Teenagers’ digital feeds are filled with graphic images and claims about U.S. immigration enforcement, including civilian deaths in Minneapolis; geopolitical brinkmanship involving Venezuela and Greenland; and ongoing conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine. These events arrive on kids’ phones, compressed into memes and clips long before facts are verified or meaning can be made.

At the same time, schools are locked in public conflicts over cellphone and book bans, curriculum restrictions and artificial intelligence policies. In this environment, many educators understandably see avoidance of potentially contentious topics — including and — as a survival strategy. Discussing the war in the Middle East can be read as advocacy. Talking about immigration raids — or even the meaning of the rule of law — can spark backlash. Staying silent often feels safer.

But young people are not waiting for adults to dive in.

They encounter war, political upheaval and social fracture in the same digital spaces where they flirt, joke and pursue their interests. When something trends or becomes a meme, it immediately shows up in group chats, tests friendships and erupts in classrooms as debates over who belongs.

That is the civics problem hiding in plain sight: Young people are learning how public life works — grappling with evidence and the best resolutions to issues, especially when there are disagreements — in environments that reward certainty and spectacle while punishing nuance and humility.

Since 2024, our researchers have studied how young people and educators are navigating this reality. Through in-depth interviews with more than 100 middle and high school students, educators and school leaders in New York City and Southern California, as well as college students and faculty across the country, we examined how young people make sense of contentious events and decide what information to trust, and how digital media shapes their views and relationships. We are releasing those findings in a new report, .

We found that most teens do not hold extreme views but believe their peers are far more polarized than they are. Many care deeply about issues like immigration, antisemitism, racial justice and climate change but worry that what they say will be misunderstood or weaponized.

Young people are also keenly aware that digital environments distort what they see. They know algorithms are not neutral. Some try to block accounts, follow posts with different perspectives and like content on multiple sides of an issue. But they are also teenagers. They want their feeds to be social and affirming. And they can’t fact-check a disappearing clip the way they can revisit a textbook or compare sources side by side.

The result is a corrosive belief that we heard again and again: Nothing is really true. Every claim has a counterclaim. Every source has an agenda. When nothing feels verifiable, cynicism grows — and creates fertile ground for disengagement.

Teens see classrooms as one of the few places where they can slow down, ask real questions and change their minds. But school functions as a counterweight only when adults establish shared evidence standards and structured opportunities to practice disagreement over time.

This is where many schools are falling short — not because educators don’t care, but because they are being asked to improvise under pressure.

Teachers told us they view engaging complex, controversial issues as part of their responsibility to young people, but they fear being perceived as biased or vulnerable to backlash. In today’s climate, classrooms can feel like both a refuge and a pressure cooker.

Too often, the tools teachers reach for are fragmented: a digital literacy lesson that assumes students encounter information mainly through websites; lessons on active listening divorced from content that would require such skills; and content related to social issues that doesn’t match what students see in their feeds. Teens notice when discussions are avoided or abruptly shut down, making them confused and anxious.

If America’s education leaders are serious about civic learning, they cannot keep treating tough topics as extracurricular.

That includes conflicts like Israel-Palestine and the rise in antisemitism and xenophobia — issues that are deeply personal for many students. Our research probed students’ and teachers’ perspectives on teaching about the Middle East conflict because it is a strong example of what happens when young people are pressed to pick a side on a hotly contested topic before they have had time to learn, debate and sit with moral complexity. These challenges are not limited to any one issue; students we interviewed also disclosed how affected they were by other news they encountered first in their feeds, from Charlie Kirk’s assassination to immigration raids by ICE.

Schools cannot resolve geopolitics. But they can teach the habits of mind and heart that democratic life depends on. Our research points to three practical commitments that school systems and education leaders can act on now.

First, make evidence-building a core civic priority — not “my truth” and “your truth,” but shared texts, verifiable sources and clear norms about what counts as evidence, both for in-person discussions and in digital forums, from social media to group chats.

Second, treat discourse as a practice, not a personality trait. Civil discourse is not about being nice. It is a teachable skill set: asking honest questions, acknowledging uncertainty, resisting easy answers, and maintaining peer relationships even in disagreement.

Third, teach tough topics with good guardrails. Avoidance does not protect students; it abandons them to confront challenging issues alone in digital spaces designed to amplify their outrage rather than understanding. What students need are structured opportunities — in classrooms — to slow down, examine evidence and ask hard questions.

Beyond those more immediate changes, teachers need longer-range help in managing rapid technological change — including how the content that students encounter online inevitably spills into the classroom. Schools need AI-driven learning tools that update easily to include current events, designed to help students learn how to transform information into knowledge and disagreements into deeper understanding of one another.

