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Meet Mark Robinson, the Republican frontrunner in the North Carolina governor’s race accused of antisemitism
(JTA) — The Facebook post in early August condemning antisemitic flyers left around Raleigh might not have been surprising, coming from North Carolina’s lieutenant governor.
But for Lieutenant Gov. Mark Robinson, the statement marked something of a change in tone. After the Republican was elected to the state’s second-highest office in 2020, revelations emerged that he was the prolific author of Facebook posts downplaying the threat of Nazism, invoking antisemitic stereotypes and targeting other minority groups.
At the time, Robinson’s track record earned him criticism from local Jewish leaders and national commentators; the Republican Jewish Coalition called his comments “clearly antisemitic.” In response, Robinson did not publicly apologize for the posts but he said he would no longer make them. He met with a group of local Jewish leaders in 2021 and says he privately apologized to them.
Now, as Robinson runs for governor — and increasingly appears on track to become the Republican nominee next year — North Carolinians must decide whether Robinson has earned their trust. For some local Jews, that means taking him more seriously.
“Most of us find it hard to believe that he will be the candidate,” said Randall Kaplan, a board member of the Jewish Democratic Council of America who is also married to Rep. Kathy Manning, a Jewish Democrat who represents North Carolina in Congress. “I think most of us are in denial.”
Here’s what you need to know about Robinson, his contentious social media presence and his campaign to lead North Carolina.
He’s a political newcomer whose star is rising.
Robinson has risen rapidly in state politics in recent years after a life spent out of the spotlight. A native of Greensboro, his campaign website says he was the ninth of 10 children and that his alcoholic father abused his mother. He studied at the University of North Carolina Greensboro with hopes of becoming a history professor, has worked in furniture factories and also opened a daycare center with his wife. He filed for bankruptcy in 1998, 1999 and 2003.
Robinson’s improbable rise in the GOP began in early April 2018, when he spoke before the Greensboro City Council about preserving gun owners’ rights following the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, two months earlier in which 17 students and teachers were killed.
“I’m a law-abiding citizen who’s never shot anybody,” he said in the four-minute speech. “Every time we have one of these shootings, nobody wants to put the blame where it goes, which is at the shooter’s feet. You want to put it at my feet.”
The appearance went viral. Robinson went on in 2020 to win the lieutenant governor’s job with 51.6% of the vote against his Democratic opponent. He is also a National Rifle Association board member and speaker at events calling for gun rights, including the NRA’s annual meeting this past April.
Now, Robinson is the Republican frontrunner in the high-profile contest for governor. At a June rally in Greensboro, former President Donald Trump pledged to endorse Robinson, calling him “one of the great stars of the party.”
Other candidates on the Republican side include State Treasurer Dale Folwell, former Rep. Mark Walker, former State Senator Andy Wells and former healthcare executive Jesse Thomas.
Whoever wins the March 2024 primary will likely face the state’s Jewish attorney general, Josh Stein, who is so far running unopposed for the Democratic nomination.
Robinson would be North Carolina’s first Black governor, Stein its first Jewish one. Polls show them running a close race, though the election is more than a year away. Stein is winning the campaign funds battle to date: His campaign raised about $6 million this year through June, while Robinson’s campaign raised $2.2 million during the same period.
Stein has also seized upon some of Robinson’s comments. Robinson’s “brand of extremism is off the charts,” Stein told Charlotte radio station WFAE.
Robinson has a history of inflammatory comments referencing Jews and other groups.
Before his first political campaign in 2020, Robinson was an active and controversial Facebook user whose posts downplayed the need to discuss the Nazis’ evil.
“I am so sick of seeing and hearing people STILL talk about Nazis and Hitler and how evil and manipulative they were. NEWS FLASH PEOPLE, THE NAZIS (National Socialist) ARE GONE! We did away with them,” he declared in a 2017 post first uncovered by Jewish Insider, which has tracked Robinson’s comments since he took office.
