“We want to make sure that people know that antisemitism, anti-Zionism and anti-Israel material have no place in our K-12 classes and curriculum,” James Pasch, an ADL vice president, told JNS.
The Santa Ana Unified School District—a more than 135-year-old public school district in southern California—settled a lawsuit on Feb. 20 brought by major Jewish organizations. The district, which operates 50 schools with some 36,000 students, agreed to pause several of its ethnic studies courses and remove antisemitic content from the classes and vowed to teach about Israel and the Palestinians more factually.
Marci Miller, director of legal investigations at the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, which brought the suit a year ago with the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee, told JNS that the groups filed the motion after discovering that the district’s ethnic studies steering committee was holding meetings in direct violation of the law.
“We support ethnic studies. We believe it should show all perspectives, and it should be taught according to the law and created in a transparent way,” Miller told JNS. “We understand the importance of ethnic studies in California. All perspectives should be taught.”