Young people are not asking for perfect adults or painless conversations. They are asking for adults who will not disappear when things get hard.

At a time when public life rewards outrage and withdrawal, schools are one of the last places where young people can be encouraged to lean into the discomfort of talking through their differences long enough to think, listen and better connect with ideas and with one another. That is education’s most urgent calling.

Delegates to the organization’s representative assembly last month narrowly voted to created by the Jewish advocacy group. They also the union from participating in programs led by the ADL or publicizing its professional development opportunities. But the NEA’s executive commission rejected the proposal days later following . 

The episode reopened an ongoing clash among the 3 million school employees represented by the union — the largest in the country by far — over numerous armed conflicts in the Middle East, alleged prejudice against both Jews and Arabs at home and how schools should teach about both. 

Teachers’ unions related to Israel, a trend that escalated rapidly in the wake of Hamas’ attack on the country Oct. 7, 2023, and the war that followed. But with the Trump administration in education, the about-face from the NEA suggests that the issue is increasingly viewed as treacherous ground. An ongoing Republican attempt to terminate the union’s congressional charter may be adding still more pressure. 

While noting that their decision to scuttle the measure was “in no way an endorsement of the ADL’s full body of work,” the union’s leadership expressed concerns over rising antisemitism, pledging to carefully review curricula designed to combat it. 

“After consideration, it was determined that this proposal would not further NEA’s commitment to academic freedom, our membership or our goals,” the authors concluded.

The delegates’ original motion to disaffiliate came after a series of confrontations with the ADL, which has been vocal in attacking what it deems as hateful and biased content circulated by educators. Throughout 2024 and 2025, the ADL has issued report cards for colleges and universities, accusing them of ignoring antisemitism during student protests against Israel’s wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran; their critical grades by members of Congress seeking to pressure the institutions into taking more dramatic action against student activists.

The disputes have extended into K–12 schools as well, with the Massachusetts Teachers Association (an NEA affiliate) for circulating teaching materials it called antisemitic, including images of a dollar bill folded into a Star of David. For their part, the that the materials were mischaracterized and that the ADL’s denunciations had triggered death threats to MTA leaders and staff.

Merrie Najimy, a former president of the Massachusetts union who supported the anti-ADL resolution, said in an email that the since-reversed vote at the representative assembly “signals a sea change in the desire of the NEA rank-and-file for a new position from both their union and politicians.”

“The ADL consistently commits acts of anti-Palestinian racism by falsely conflating the criticism of Zionism and Israel with antisemitism, dehumanizing the Palestinian People [sic], pushing to erase and censor Palestinian narratives in schools and targeting educators who speak up for Palestinian rights,” Najimy wrote. 

Growing divisions

Patrick Crabtree, a retired teacher who served for four years as chair of the NEA Jewish Affairs Caucus, said he was deeply concerned that his fellow members had taken sides against “one of the most reputable organizations in America.” 

“It shocked me that it was even under consideration,” he said. “And it shocked me even more that it passed.”

Crabtree observed that harsh sentiments against Israel have been somewhat commonplace during his involvement with the union. Delegates to officially declare support for Palestinians after a spasm of violence in 2021, when the Israeli Defense Forces and Hamas traded airstrikes and missile volleys that killed hundreds. Once the IDF launched its invasion of Gaza, activists within the union to revoke its 2024 endorsement for Joe Biden, arguing that the president hadn’t done enough to restrain Israel. 

Dissension has spread to other teachers unions as well. In May, Michael Mulgrew encountered unusual resistance in winning a sixth term as president of New York City’s United Federation of Teachers. Accustomed to breezy victories, Mulgrew faced two challengers advocating for a more militant stance against Israel, including from any enterprises in the country. The combined share of the opposing candidacies of the union’s vote, indicating high levels of support for such policies. 

A few weeks later, the UFT New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, who has been bluntly critical of Israel’s actions in Gaza. 

Jerald Podair, a historian at Wisconsin’s Lawrence University, wrote about a seminal collision of American education politics: the 1968 teachers strike, when the UFT led a lengthy work stoppage after a number of Brooklyn teachers claimed that they had been subjected to antisemitic discrimination by the local Ocean Hill-Brownsville school board. 

At that time, the union’s membership was predominantly Jewish, including a large number of Holocaust survivors. In the decades since, he reflected, the UFT has become both more willing to wade into national politics and more internally divided on what positions to adopt.

“At Ocean Hill-Brownsville, the UFT was composed of moderately liberal members, virtually all of whom supported Israel,” Podair said. “So I think it’s fair to say that there is less homogeneity today — certainly less ethnic homogeneity — and less unanimity about the issues they choose to interject on.”

