A quiet purge is beginning in American education. For decades, public schools relied on the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to teach students about antisemitism, bigotry, and the Holocaust. Now the largest teachers’ unions are trying to drive the ADL out — not because antisemitism has disappeared, but because a new ideological litmus test has replaced the old moral clarity.
At the same time as NEA’s push to oust the ADL, New York City’s largest teachers’ union, the UFT, endorsed Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani to become mayor. Mamdani’s acceptance of the chant to “globalize the Intifada!” on New York City’s streets threatening Jews, was not considering disqualifying.
CAIR (Council of American Islamic Relations) celebrated the moment. The organization issued statements praising the union’s rejection of ADL and urging school districts across the country to follow suit. In their telling, removing the leading Jewish civil-rights organization from American classrooms was not a loss — it was liberation.
But liberation for whom?
What fills the void when ADL’s anti-bias programs are stripped from schools is not neutrality. It is an ideological curriculum that recasts Jewish history through the false frame of colonial theory. The Jewish people’s 3,000-year connection to the Land of Israel — recorded in scripture, archaeology, language, and tradition — is brushed aside in favor of a political slogan: Jews are Europeans; Israel is a colony; Jewish identity is whiteness in disguise.
And this falsehood is taught with absolute confidence, even though it collapses under the simplest demographic truth: most Jews in Israel are not European at all. More than half of Israeli Jews are Mizrahi — descendants of families rooted for centuries in Baghdad, Aleppo, Casablanca, Sana’a, and Tehran. Many arrived as refugees expelled from Muslim countries after 1948. But because their existence breaks the colonial narrative, it is erased.
In this rewritten history, Jews did not return home. They invaded. And Jewish children sitting in American classrooms are told, implicitly and sometimes explicitly, that their people do not come from the place their prayers face, the place their ancestors named, the place their holidays commemorate.
It gets worse.
Qatar is helping fill the hole in American education course materials. That same Qatar that bankrolls and supports the political-terrorist group Hamas that is sworn to killing Jews. The Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) published a report that shows how Qatari materials are being mainstreamed in K-12 education.
When the ADL is expelled from the curriculum and radical Islamic materials are substituted, so is the understanding that antisemitism is a unique and ancient form of hatred. So is the recognition that Jews are a minority-minority. So is the historical memory that Jews have been indigenous to the Land of Israel since before Rome, before Islam, before Christianity. The frameworks that replace it reduce Jewish identity to a political position and Jewish history to a fabrication.
And Jewish students feel it instantly.
A seventh grader is told her family “isn’t really from Jerusalem.” A boy wearing a Star of David is treated as if he is declaring an ideology rather than a heritage. Mizrahi and Sephardi students — whose grandparents fled violence or expulsion in the Middle East — learn in school that Jews are “white Europeans.” A child is shamed for speaking Hebrew, as if language itself were an act of domination.
The classroom becomes a place where Jewish children learn that their story is not welcome. That they are frauds.
But the result is not balance — it is a world in which Jewish history is a political inconvenience, and Jewish identity is recast as oppression. The very institutions tasked with protecting vulnerable students are now erasing the vulnerabilities of one of the world’s smallest minorities.
A people is stripped of its past in front of its children. To its children, to create a new type of American: anti-Jewish.
This is not an argument about Israel. It is a warning about America. When unions push out the ADL and bring in organizations which openly provide material support to terrorists, they are not modernizing education. They are dismantling the guardrails that distinguished history from propaganda and identity from accusation.
This has an ugly echo.
On May 10, 1933, 40,000 people watched as students burned Jewish books in Berlin, Germany, part of the Nationalist Socialist (Nazi) Party’s campaign to eradicate Jewish thought and show its control of the intellectual and cultural landscape.
University students burn upwards of 25,000 “un-German” books in Berlin’s Opera Square. Some 40,000 people gather to hear Joseph Goebbels deliver a fiery address: “No to decadence and moral corruption!”
Today, it’s not Jewish opinions but Jewish history, heritage and lived experiences that are targeted for obliteration in America’s schools by the teachers unions. It must stop.
The October 7 Hamas-led massacre by thousands of Gazans did not spark antisemitism on American campuses. It merely exposed how deeply embedded it already was. At CUNY, UC Berkeley, and Georgetown, students and professors came out to celebrate the torture and murder of Israeli victims of terror — with institutional protection, foreign funding, and a growing network of terror-affiliated faculty and student activists.
UC Berkeley protestors come for Jews
Organizations like Canary Mission have tracked and documented the alarming volume of antisemitic activity from students and professors — revealing how extremism isn’t on the fringe anymore. The Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and StandWithUs have brought lawsuits against the universities. Now, the House Education & Workforce Committee is bringing the presidents of these three universities to Washington, D.C. on July 9.
CUNY: A Campus Captured by Hate
Canary Mission has documented dozens of CUNY students and professors who:
Featured speakers from U.S-designated foreign terrorist groups like Samidoun
Praised Hamas and Islamic Jihad
Supported Intifada
Called for the extermination of Zionists and Israelis
Calls Zionists “White Supremacists”
One notable example is Nerdeen Kiswani, a CUNY law graduate and founder of Within Our Lifetime (WOL), a group which openly calls for “globalizing the intifada” and “confront Zionists” wherever they are, including their homes and workplaces. Despite – or because of – this, she was chosen as the keynote speaker for the 2022 CUNY Law commencement — a decision defended by the law school.
Professors at CUNY have supported Hamas terrorism and protect antisemitic groups like Students for Justice in Palestine. They include Saadia Toor, Eve Tuck, Danny Shaw and Lucien Baskin. They have:
Called Israelis “Nazis”
Called to “Globalize the intifada”
Posted on social media the desire for destruction of Israel
They proudly teach this in their classrooms in departments that include “Center for the Humanities,” rebranding their noxious antisemitism as a component in the fight for human rights. This isn’t just tucked into a comment during a class; there are literally classes on globalizing the intifada.
