Tensions flared during an international culture night at Jackson-Reed High School in Washington, D.C., on May 29, with videos documenting protesters using a bullhorn to interrupt the event by chanting “Free Palestine.” And at least one protester approached Jewish and Israeli students, aggressively filmed them and called them “Nazis” and “baby-killers.”
The administration was unable to remove the protesters — adults related to a student at the school — until the event was over and made no mention of the incident in a statement days later, drawing sharp criticism from Jewish parents and local Jewish organizations.
The Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington said the incident and lackluster response is another example of problematic behavior exhibited by the school going back several years.
“We have emphasized that this debacle was … a natural outgrowth of the worsening climate at Jackson-Reed for Jewish and Israeli students, which itself is due to DCPS’ persistent failure to meaningfully confront pervasive antisemitism at the school,” JCRC Executive Director Ron Halber and Associate Director Guila Franklin Siegel wrote in a letter to the D.C. Mayor’s Office and the D.C. Council.
JCRC has tracked incidents going back months, saying that there are multiple decisions by administrators that are biased against Jewish students, including several denials to create programs and clubs in support of Israel.
JCRC has also documented issues with lessons and items being shown to students, the most controversial being the film “The Occupation of the American Mind” that the school’s Arab Student Union attempted to screen.
After parents raised concerns about the film, which is highly critical of Israel and is said to be filled with antisemitic tropes, Jackson-Reed Principal Sah Brown halted its showing. That led to a lawsuit from the ASU and the American Civil Liberties Union.
The ASU eventually backed off the lawsuit on May 8 and agreed to have other films shown instead that were said to be free of antisemitic content.
“No one in school has unfettered speech rights. And speech rights certainly do not extend to disseminating hateful speech and there were hundreds of other films that could have been chosen, some of which are harshly critical of Israel, that are not antisemitic but could have been selected in order to educate students,” Franklin Siegel said.
Another issue in February involved an environmental teacher assigning students to “Explain the climate impact of Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza,” according to JCRC documents.
The assignment was modified after the Anti-Defamation League became involved and worked with the school.
JCRC also documented a world history lesson where students were tasked with looking at the International Court of Justice and determining if Israel and Sudan were respectively committing genocide.
JCRC stated that the sources used were heavily biased and that some of the information presented was one-sided.
“This is what’s exhausting and upsetting — monitoring and waiting all the time for the next flashpoint where someone might hijack the school in the service of hate,” said Edna Friedberg, a parent of a ninth-grade student at Jackson-Reed.
Friedberg has been involved in the school’s issues since her son enrolled, using her knowledge as a scholar of antisemitism to review “The Occupation of the American Mind” and filing an amicus brief opposed to the screening.
Friedberg added that her son was one of the students harassed by a protester on May 29. When her son asked the protester to leave their table, they told him to, “Shut the f*** up b****.”
“The same adult was outside of school [after the event] and accosted a Jewish boy who she mistook for my son to ask if he was the little brat who had told her to shut up,” Friedberg said.
Friedberg said that the lack of a statement by the school addressing the potentially dangerous events was concerning, as she felt the communication issued by the school following its international culture night was put out by intimidated administrators who made no mention of the incident that occurred.
“I don’t think that students need to be shielded from uncomfortable ideas, but they should not be abused and certainly not by adults in the community,” Friedberg said. “I intend, and other parents intend, to be very alert and monitoring for the next school year, that teachers are not allowed to go rogue again and make up lessons in which they have no expertise and that have little or no relationship to the subject of the class.”
Franklin Siegel said that the relationship between the school and the Jewish families is damaged, with work needed to regain trust.
She said training teachers with experts, increasing transparency and abiding by a zero-tolerance policy on antisemitism is needed.
“There’s no one magic bullet to create this change overnight. It takes time. It takes a multiplicity of strategies,” Franklin Siegel said. “Be honest about what happened [on May 29], do a thorough investigation and, if it’s warranted, hand out any disciplinary consequences.”