Eighteen Warning Signs Jewish Parents Should Look Out for This School Year

The K-12 school year is starting soon, and Jewish parents must be on the lookout for radical, anti-Israel activity. The first signs of such activity, however, are rarely extreme anti-Zionist teachings but rather a host of ideological pronouncements and commitments made by the school that mark the official adoption of a binary oppressed-oppressor ideology in every aspect of school life.

Jewish parents are often unaware of or ignore these warning signs. Yet when schools adopt such radical pedagogies, antisemitism is never far behind. The radical ideology provides a permission structure for activist educators to impose their distorted perspectives on students. In this radical approach to education, Israel and Jews are invariably coded the “oppressor.”

Jewish parents are often unaware of or ignore these warning signs. Yet when schools adopt such radical pedagogies, antisemitism is never far behind.

Here are 18 terms to look out for that likely forecast increased antisemitic activity.     

1. Affinity Groups – Divided into groups based on their skin color/ethnicity, students discuss either their experiences as people of color and the importance of community or, in white affinity groups, their privilege and how they might leverage their privilege to be better allies to people of color. 

2. Anti-Palestinian Racism (APR) – Adopted by the Toronto District School Board and now spreading in school districts and teachers unions in the U.S., APR is any challenge to the dominant Palestinian narrative of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, including denying the “Nakba,” denying Palestinian indigeneity to Israel, denying the Palestinian “right of return” to Israel and justifying violence against Palestinians.

3. Anti-Racism – Eschews color-blindness in favor of recognizing fundamental power imbalances between different racial groups and recognizing the inherent privilege some groups have over others. According to this approach, racism is about systems of power and privilege, so to be anti-racist is to be against systems that reinforce the racist binary.

4. Critical Consciousness – The ability to recognize and push back against systems of oppression and the power structures that create them. The educational bureaucracies that adopt a “critical consciousness” perspective, such as the California school system, claim to know precisely who is oppressed and who is privileged, and stifle alternative viewpoints. 

5. Decenter – To remove a subject from the central or dominant role – in other words, when discussing racism, white people should decenter themselves to listen to minority voices. Jews who have raised concerns about antisemitism have been told they are decentering marginalized voices. 

6. Decolonize – To decolonize a curriculum, for example, means to remove or minimize the influence of traditional, Western, ways of knowing and knowledge.

7. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion – Focuses on ethnic/racial diversity and equal outcomes. DEI often is used to advance and institutionalize the oppressed/oppressor binary.

8. Equitable Grading or “Grading for Equity” – Equitable grading negates traditional standards of grading in favor of “motivation” (grades should be awarded to motivate students to do their work) and “bias-resistance.” Under such a system, participation in class and submitting work on time is not taken into account when grading.

9. Intersectionality – A framework to view the interactive effects of various forms of discrimination and disempowerment. Intersectionality looks at the way racism interacts with patriarchy, heterosexism, classism and xenophobia, noting that overlapping vulnerabilities create specific and compound problems. Intersectionality is often used to establish a hierarchy of oppressions and privileges based on identity. 

10. Land Acknowledgements – Statements that acknowledge “indigenous rights to territory seized by colonial powers.”

11. Liberatory education – Focuses on centering the experiences and narratives of marginalized communities.

12. Microaggressions – The everyday verbal and nonverbal slights or insults, intentional or not, which communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative messages to marginalized groups and individuals. Some microaggression policies treat such statements as “color-blindness” and “pull yourself up with your bootstraps” as offensive and beyond the pale. 

13. Privilege – Societal privilege that benefits dominant groups and white people over minorities and nonwhite people, particularly if they are otherwise under the same social, political, or economic circumstances. While nearly everyone agrees that some people enjoy certain advantages in life, the use of the term lacks nuance and labels people in entire identity categories as privileged, regardless of circumstances. 

14. Privilege Walk – An exercise commonly used in K-12 settings in which students take a step forward for each area of “privilege” they hold — i.e., skin color, sexuality, socio-economic background.

15. Restorative Justice – A disciplinary model that avoids punishment for bad behavior in favor of “healing” and “rebuilding” community relationships. Restorative Justice measures became popular when schools were criticized for “disparities in their suspension data.” While perfectly acceptable when used alongside more traditional disciplinary measures, it is less successful when disruptive behavior is allowed to persist.

16. Settler-Colonialism – A form of colonialism in which the indigenous population is removed and replaced with a colonial population. It’s often used to demonize Israel and Western countries. 

17. Systems of Oppression – Structures of oppression within our society – including racism, sexism, heteronormativity and ableism.

18. White Supremacy Culture – Society has been designed to maintain and reproduce the privilege white and white-adjacent groups hold in contrast to minority groups. “White supremacy values” like “punctuality,” “objectivity” and “worship of the written word” promote “white supremacy” and are prized over other groups’ cultural norms and values. Organizations which uphold these values disadvantage minority groups.

Some of these concepts may seem benign and, in certain contexts, may be entirely unobjectionable, but they often signal a strong ideological agenda on the part of the schools. Parents need to be on the lookout. 

When such an agenda is present, it’s not enough, unfortunately, to counter the explicit antisemitism. The oppressed-oppressor ideology itself will continue to produce hostility toward Jews. Parents need to step up to fight the larger ideological battles in school lest their kids, ultimately, pay the price.

Mika Hackner is the Senior Research Associate at The Jewish Institute for Liberal Values.