“Marxist Socialist(s)” and communism pose the bigger threat and control the media, he maintained. “After all, who do you think has been pushing this Nazi boogeyman narrative all these years?”
Later that year, in another post, Robinson wrote, “Please STOP wasting my time, your time, and the time of your fellow conservatives talking about, and making mention of, the NAZIS who have been DEAD since 1945.”
He has also targeted other groups, including LGBTQ people, Muslims and others. “Note to liberals; I’ll accept ‘Gay Pride’ when you accept ‘White Pride,’” he wrote in 2014, according to screenshots posted by the liberal news site Talking Points Memo. Another post read, “I believe that homosexuality is a sin and that those people who are ‘proudly coming out of the closet’ are standing in open rebellion against God.”
In 2018, he railed on Facebook that the hit superhero movie “Black Panther” was “created by an agnostic Jew and put to film by satanic marxist.” Invoking an antisemitic trope about Jewish pursuit of money and using a Yiddish slur for Black people, Robinson, who is Black, wrote that the film was “only created to pull the shekels out of your Schvartze pockets.” The following year, the News and Observer in Raleigh reported that he responded affirmatively to a far-right religious leader who invoked an antisemitic conspiracy theory.
After national news organizations called attention to Robinson’s posts after his election, he said they would not continue.
“When I made those posts as a private citizen, I was speaking directly to issues that I’m passionate about,” he said upon taking office. “As a public servant, I have to put those opinions behind me and do what’s right for everyone in North Carolina.”
The CEO of the Republican Jewish Coalition, Matt Brooks, said at the time he was not satisfied with Robinson’s response. “His refusal to apologize is troubling and unacceptable to us,” Brooks said.
As lieutenant governor, Robinson has tried to play it straighter.
While Robinson has not issued a public apology, he met with Jewish leaders from Greensboro shortly after taking office to discuss their concerns about his posts. Marilyn Chandler, CEO of the Greensboro Jewish Federation, helped to organize and participated in the virtual meeting, which included Jewish participants as well as Robinson and members of his staff.
During the meeting, Chandler and other Jewish leaders expressed their deep concerns about antisemitic remarks Robinson had made on social media prior to becoming lieutenant governor. He shared a press statement addressing these issues, though it is unclear if the statement has been released publicly.
Mike Lonergan, communications director for Robinson’s campaign for governor, told JTA that Robinson “met with dozens of rabbis and Jewish leaders from across NC” after taking office, and that he “expressed remorse, and communicated a desire to learn more about the Jewish community in an effort to understand how he can better serve them as an elected official.”
After speaking with several rabbis across the state, JTA was unable to independently confirm additional meetings Robinson had with Jewish leaders beyond the one in Greensboro.
Robinson also addressed his contentious Facebook posts and said he apologized for them in his memoir. The book, titled “We Are The Majority: The Life and Passions of a Patriot,” was published in September 2022.
“It came off the wrong way,” he wrote, according to a photo of the book’s text shared by Lonergan. “When people called me and asked about it, that’s what I told them. And I apologized to them. It’s the only time I’ve ever apologized for anything I put on Facebook. It did come out wrong. I knew the truth of what I was trying to say, but I should have chosen different words.”
His social media presence of late has taken on a different character. Recently, on his official page as lieutenant governor, Robinson has appeared to make a point of condemning antisemitism publicly — including the flyers in Raleigh. Adopting a pro-Israel outlook that is de rigueur among Republicans, he has also called out recent criticism of Israel by Democrats.
“Democrat Congresswoman Jayapal labeling Israel a ‘racist state’ is unjust and plain wrong,” he wrote on Facebook in response to comments made in July by Rep. Pramila Jayapal, an influential Democrat from Washington who later walked the statement back. “These harmful antisemitic comments are not representative of our nation’s values. We stand firmly with Israel, our steadfast ally.”
