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A Florida bill attacking ‘critical theory’ in higher education has the state’s Jewish academics worried

(JTA) — The University of Florida has more Jewish students than any other public college in the United States — and last week, one of them reached out to a professor, fearing that it would no longer be possible to study Jewish topics there.

Citing a graphic that had been making the rounds on social media, the student asked if it was true that a new bill working its way through the state legislature would remove all “Jewish Studies courses, majors and minors” in the state. The graphic was shared by several people with large online followings, including comedian D.L. Hughley, who has more than 750,000 followers on Twitter.

“I love my major and I can’t imagine switching to anything else,” the student wrote, according to Norman Goda, director of the university’s Center for Jewish Studies. 

Goda wasn’t able to console the student. Like other Jewish academics in Florida who spoke to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, he doesn’t know whether H.B. 999 would affect Jewish studies on the state’s college campuses. Though the bill’s author — a Republican state representative — says that won’t be the case, the bill’s language is much less clear.

That’s because the bill’s current wording would forbid the state’s public higher education institutions from teaching or offering any major or minor based in “methodology associated with Critical Theory.” That prohibition, say academics and other critics of the bill, would make teaching courses in Jewish studies impossible — and would also outlaw many other fields in higher education.

Exactly what the bill means by “critical theory” is unclear. To academics, the term refers to a tool for analyzing society and culture, created in the 1930s by German Jewish academics, that encourages people to view the world through power structures, and to consider why they fall short. To political conservatives, it’s a relative of “critical race theory,” a watchword for those who want to inhibit classroom instruction about racism. An earlier version of H.B. 999 mentioned only critical race theory, not the umbrella theory.

“These people don’t know what they’re talking about,” said a Jewish faculty member at a Florida university, who requested anonymity due to fear of retaliation from the state government, regarding the lawmakers behind H.B. 999. “You’re putting people who don’t know what critical theory is, but have heard the words — and now you’re putting them in charge of universities.”

A university that completely purged such ideas from its classrooms, the anonymous faculty member said, “would be non-existent.”

The bill in question is the latest example of conservative-led state efforts to snuff out culture-war modes of thought like critical race theory and gender studies, often referred to euphemistically by lawmakers as “divisive concepts” in education. Such efforts have occasionally ensnared efforts to teach Jewish history and the Holocaust. 

Attempts to legislate the classroom are particularly potent in Florida, where Republican governor Ron DeSantis, a likely presidential candidate, has frequently stated his desire to ban “woke” concepts from being taught in the state. (DeSantis has stated he will wait to see H.B. 999’s final form before he decides whether to sign it, but in a discussion with college administrators last week he continued to rail against what he called the “ideological agenda” of campus diversity, equity and inclusion programs.)

The state recently rejected the curriculum for a new Advanced Placement African-American Studies course in high schools, forcing the College Board to rework the class. Florida is also home to several active conservative “parents’ rights” groups that have lobbied to remove objectionable books and clubs from public schools.

While most legislation in this realm to date has targeted what’s taught in K-12 public schools, this bill and other efforts in Florida have gone a step further by seeking to regulate the world of state-funded higher education — creating what critics say are new and dangerous threats to academic freedom, with broad and vague wording that leaves efforts to research and teach a variety of disciplines in doubt.

“This bill would cripple the long-standing freedom universities have to design and teach a curriculum based on the development of academic disciplines,” Cary Nelson, an emeritus professor at the University of Illinois and past president of the American Association of University Professors ,who has taught multiple courses on Jewish issues, told JTA. 

In a recent subcommittee hearing on the bill, Republican state Rep. Alex Andrade, who co-authored the legislation, said, “I believe that state universities should be focused on teaching students how to think, not what to think.” He said the bill’s banning of “radical” ideologies referred to “a system meant to direct and promote certain activism to achieve a specific viewpoint.” 

Efforts to limit the material taught to children and college students are underway in several states. But Florida has an especially large population of Jewish students. The University of Florida stands atop Hillel International’s ranking of public colleges with the highest proportion of Jewish students, and the University of Central Florida has the third-largest. Florida State University, Florida International University, Florida Atlantic University and the University of South Florida also rank in the top 60. 

H.B. 999 would affect education at those schools in other ways, too. The bill, which recently advanced to committee, would overhaul the state’s post-tenure review process, so that instead of checking on a faculty member’s research productivity every five years, as is currently the case in the state, tenured professors could face reviews “at any time for cause” including “violation of any applicable law or rule.” 

The result, one academic in the state said, would be “open season on faculty,” who could be out of a job if their university’s board — which, in public schools, is beholden to the governor — disagrees with their syllabus.

Andrade rejected the idea that H.B. 999 would undercut Jewish studies in Florida.

