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California School District Pauses Ethnic Studies Curriculum to Settle Lawsuit Over Antisemitism Complaints
Pro-Hamas activists calling themselves the United Front for Liberation lead march through Valley Plaza Mall. The ‘Ceasefire’ rally began at Wilson Park in Bakersfield, California, on Dec. 16, 2023. Photo: Jacob Lee Green via REUTERS CONNECT
The Santa Ana Unified School District (SAUSD) in California is pausing the implementation of an ethnic studies curriculum to settle a lawsuit brought by a cohort of Jewish civil rights groups which accused the educational program of containing antisemitic content.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the suit alleged that SAUSD gave students and parents virtually no notice of its ethnic studies plans and that secrecy was its intention, citing internal emails obtained through a Public Records Act request in which SAUSD officials discussed how to “address the Jewish question” and plans to avoid dialogue with the Jewish community by consulting outside groups for advice on the best path forward. Court documents also described a troubling incident in which members of the Jewish community were called antisemitic slurs, accused of racism, and followed to their cars after raising their concerns about the curricula during a school board meeting in May 2023.
Plaintiffs for the case included the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), StandWithUs, and the American Jewish Committee.
The settlement announced on Thursday calls for SAUSD to “cease instruction” of several ethnic studies courses until their contents are fully disclosed to and agreed on by the public. SAUSD will also ensure that any district-issued content regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is impartial and that teachers refrain from using the classroom as a soapbox for their personal views.
“Ethnic studies should never become a vehicle for sneaking dangerous, antisemitic materials into our schools. That is the law, plain and simple, and we’re glad to have stopped this in Santa Ana schools,” L. Rachel Lerman, the Brandeis Center’s vice chair, said in a statement. “Unfortunately, this dangerous and deceitful behavior is being attempted in other school districts as well. This should serve as a cautionary tale. We are watching those jurisdictions and will not hesitate to address similar violations of the law. School boards must operate in the light of day, and not ‘under the radar’ as SAUSD described its own conduct.”
Antisemitism in K-12 schools has continued to surge, according to the ADL’s latest data. In 2023, antisemitic incidents in US schools increased 135 percent, a figure which included a rise in vandalism and assault. The lawsuit against SAUSD was one of many filed against K-12 education institutions across the country in 2024 to address the problem.
In February 2024, the Brandeis Center filed a complaint alleging that the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) in California has caused severe psychological trauma to Jewish students as young as eight years old and fostered a hostile learning environment.
The problem exploded after Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the suit charged. Since then, BUSD teachers have allegedly used their classrooms to promote antisemitic tropes about Israel, weaponizing disciplines such as art and history to convince unsuspecting minors that Israel is a “settler-colonial” apartheid state committing a genocide of Palestinians. While this took place, high-level BUSD officials allegedly ignored complaints about discrimination and tacitly approved hateful conduct even as it spread throughout the student body.
At Berkeley High School, for example, a history teacher allegedly forced students to explain why Israel is an apartheid state and screened an anti-Zionist documentary. The teacher sharply squelched dissent, telling a Jewish student who raised concerns about the content of her lessons that only anti-Zionist narratives matter in her classroom and that any other which argues that Israel isn’t an apartheid state is “laughable.” Elsewhere in the school, an art teacher, whose name is redacted from the complaint for matters of privacy, displayed anti-Israel artworks in his classroom, one of which showed a fist punching through a Star of David.
A number of K-12 institutions that faced legal complaints chose to settle the cases brought against them.
In June 2024, the Community School of Davidson, a charter school located in North Carolina, agreed to settle a complaint alleging that administrators failed to address a series of heinous antisemitic incidents in which a non-Jewish student, whose name is redacted from the public record, was called a “dirty Jew,” told that “the oven is that way,” and battered with other denigrating comments too vulgar for publication. The abuse, according to the complaint, filed by the Brandeis Center, began after the child wore an Israeli sports jersey.
That some month, the Clark County School District (CCSD) in Las Vegas, Nevada resolved a discrimination lawsuit which alleged that it failed to protect an autistic Jewish student from a heinous antisemitic incident in which someone scratched a swastika into his skin at school, an injury that was not discovered until he returned home.
