A Letter to the IQC and the State Board of Education about Ethnic Studies

I strongly oppose the 2021 California Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum.

I am particularly alarmed by its attempt to depict inter-ethnic relationships as a irreconcilable struggle between racially-defined “oppressed” and “oppressors” and by the way it associates “whiteness” with “oppression” and “colonialism.”

I am particularly alarmed by its attempt to depict inter-ethnic relationships as a irreconcilable struggle between racially-defined “oppressed” and “oppressors”

I am a “white,” Jewish American, and I believe the history of my people is a model of emancipation from oppression and colonialism, culminating in the State of Israel, which is an inspirational model of an oppressed ethnic minority lifting itself from the margins of history to become a world center of art, science and entrepreneurship — a multi-colored lighthouse of free speech and equality.

I want my grandchildren to take pride in this historical transformation and to share our experience with other minorities — but sharing it as equal partners in one colorful mosaic of ethnic diversity, not as guilt-stricken “whites,” burdened with undeserved privileges.

The idea of mutually-respectful ethnic diversity has been at the heart of California Education for decades, and I know firsthand that it can be operationalized successfully. For the past 15 years, I have seen it practiced in the Daniel Pearl Magnet School, here in Van Nuys California, a top-ranking school named after my late son, Daniel Pearl. I have seen, year after year, how students of diverse backgrounds and heritage walk with a flower in their hand, speak in their parents’ language — Spanish, Hebrew, English, Russian and Arabic — and place the flower in a huge Baguette in the center of the room, a symbol of their unity and common humanity.

I dread to see this spirit of comradeship ruined by the “oppressed” — “oppressor” ideology of the proposed Ethnic Studies Curriculum.

Judea Pearl is a UCLA professor and president of the Daniel Pearl Foundation (www.danielpearl.org), named after his son. He and his wife, Ruth, are editors of “I Am Jewish: Personal Reflections Inspired by the Last Words of Daniel Pearl” (Jewish Light, 2004), winner of the National Jewish Book Award.