“Outsiders are wrong. Ethnic studies are not affected by the bill either by the bill’s intent or the bill’s language,” Andrade wrote in an email to JTA, accusing the bill’s critics of “lying and claiming that Florida’s leaders have tried to ban teaching black history in schools.” 

The state’s only Jewish Republican legislator, state Rep. Randy Fine, did not return a JTA request for comment on whether he supports the bill. Fine has promoted similar culture-war legislation in the past, including a bill he co-authored in February that would prohibit all K-12 schools in the state from referring to either students or employees by pronouns that do not correspond to the sex they were assigned at birth.

With a Republican-dominated House and Senate, some form of H.B. 999 seems likely to reach DeSantis’ desk. (A parallel bill in the state Senate does not contain wording on critical theory.) But there is strong opposition from the academic community. Groups including the American Historical Association, the American Association of University Professors and Florida’s statewide faculty union have harshly condemned the bill and urged lawmakers to oppose it. 

The American Historical Association’s statement on the bill this month calls it a “blatant and frontal attack on principles of academic freedom and shared governance central to higher education in the United States.” More than 70 academic, historical and activist organizations co-signed the statement. 

The executive committee of the Association for Jewish Studies signed a different statement authored by the American Council of Learned Societies, decrying the bill as an “effort to undermine academic freedom in Florida.” 

“If it passes, it ends academic freedom in the state’s public colleges and universities, with dire consequences for their teaching, research, and financial well-being,” the statement said of the bill. “Academic freedom means freedom of thought, not the state-mandated production of histories edited to suit one party’s agenda in the current culture wars.”

Asked for comment on the bill, Warren Hoffman, the executive director of the Association for Jewish Studies, pointed to the statement. 

Rachel Harris, director and endowed chair at Florida Atlantic University’s Jewish Studies program, is in her first semester at the university, having just arrived from the University of Illinois. “I’m now wondering if that was a terrible mistake,” she joked. (Harris is spending this term in Israel, researching on a Fulbright fellowship.)

Still, Harris said she was “confident” that legislators would “continue to support educational commitments in the state,” noting that Florida has a Holocaust education mandate for K-12 public schools. Her Boca Raton university is currently building an expanded center for Jewish and Holocaust studies, funded by private donors. H.B. 999 in its current form would prohibit universities from teaching critical theory concepts even when such programs are privately funded.

Despite what he described as a few students at the Jewish Studies center who are concerned about the new bill, Goda said he did not think the legislation would change the experience of Jewish students on his campus.

“Jewish kids these days are really choosing universities based on whether or not Jewish kids feel comfortable there,” he said. “And I would argue that [the University of Florida] is a very welcoming campus for Jewish kids overall. There are strong Jewish institutions associated with the campus.”

Instead, he  feels the bill’s real effects would be felt in the state’s ability to recruit faculty and staff while its legislators jeopardize academic freedom, tenure and other lodestars of the humanities. He said, “The real question to me is how and in what way it’s going to be enforced.”

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The post A Florida bill attacking ‘critical theory’ in higher education has the state’s Jewish academics worried appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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How Social Media Got Hamas Casualty Figures Wrong

A Palestinian man points a weapon in the air after it was announced that Israel and Hamas agreed on the first phase of a Gaza ceasefire, in the central Gaza Strip, October 9. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa

As the Israel-Hamas ceasefire continues to hold, many analysts have begun examining available data to better understand Hamas’ casualties throughout the war. This is no easy feat, considering Hamas has consistently lied and inflated the civilian casualty figures. The reality of urban warfare provides other challenges for the IDF to count every eliminated terrorist.

Varying numbers regarding Hamas’ casualty figures have been recently touted on social media. But many of them lack sources, or a breakdown of the statistics.

Conversely, some analysts, such as HonestReporting board member Salo Aizenberg, have done an exceptional job at critically analyzing the available casualty numbers.

The Hamas-run Ministry of Health has reported over 70,000 deaths in Gaza, including civilians.

But closer examination of these numbers displays that it also includes an estimated 22,000-25,000 Hamas fighters, around 11,000 natural deaths, and 4,000 casualties caused by internal fighting amongst Gazans. With 1,000 deaths attributed to reporting errors, this suggests that 25,000 casualties were terrorists, and 36,000 were civilians.

One suggestion that has gained momentum on social media suggests that the actual number of Hamas casualties is double this number, at 50,000 combatant deaths.

However, pre-war estimates by the IDF suggest that Hamas had 35,000 combatants. US estimates believe that Hamas recruited 10,000-15,000 new combatants throughout the war. This means that if the IDF had killed 50,000 Hamas terrorists, there would be virtually no Hamas terrorists left — an analysis that is unfortunately not accurate.