But Robinson has not entirely avoided hot-button issues or the controversy that can accompany them. His tenure as second-in-command has included a campaign against what he sees as left-wing political indoctrination in schools. In March 2021, he formed the Fairness and Accountability in the Classroom for Teachers and Students, or FACTS, task force, and in an August press conference, he said he was combating teachers who put “undue pressure on young minds to accept their way of thinking.”
Earlier this summer, he went viral after speaking at a conference held by Moms for Liberty, the conservative group that is fueling book bans in school districts across the United States.
“Whether you’re talking about Adolf Hitler, whether you’re talking about Chairman Mao, whether you’re talking about Stalin, whether you’re talking about Pol Pot, whether you’re talking about [Fidel] Castro in Cuba, or whether you’re talking about a dozen other despots all around the globe, it is time for us to get back and start reading some of those quotes. It’s time for us to start teaching our children some of those quotes,” he said. “It’s time for us to start teaching our children about the dirty, despicable, awful things that those communist and socialist despots did in our history.”
People who viewed a clip of the speech without the condemnatory final sentence blasted Robinson for endorsing the views of history’s worst dictators. Stein’s campaign said in a press release that Robinson “promotes reading of quotes from global dictators.” The full video of the speech, however, showed that Robinson was not endorsing the dictators’ views.
Jewish groups are voicing concern — though Robinson has Jewish supporters, too.
In July, the North Carolina Jewish Clergy Association, the Democratic Majority for Israel and six North Carolina Democratic members of Congress sent a letter to state Republican leaders asking them to strongly condemn Robinson’s remarks.
“His inflammatory statements invoke harmful stereotypes and conspiracy theories, downplay the Holocaust, and denigrate entire groups of human beings,” the letter said. “They are not just deeply troubling, but downright dangerous.”
To date, none of the people who received the letter have publicly responded to it. Manning, a signatory on the letter, said she remained concerned about Robinson.
“The fact that we have a gubernatorial candidate in the state of North Carolina who makes antisemitic comments, who veers on Holocaust denial, is very frightening,” Manning, co-chair of the House Bipartisan Task Force for Combating Antisemitism, told JTA.
For Rabbi Barbara Thiede, assistant professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, the danger of Robinson’s rise comes from his potential to inspire extremists to take action. She said she thought some of her fellow Jews may not be adequately concerned by the possibility that he could become governor.
“They may not appreciate the danger that Robinson and others like him pose to their safety,” Thiede said. “Speech is not unrelated to action, even if one person is doing the speaking and the next is taking up the weapon — whatever that may be.”
Not all North Carolina Jews oppose Robinson’s candidacy. Jeremy Stephenson, a Charlotte attorney who previously ran as a Republican for local school board and served for two years as general counsel of the Mecklenburg County Republican Party, said he plans to vote for Robinson in the primary.
Stephenson dismisses the “hyperventilation from the left” about the candidate and told JTA that he isn’t worried about “isolated Facebook posts which are then blasted in paid social media from the Dems.”
“The Jewish Republicans I know are strongly in favor of Robinson, particularly in contrast with Stein,” Stephenson said. “I think Josh Stein has far more antisemitic friends on the left who he has been unwilling to distance himself from, and will accept donations from, in running for governor.”
Stephenson said he believes Robinson’s embrace of religion in the public sphere would have benefits for Jews in the state. “I think that Robinson in many ways will embolden more people to be more comfortable expressing their religious beliefs,” he said. “And that includes Jews.”
While it’s clear that Robinson’s past comments will draw more attention in the coming months, as the primary season heats up, it’s unclear how much North Carolina Jews will hear that chatter in their synagogues.
At Temple of Israel in Wilmington, the oldest Jewish congregation in the state, Rabbi Emily Losben-Ostrov said she’s keenly aware of the diverse viewpoints in her congregation, which she characterizes as “purple.”
Losben-Ostrov serves on the steering committee of the Jewish Clergy Association, which authorized the letter about Robinson. At the same time, she said she talks about Jewish values but not about any single politician or political party from the bimah.