The young man, who wears a kippah and is nonverbal, was assaulted in March 2023. In addition to being physically harmed, someone tore up a bag worn by his service dog. Because the school at which the incident took place, Ed W. Clark High School, had not installed surveillance cameras, there remains to this day little information about when and where the incident took place.
Commenting on SAUSD’s decision to respond to the concerns of Jewish parents and community leaders by enacting policies which will prevent antisemitic discrimination, StandWithUs chief executive officer Roz Rothstein added, “This lawsuit allowed us to uncover serious issues with the SAUSD’s implementation of California’s ethnic studies laws, leading to the critical results of ensuring that antisemitic material will no longer be included in these course and improving the district’s process for adopting such future courses.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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UK, France, Germany Urge Gaza Ceasefire, Ask Israel to Restore Humanitarian Access
People walk among destroyed buildings in Gaza, as viewed from the Israel-Gaza border, March 20, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen/File Photo
The governments of Germany, France and Britain called for an immediate return to a ceasefire in Gaza in a joint statement on Friday that also called on Israel to restore humanitarian access.
“We call on Israel to restore humanitarian access, including water and electricity, and ensure access to medical care and temporary medical evacuations in accordance with international humanitarian law,” the foreign ministers of the three countries, known as the E3, said in a statement.
The ministers said they were “appalled by the civilian casualties,” and also called on Palestinian Hamas terrorists to release Israeli hostages.
They said the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians could not be resolved through military means, and that a long-lasting ceasefire was the only credible pathway to peace.
The ministers added that they were “deeply shocked” by the incident that affected the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) building in Gaza, and called for an investigation into the incident.
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Israeli Military Says It Intercepted Missile Fired from Yemen; Houthis Claim Responsibility
FILE PHOTO: Houthi military helicopter flies over the Galaxy Leader cargo ship in the Red Sea in this photo released November 20, 2023. Photo: Houthi Military Media/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo
The Israeli military said it intercepted a missile fired from Yemen on Friday, one day after shooting down two projectiles launched by Houthi terrorists.
Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis claimed responsibility for the attack, saying that it fired a ballistic missile toward Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv, the group’s military spokesperson, Yahya Saree, said in a televised statement in the early hours of Saturday.
Saree said the attack against Israel was the group’s third in 48 hours.
He issued a warning to airlines that the Israeli airport was “no longer safe for air travel and would continue to be so until the Israeli aggression against Gaza ends and the blockade is lifted.”
However, the airport’s website seemed to be operating normally and showed a list of scheduled flights.
The group’s military spokesman has also said without providing evidence that the Houthis had launched attacks against the US aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman in the Red Sea.
The group recently vowed to escalate attacks, including those targeting Israel, in response to US strikes earlier this month, which amount to the biggest US military operation in the Middle East since President Donald Trump took office in January. The US attacks have killed at least 50 people.
The Houthis’ fresh attacks come under a pledge to expand their range of targets in Israel in retaliation for renewed Israeli strikes in Gaza that have killed hundreds after weeks of relative calm.
The Houthis have carried out over 100 attacks on shipping since Israel’s war with Hamas began in late 2023, saying they were acting in solidarity with Gaza’s Palestinians.
The attacks have disrupted global commerce and prompted the US military to launch a costly campaign to intercept missiles.
The Houthis are part of what has been dubbed the “Axis of Resistance” – an anti-Israel and anti-Western alliance of regional militias including Hamas, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and armed groups in Iraq, all backed by Iran.
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Columbia University Agrees to Some Trump Demands in Attempt to Restore Funding
A pro-Palestine protester holds a sign that reads: “Faculty for justice in Palestine” during a protest urging Columbia University to cut ties with Israel. November 15, 2023 in New York City. Photo: Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
Columbia University agreed to some changes demanded by US President Donald Trump’s administration before it can negotiate to regain federal funding that was pulled this month over allegations the school tolerated antisemitism on campus.