The claim of 50,000 eliminated Hamas terrorists is based on an announcement by the Hamas-run Ministry of Social Development of the start of a new program that would provide NIS 500 to the widows of Gazans killed in the war.

By February 8, 2026, payments had been made to 19,306 widows, totaling NIS 9.653 million or over three million US dollars.

The Ministry of Social Development further stated that 50,000 widowed families were set to receive these benefits, implying that more than widowed wives would be receiving the payments. This is likely where some analysts misinterpreted Hamas’ statement and took it to mean that for every Hamas terrorist, one wife would receive a payment. However, this payment is not exclusively for the wives of terrorists, and not every Hamas combatant would have been married by the time of his death.

What these numbers do suggest, however, is that claims of unreported casualties are likely to be false. The ability to receive a payment for reporting a death would presumably encourage many Gazans to submit claims of being widowed.

Since the early days of the war, news outlets and influencers on social media have blindly repeated Hamas’ claim that the majority of casualties were women and children. The claim implied that the IDF was specifically targeting both groups.

Beyond this claim not being true — men of combat age account for around 46.7% of total casualties — data from the World Health Organization (WHO) displays that 603,000 children under the age of 10 were vaccinated at the beginning of 2025. This number exceeds the pre-war population of that age group, indicating that the overall population of young children has remained stable or even grown despite the war.

With births being the same as, if not higher than, pre-war numbers, the claims of underreported casualties and casualties disproportionately targeting children fall apart. Despite this data being publicly available and offering important information about the war’s human toll, it has received no attention in media coverage, allowing the misleading child casualty narrative to persist.

These two case studies of terrorist casualty statistics and the reported number of children under 10 during the war highlight the need to analyze all available data with scrutiny. It is not enough to rely on unverified claims about casualty figures. Instead, accurate conclusions must be based on transparent analysis conducted by credible analysts who rely on publicly available data, verifiable sources, and clear methodology. Only through rigorous examination can casualty figures be properly understood, rather than simply repeated without question.

The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.

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We Are Fighting Hate; But Are We Building Jews?

Illustrative: Pennsylvania State Sen. David Argall addressed the more than 300 Jewish-day school students, parents and administrators gathered at the State Capitol in Harrisburg. Photo: Teach PA.

The Super Bowl ad showing a Jewish boy being bullied sparked intense conversation across the Jewish community about how we are investing our resources in the fight against antisemitism, and whether we are approaching the challenge in the right way.

Rising antisemitism has understandably pushed our community into a defensive posture, with enormous resources directed toward monitoring hate, raising awareness, and responding to dangerous rhetoric. Those efforts matter. But the Super Bowl moment also raises a deeper question: if this is what Jewish vulnerability looks like on the biggest stage in America, are we investing enough in what actually makes Jewish children strong?

History shows that by itself, fighting hatred has never been enough to secure the Jewish future. A generation raised primarily to react to antisemitism risks growing up defined by fear instead of by identity. Children need more than protection from hate. They need a strong connection to their own identity and community.

The past few years have been a painful reminder that we cannot rely solely on the outside world to safeguard Jewish life. Partnerships matter, but in moments of crisis, the Jewish community is reminded that our deepest strength has always come from within. That realization is shaping a quiet but meaningful shift in where many leaders and families believe our focus must go. Less looking outward. More building inward.

Investing in Jewish education is not a retreat from the fight against antisemitism. It is a long-term strategy for ensuring that Jewish life does not decline under pressure. You know where Jewish children are not bullied for being Jewish? In Jewish schools. You know where they learn to speak confidently about their heritage, to celebrate their traditions without embarrassment, and to see their identity as a source of pride? In Jewish schools.

In strong Jewish educational environments, children do not just learn history or holidays. They have a sense of belonging. They build friendships rooted in shared identity. They encounter teachers and mentors who model what it means to live Jewishly with confidence. When they later encounter antisemitism online, on campus, or in broader culture, they face it with a foundation of knowledge and self-respect, not confusion or isolation.

Jewish day schools are among the most powerful builders of Jewish identity. These schools answer the question that defensive campaigns cannot: not only “what is antisemitism?” but, “why am I Jewish, and why does it matter?”

At Teach Coalition, this belief shapes our work every day. Teach is the only national Jewish advocacy organization focused solely on expanding access to Jewish education. We work to ensure schools have the resources they need to thrive: funding for STEM, arts and music, transportation, lunches, and critical security support. We support policies that help schools stay strong, enhance quality, and establish new ones. We also help create pathways for families who once believed Jewish education was out of reach to find a place within it.

The impact of this work shows up where it matters most: at home and across communities. Parents describe children coming back singing songs, asking thoughtful questions about the holidays, and bringing a new sense of pride to the Shabbat table. The continuity of the Jewish people relies on Jewish education, which not only shapes students but also strengthens families and builds lasting communal roots.