Politics as ‘sideshow’

Divisions within the NEA have become even more sharply defined since its executive commission, led by President Becky Pringle, dismissed the measure targeting the ADL.

Najimy called the move “a fundamental violation of union democracy [that] has caused great harm to the Jewish and Arab-American educators who crafted and fought for it.”

“What’s more important,” she continued, “is that the education about the ADL went far beyond the walls of the representative assembly, and the desire of the representative assembly cannot be undone.”

With tensions around antisemitism rising to a level rarely seen in recent U.S. history, education leaders around the country are taking steps to distance themselves and their institutions from perceptions of animus toward Jews. In response to threats from the Trump administration to remove billions of dollars in funding over violations of federal antidiscrimination statutes, Harvard to identify and remedy instances of antisemitism. Columbia, while not admitting any wrongdoing, agreed to pay $221 million into similar allegations. 

Even before President Donald Trump took office, both colleges following congressional hearings into antisemitism on their campuses. The Biden administration the School District of Philadelphia for taking insufficient steps to counter discrimination during the 2022–23 and 2023–24 school years.

Official sanctions have also been considered in the case of the NEA, with Republicans in Washington introducing legislation of its congressional charter. Sponsors specifically pointed to last month’s vote to break with the ADL as an impetus for the bill, though the GOP has weighed similar proposals in years past. (The consequences of losing the charter would be more symbolic than practical, though conservative activists for the more drastic step of barring the NEA from political organizing.)

Podair said Pringle’s intervention in the ADL spat likely reflected a belief that engagement in the hottest of political imbroglios didn’t offer sufficient upside in the fight that matters most to her supporters.

“The politics, for most union members, is a sideshow,” he said. “What really matters is how much money you make and what your health plan looks like. If you don’t deliver for your members on those things, you can take all the political stances you want, but you’re still going to be out.”

Crabtree shared the same view, adding that his own conversations with fellow union members usually revolved around pay and working conditions, with some concerns around explicitly education-related policies like school choice programs. Lately, he’d been hearing a familiar quip.

“It clearly cannot be shut down without it,” Linda McMahon said during a confirmation hearing before the Senate education committee. “We’d like to do this right. We’d like to make sure that we are presenting a plan that I think our senators could get on board with.”

During the nearly three-hour session, frequently disrupted by protestors opposed to her nomination, McMahon offered a far less combative tone than some of the president’s other lieutenants in recent days, voicing support for maintaining funding for most major education programs, including Title I and special education. 

The apparent discrepancy has fed a sense of whiplash. Just yesterday, Trump named North Dakota state Superintendent Kirsten Baesler as assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education after previously nominating former Tennessee education chief Penny Schwinn as deputy secretary. Both are well regarded, even among many Democrats. 

But also this week, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency decimated the department’s research arm and continues to comb through contracts to identify what it considers waste and fraud. On Tuesday, Trump called the department “ 

During the hearing, Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire described the current state of play as “very elegant gaslighting.” 

“I am going to take you at your word that you will enforce the law,” Hassan told McMahon. “Three weeks ago, the president unilaterally cut all federal grants by issuing an indefinite freeze. That’s an unconstitutional, and yes illegal, action.”

Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington and former head of the committee, put McMahon on the spot over how she might answer to both Congress and the White House. 

“What will you do if the president or Elon Musk tells you not to spend the money Congress has appropriated?” Murray asked.

And Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska, warned McMahon that federal law would limit her from restricting curriculum topics Trump opposes. 

“You may be in a position where you are not able to prohibit teachers from discussing LGBTQ issues with students,” she said. 

McMahon came down on the side of local control.

“The federal government is not the school board here, if you will, for our nation’s schools,” she said.

Sen. Jim Banks of Indiana, a Republican, noted that some of the protesters who interrupted testimony in the hearing room said they were teachers.

“Can you imagine … these people teaching our kids in classrooms across America?” he asked. “I wanna get politics out of the classroom. I want political flags and political statements and ideologies out of the classroom.”

While she offered less barbed rhetoric than Trump or Musk, McMahon voiced support for what she called DOGE’s “audit.”

“It is worthwhile to take a look at the programs before money goes out the door,” she said. “It’s much easier to stop the money that’s going out the door than it is to call it back.” 

McMahon, former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, is one of tapped to lead Trump’s administration. In her comments Thursday, she held tightly to Trump’s key education priorities — advancing private school choice, preventing trans students from competing in sports consistent with their gender identity and fighting antisemitism. 