“I want the synagogue to be a place for unity and for escaping some of the difficulties of the things that divide us,” she said, adding, “It’s a dual job I need to do. One is to stand up to hate and two is to also keep our community connected.”
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Union Antisemitism Running Rampant on College Campuses, Experts and Student Tell US Congress
Illustrative: Rutgers University students holding an anti-Zionist demonstration on March 19, 2024. Photo: USA Today Network via Reuters Connect
Experts told the US Congress on Tuesday that antisemitism runs rampant in campus labor unions, trapping Jews in exploitative and nonconsensual relationships with union bosses who spend their compulsory membership dues on political activities which promote hatred of their identity and the destruction of the Jewish homeland.
Testifying at a hearing titled “Unmasking Union Antisemitism” held by the House Education and the Workforce Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions, the witnesses described a series of issues facing Jewish graduate students represented against their will by the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers (UE) union.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation (NRTW), which was represented among the expert witnesses, has spoken publicly before about a litany of alleged injustices to which UE officials subject Jewish student-employees in the US’s most prestigious institutions of higher education, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to Cornell University.
At MIT, the group said in August, “union officers” aided a riotous mob which illegally occupied a section of campus with a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” participating in the demonstration and even denying access to campus buildings. UE members at Stanford University, meanwhile, allegedly denied religious accommodations to Jewish students who requested exemption from union dues over that branch’s supporting the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. And Cornell University UE was accused of denying religious exemptions in several cases as well and followed up the rejection with an intrusive “questionnaire” which probed Jewish students for “legally-irrelevant information.”
During an interview with The Algemeiner after the hearing, Glenn Taubman, staff attorney for NRTW, said union antisemitism highlights the issues inherent in compulsory union representation, which he says quells freedom of speech and association. He pointed to the case of Cornell University PhD candidate David Rubinstein, who testified before the subcommittee on Tuesday about his own tribulations and a climate of hatred which evades being redressed because the ringleaders fostering it hold left-wing viewpoints.
“The only reason that David is forced to be represented by UE and is theoretically forced to pay them dues is because federal labor law allows that and in many cases requires it,” Taubman explained. “What I told the committee is that ending the union abuse of graduate students and people like David requires amending federal law so that unions are not the forced representatives of people who don’t want such representation.”
He added, “Unions have a special privilege that no other private organization in America has, and that is the power to impose their representation on people who don’t want it and then mandate that they pay dues because they quote-un-quote represent you. That is the most un-American thing that I can imagine.”
Rubinstein told The Algemeiner that he is a Democrat who supports many of the causes for which unions advocate but that what he described as UE’s support for Hamas leaves him no choice but to seek every avenue for disassociating with it.
“As a Jew, I cannot support an organization which spends its time not advocating for wages and health care but rather for ‘intifada revolution,’” he said. “The union antisemitism is empowered by the Cornell administration’s persistent weakness and consistent reneging on its promises to defend the rights of Jewish students.”
Rubinstein added that Cornell University president Michael Kotlikoff came close to exempting students from paying UE dues but abandoned the policy change after its members threatened to strike and thereby disrupt university operations.
“The threat of being terminated, the demands for money, and the constant harassment that others and I have experienced from UE would have never been possible had it not been for the weakness of Cornell leadership,” he added.
Campus antisemitism has drawn NRTW into an alliance with Jewish faculty and students across the US.
In 2024, it represented a group of six City University of New York (CUNY) professors, five of whom are Jewish, who sued to be “freed” from CUNY’s Professional Staff Congress (PSC-CUNY) over its passing a resolution during Israel’s May 2021 war with Hamas which declared solidarity with Palestinians and accused the Jewish state of ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and crimes against humanity. The group contested New York State’s “Taylor Law,” which it said chained the professors to the union’s “bargaining unit” and denied their right to freedom of speech and association by forcing them to be represented in negotiations by an organization they claim holds antisemitic views.