The Super Bowl ad reminded us how exposed a Jewish child can feel. The real answer is making sure more Jewish children grow up surrounded by confidence, community, and pride. That work is happening every day in Jewish schools, supported by educators, families, and groups such as ours, who work to keep those schools strong and accessible. This is the future worth investing in.

Sydney Altfield is CEO, Teach Coalition.

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Inclusion Isn’t About Being the Same

An empty classroom. Photo: Wiki Commons.

“Same.” That’s what the two-year-old proudly proclaims when she wanders, cloppity clop, into the kitchen wearing her mother’s good heels and expensive jewelry. It’s also what the teenager is attempting to achieve when shopping for a new outfit or schoolbag, and what the business executive might have in mind when he orders the new luxury SUV that some of his colleagues were talking about in the office lounge. We have “made it,” it seems, when we are just like everyone else. It is that innate drive to achieve sameness that all too often diverts limited resources away from helping individuals to maximize their potential while still taking note of and honoring their differences.

This drive for sameness underlies so much in life: applied behavioral analysis, corrective surgeries, even a handicap in a round of golf — it’s all about leveling the playing field. The problem, however, with chasing the unattainable, is that it is a recipe for burnout, disappointment, and existential crises. 

In the world of learning disabilities, neurodivergence, genetic conditions, and a host of other differences, there is a disproportionate focus on being the “same.” While I can’t seem to put my finger on the “why,” there has certainly been an uptick, of late, of children and teens with very pronounced differences being shoe-horned into more mainstream learning environments. This happens despite the oft-mentioned idea in the world of education that we can’t “force a round peg into a square hole.” That thinking, however, is generally limited  to children who exhibit mild or less overt differences. Kids who need a little something extra: extra time on a test, extra attention from the teacher or paraprofessional staff, extra recess, or extra incentives. “Don’t let their differences be the cause of their slipping between the cracks of institutionalized education and development,” goes the rationale: acknowledge their unique needs and address those needs. 

But somehow, when the needs are indeed significant and overt; when the differences put their host in danger of being “othered,” then we do the opposite: we try to make them fit in, almost at all costs. Tremendous resources are invested in this group. Many of those resources are government sponsored, while others come from parents in the form of tuition or private therapies. Another significant source is philanthropic dollars. In addition to funding for these efforts, volunteerism plays a meaningful role in making “others” be “the same.”  

This approach does not and cannot work. As Australian disability advocate Stella Young quipped in her viral TED talk, “No amount of smiling at a flight of stairs has ever made it turn into a ramp.” The reality is that many students with learning or developmental differences are provided significant supports and adaptations to allow them to function within parameters specifically designed for people who are not like them. Eventually and necessarily, many of those supports disappear leaving so many of these individuals lost and frustrated, as they are unprepared to engage properly and independently with a world that runs counter to their unique experience.

To be sure, there are many ways in which certain kinds of support can, should, and are appropriately maintained in what we might call the real world, but these tend to be in the form of physical accessibility. A business is mandated to provide wheelchair access, for example, and options for the hearing and visually impaired are very commonplace. But to rewire a business or society for those who experience and process it differently is virtually impossible. 

Fear not: it really doesn’t have to be this way. If we engage all individuals from a place of acceptance and understanding, we can normalize not being “normal.” After all, isn’t that how teams work? The running back doesn’t have to be a lineman and there will only be one quarterback. And that’s fine. Sure, it can be uncomfortable to be different, but at the same time…does it really have to be?  

A student of mine, a fellow by the name of Meir, was once asked by a group of high school girls what it is like for him to have Down Syndrome. Without missing a beat, Meir replied: “Some people are tall and some people are short, some people are fat and some people are skinny, and I have Down Syndrome.” As simple as that. Differences are just…different. 

February is designated as JDAIM — Jewish Disability Awareness and Inclusion Month — specifically because February, with its 28 days (and sometimes 29), is the month that is not like the others. And that’s just fine for February. We need to realize that acceptance and inclusion doesn’t refer to fixing the “problem” or ignoring the difference. Telling or even silently suggesting to a fish that it is safe on land, would not bode well for the fish. As a matter of fact, that very thought is a fairy tale — one we know as Disney’s “The Little Mermaid.”

Rather, we all need to look differences right in the eye and welcome their uniqueness into our mostly mainstream world. We need to encourage those who are different to embrace their struggles and differences, and we need to be ready to do the same — with open arms and open minds. 

Avi Ganz is the program director of the Elaine and Norm Brodsky Yeshivat Darkaynu, a division of Ohr Torah Stone, which offers a unique year-in-Israel program for young adults with special needs.

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