UC Berkeley: The Legalization of Hate
Influence Watch has tracked Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FLP) which was founded in the 2023-4 school year. It is a network of professors which is associated with the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI) and “advocates that universities end study abroad programs with Israeli universities, and advocates that universities end disciplinary action against students involved in pro-Palestinian campus protests.” There are chapters at UC Berkeley and Georgetown, among others.
Coordinate with Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP)
In December 2022 – before the October 7, 2023 massacre – the Office of Civil Rights for the U.S. Department of Education (OCR) launched a formal investigation into UC Berkeley Law School over a controversial anti-Zionist bylaw adopted by several student groups in August. The groups sought to ban Zionists – individuals and groups – from campus.
Professors like Hatem Bazian are affiliated with several antisemitic and anti-Israel groups. He regularly calls out Jews and pro-Israel advocates as the leading spreaders of “Islamophobia” who are evil manipulators of Congress. He teaches courses at Berkeley on “Islam in America: Communities and Institutions” and “De-Constructing Islamophobia and Othering of Islam.” He addresses audiences and asks why there hasn’t been an intifada in the United States.
The school has been sued over its “unchecked antisemitism.”
Georgetown: Foreign Funds, Foreign Values
Georgetown – located in the nation’s capital of Washington, D.C. – is one of the most bought universities in America. It has received roughly $1.3 billion from foreign actors, with over $1 billion coming from Qatar, one of the leading sponsors of the U.S.-designated terrorist group Hamas.
Robert Groves, the interim president of Georgetown, is a regular in Qatar. Georgetown opened a campus in the sheikhdom and Groves interacts regularly with the royal family, seemingly as a conduit for influence in the nation’s capital.
Though Georgetown has a more diplomatic tone, Canary Mission has documented:
Students and guest speakers who supported Hamas and BDS
Faculty like Jonathan Brown, who have repeatedly called Israel practicing “apartheid” and “ethnic cleansing.” He said Jews and Christians view the Middle East through an anti-Muslim lens but Muslims do not think of the conflict as stemming from antisemitism. It’s a remarkable dynamic considering Brown is a director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding in the School of Foreign Service and the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. The prince is a Saudi billionaire.
Georgetown has hosted a number of people with links to jihadi terrorism:
Ribhi Karajah, affiliated with terrorist group PLFP, who was convicted in 2019 for his involvement in a bombing which killed a 17 year old girl.
Georgetown professor Badar Khan Suri with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh as covered by CAMERA
Unsurprisingly, Georgetown students have rallied to the terrorist group Hamas and its supporters in the aftermath of October 7, joining in the Global Intifada against Jews.
The Middle East Forum did a 30 minute video about Georgetown’s ties to Hamas sympathizers. It is worth watching:
Conclusion: Universities Incubate And Spread Antisemitism
The picture is clear. Professors promote terror. Students celebrate slaughter. Hostile governments fund it, and administrations on the take allow it to fester.
If these universities continue to protect hate under the banner of “academic freedom,” they will soon graduate leaders who believe murder is resistance, and Jewish life is expendable.
“We are going to have an intifada on every college campus! We are going to shut down all the Zionist events!”
Husam Kaid, YouTube, Nov 15 2019
People from CUNY in Times Square in 2019 calling for an intifada in every classroom and the destruction of Israel
This is not a free speech issue. It’s a moral emergency.
ACTION ITEM
Call Rep. Tim Walberg’s office at (202) 225-6276 to thank him for holding the session on campus antisemitism.
Call your senator to support the DETERRENT Act and call Sen. Thom Tillis’s office at (202) 224-6342 to thank him for sponsoring it.
Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI), the chairman of the 45-person committee, said the “hearing will focus on the underlying factors instigating antisemitic upheaval and hatred on campus. Until these factors — such as foreign funding and antisemitic student and faculty groups — are addressed, antisemitism will persist on college campuses. Our committee is building on its promise to protect Jewish students and faculty while many university leaders refuse to hold agitators of this bigotry, hatred, and discrimination accountable.”
This Republican-led hearing will have the following witnesses:
Dr. Robert M. Groves, Interim President, Georgetown University
Dr. Félix V. Matos Rodríguez, Chancellor, The City University of New York
Dr. Rich Lyons, Chancellor, University of California, Berkeley
Here we will review foreign funding of universities.
Foreign Funding
Americans for Public Trust (APT) produced a report in March 2025 focused on foreign funding to universities. It found that “$60 billion in foreign gifts and contracts have been funneled into American colleges and universities over decades.” In particular, $20 billion went to ten elite schools with transparency laws being “lightly enforced” leading many universities to not report. Alarmingly, “many of the countries that top the list of foreign gifts… are long-standing adversaries and enemies of the U.S..”
The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) noted in February 2025 that “a key culprit [for so much foreign money coming into universities] is universities’ failure to comply with the provisions of Section 117 of the Higher Education Act, which requires US institutions of higher education to report income from foreign countries valued at over $250,000, such as gifts or research contracts. But American universities have failed to report billions in foreign funding, which drove the first Trump administration to launch several investigations into Section 117 noncompliance.”
The databases from the Education Department Office of Federal Student Aid Section 117 compliance can be found here.
AEI found “US schools reported over $4 billion in Qatari funding, making it easily the largest foreign donor to American universities. Looking at Qatari money together with China and Saudi Arabia further highlights how entangled these sources are with US higher education—seven of the universities investigated under Section 117 received most of their foreign funding from these three countries alone.”
APT reported that several “foreign adversaries” have donated to U.S. education, with “China, Russia, Iran, Qatar, Venezuela and Yemen have collectively syphoned billions into American schools.”