That same year, NRTW prevailed in a discrimination suit filed to exempt another cohort of Jewish MIT students from paying dues to the Graduate Student Union (GSU). The students had attempted to resist financially supporting GSU’s anti-Zionism, but the union bosses attempted to coerce their compliance, telling them that “no principles, teachings, or tenets of Judaism prohibit membership in or the payment of dues or fees” to the union.
“All Americans should have a right to protect their money from going to union bosses they don’t support, whether those objections are based on religion, politics, or any other reason,” NRTW said at the time.
Kyle Koeppel Mann, senior staff attorney at the New York Legal Assistance Group, and Joseph McCartin, professor and executive director of the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University, also testified at Tuesday’s hearing.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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German Police Arrest 5 Anti-Israel Activists After Break-In, Vandalism Targeting Elbit Systems
Demonstrators attend the “Lift the Ban” rally organized by Defend Our Juries, challenging the British government’s proscription of “Palestine Action” under anti-terrorism laws, in Parliament Square, in London, Britain, Sept. 6, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Jasso
Authorities in Germany on Monday arrested five activists linked to the anti-Israel network Palestine Action after the group broke into an Elbit Systems building in the southern city of Ulm, vandalizing the facility with red paint, smoke bombs, graffiti, and smashed windows before occupying an upper floor in an effort to oppose the Jewish state’s war to dismantle the terrorist group Hamas in Gaza.
The officers who responded surrounded the building and apprehended the suspects. The state’s Security and Counterterrorism Center then took over the investigation.
Video posted by Palestine Action showed masked figures hurling paint, breaking through doors, and damaging equipment inside the facility owned by the Israeli defense contractor, which the activist group and recently proscribed terrorist organization has regularly targeted. The vandals claimed they had sought “to dismantle the tools used to commit genocide in Gaza.”
Elbit released a statement condemning the crime.
“Elbit Systems Deutschland GmbH is a German company and has been a reliable partner of the Bundeswehr for many years in protecting democracy and freedom in the Federal Republic of Germany. In this regard, we condemn in the strongest possible terms the illegal acts of destruction and vandalism committed at our site over the weekend,” the defense firm stated. “It is unacceptable that violent groups, presumably under the influence of foreign agitators, are repeatedly attempting to disrupt production processes in Ulm, seeking to endanger employees and to instill fear.”
The company added that “we have been an attractive employer and a driver of technical innovation in the Ulm region for decades, and we trust in the support of the authorities in quickly solving the latest crimes and restoring the status quo. The company is working that production of systems for the German Armed Forces at the Ulm plant will resume shortly.”
Israel’s ambassador to Germany, Ron Prosor, labeled the attack on Elbit an act of terrorism.
“In Ulm, the branch of an Israeli company was attacked by masked perpetrators — presumably motivated by left-extremist, Israel-hostile intent,” he wrote on X. “While Hamas supporters smash windows here, terrorists in Jerusalem murder 6 civilians in a brutal attack on a bus. Anyone who attacks Israel — whether with words, deeds, or weapons — simultaneously assaults our shared security and our values. Antisemitism and terror must have no place in Germany. These attacks are terrorist acts — they must be clearly named and harshly punished.”
Prosor was referring to a terrorist attack in Jerusalem on Monday in which Hamas terrorists opened fire on a bus, murdering six Israelis and injuring several more.
The break-in is the latest in a concerted campaign of vandalism and intimidation carried out by Palestine Action across Europe. Founded in the UK in 2020, the group has specialized in spectacular stunts and property destruction aimed at shutting down Elbit facilities and other companies the group regards as complicit in an alleged genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza. Its activists have smashed factory windows, chained themselves to gates, poured red paint over equipment, and even attacked military planes at a Royal Air Force base.
