Enikia Ford Morthel, superintendent of the Berkeley Unified School District, testified before Congress on May 8, 2024, regarding alleged antisemitism in the California district. The previous day, the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) launched an investigation into the same allegations, and Ford Morthel was questioned about the newly opened case, as reported by local publication Berkeleyside and others. Despite the accusations, the superintendent was adamant, telling Congress that “antisemitism is not pervasive in Berkeley Unified School District.”

Ford Morthel’s testimony resonated with Judah Press, a sophomore at Berkeley High School who has participated in protests against the Israeli occupation of Palestine and genocide in the Gaza Strip. In Gaza, the Israeli military has killed more than 62,000 Palestinians, including at least 17,000 children, since Oct. 7, 2023, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, though experts estimate the real toll to be several times greater. According to Press, there was a disconnect between the investigation into alleged antisemitism in the Berkeley school district and his experience as a Jewish student.

“During all of the Berkeley High-organized walkouts I’ve attended, there have been no antisemitic chants or ideology that’s been taught,” he told Prism. “I’ve seen students and teachers bravely calling out Israel’s dehumanizing occupation and genocide. And I see their critics intentionally conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism and attacks on the Jewish identity.”

Since Oct. 7, 2023, the DOE has opened at least 47 investigations into alleged discrimination based on shared ancestry at elementary and secondary school districts across the U.S. The department does not comment on ongoing investigations but has published select complaints, at least 20 of which explicitly concern alleged antisemitism. Yet despite the accusations, students like Press, as well as parents, teachers, and organizers for Palestinian liberation, say that such investigations are less about protecting Jewish students and more about suppressing criticism of Israel.

Alleged hate, real consequences

Critics describe the DOE’s so-called Title VI investigations as threatening students and staff who oppose the Israeli genocide and occupation. Following the Israeli military’s first siege of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City in November 2023, Maryland English teacher Angela Wolf posted a political cartoon criticizing Israel’s actions on her Facebook account. Before the month’s end, Wolf was placed on administrative leave from her position at Takoma Park Middle School, part of the Montgomery County Public School District in Rockville. A Title VI investigation into the district was filed by an unnamed complainant in February 2024, and another was filed by the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) in April 2024. Wolf has since been reinstated and is now pursuing legal action against the district, along with three other teachers who also feel they were wrongfully put on administrative leave and falsely accused of being antisemites. She described the investigations as contributing to a culture of silence.

“Across the country, teachers are fearful of speaking out,” Wolf told Prism. “People are aware that there are a lot of these attacks occurring, and because they don’t want to be targeted, they’re not dealing with it.”

The Montgomery County Public School District and the ZOA did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Students have not been spared either. Amar Halak organized a student walkout supporting a ceasefire in Gaza at Teaneck High School in New Jersey in November 2023 before graduating the following year. In response to the walkout, New Jersey Democratic Rep. Josh Gottheimer urged the DOE to open an investigation into alleged antisemitism at the school district, which the department did in January 2024, as reported by The Intercept. Halak said the investigation was a tactic used by opponents to try to intimidate students into submission.

How can students advocating against a genocide be accused of antisemitism?

Amar Halak, former Teaneck High School student

“The timing of this investigation—occurring right after the walkout for Palestine—just proves exactly what they’re trying to do,” she told Prism. “How can students advocating against a genocide be accused of antisemitism?”

Conflating antisemitism with anti-Zionism

For years, defenders of Israel have accused its critics of being antisemites, a notion that the DOE has also entertained. Since at least 2018, the department has considered adopting a definition of antisemitism that includes criticism of Zionism or Jewish ethnonationalism. Although the DOE has never formally adopted it, such a definition has been used to challenge student and staff organizing in support of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions, which advocates economic opposition to the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Individual schools have also incorporated the definition into their internal policies, including Harvard University, which did so in January to settle a Title VI complaint filed by the Brandeis Center. Such complaints of alleged antisemitism are filed with the DOE against schools or school districts, which often opt for settlements rather than litigating cases, thereby incurring more significant costs—including further accusations of antisemitism.

“The core of that is the argument that any meaningful protest or criticism of Israel or Zionism is antisemitism,” Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, which tracks such Title VI complaints, told Prism. “The overwhelming majority of these cases that they’re making are about things that a teacher said about Israel, or allowed to be said in class about Palestine, or was written on a wall—that sort of thing.”

As an example, Friedman cited the phrase “from the river to the sea,” a popular rallying cry for Palestinian liberation, which Title VI complainants have claimed is antisemitic.

Many of the Title VI investigations opened since Hamas’ Operation Al-Aqsa Flood have been triggered by complaints filed by individuals and organizations outside of school systems, such as ZOA, the Brandeis Center, and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which filed the Berkeley school district complaint. Although the ADL bills itself as a crusader against antisemitism, the organization has focused its efforts on attacking critics of Israel, describing the recent walkouts by students like Press as “praising” Palestinian militants. According to critics like Nora Lester Murad, an organizer with Drop the ADL From Schools, the organization is just one of many seeking to intentionally conflate antisemitism with anti-Zionism in order to suppress criticism of Israel.

“The ADL is not the only organization filing these politicized complaints, but they all seem to use a similar tactic,” Murad told Prism. “They mix real incidents of antisemitism with pro-Palestinian speech, making it difficult to discount them in their entirety, and leveraging the real incidents to bring political speech into a discussion about punishment.”

A faltering strategy

As the persistence of students in Teaneck, Berkeley, and elsewhere illustrates, Title VI complaints are not necessarily succeeding in suppressing the movement for Palestinian liberation at schools across the U.S. Jonah Rubin, senior manager of campus organizing at Jewish Voice for Peace, which advocates for the end of both the Israeli genocide and occupation, described the complaints as increasingly at odds with “objective reality.”

“Complaints allege that the mere acknowledgment of Palestine’s and Palestinians’ existence is somehow antisemitic,” Rubin told Prism in a statement. “They seek to ban the very language of human rights from the classroom, even though the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and countless other prominent human rights organizations all describe the Israeli state as carrying out genocide, starvation and ethnic cleansing in Gaza. One complaint even alleges that the use of the term ‘Occupation,’ a term regularly used by the U.S. State Department, constituted antisemitism.”

Some Jewish parents also described the impossibility of reconciling Title VI complaints with the experiences of their school-age children. Liz Jackson has two children in the Berkeley Unified School District, which faced the “most serious” accusations of antisemitism, House Committee on Education and the Workforce member Rep. Aaron Bean said during Superintendent Ford Morthel’s congressional testimony. According to Jackson, the greatest detriment to Jewish students in Berkeley is not the allegations within the complaints but the complainants’ attempts to tie all Jewish identity with Israel.

“They have not experienced any antisemitism at all,” Jackson told Prism, referring to her children. “Jewish kids in Berkeley are very well and thriving—despite the awkward stress of having your identity associated with a genocidal state.”

Editorial Team:
Sahar Fatima, Lead Editor
Carolyn Copeland, Top Editor
Rashmee Kumar, Copy Editor