Tag Archives: education

The Greatest Decolonization Story, Inverted

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The Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium (LESMC) has an ambitious mission. It calls for “anti-racist and decolonial pedagogy” in which students study imperialism and oppression, resistance movements and the struggles of peoples to reclaim their identity and agency.

By those standards, one extraordinary case study should sit near the center of the curriculum: The Jews.

Israel may be one of history’s greatest examples of successful decolonization.

Indigenous

Jewish civilization did not originate in Europe. It arose in the Land of Israel.

Israel, Judah, Judea, Jerusalem and Zion are not modern colonial names. They are ancient names embedded in Jewish history. Judaism developed there. The Hebrew Bible is centered there. Jewish holidays follow its seasons and agricultural cycles. Jerusalem became the religious and national center of the Jewish people.

1630 Map of the Israelite tribes in the holy land, together with images on the border from the life of the Jewish prophet Moses, and the Children of Israel’s exodus from Egypt

Even the people’s name—Israel—is ancient.

Colonized

Then came conquest. Jewish kingdoms were conquered by successive imperial powers, including the Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks and Romans.

The Babylonians destroyed the First Temple and carried many Jews into exile. Rome later destroyed the Second Temple, crushed Jewish revolts and accelerated the dispersion that would define Jewish existence for centuries.

The Jewish people lost sovereignty in its own homeland but never its connection.

Dispossessed—but Not Disconnected

Dispersion scattered the Jews without eliminating Jewish peoplehood. Jews in Poland did not simply become Poles. Jews in Morocco did not simply become Moroccans. Jews in Iraq did not simply become Iraqis.

Across continents, they retained a common religion, history, calendar and connection to the same ancestral land. They prayed toward Jerusalem. They ended Passover with “Next year in Jerusalem.” Hebrew survived as the language of scripture, prayer and scholarship.

And Jews never disappeared from the land itself. Jewish communities remained through centuries of foreign rule.

Resistance

Jewish history is also a story of resistance. The Maccabees resisted Seleucid repression and restored Jewish sovereignty. Jews later rebelled against Rome.

Judah the Maccabee, Wood engraving by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (German painter, 1794 – 1872), published in 1860.

After military resistance became impossible, survival itself became resistance. A small, scattered minority endured expulsions, forced conversions, discriminatory laws and massacres without surrendering its identity.

Eventually came Zionism: the modern movement to restore Jewish national self-determination where Jewish national history began.

A stateless people sought to cease being stateless.

Decolonization

And then something extraordinary happened. The dispersed people returned in large numbers.

There was no Jewish Britain or France directing an overseas colony. Jews came from Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere to the land at the center of their collective history.

They restored sovereignty.

And they accomplished perhaps their most astonishing act of cultural decolonization: they revived Hebrew.

Not Polish, Russian, German or Arabic. Their ancestral language became the everyday language of children, schools, newspapers, commerce and government.

They made Jerusalem their capital. They called their national movement Zionism, after Zion.

So apply LESMC’s vocabulary consistently: Indigenous. Conquered. Dispossessed. Resistance. Return. Cultural restoration. Self-determination.

The Jewish story fits remarkably well.

So What Happened?

Why does this seemingly perfect LESMC case study become almost its opposite when the curriculum reaches Israel?

Some of the people shaping the curriculum help explain the disconnect.

Samia Shoman, a Palestinian-American member of LESMC’s leadership, co-coordinates the Teach Palestine Project, which develops curricula for American schools. Her materials describe Israel as an “institutionalized system of oppression and apartheid.” After California rewrote its original ethnic-studies curriculum, Shoman blamed “Zionist and other rightwing lobbyists” for what she said was the destruction of its “anti-racist, decolonial and liberatory” approach.

Jody Sokolower, who is Jewish, co-coordinates Teach Palestine. Her student history says Britain promised Palestine to Zionists and describes Zionists as subsequently carrying out plans to push Palestinian Arabs and Britain out. The larger Teach Palestine curriculum explicitly seeks to put these perspectives into American classrooms.

Guadalupe Carrasco Cardona, a founding member of Liberated Ethnic Studies, has spent her career developing what LESMC itself describes as “critical curriculum” and helped build the Liberated alternative after the original California curriculum was substantially changed.

This isn’t a peripheral connection. LESMC lists Shoman, Cardona and Theresa Montaño among its leadership, while Teach Palestine produces lessons connecting the conflict to forced relocation, criminalization and a “culture of resistance.”

“Zionism is a nationalist, colonial ideology that, from the late 19th century on, has called for the creation and expansion of Israel as a Jewish state in historic Palestine by any means necessary. As support for Palestine and criticism of Israel’s apartheid policies have grown in the US and internationally, Zionist organizations have stepped up their efforts to silence
discussion of Palestine/Israel in movement circles, on college campuses, and now in K–12 education.” – Teach Palestine’s Understanding Zionist Backlash

Now the inversion makes more sense.