APT raised a red flag on the number of university researchers who have been arrested for illegally collaborating with China, including the chair of Harvard’s chemistry department. AEI was alarmed by the association of these foreign funders to universities doing work in artificial intelligence (AI). The COVID pandemic and risks from AI to society are reasons enough to clamp down on this funding, before even approaching foreign money stoking antisemitism.
“influenced… the academic environment, research priorities, and faculty recruitment, particularly within the School of Foreign Service (SFS), the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS), and the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU).”
created centers that mainstreamed “political Islam, minimizing the threat of Islamist extremism, and advancing anti-Israel narratives.”
Georgetown, based in the nation’s capital of Washington, D.C., thereby produced a large cohort of alumni who “occupy prominent positions in the U.S. State Department, intelligence agencies, media, and NGOs, effectively introducing and reinforcing these ideological perspectives within American foreign policy-making processes.” It has also led to a spike of anti-Jewish actions on campus.
The ISGAP report specifically called out Qatar, “from being a major funder of the Muslim Brotherhood’s global operations to providing resources to Hamas—the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood—and harboring the remnants of its leadership, Qatar has consistently positioned itself as both an ideological incubator and logistical facilitator of Islamist extremism. The Muslim Brotherhood is committed to destroying democracies, including the United States and Israel, and to replacing them with a distorted version of an Islamist caliphate.”
The funding works two ways – monies flowing onto American campuses as well as building campuses of American schools in foreign countries. Six American universities maintain campuses in Doha’s Education City: Georgetown, Carnegie Mellon, Virginia Commonwealth, Cornell, Northwestern, and Texas A&M, although Texas A&M is scheduled to close in 2028 (bolded countries in top 10 receiving foreign money). The state-run Qatar Foundation finances the campuses and personnel in Doha.
There have been numerous studies which analyze whether funding from foreign institutions – and those from countries which might be viewed as hostile to the U.S. – have an increased level of anti-American and antisemitic activity. A comprehensive statistical study showed “consistently strong evidence that institutions that received Section 117 funding from OIC (Organisation of Islamic Cooperation) member countries or authoritarian countries had much higher levels of antisemitic/anti-Zionist activity.” Interestingly – and counter to the argument of liberals – the study added “that there is minimal evidence here that foreign funding, per se, is associated with erosion of liberal democratic norms around campus speech.”
The Jew hatred was not confined to the universities’ campuses. In additional analyses, the study found “that as campus antisemitism goes up or down, so does antisemitism in the surrounding communities.”
While the study cautioned about drawing direct conclusions about the direction of antisemitism (perhaps society has caused antisemitism to spike in schools rather than vice versa), it was clear with its conclusion:
“The present research highlights two troubling possibilities that deserve further investigation. The first is that receipt of Section 117 funding from foreign sources, especially authoritarian ones, has contributed to these [antisemitic] developments. The second is that providing massive financial support to campuses with ascendant illiberalism serves the interests of foreign actors hostile to the U.S. in particular or liberal democracy in general.”
These are profound concerns not just for American Jews but America.
Biased Think Tank Fig Leaves: Brookings Institute
There are a number of “think tanks” that offer opinions and research papers about a variety of issues, including antisemitism at universities and the impact from foreign funding. Many are deeply conflicted. For example, the Brookings Institute had a center in Doha for 14 years, until it was closed in 2021. It often works in partnership with Georgetown University which takes significant money from Qatar. It is therefore not surprising that Brookings publishes defensive reports on Qatar which paint the sponsor of terrorist groups as a partner for the United States against bad actors in the Middle East, rather than a fountain of funding for evil: “a window may still be apparent whereby Qatari policymakers would welcome inventive U.S. suggestions as to ways that they could make themselves useful to American counterparts, all in the name of firming up their U.S. partnership in the face of hostile local states.”
Considering the Brookings-Qatar-Georgetown dynamic, it is not surprising that the group published a study that the Trump administration’s efforts to root out antisemitism at universities was really about Trump attacking his critics, not combatting Jew hatred.
Recommendations
AEI recommended that the government “move the enforcement of Section 117 out of the Office of Federal Student Aid (the office that gave us the FAFSA debacle) and return it to the Office of the General Counsel, which is better equipped to investigate and address non-compliance with federal statutes. The Education Department should also audit far more universities to ensure adequate reporting of foreign funds. Finally, department investigators should work closely with their counterparts in the Department of Justice and FBI to tackle this issue—especially when foreign funding could be linked to influence campaigns, technological espionage, or other efforts to undermine national security.”
The Senate should pass the DETERRENT Act (Defending Education Transparency and Ending Rogue Regimes Engaging in Nefarious Transactions Act) which seeks greater transparency of foreign funding in universities, especially from a “foreign country of concern.” It was passed by the House on March 27, 2025 with a vote of 241 to 169 (with 20 abstentions). Nearly 97% of Republicans voted for the measure while fewer than 15% of Democrats voted for the bill. It is before the Senate as S. 1296, sponsored by Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) with 13 Republican co-sponsors.
Conclusion
Billions of dollars are seeping into American universities from countries which are undermining American society and values. Qatar and China are particular actors which deserve heightened scrutiny regarding their potential nefarious efforts in artificial intelligence, biochemical research and promoting antisemitism.
ACTION ITEM
Call Rep. Tim Walberg’s office at (202) 225-6276 to thank him for holding the session on this important matter.
Call your senator to support the DETERRENT Act and call Sen. Thom Tillis’s office at (202) 224-6342 to thank him for sponsoring the bill.
Zohran Mamdani, a radical socialist won the New York City Democratic primary for mayor. He did it on the strength of young voters who turned out to vote in Brooklyn and Queens. It was not solely about race or income level as commonly thought (Bronx is poorest and went +18 for Cuomo and Manhattan has the greatest percentage of Whites and went for Mamdani). The young people in liberal districts who came out in droves and secured his victory.
