jews.

 Dr. Brandy Shufutinsky is the Director of Education of Community Engagement at the Jewish Institute of Liberal Values (JILV) and a co-founder of the Coalition for Empowered Education (CEE). 

This op-ed is published in partnership with a coalition of organizations that fight antisemitism across the world. Read the previous article by Anne-Sophie Sebban-Becache.