A framework supposedly built to recognize indigeneity, dispossession, resistance and decolonization encounters a people whose history contains all four—but influential architects approach Jewish national restoration through an anti-Zionist and settler-colonial lens.

So:

The indigenous become settlers.
The dispossessed become colonizers.
Return becomes colonialism.
National liberation becomes oppression.

The Jews should be a textbook LESMC case study: an ancient people conquered and dispersed, preserving its identity and ancestral language for centuries, returning home, reviving that language and restoring sovereignty.

Instead, one of history’s most remarkable decolonization stories is recast as colonization.

The history didn’t change. The ideological lens did.

ACTION ITEM

Be involved in your local school board and investigate the materials used in the classroom.

Correcting An UNRWA School

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A school in Jerusalem’s Shuafat refugee camp is reopening. The building is the same but UNRWA is no longer running it.

The school is now affiliated with Israel’s Ministry of Education and the Jerusalem Municipality. Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Aryeh King posted video of UNRWA signs being removed as the school prepared to open.

Sign of UNRWA run school in Shu’afat, Jerusalem

The change ends an educational arrangement dating back more than sixty years.

UNRWA established the Shuafat refugee camp in 1965, when Jordan controlled “East Jerusalem.” UNRWA’s educational policy, dating to 1952, has been to use the curriculum of the “host countries,” allowing refugee children to take local examinations and continue into local schools and universities.

So UNRWA worked with Jordan at that time.

There was nothing internationally settled about Jordan’s sovereignty over Jerusalem. Jordan seized eastern Jerusalem in 1948 and annexed the West Bank – including East Jerusalem in 1950. Even Britain, one of only two countries (along with Pakistan) which recognized Jordan’s illegal annexation of the West Bank, specifically withheld recognition of Jordanian sovereignty over Jerusalem. It only recognized Jordan’s de facto authority there.

Yet Jordan administered East Jerusalem, so UNRWA worked with Jordan there.

Then came 1967.

Israel captured East Jerusalem and became the government actually administering Shuafat, much like Jordan had previously. But UNRWA did not treat Israel the same way as the de facto administrating authority.

The Jordanian curriculum continued for years. After the Palestinian Authority was established, UNRWA increasingly coordinated its West Bank education program with it and ultimately used the Palestinian Authority curriculum.

That is difficult to square with the simple explanation that UNRWA follows the curriculum of its host country. The Palestinian Authority did not govern Jerusalem; Israel did. Yet UNRWA chose the PA curriculum for schools there.

The contrast is particularly striking today. Israel has nine foreign embassies located in Jerusalem, with Nauru announced as the tenth. Jordan never enjoyed anything approaching that level of international recognition of its rule over Jerusalem. Yet UNRWA had been willing to work with the authority actually administering the city when that authority was Jordan.

UNRWA offices in Jerusalem (photo: First One Through)

But the problem at Shuafat went beyond which government UNRWA chose to recognize educationally. It was what children at this particular school were saying they learned.

UNRWA says its curriculum framework must reflect UN principles of neutrality, human rights, tolerance, equality and non-discrimination.

Footage recorded at an UNRWA school in Shuafat in 2022 and published by Ynet in 2024 showed something very different.

Students said that stabbing and running over Jews brought Palestinians honor. One said he was prepared to carry out a suicide attack. Another said they were taught that Jews were terrorists. Another said they were taught that Jews were deceitful and evil and that he would stab and run them over.

The videos offer a horrifying vision of what is taught at UN schools.

Israel eventually acted.

In May 2025, Israeli authorities closed six UNRWA schools in eastern Jerusalem, including three in Shuafat. UNRWA protested that hundreds of Palestinian children were being deprived of education. Israel said alternative schooling would be provided through the Jerusalem education system.

Now that alternative is becoming tangible.

A former UNRWA school in Shuafat is reopening under the Israeli Ministry of Education and Jerusalem Municipality.

The choice was never between UNRWA and no education. What can change is the system educating them and the content of that education.

The UNRWA sign coming down in the Shuafat school is symbolic. What the children learn when they walk back through those doors will determine whether the real change happened inside.

The Western Intersection and Direction of Antisemitism

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Years ago in Australia, I rented a car and learned what every American driver eventually does overseas: instinct is not universal.

About 45 minutes into my first drive, I took a left turn too wide and drifted into the wrong lane. No crash. No damage. Just a slow, awkward mistake at a four-way stop.

An older driver exploded at me. Shouting. Cursing. A full theatrical performance of outrage.

I apologized immediately. I explained I was American and adjusting to the other side of the road. That only intensified things. Now the insults expanded — not just me, but my country and people like me. He wasn’t correcting a traffic error. He was indicting a type.