Poor Hispanics generally preferred Cuomo; Asians preferred Mamdani. But the real divide was in age: both in candidate preference and coming out to vote
America’s young people – especially in urban areas like New York City – are much more likely to be non-White than older Americans. They are more likely to get their news from social media influencers than credible news outlets, know little about the Holocaust, don’t remember the terrorist attacks of 9/11, and have been indoctrinated in a public school system that has advanced an “oppressor/oppressed” narrative in which “White privilege” has not only intentionally placed young non-White people at a disadvantage, but stolen their wealth and power in a racist generational kleptocracy.
Today’s youth have been indoctrinated by a socialist public school system which has compulsory attendance. Powerful teacher unions block alternatives like new charter schools and fight any monies going to private schools, thereby making them out-of-reach for many and frequently non-viable. Further, the teacher unions demand that they have total control of the education and block parental involvement.
This forced indoctrination of youth into a divisive ideology has a historic parallel: Nazi Germany.
When people think of black-and-white images of Hitler Youth, they instinctively recoil. The idea of a government-run school system indoctrinating children with a twisted dogma, demonizing whole groups of people, and eliminating parental rights is rightfully condemned. But the problem of the real world modern incarnation is ignored. Western democracies employ the same mechanisms, just with different terminology and new targets.
Germany’s National Socialist Party Educational System
In Nazi Germany, schools were not really about education—they were about indoctrination. From an early age, children were taught racial supremacy, loyalty to the Führer, and hatred of Jews, communists, and other so-called “enemies of the state.” Textbooks were rewritten to glorify White Aryans and dehumanize others. History was a fable of German victimhood and revenge. Biology became eugenics.
Parents were sidelined and teachers were party enforcers. Loyalty was not to truth or family, but to ideology.
America’s Democratic Socialist Party Indoctrination
Today, we do not see classrooms preaching eugenics or worshipping a dictator. But we do see a disturbing echo of the same approach: children are being indoctrinated to hate fellow classmates and members of society.
Public schools across the United States and other Western democracies increasingly push a worldview centered around oppressor and oppressed—not in terms of deeds or choices, but by skin color and gender. Critical Race Theory, once an obscure legal theory, has bled into K–12 education in the form of “equity-based learning,” and “antiracism,” approaches that specifically elevate non-White and low income students, and sideline Whites and Jews.
White children are taught they benefit from “privilege,” regardless of their life experience. Minority children are taught that their struggle is rooted in systemic bias. And the lesson is rarely a call for unity or shared values—it is a call for reordering society through grievance and power struggle.
History is reframed as nothing more than a record of Western oppression. Heroes like Washington, Lincoln, and Churchill are minimized or vilified. Meanwhile, activists are lionized regardless of method or truth. There is no longer a shared civic narrative—only the mantra of “deconstructing power structures.” The language of “revolution” and “liberation” are instilled in America’s youth.
And the teachers – and only the teachers – are in charge. Parents and politicians who push back against the curricula are demonized under a banner of “disguised censorship” who are “trying to dictate what teachers say and block kids from learning about our shared history.”
But it’s not shared history; it’s divisive history.
Teachers as Activists
During the Nazi regime, teachers were required to join the National Socialist Teachers’ League and toe the ideological line. They encouraged teachers to intimidate and harass perceived enemies: Jews. Today, public school teachers are forced to join powerful teacher unions. It promotes teachers becoming open activists that feast on current enemies, such as attacking “Zionist” Jews.
Holocaust Museum review of education in Nazi Germany
These teacher unions aggressively fight against charter schools and school vouchers, keeping millions of students trapped in underperforming, politically biased and morally deformed systems. Parents who speak up at school board meetings could be tarred as “domestic terrorists” by the National School Boards Association (NSBA), as happened in September 2021.
In Nazi Germany, dissent was criminal. In the modern West, dissent is canceled.
Michael Mukasey reviewed attempt by NSBA to shut down parental involvement in classrooms, vilifying parents who “disrupt” school board meetings as engaged in “domestic terrorism.”
Compulsory Attendance, Controlled Curriculum
In both Nazi Germany and America today, attendance was (and is) compulsory. Children cannot simply walk away and parents are similarly held captive. And in most school districts, there is no alternative—no charter school, no voucher for private education, no support for homeschooling. The state dictates the curriculum. The unions staff the classrooms. And the ideology is enforced, not debated.
Then and Now
Feature
Nazi Germany
Modern Public Schools
Curriculum
Racial supremacy, hatred of Jews
Oppressor vs. oppressed, white guilt, DEI focus
Control
Total state monopoly
Union-dominated, resistance to school choice
Teachers
Nazi enforcers
Ideological activists protected by unions
Enemies
Jews, Slavs, Communists
“Whiteness,” traditional values, parents who dissent
Dissent
Criminalized
Canceled, ignored, or labeled extremist
Outcome
Fanatical loyalty to regime
Cultural division and civic unraveling
Indoctrination by Any Other Name
Today’s teachers are not training students to become SS officers but they are shaping how children see their country, their history, their families, themselves – and their neighbors. And when a government-backed education system insists that children adopt one political ideology, demonize dissent, and question parental authority, we are no longer talking about education—we are talking about indoctrination.
ACTION ITEM
Get involved in your local school board. There are elections every year and public fora held throughout the year.
Westchester County has three neighboring towns which act very differently when it comes to their public schools. White Plains stands out relative to neighboring Scarsdale and similarly sized New Rochelle: it spends more and gets worse student performance.
White Plains has a staggering 2025-2026 budget of $277,965,500 for 6,836 students. That amounts to $40,662 per student. That is 13% more than Scarsdale spends, which is one of the best school districts in the entire country. It is also significantly more than New Rochelle which is a similarly sized city with comparable demographics.
And White Plains performs much worse than both despite its massive budget.
