How Schools Are Addressing Antisemitism and Islamophobia
Published December 4, 2023 in K-12 Dive
When Fred Rundle learned Hamas had attacked Israel on Saturday, Oct. 7, the Washington state school superintendent knew what he had to do. The following Monday morning, he sent a message to staff, students and families in his Mercer Island School District to try to ward against any rise in antisemitic and Islamophobic acts.
“Mercer Island is home to families with cultural ties to Israel, Palestine, and the geopolitical region known as the Middle East,” Rundle wrote. “While we may hold different or congruent opinions about the years of war and conflict, I worry that the escalation this weekend will spark a rise in Antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents in our own community.”
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Based on past experiences, Rundle had some reason to worry. In October 2022, a student at the district’s Islander Middle School made antisemitic remarks to another student. In 2019, images of students raising a Nazi salute were shared on social media.
A week after his message on Oct. 9, Rundle sent another, in the wake of an Oct. 13 call from Hamas to commit acts of violence against Jewish people globally. Rundle wrote that security would be posted on campuses and said students who were uncomfortable attending school should notify their school.
The threats from Hamas, he wrote, heightened already growing concerns for both the Jewish and Muslim communities.
“We have had our challenges with antisemitism,” Rundle said. “And we’ve had a history of being reactive to these things. I’ve worked really hard to be proactive and send a message that we’ll continue to condemn antisemitism and Islamophobia or any other hate speech.”
Mercer Island sits along Lake Washington and is connected by an interstate highway bridge to Seattle. The district serves about 4,000 students. The island is home to one of Seattle’s largest Jewish populations. Antisemitism has been enough of an issue on the island that the city council officially reaffirmed its commitment to reject bias based on religion in a 2021 proclamation.
Nationwide, between Oct. 7, the day Hamas attacked Israel, and Oct. 24 there was an almost 400% increase in incidents of antisemitism year over year, according to the Anti-Defamation League, a leading antisemitism advocacy organization. The 312 incidents include reports of harassment, vandalism and assault.
During the same two-week period, there were 774 complaints of Islamophobia, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights organization. By comparison, CAIR received only 63 complaints in the month of August.
For teachers and administrators, the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas has become another reason to worry about antisemitic and Islamophobic speech, bullying and harassment.
Here are some ways they are addressing antisemitism and Islamophobia in schools.
Confronting hate through education
Helping students to understand and confront hate in general — and antisemitism and Islamophobia in particular — is at the heart of educational equity, said Julie Goldman, director of equity curriculum and instruction with the San Diego County Office of Education.
The district curates guides with resources, either developed internally or by outside organizations, to help educators counter extremism by allowing students to hear about the experiences of Jewish and Muslim people.
“It’s also preventative,” she said. “Teachers can ask themselves how they are creating schools that are truly inclusive and welcoming.”
Resources to address antisemitism through instruction include, among other things, diversity within Judaism and how anti-Judaism evolved into antisemitism. Resources to address Islamophobia in schools include education for teachers about how to support students during Ramadan and an interactive high school lesson about Islamophobia created by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
“I want students to be exposed to many different kinds of families,” Goldman said. “If we do that work, it is going to impact the antisemitism and hate in general.”