I didn’t engage. I blew him a kiss and wished him a good day. His fury was his burden, not my identity.

Then I drove away and forgot him.

I could afford to. He had no power. No platform. No mechanism to convert temper into consequence. He was just a man yelling at an intersection.

But imagine if he did.

Imagine if he persuaded Australian officials that Americans are inherently unsafe drivers. Rental cars should require warning stickers: CAUTION — AMERICAN DRIVER and charge them higher insurance premiums. Restricted roads. Special licensing. Even banning them from the road. Imagine it caught on and other countries adopted the same “precautions.”

Now the incident isn’t about a bad turn. It’s an inditement of an entire people, with irritation morphing to governance.

Apply this to western antisemitism.

The Mechanism

Western antisemitism rarely begins as doctrine. It begins as emotion: resentment, humiliation, envy. A story forms around the feeling. Jews are clannish, privileged, manipulative, alien.

From there, the sequence is almost mechanical:

Anecdote becomes stereotype.
Stereotype becomes narrative.
Narrative becomes moral permission.
Permission becomes policy.

By the time formal discrimination appears, the ethical resistance has already been dissolved. People do not feel they are doing wrong. They feel they are being sensible.

The danger is not the man screaming at the intersection; every society has loud fools.

The danger is when the fool’s story becomes civic common sense.

Why Pride Isn’t Enough

One response to the current wave of western antisemitism is to ignore the screamers and turn inward: strengthen Jewish identity, deepen learning, fortify community. There is wisdom there. Cultural confidence is stabilizing.

But pride is psychological armor. It is not structural protection.

You can build a stronger community life. That does not prevent surrounding institutions from teaching your neighbors to see you as a problem to be managed. Parallel vitality does not neutralize hostile narratives embedded in the systems that shape public belief.

Resilience helps you endure hostility. It does not stop hostility from becoming rule.

Where the Real Battle Is: Public Schools

Street hate is episodic. Institutional formation is durable.

Public schools are the key civic storytelling monopolies. For more than a decade, nearly every American child passes through them, and is taught and tested by them. That is where moral categories are formed, historical legitimacy is assigned, and group identities are framed as native or suspect.

If students absorb a picture of Jews as recent interlopers, racial outsiders, uniquely powerful, or structurally oppressive by nature, then the Melbourne intersection has already found its legislature.

Western antisemitism does not need crude slurs. It adapts. It speaks the language of equity, power, decolonization, and social justice — while recycling ancient claims of Jewish illegitimacy and hidden control.

A new syllabus needs to be established.

Students should be taught that Judaism is the ancient Israelite civilization of the Hebrew Bible; that Jewish peoplehood originates in the land of Israel long before Christianity and Islam; that both later faiths arise in dialogue with — and departure from — that earlier tradition. That millions of Hispanics today are descendants of conversos – Jews who were forced to convert by the Inquisition hundreds of years ago, and that the majority of Jews in Israel today are descended from Muslim-majority countries that forced them to flee.

Today, the opposite is taught at the most antisemitic public schools – like those in California and Massachusetts – where Jews are cast as “oppressors,” “racists” and only care about themselves.

The public schools are setting the environment, and while I respect Bret Stephens, Jewish pride is ill equipped to address the current curriculum.

Yes, Jews should spend more time focused on their Judaism, but that will not insulate them from a hostile society. Jews and all decent Americans should take back K-12 education from the socialist-jihadi alliance that has assumed control of many school boards and unions.

An immediate effort should be to advance more charter schools and enable funding of non-public schools. Breaking the monopoly of school unions is a must to save the future.

Another remedy would be to pass a law that any school union that does not take immediate action to report, investigate and discipline (as appropriate) incidents of racism and antisemitism, will lose its right to collect dues out of paychecks and to negotiate contracts with the relevant municipality.

Public schools should also be prohibited from using materials provided by another government, such as Qatar which has been funding K-12 textbooks and trips to Qatar. This initiative is being advance under the “Transparency in Reporting of Adversarial Contributions to Education Act,” the TRACE Act.

ISGAP March 2025 report

Antisemitism is being taught and instilled into children in many public schools around the country, via antisemitic and anti-Israel school boards, unions and foreign countries. It requires an all-out war to root it out.

As opposed to the COVID-19 pandemic which mostly impacted older people, the western antisemitism pandemic has consumed the youth, courtesy of a deeply broken and plagued public school system.

We cannot pretend it doesn’t matter and there’s nothing to be done. Not just for ourselves, but to save the West from the furious fools in the intersections who have gained real power.

The Expulsion of Jewish History, Heritage and Lived Experience from America’s Classrooms

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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.

July 10, 2025 statement that largest teachers union in USA recommends no longer using material from the ADL

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.