Almost all of the Hispanic and Black students in Scarsdale perform well in math, with both groups having over 80% proficiency. In New Rochelle, proficiency in mathematics is 57% each for the groups. Yet in White Plains, only 38% of Hispanics and 42% of Black students have proficiency in math.
Where does the money go in White Plains if not into educating students?
Ten years ago, the White Plains school budget was $208,750,0000 in 2016-2017 when it had 7,091 students, spending $29,439 per student. White Plains is now spending 38% more per student. Much of the cost is NOT GOING FOR THE STUDENTS but to facilities and teacher benefits.
Facilities
The school district has 1.4 million square feet of buildings, not including the new $33 million high school building going up now. New York State generally guides schools to have 85 to 125 square feet per child, depending on the grade. White Plains has 199 square feet per student, 60% more than the high-end recommendation.
And the White Plains school district is planning on spending much more on facilities despite a declining enrollment.
The city already has $88 million of debt and an $11 million capital lease (page 26). The capital lease and $38 million in notes are coming due in 2026. Presumably this is going to be refinanced in a higher interest rate environment which will add expenses into the school budget.
Fewer kids, worse performance and state-of-the-art buildings.
Teacher Salaries and Benefits
The budget lays out teacher salaries (page 39), with school principals making just under $200,000 per year and the school superintendent making over $300,000.
Employee benefits account for $68.6 million (page 10), or 25% of the budget. This is a 10% jump from the previous year, and accounts for OVER HALF OF THE INCREASE from last year’s budget. So while curriculum development went down this year, teacher benefits rose by $6.25 million.
And this is going to continue according to the long-term plan (page 25). Contributions to the teachers retirement and employee retirement systems are going to keep going up while the number of students declines.
Student Performance
There is a lot of data on student performance (pages 43 onward). There are a few take-aways:
The school is 70% Latino and Black and those groups are not reaching proficiency in English or math
Roughly 19% of the students are English language learners, 17% have disabilities and 56% are economically disadvantaged. The English learners and those with disabilities are doing terribly. It is unclear how the school can continue to keep these children in the school system when they are clearly unable to service them. The government should do a full review of the situation.
School Board
The school board will tell you that your taxes are not going up and that the school district is an incredibly open and caring environment with state-of-the-art facilities. What they are not telling you is that they have been over-taxing you for years to fund capital projects, have $50 million of looming debt coming due in 2026, are spending incredible sums on teacher benefits while allowing a significant percentage of the student body to flounder.
That is the sad reality.
ACTION PLAN
Vote on May 20. Polls are open from 12:00PM to 9:00PM. Find your voting location here.
Vote ‘No” on the school budget to reduce it by $3.4 million.
Vote for Julia Oliva, a parent of a second grader who wants to put money into services instead of football fields. It is time to phase out the old school board which has spent your money on shiny buildings instead of our youth.
If you thought the fight for our values ended with Jamaal Bowman’s defeat in last year’s Congressional Democratic primary, think again. That victory—fueled by a coalition of Jewish voters, moderates, and outraged citizens—was just one front in a much larger war. The next battleground? Our local school boards.
Yes, school boards—those often-overlooked panels of elected volunteers who decide how to spend hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, what our children are taught, and what values our public institutions promote. Voting to approve school budgets and new school boards will take around New York State on May 20. In Westchester County, two city school board races —in New Rochelle and White Plains—are shaping up to be ideological flashpoints, and the Jewish community cannot afford to sit them out.
Because what’s happening in these school districts mirrors the dynamics that led to Bowman’s rise—and fall. And unless we show up, the same extremist playbook will continue to take root, just under a different banner.
From Bowman to the Board: The Same Movement, New Target
In 2020, former public school principal Bowman’s ascent was cheered by radical groups like the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) as he defeated Eliot Engel in New York’s 16th Congressional District, one of several “progressive” victories. The DSA’s 2023 convention called on its members to build on those victories and get people elected not only in Congress but on local school boards.
The strategy was simple: infiltrate local systems—schools, unions, and boards—with activists trained not in pedagogy or finance, but in ideology. These organizations view school boards as soft targets: low-turnout races that are easy to win with grassroots organization, with enormous power over curriculum, staffing, budget and even political culture.
Nowhere is this strategy more visible than in the New Rochelle school board election, where Dr. Rosa Rivera-McCutchen is aligned with the same progressive, anti-Israel networks like WESPAC that propelled Bowman into Congress. Rivera-McCutchen has been outspoken in her support of “radical care” models, a euphemism for politicized curricula that blur the line between education and activism. Her book on “Radical Care” has a foreword by Bowman and he has endorsed her in the race, which should alarm every Jewish and moderate voter.
Remember: Bowman didn’t fall because his opponents suddenly outspent him, despite what radical socialists scream. He fell because our community turned out. In Westchester, especially in places like New Rochelle, Scarsdale, and White Plains, Jewish voters made the difference. And we must do it again on May 20.
The Stakes in New Rochelle
New Rochelle’s school district is large—9,700 students and over $360 million in spending—and politically volatile. While minority student outcomes have improved, the district is on shaky fiscal ground, and ideological activism is increasingly overt.
Two candidates—Elana Jacob and Jessica Klein—are running to restore balance. Both are active members of the Jewish community and parents. Both are running because they believe in education, not indoctrination. They are not interested in scoring political points—they’re interested in ensuring that students can read, write, think critically, and treat others with respect.
They are up against a well-organized, highly motivated bloc that views school boards as the next front in a larger ideological war. If we don’t match that energy, we lose the ground we worked so hard to win when we sent Bowman packing.
What’s Going On in White Plains?