The UK regards Palestine Action as a terrorist organization. On Sunday, police announced the arrests of almost 900 at a demonstration organized in support of the group. Charges included 857 alleged to support a banned extremist entity and 17 alleged assaults.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Claire Smart said of the event that “the violence we encountered during the operation was coordinated and carried out by a group of people … intent on creating as much disorder as possible.”
James “Fergie” Chambers, an American heir to the Cox Enterprises fortune, pays the legal fees of arrested Palestine Action members. He once wrote online, “I chant death to America every day” and that “No faction of the Palestinian resistance, Hamas or other, has done *anything* wrong.”
Richard Barnard, a co-founder of the UK-designated terrorist group, is scheduled to face trial next year on “one count of inviting support for a proscribed organization, namely Hamas, under section 12(1A) of the Terrorism Act and two counts of encouraging ‘criminal damage’ against Israeli weapons factories under s44 of the Serious Crime Act.”
Barnard stated in a June 2024 interview that he had previously broken into US Air Force bases in Germany. In October 2023, he said that “when we hear the resistance, the Al-Aqsa flood [Hamas’s name for the Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel], we must turn that flood into a tsunami of the whole world.”
Huda Ammori, another co-founder of Palestine Action, also expressed her enthusiasm for the mass slaughter of Jews on Oct. 7, 2023.
“Zionists spend 75 years stealing Palestinian land but fails [sic] to take away the Palestinian determination for liberation. Palestine will be free!” Ammori wrote on the day of the attack. “If armed thugs stormed your home, forced you and your family to live in the garage, routinely beat you and starved you. Would you fight back? #FreePalestine.”
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‘End Hate’: Major New Campaign Targets Antisemitism in K-12 Schools
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
EndJewHatred (EJH), a Jewish civil rights nonprofit group based in New York City, declared war on K-12 antisemitism on Tuesday, launching its new “End Hate in Education” initiative in the US and beginning preparations for a push into the Canadian media market.
“For too long, classrooms have been used as platforms for pushing divisive ideologies that undermine our core values,” EJH founder Brooke Goldstein said in a statement on Tuesday. “Across the United States, K-12 schools and college campuses have become incubators of extremist ideology, including pro-terror and radical Islamist agendas. The End Hate in Education campaign is about reclaiming our schools, defending civil liberties, and ensuring that every child — regardless of background — can learn in an environment grounded in truth, respect, and constitutional values.”
In press materials, EJH outlined six objectives for the campaign — “curriculum transparency,” “rejecting political indoctrination,” “accountability through funding,” “examination of the rule of foreign funding,” “strategic legal action,” and “grassroots mobilization” — all of which serve its larger, ambitious goal of eradicating from public schools not just antisemitism but all forms of “hate and harassment.”
Creeping antisemitism in public education is a growing problem, as The Algemeiner has reported previously. In June, for example, the North American Values Institute (NAVI) raised alarms when the Wissahickon School District (WSD) in Ambler, Pennsylvania presented as fact an anti-Zionist account of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to its K-12 students by using it as the basis for courses taken by honors students.
The material, provided by virtual learning platform Edgenuity, implied that Israel is a settler-colonial state — a false assertion promoted by neo-Nazis and jihadist terror groups — while referring to the founding of Israel as the “nakba,” the Arabic term for “catastrophe” used by Palestinians and anti-Israel activists. Based on documents obtained by The Algemeiner, the material does not seemingly detail the varied reasons for Palestinian Arabs leaving the nascent State of Israel at the time, including that they were encouraged by Arab leaders to flee their homes to make way for the invading Arab armies. Nor does it appear to explain that some 850,000 Jews were forced to flee or expelled from Middle Eastern and North African countries in the 20th century, especially in the aftermath of Israel’s declaring independence.