Map of “Palestine” used by the NEA erases Israel

The shift is not academic. It is surgical.

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.

The unions pretend this is progress. They say they are freeing schools from “biased” Jewish organizations. Democratic senators circle around to defend the teachers’ unions and mock Jewish concerns. They hope no one knows that teacher unions only donate to Democratic candidates.

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.

Antisemitism at CUNY, UC Berkeley, and Georgetown

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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.

Professors and students at Berkeley have:

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:

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.

Related:

Preview of July 9, 2025 House Education Committee Session On University Antisemitism: Foreign Funding (July 2025)

Global South’s Beachhead On American Universities (March 2025)

CUNY’s New Anti-Education Professor Of Intimidation (February 2025)

Hamas At Hunter College (May 2024)

Considering Campus Antisemitism (November 2023)

Preview of July 9, 2025 House Education Committee Session On University Antisemitism: Foreign Funding

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On July 9, 2025, the House Education & Workforce Taskforce Committee will hold a session on “Antisemitism in Higher Education: Examining the Role of Faculty, Funding, and Ideology.” This is another meeting about ongoing Jew hatred on American campuses and the factors that drive 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.

University Antisemitism

The Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) produced a 135-page report in June 2025 called “FOREIGN INFILTRATION: GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY, QATAR, AND THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD.” The study concluded that Qatar’s huge donations – to Georgetown in particular:

  • “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.

Related:

A Fever Called Antisemitism Hatched In Schools (June 2025)

Ignoring Columbia’s – And The Education Industry’s – Systemic Antisemitism (July 2024)

The Problem With Antisemitism On College Campuses Stems From Where Jews And Arabs Focused Their Donations (October 2023)

Saudi Students In United States (September 2023)

Hamas And Harvard Proudly Declare Their Anti-Semitism And Anti-Zionism (May 2022)

Follow the Money: Democrats and the Education Industry (November 2020)

On Accepting and Rejecting Donations (September 2019)

From the Hitler Youth to Woke Classrooms: State Indoctrination Then and Now

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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.

New York Times bestseller to remake education in grades K-8 focused on “liberation”. As described by the publisher, “Antiracist Reading Revolution provides an actionable antiracist teaching framework and models how K-8 educators can create opportunities for transformative reading and discussions in classrooms.“

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

FeatureNazi GermanyModern Public Schools
CurriculumRacial supremacy, hatred of JewsOppressor vs. oppressed, white guilt, DEI focus
ControlTotal state monopolyUnion-dominated, resistance to school choice
TeachersNazi enforcersIdeological activists protected by unions
EnemiesJews, Slavs, Communists“Whiteness,” traditional values, parents who dissent
DissentCriminalizedCanceled, ignored, or labeled extremist
OutcomeFanatical loyalty to regimeCultural 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.

Related:

A Fever Called Antisemitism Hatched In Schools (June 2025)

School Boards Are the New Battleground: Why the New York Jewish Community Must Vote on May 20 (May 2025)

Anti-Israel Socialists Are Coming For Public Schools (May 2025)

Global South’s Beachhead On American Universities (March 2025)

Ignoring Columbia’s – And The Education Industry’s – Systemic Antisemitism (July 2024)

CNN And NY Times Call Congressional Hearing On Antisemitism in Public Schools A Fake Issue Concocted By Republicans (May 2024)

In San Francisco Schools, Anti-Zionism is Anti-Racism (February 2021)

Follow the Money: Democrats and the Education Industry (November 2020)

White Plains School District – Vote Tuesday May 20

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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.

According to the school district’s long-term plan, school enrollment is projected to decline to 6,540 in 2028-9. Despite the shrinking student body, the 20-year plan has $395 million of expenditures to upgrade its facilities.

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.

Related articles:

School Boards Are the New Battleground: Why the New York Jewish Community Must Vote on May 20

School Boards Are the New Battleground: Why the New York Jewish Community Must Vote on May 20

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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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.

White Plains Board of Education election information

New Rochelle Board of Education information

Related articles:

School Board Elections Are Like Rotten Tomatoes Documentaries—Unanimously Approved Because No One Watches

School Board Case Studies: White Plains and New Rochelle

Anti-Israel Socialists Are Coming For Public Schools

Talking About Local School Boards In New York State

Ignoring Columbia’s – And The Education Industry’s – Systemic Antisemitism (July 2024)

CNN And NY Times Call Congressional Hearing On Antisemitism in Public Schools A Fake Issue Concocted By Republicans (May 2024)

Follow the Money: Democrats and the Education Industry (November 2020)

School Board Elections Are Like Rotten Tomatoes Documentaries—Unanimously Approved Because No One Watches

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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.

Related articles:

School Board Case Studies: White Plains and New Rochelle

Talking About Local School Boards In New York State