White Plains is not immune. There, a two-seat school board race has drawn four candidates—two incumbents and two challengers. Sheryl Brady and Charlie Norris have each served for over 15 years. They are status quo guardians who toe the superintendent’s line, not particularly concerned about antisemitism indoctrination in the district, favor “age-appropriate” instruction on gender identity to even the youngest students in kindergarten, and are giddy about the city’s capital program that has professional-grade football fields. Their governance has led to skyrocketing costs—over $40,000 per student, among the highest in the state—while academic outcomes for minority students, especially Black and Hispanic students, have remained poor. That astronomical cost is funded 78% with local taxes, also a high in the state where the normal local tax burden for public schools is around 50%.
Enter Julia Oliva, a new candidate who is running on a platform of fiscal discipline, academic excellence, and common sense. She has a child in the public elementary school and believes in redirecting funds from flashy capital projects toward things that actually benefit students: vocational training, classroom instruction, and teacher development.
While it is unclear how she will do in a board setting, Oliva deserves our support. She would bring a fresh, needed voice to a board that desperately needs one.
The fourth candidate, Dr. Mohammed S Chowdhury, has no children in the school, is unfamiliar about the weak performance of minority students and the enormous budget, and not a serious invested candidate.
The Broader Trend: Silence Is Not Neutrality
Some in our community may ask, “Why get involved in school board politics?” Here’s why:
School boards set the tone for everything: what’s taught, how it’s taught, and whether bias—subtle or overt—is allowed to fester. They help set the budget for the public schools and influence whether charter schools or transportation for students at private schools will get funded.
These elections are winnable. Most school board races are decided by just a few hundred votes. In districts like New Rochelle and White Plains, the Jewish vote is not only significant—it is decisive.
The opposition is not sleeping. Progressive networks have identified these races as key footholds. They are training, funding, and running candidates who align with their views. If we stay home, we hand them the keys.
Remember: the same activist energy that got Bowman elected now animates many of these local candidates. They may not use his name—but they are advancing his ideology.
What You Can Do
Vote on May 20. Put it in your calendar. Bring a friend. Tell your synagogue or community group. You do not need to have students in public school to vote. You pay taxes and fund the future.
Support Jacob and Klein in New Rochelle. Support Julia Oliva in White Plains.
Vote on the school budget: Reject the White Plains budget to lower the expenses by $3.4 million.
Prepare to run in 2026: There is an election every year, and all that is needed is 100 signatures from the district.
Speak up: Attend board meetings, write letters, post on social media. White Plains Superintendent is Dr. Joseph Ricca (Josephricca@wpcsd.k12.ny.us 914-422-2019)
Volunteer: Local races are won with word-of-mouth and turning out.
These are low-turnout races. Your vote isn’t one in a million—it might be the one that tips the balance.
Final Word: This Is Where the Fight Is Now
We can’t let down our guard. The battle against Bowman was just the beginning. The activists who filled his rallies are now aiming for school board seats. And they are counting on your apathy.
Don’t give it to them.
Vote on May 20.
Stand up—for our children, our community, and our values.
RESOURCES
If you are out of town or unable to vote on May 20, you can pick up absentee ballots and drop them off before May 20.
If school board elections were Rotten Tomatoes scores, they’d be 97% Fresh—but only because nobody bothered to show up.
White Plains held its 2024 budget approval and school board elections and just over 2,100 voters cast a ballot in a city of more than 60,000 people. That’s less than 4% of the population deciding who controls a school budget north of $250 million. The budget got almost a 90% approval because only the devout show up to vote. You’d get more engagement trying to organize a bocce tournament in a thunderstorm.
This year, four candidates are competing for two open board seats, making the election a contested one – a rarity. Alas, fewer than twenty people showed up to hear them speak and two of them were the timekeepers. And what did the candidates talk about? Diversity, as if that’s a school board issue rather than a census reality. No discussion of education, student performance, budget allocation, or academic results. Just talking points straight out of a DEI seminar.
Candidates for White Plains School Board Debate in White Plains High School library, May 13, 2025
No one mentioned that Black and Hispanic students continue to underperform in math and science. No one asked why 14% of the city’s students—those in private schools—get zero dollars from the school budget. And not a peep about the fact that White Plains spends an eye-watering $40,000 per student, one of the highest per-student spends in the entire state.
Local taxpayers are footing 78% of the school bill. That’s not just high—it’s the highest in the state. The state average is 50%. If the board had its way with no one watching the shop, they’d probably approve one-on-one tutoring for every student and throw in a life coach just to round things out.
In a functioning democracy, school board elections should be about education policy, results, and fiscal responsibility. In White Plains – and most school boards – it’s a sleepy backroom handshake and a baked-in majority. The less people show up, the more the insiders run the show. And in 2025, they’re running it like it’s their own personal foundation.
Don’t believe me? The city is now adding a $33 million building to the sprawling high school as part of a $395 million 20-year capital plan, even though demographers predict that enrollment will stay flat for the next decade.
White Plains High School is adding a $33 million building to be a free vocational school for teenagers
It is no wonder that the school board panel discussion happened in the fantasy section of the high school library. Everyone in the room imagined that they were directors in a high school musical where education is irrelevant and money grows on trees. Maybe next year, the school board candidate debate should be held in a science lab so people can reorient the discussion towards student success.
Don’t get me wrong – I very much appreciate the volunteer work that the school board does. It’s essential. However, they have seemingly lost the focus on teaching students critical skills and have adopted an orientation that school is really drop-off child care so parents can go to work. The primary function – no, the mission – is to keep kids in elementary and middle school safe and happy. With few basic skills, the high school (read pre-vocational school), will prepare them for jobs in nursing and food services after they change out of their prom dresses.
Vote on May 20 in your local school board election and bring a friend. Trust me, there will be no lines.
There has been an alarming increase in antisemitism at universities which has prodded the federal government to get involved. A lot of the foundational problem at colleges is set by the failures of kindergarten through high school (K-12) education. Today’s youth is much more likely to be antisemitic than older Americans, who tend to be more racist, setting the stage for many years of university Jew-hatred.
