Since October 7, the US Department of Education has opened at least 40 investigations into K-12 schools for “discrimination based on shared ancestry,” including alleged antisemitism — many of which appear aimed at stifling criticism of Israel.
Chicago Academy High School students stage a walkout in support of Palestinian children on November 16, 2023. (Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune / Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
Last November, students at Teaneck High School in New Jersey organized a walkout and teach-in in support of a cease-fire in the ongoing Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip, which has now killed more than thirty-eight thousand Palestinians, including at least fifteen thousand children. The students’ actions were immediately met with criticism from politicians at both the municipal and federal levels, with Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) urging the US Department of Education (DOE) to open an investigation into alleged antisemitism in the school district. On January 5, DOE opened a so-called Title VI investigation into alleged “discrimination involving shared ancestry” at Teaneck public schools.
DOE has opened at least forty Title VI investigations into elementary and secondary schools across the United States since October 7. In a November 2023 press release, the department described these investigations as covering both antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents, but also suggested that the former outnumbered the latter more than two to one. Critics of the war on Gaza fear that such investigations threaten to have a chilling effect on dissent at schools nationwide.
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 been considering adopting a definition of antisemitism that includes criticism of Israel, according to the New York Times. Although that endorsement has never come to pass, such a definition has been used by DOE to challenge organizing in support of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, which advocates economic opposition to the Israeli occupation of Palestine, at higher-ed institutions like Rutgers University, in New Jersey.
Many of the DOE investigations opened since October 7 appear to have been triggered by complaints filed by individuals and organizations outside of the respective schools, like Gottheimer’s. Campus Reform, a self-described “conservative watchdog” of higher education, claims to have filed complaints triggering investigations at thirteen schools, though these appear to be confined to colleges and universities.
The Anti-Defamation League and the Brandeis Center have also filed Title VI complaints against a number of school districts, including both Berkeley and Santa Ana in California. At a recent congressional hearing, Kenneth L. Marcus, founder of the Brandeis Center and a former DOE official, described cease-fire demonstrations by students, teachers, staff, and others as “attacks” comparable to those carried out by Hamas on October 7:
The national breadth, violent extremism, and sheer monstrosity of these attacks — which began in response to the Hamas atrocities of October 7, 2023 — suggest that we are dealing with something very different than what we have ever seen before. These are not mere demonstrations of political viewpoints.
Critics of Israel describe the department’s consequent investigations as threatening opposition to the Israeli campaign in Gaza among students, teachers, and staff. “This political theater functions to silence our movement and distract the American public from the US-sponsored genocide in Gaza,” says the media and messaging committee of National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP), which calls for the end to both the ongoing assault on Gaza and the occupation of Palestine more broadly.
NSJP contextualizes the current DOE investigations as part of a wider campaign of political repression against the movement for Palestinian liberation that has taken hold across the United States. Even prior to October 7, individuals were fired, threatened, and retaliated against in other ways for pro-Palestine speech, fostering an atmosphere of demonization that has motivated violence against Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims. Since October 7, this demonization has led to the fatal stabbing of a six-year-old in Illinois, the shooting of three students in Vermont, the stabbing of a man in Texas, and the attempted drowning of two children also in Texas, as reported by Reuters and others.
The DOE investigations may have the effect — perhaps intended — of distracting from the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza itself, according to NSJP. Per the Council on Foreign Relations, Israel has received more US economic and military aid than any other country since the end of World War II — $310 billion, when adjusted for inflation. As the Washington Post and others have reported, $6.5 billion of that aid to Israel has been delivered since October 7.
A particularly grim aspect of the campaign in Gaza has been “scholasticide,” or the systematic targeting of schools, teachers, and students. In April, the United Nations reported that more than 5,800 students and teachers had been killed, 80 percent of schools damaged or destroyed, and a further 195 heritage sites, like archives, also damaged or destroyed.
“Since October, every university in Gaza has been destroyed, and nearly 70 percent of schools sheltering displaced Palestinians have been directly hit or damaged by the [Israeli military],” says NSJP. “This is the true crisis in education right now.”