In front of a chalk board, a star of david stands embedded in a wooden table.
(Image by Yael Mazor)

LAST MONTH, the Massachusetts Special Commission for Combatting Antisemitism quietly passed a series of recommendations for K-12 education. As a Jewish American parent with two children in Massachusetts public schools, I do not look forward to the implementation of these recommendations.  

The commission said that public concerns about these recommendations, including those submitted by many Jews, were mainly about “semantics,” not substance. Much more than words are at stake. In practice, different aspects of the recommendations contradict each other or put staff, teachers, and students in impossible educational situations.  

The recommendations treat Jews differently from others, fail to create an open educational environment, and will produce a climate of confusion and suspicion. This can only make the problem of antisemitism worse not better. Consider some concrete examples. 

One of the commission’s recommendations is that the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) establish an “Advisory Council on Holocaust and Genocide Education” to facilitate implementation of the “Genocide Education Mandate.”  

It is reasonable to ask teachers and students to have informed and curious discussions about genocide. However, the committee also says that educators and staff must “be informed by” the International Holocaust Remembrance Association (IHRA) definition of antisemitism. For unclear reasons, the committee chose the most politically controversial, even among Jews, definition of antisemitism.  

Various aspects of that definition make saying Israel is committing genocide a form of antisemitism. That means educators are ordered to have open and frank discussions about genocide, while making it impossible to consider whether what students learn about genocide may be applied to Israel. Regardless of whether you think Israel is doing that or not, given that Israelis themselves, including a former Israeli attorney general and former speaker of the Knesset, have said that Israel is doing so, means that it must be permissible to consider. But the committee’s recommendations cut that discussion off.  

Education requires that teachers and students feel free to try out ideas without fear that they will immediately be accused of bias and prejudice. Yet teachers will be forgiven for thinking it is too risky to discuss what American Jews and Israelis openly discuss as part of a genocide education unit. Subordinating instruction to what counts as antisemitism makes education look more like indoctrination. 

Elsewhere, the committee instructs the state education department to establish an anonymous government hotline for reporting antisemitic incidents as part of a “statewide Bias Reporting Program.” The committee claims this will help provide a way for students to report harassment and provide a “mechanism for reporting problematic curriculum.” In the absence of any guidance, beyond again being “informed by” the International Holocaust Remembrance Association definition of antisemitism, the committee seems to think that the judge of whether something was antisemitic is just how a hearer felt about it.  

So now students, teachers, and staff can fear that they might be anonymously reported based on a politicized definition of antisemitism. This will only further chill discussion and undercut teachers, who will have to tiptoe around anything perceived as controversial. Historically speaking, the kinds of societies where acquaintances can report each other anonymously to a government agency are not known for their open, high-quality learning environment.  

Consider another problem. One genuinely well-meaning recommendation is the development of new “model curricula and best practices” around “teaching antisemitism and Jewish identity” that “may include Jewish history, positive Jewish contributions to America, Jewish diversity, and manifestations of contemporary antisemitism.” On its own, this sounds fine. But when integrated with a “mandatory anti-bias education for school committees and all K-12 faculty and administrators that includes antisemitism,” anonymous reporting hotline, and that pesky definition of antisemitism, things look different.  

Somehow, antisemitism education now amounts to emphasizing “positive contributions” of Jews while condemning any negative statements about anything associated with Jews as antisemitic. The overall message will be that Jews don’t do bad things – unlike ordinary human beings they can’t hate others, or commit genocide, or be racist. To even suggest that will already to be under suspicion of antisemitism.  

Such an approach can only backfire. It sends the message that Jews are essentially different, almost inhumanly different. Worse than that, given that these messages will arrive as state-level mandates, it makes it seem like Jews are trying to force people to believe that they are different.  

There is no doubt that there are all kinds of nasty, antisemitic ways in which Jews are criticized as Jews. But the broad and confused way in which antisemitism is presented in the recommendations does not capture that problem. Instead, this “antisemitism education” will likely function in an actual classroom only to discourage or browbeat students into seeing Jews as different or special. That cannot possibly be good for reducing antisemitic prejudice. 

Finally, there is the wider problem of speech suppression. The commission said it values academic freedom. But the thrust of the recommendations is that if students feel that “protests, walkouts, postering,” and ordinary discussion are antisemitic, then the presumption is those acts of expression should be punished or shut down. There seems to be no thought at all about how in a diverse democracy like ours there will be vigorous and strong disagreements, which we accept and tolerate even if we happen to find them offensive.  

It is strange to see Massachusetts following in the footsteps of the Trump administration in its approach to education. And it cannot be good for the fight against antisemitism to associate Jews with new limits on speech and the degradation of the learning environment.  

The commission has tied its shoelaces together and then tried to start running. On the one hand, it issues new orders for educators and students to talk more about Jews, antisemitism, genocide, and Israel. On the other, it creates new disciplinary procedures and constraints, enforced according to poorly defined and politically controversial standards, that will make those conversations stilted and non-educational.  

Kids know when they are being set up or told that they may only think in certain ways, not others. Even on their own terms, these recommendations cannot possibly advance the aim of fighting antisemitism. Never mind how incompatible they are with open-minded education on controversial topics about which reasonable people might disagree.  

Instead of rushing these ill-considered measures out, right before the school year, the state should have hit pause. At a minimum, the Massachusetts Legislature needs to step in with some oversight of this Trumpist approach to educational policy. This issue is too important to mess up. 

Alexander Gourevitch is an associate professor of political science at Brown University and a member of Concerned Jewish Faculty and Staff.