It is therefore critical for people to get involved in local school boards and impact the budget and curricula.
K-12 Anti-Jewish Bias Around The Country
School boards and teachers’ unions around the United States have pushed anti-Israel and anti-Jewish programming since the October 7, 2023 massacre in Israel, and before then as well. Here is a sampling:
In April 2021, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) which has roughly 1.7 members said that “American Jews are now part of the ownership class,… who want to take that ladder of opportunity away from those who do not have it.”
In October 2023, the Oakland Education Association, a teacher’s union, condemned “apartheid” and “genocidal” Israel. The OEA handed out material from Teach Palestine, with curriculums for educators.
In November 2023, the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT 59) union produced a resolution which “condemn the role our government plays in supporting the system of Israeli occupation and apartheid, which lies at the root of the Palestinian Israeli conflict.”
In May 2024, Portland Oregon’s teacher union, the Portland Association of Teachers, had a meeting about how to teach students both inside and outside of the classroom how to be anti-Zionists, complete with a website to disseminate propaganda.
In July 2024, the National Education Association (NEA), the largest labor union and teachers union with around 3 million members held its annual meeting with resolutions to boycott Israel and praise the October 7 massacre of 1,200 people in Israel (NBI 8).
The non-partisan American Jewish Committee (AJC) issued a report in December 2024 that “Leaders and activists within the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA) have waged an aggressive campaign that has encouraged K-12 teachers to become pro-Palestinian activists and bring anti-Israel propaganda into their classrooms.”
In February 2025, the Santa Ana Unified School District of California settled a lawsuit for using “courses that were developed in secret and infected with anti-Semitism.” Committees at the school said “Jews are the oppressors,” and “racist” and worked with outside groups who decried “Zionist control.”
The bias against Jews and Israel is systemic, and starts well before people enter colleges.
State of New York
The State of New York is a Democratic stronghold in which the party controls the governorship, Senate (41-22) and Assembly with a super-majority (103-47). The Democrats have held this trifecta since 2019 which has enabled the party to advance particular policies without much pushback. Some current bills include:
NY A08053, which deals with transgender students in locker rooms and bathrooms
NY A06415, which examines admission diversity in specialized senior high schools
NY S06901, which teaches all students in K-12 about sexuality, including gender identity
NY S02498, which allows parents to exempt their children from lockdown drills
NY S05700, which eliminates religious exemptions for immunizations
This is a sample of current bills impacting schools. Note that there is an exemption for parents to limit their child’s participation in lock down drills, but no accommodation for religious parents to exempt their children from gender ideology classes or be exempted from immunizations.
The orientation of New York politicians is very much about majority-minority groups of Hispanic, Black and the LGBT+ communities. It is not about the minority-minority Jews, despite pervasive antisemitism.
Consider NY Senate bill S317, which requires anti-bias training for every medical student. The text of the bill refers to “people of color, women, and the LGBTQ+ community.” Despite threats by nurses and doctors to injure and kill Jewish patients and prevalent antisemitism, Jews were not mentioned.
Ohio doctor publicly denigrates Jews and threatens them
Disgraced former Congressman Jamaal Bowman is a textbook example of ingrained bias against Jews in the public sphere, both in politics, education and media. He was a public school principal before going into politics. His anti-Jewish vitriol helped galvanize members in his NY16 district to oust him in a primary in favor of a more moderate politician. He now has a platform on the anti-Israel site Zeteo to continue to demonize the Jewish State.
Every year, seats on local school boards around the state come up for election. This year’s vote in New York State is on Tuesday, May 20. Here is a list for each town and city. The people on these committees will have an impact on the future, locally, in the state and the country.
Some things to evaluate and ask each candidate:
The school budget is $xxx million a year, averaging $xx,000 per student. Student to teach ratios are xx-to-1. Why?
Student enrollment peaked in 20xx and has declined over the years to only xx,xxx. What has caused the decline, beyond COVID?
The school budget is a mix of services, capital projects and administrative overhead. More specifically, it breaks down as XX% for education, XX% for employee benefits, XX% for “general support”, X% for child transportation, X% to repay debt and X% for other. Why?
What is the capital plan for the district and how is it prioritizing things like new buildings and football fields versus services for the students?
How is your school district doing in the absolute and relative to other school districts (rankings here). How is proficiency in math and reading for different groups? How are absentee rates for students? How are graduation rates? How prepared are they for college and how many attend?
Is the high school preparing students for vocational schools in the jobs of the future (like technology) or for professions in the neighborhood (say healthcare)? Is it teaching a class on financial literacy?
How are the schools handling current matters like gender identity classes for young students and banning phones in classes?
Are children with disabilities able to thrive in the district? What steps are being taken to address their situations?
How is the school addressing current events like the Arab-Israeli conflict?
How does the school make sure that all students are able to learn without discrimination, harassment and intimidation?
Are charter schools being allowed and under what framework?
Review the composition of your school board. Is the entire committee there for over 20 years? Are all there for less than five? It usually makes sense to have a balance of people with children who are current students and those with institutional knowledge.
This is a sampling of things everyone should know about their school district. It will not guarantee a great education or prevent swastikas from being drawn on school property, as happened in Weber Middle School in Port Washington, Midwood Elementary, Clarkstown South High School and others. It will not prevent students from rioting against Jewish teachers as happened in Hillcrest. But unattended school boards lead to lax superintendents and distorted lesson plans and school culture. It leads to a systemwide decay in knowledge and values.
New York City has a resource list to help teachers learn and educate students about antisemitism. Other sites have recommendations as well. Have you reviewed the lists to see if there are materials that are omitted or should be removed? Do you have a relationship with the school chancellor, superintendent or people on the school board to effectuate change?
Are you showing up on May 20 to vote?
International actors are contributing to a negative influence at universities but so is the education before students get to college. Get involved in your local school board for the benefit of your community and society, whether or not you have children in the schools.