Another module reviewed by The Algemeiner contains a question based on a May 15, 1948, statement from The Arab League — a group of countries which adamantly opposed Jewish immigration to the region in the years leading up to the establishment of the State of Israel and refused to condemn antisemitic violence Arabs perpetrated against Jewish refugees — after Israel declared its independence. The passage denies that Jews faced antisemitic indignities when the land was administered by the Ottoman Empire, a notion that is inconsistent with the historical record, and asserts that “Arab inhabitants” are “the lawful owners of the country.”
Following the passage, students are asked to agree with its content as a prerequisite for proceeding to the next module. That means selecting as the correct answer the choice which says “the creation of Israel failed to consider Arab interests.”
Speaking to The Algemeiner during an interview on Tuesday, Gerard Filitti, senior counsel of EJH and The Lawfare Project, a partner organization, said the Wissahickon case highlights the degree to which antisemitism and anti-Israel bias has planted itself in public schools.
“What we’re seeing in colleges and universities is just the tip of the iceberg. The radicalization in schooling, in reality, starts much earlier,” Filitti said. “We’re seeing lesson plans which push the idea that Israel is a genocidal state, or that it is an illegitimate state. We see faculty and administrators who do not support Zionist identity and reject that it can be the basis of discriminatory hate.”
“College campus antisemitism has gotten a lot of attention because we see the effects, the protests, the barricades, and encampments,” he added. “In K-12, it’s not as flagrant. It’s educational material that’s talked about in the classroom and which parents may not be aware of unless they talk with their children about what’s happening in school. So this has essentially been a secret issue because the American people are not aware of what children are learning in schools or how schools have been handling antisemitism in school.”
Antisemitism in K-12 schools has increased every year of this decade, according to data compiled by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). In 2023, antisemitic incidents in US public schools increased 135 percent, a figure which included a rise in vandalism and assault.
The problem has led to civil rights complaints and lawsuits.
In September 2023, for example, some of America’s most prominent Jewish and civil rights groups sued the Santa Clara Unified School District (SCUSD) in California for concealing from the public its adoption of ethnic studies curricula containing antisemitic and anti-Zionist themes. Then in February, the school district paused implementation of the program to settle the lawsuit.
One month later, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, StandWithUs, and the ADL filed a civil rights complaint accusing the Etiwanda School District in San Bernardino County, California, of doing nothing after a 12-year-old Jewish girl was assaulted, having been beaten with stick, on school grounds and teased with jokes about Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
The problem has taken hold in private schools as well, according to a recent Anti-Defamation Leage (ADL) survey.
Among surveyed school parents, 25.2 percent said their children had experienced or witnessed antisemitic symbols in school since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, the data showed. Perhaps more striking, 45.3 percent of surveyed parents reported that their children had experienced or witnessed some form of antisemitism since the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7, and 31.7 percent said their children had “experienced or witnessed problematic school curricula or classroom content related to Jews or Israel.”
Parents are displeased with schools’ handling of the issue, the ADL said. Focus groups told its experts that schools decline to denounce antisemitism or resort to denying altogether that it is fostering a negative learning environment which causes student discomfort and precipitous declines in academic performance. In a poll, over a third of parents have said their local school’s response “was either somewhat or very inadequate.”
Moreover, diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, which were purportedly meant to improve race relations, abstain from recognizing antisemitism as a form of hatred meriting a focused response from administrators. The Algemeiner has previously reported that many of those programs also ignore antisemitism because they actively contribute to spreading it. Due to this, schools often lack authority figures who understand antisemitism, its subtle and overt variations, leaving Jewish students with no recourse when they become victims of hate.
“These independent schools are failing to support Jewish families. By tolerating — or in some cases, propagating — antisemitism in their classrooms, too many independent schools in cities across the country are sending a message that Jewish students are not welcome. It’s wrong. It’s hateful. And it must stop,” ADL chief executive officer Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement at the time. “ADL is partnering with parents to demand change.”
ADL vice president of advocacy, Shira Goodman, added: “School administrators and faculty have a duty to ensure safe, inclusive environments for all. ADL will fully invest in bolstering the families who are demanding that their schools meet this obligation.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.