The Ivy League university in New York City acquiesced to several demands in a 4,000-word message from its interim president released on Friday. It laid out plans to reform its disciplinary process, hire security officers with arrest powers and appoint a new official with a broad remit to review departments that offer courses on the Middle East.
Columbia’s dramatic concessions to the government’s extraordinary demands, which stem from protests that convulsed the Manhattan campus over the Israel-Gaza war, immediately prompted criticism. The outcome could have broad ramifications as the Trump administration has warned at least 60 other universities of similar action.
What Columbia would do with its Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies department was among the biggest questions facing the university as it confronted the cancellation, called unconstitutional by legal and civil groups, of hundreds of millions of dollars in government grants and contracts. The Trump administration had told the school to place the department under academic receivership for at least five years, taking control away from its faculty.
Academic receivership is a rare step taken by a university’s administrators to fix a dysfunctional department by appointing a professor or administrator outside the department to take over.
Columbia did not refer to receivership in Friday’s message. The university said it would appoint a new senior administrator to review leadership and to ensure programs are balanced at MESAAS, the Middle East Institute, the Center for Palestine Studies, the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies and other departments with Middle East programs, along with Columbia’s satellite hubs in Tel Aviv and Amman.
‘TERRIBLE PRECEDENT’
Professor Jonathan Zimmerman, a historian of education at the University of Pennsylvania and a “proud” graduate of Columbia, called it a sad day for the university.
“Historically, there is no precedent for this,” Zimmerman said. “The government is using the money as a cudgel to micromanage a university.”
Todd Wolfson, a Rutgers University professor and president of the American Association of University Professors, called the Trump administration’s demands “arguably the greatest incursion into academic freedom, freedom of speech and institutional autonomy that we’ve seen since the McCarthy era.”
“It sets a terrible precedent,” Wolfson said. “I know every academic faculty member in this country is angry about Columbia University’s inability to stand up to a bully.”
In a campus-wide email, Katrina Armstrong, Columbia’s interim president, wrote that the her priorities were “to advance our mission, ensure uninterrupted academic activities, and make every student, faculty, and staff member safe and welcome on our campus.”
Mohammad Hemeida, an undergraduate who chairs Columbia’s Student Governing Board, said the school should have sought more student and faculty input.
“It’s incredibly disappointing Columbia gave in to government pressure instead of standing firm on the commitments to students and to academic freedom, which they emphasized to us in almost daily emails,” he said.
The White House did not respond to Columbia’s memo on Friday. The Trump administration said its demands, laid out in a letter to Armstrong eight days ago, were a precondition before Columbia could enter “formal negotiations” with the government to have federal funding.
ARREST POWERS
Columbia’s response is being watched by other universities that the administration has targeted as it advances its policy objectives in areas ranging from campus protests to transgender sports and diversity initiatives.
Private companies, law firms and other organizations have also faced threatened cuts in government funding and business unless they agree to adhere more closely to Trump’s priorities. Powerful Wall Street law firm Paul Weiss came under heavy criticism on Friday over a deal it struck with the White House to escape an executive order imperiling its business.
Columbia has come under particular scrutiny for the anti-Israel student protest movement that roiled its campus last year, when its lawns filled with tent encampments and noisy rallies against the US government’s support of the Jewish state.
To some of the Trump administration’s demands, such as having “time, place and manner” rules around protests, the school suggested they had already been met.
Columbia said it had already sought to hire peace officers with arrest powers before the Trump administration’s demand last week, saying 36 new officers had nearly completed the lengthy training and certification process under New York law.
The university said no one was allowed to wear face masks on campus if they were doing so intending to break rules or laws. The ban does not apply to face masks worn for medical or religious purposes, and the university did not say it was adopting the Trump administration’s demand that Columbia ID be worn visibly on clothing.
The sudden shutdown of millions of dollars in federal funding to Columbia this month was already disrupting medical and scientific research at the school, researchers said.
Canceled projects included the development of an AI-based tool that helps nurses detect the deterioration of a patient’s health in hospital and research on uterine fibroids, non-cancerous tumors that can cause pain and affect women’s fertility.
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