Well before the brutal October 7 massacre of 1,200 people in Israel, antisemitism in the United States had reached horrific levels. Jews were shot in synagogues and supermarkets. Held hostage and hacked with machetes. Vilified by famous athletes and entertainers. Accused of being too powerful in the news and told by the leading powers in the country to hide their Jewishness.
“Experts” said that the antidote was to teach people about the Holocaust. If only potential Jew-haters saw what results from “big” antisemitism they would avoid smaller antisemitic acts.
The author Dara Horn scoffed at the idea in April 2023 and now in April 2025. She argues that a narrow focus on the Holocaust limits people to thinking that Jews were wiped out as a people in the past. Israel is framed as a consolation prize awarded by Europe to appease their guilt in the genocide. Lost is the rich history of Jews.
In fact, Jewish history is not passively lost but actively obliterated and vilified. To attend universities in America about “Palestinian Studies” is not a review of any positive history of Arabs in the small slice of the Middle East that Jews view as holy, rather a demonization of Jews.
Visit the University of California, Davis website regarding reading materials on “the Situation in Palestine and Israel,” last updated on October 18, 2023, right after thousands of Gazans massacred people in Israel. The materials are completely anti-Israel, whether books, blogs or articles. Israel is condemned as a “colonial project” over again, tied to “imperialism” and “militarism.” The boycott, divest and sanctions (BDS movement) is advanced everywhere. People are urged to “revolt” against Zionism and Zionists.
Nowhere is there an iota about the thousands of years of Jewish history in the land, nor about the centrality of Jerusalem in Judaism. Rather, it includes links to articles by groups like Palestinian Youth Movement which the Israeli government has tied to U.S.-designated terrorist group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
Palestineism is not a study about Arab culture or history but a rank course in antisemitism, denying thousands of years of Jewish history and the centrality of the land – and Jerusalem in particular – in Judaism.
Jewish History In Israel and Judaism
There is over 3,000 years of history of Jews in the land of Israel. Well before the modern idea of countries was formulated, Jews lived throughout their holy land. They had kings and kingdoms. They had holy temples which Jews would visit at least three times every year, ensuring they remained close to Jerusalem.
Jews have been a majority of Jerusalem since the 1860s, before the advent of modern Zionism. For hundred of years, Jews have ended their passover seder with a call “Next year in Jerusalem!” The Israeli national anthem, Hatikvah, was written in 1878, well before the First Zionist Congress, in a song about Jews being in Jerusalem and Zion. Israel is the only country in the world whose national anthem is all about its capital city.
There are certain religious Jewish practices that can only be observed in the land of Israel. Jews are the only religious group with a diaspora, defined as those Jews living outside of the land of Israel, because it is the only religion tied to a specific land.
A field in Israel with a sign that it observes “shmita,” meaning the land is resting, a Jewish tradition only observed in Israel in keeping with laws in the bible (photo: First One Through)
Whether one likes the current government of Israel and its policies is irrelevant. The LAND of Israel is the Jewish homeland. That fundamental fact is not only omitted but deliberately erased in socialist-jihadi schools like UC Davis.
It is time to rethink education and focus more on the land of Israel and its centrality to Jews and Judaism, than Holocaust studies. We need to prevent anti-Jewish lessons and teach Jewish education. To prevent another genocide of Jews, start with thousands of years of Jewish history and culture in the holy land, instead of classes about the European Holocaust.
Columbia University is cycling through yet another president. The latest leader is Claire Shipman, who takes over the “Interim/ Acting” role from Katrina Armstrong, who had the title for a short few months.
In taking over the position, Shipman offered no words to alumni about 1) the rank antisemitism on campus, 2) the perceived threat to “free speech” which anti-Israel rioters use as a red herring to mask the stink of their abhorrent conduct, nor 3) the financial sword hanging over the institution with the Trump administration’s demand for change. Instead, Shipman said she would attempt to be “transparent” about her efforts to navigate through this challenging time and sought a “partnership” with alumni.
Will Shipman openly review her responses to Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) demands, including that the university commit to $10 million for a Gaza “resilience fund” which will finance scholarships for as many as 40 students from the West Bank and Gaza for five years? Will Shipman partner with the Gaza Scholarship Initiative of the Center for Arab American Philanthropy in such effort? Will she feel compelled to have a similar donation drive for Israelis impacted by Hamas’s genocidal war?
CUAD wanted to make sure that antisemitic professors like Joseph Massad, who praised the October 7 massacre, would be “protected.” Will the school hire White Supremacists to teach students that Black people liked being slaves? Will Andrew Tate teach a class on Women’s Studies? Shipman’s letter said she “love[s] the sharp argument, the intellectual sprawl, the sense that anything feels possible.” Will vile racists be welcomed onto campus for a wide-ranging test of free speech?
CUAD demanded the reinstatement of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP). Will Shipman grant the KKK a chapter at Columbia as well?
Dozens of professors signed an open letter to university administrators to protect professors like Joseph Massad, including Columbia Law’s “Human Rights Institute” team of Kelsey Jost-Creegan and Bassam Khawaja. The institute is funded by Kathy Surace-Smith, a university trustee. Will fellow trustees sway Shipman’s course of actions?
How transparent will Shipman be with her alumni donors and what kind of feedback will she incorporate into her action plan?
She may think she’s deciding between constituents, aligning with either students, faculty, alumni, trustees, or the government with competing desires. She may be debating who will provide the most funding or people over the long term. Or perhaps she just wants to test the parameters of “intellectual sprawl,” tickling the edges of harassment and intimidation.
Would a Gaza fundraiser help clarify her calculus?
Shipman said she wants to hear from you. Contact her and the school at officeofthepresident@columbia.edu, alumdev@columbia.edu and secretary@columbia.edu. The phone number is (212) 854-9970
First One Through 