“If I am confirmed, the department will not stand idly by while Jewish students are attacked and discriminated against,” she said. 

But her responses offered few details and at times demonstrated a lack of understanding of the laws she’d be responsible for enforcing.

Currently chair of the America First Policy Institute, a far-right think tank, she stumbled when Murray asked her to identify the provisions of the Every Student Succeeds Act, the overarching K-12 education law that requires annual assessments and accountability for student performance. And she appeared to support the more expansive definition of sexual misconduct embraced by the Biden administration rather than the 2020 Title IX rule the department is now slated to reinstate. 

“I think sexual harassment should be prohibited in any case,” she said.  

She expressed support for rolling back Biden’s focus on diversity, equity and inclusion, which the Trump administration has already demonstrated by placing employees connected to DEI on administrative leave. But when Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy, from her home state of Connecticut, explained that the president’s stance against DEI could prompt schools to stop teaching African American history, she said Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday and Black History Month should be celebrated. 

‘Anti-public education policies’

Despite her inexperience in education, McMahon has been far less controversial than some of Trump’s cabinet choices, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was confirmed Thursday, and Department of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Kennedy is an anti-vaccine activist who some worry will compromise children’s health, and Hegseth has faced allegations of sexual misconduct and drinking on the job as a former Fox News host. 

After two failed bids for the Senate, McMahon, whose confirmation is expected to advance through the committee next Thursday, led the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term. But she’s better known for turning WWE into a $9 billion enterprise with her now-estranged husband Vince McMahon.

Her confirmation took longer to schedule than those of most other cabinet nominees as the Senate education committee waited for her to complete ethics paperwork detailing vast financial assets and ties to far-right organizations. 

As a board member of Trump Media & Technology Group, which runs the president’s Truth Social platform, she earns $18,400 quarterly. As , with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission shows she received stock in the company worth more than $800,000 in late January. She is also on the advisory council for the Daily Caller, a conservative media outlet that has given her . 

“I have concerns about her role in pushing a lot of anti-public school, anti-public education policies,” Keri Rodrigues, president of the National Parents Union, an advocacy organization, told ����Ӱ��. The Daily Caller often criticized Biden’s education agenda and promoted private school choice. 

If confirmed, McMahon, whose net worth is over $ 3 billion, has promised to step down from those positions, forfeit any shares in Truth Social that she doesn’t yet fully own and divest from those that she does within three months. She also earns interest income from that fund school construction across the country and has pledged to divest from those programs as well.

For some Democrats, McMahon elicits a sense of deja vu. 

“I don’t think it would be that different from [Betsy] DeVos,” said Oregon Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, ranking member of an education subcommittee in the House. Bonamici was among the members of Congress who with department staff last week to discuss DOGE’s activities, only to be denied entry to the building. 

“There’s no question that we still have work to do with our public education system,” she said. “What message do we send around the country to the parents, to the world, that we’re shutting down the Department of Education?”

But those who support her nomination described her as prepared.

“I think it went well,” said Neal McCluskey, director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the libertarian Cato Institute. “The focus wasn’t really on her, but Trump policies and DOGE, so I see no reason she won’t be confirmed.”

One Trump supporter said that underneath the chaos is an agenda to focus the department on four key priorities — eliminating DEI, cutting waste, giving more power over education to the states and expanding school choice. In this view, that is why Trump is continuing to nominate staff for top policy positions despite his caustic words.

“The President is moving on several fronts at once, so it’s easy to conflate actions as if everything is designed to ‘close down the department,’ ” said Jim Blew, a former department official under DeVos and co-founder of the conservative Defense of Freedom Institute, a think tank. “He needs a strong array of political appointees in key positions to make all four parts of his vision happen.”

These are among the numerous allegations of antisemitism The School District of Philadelphia failed to adequately address in the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.  

Pennsylvania’s largest district didn’t demonstrate that it fulfilled its legal obligation to evaluate whether a hostile environment existed in schools and, if so, take the necessary steps to eliminate and prevent it, the office found.

As part of an with the department, the 121,202-student district pledged to issue an anti-harassment statement that will be published on its website and printed or linked to in publications aimed at the school community. It will also provide annual staff training on federal law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of shared ancestry and ethnic characteristics — and improve its documentation of related complaints.   

A district spokesperson said in a Jan. 3 statement that the school system “strives to create welcoming and inclusive environments that allow our students to feel safe and heard,” and that it takes complaints of bullying, harassment, and discrimination seriously. The district has also been embroiled in several recent controversies alleging that it

As part of its agreement, Philadelphia schools will also provide an age-appropriate program for all 6th- through 12th-grade students to address discrimination: They’ll be taught to identify and report harassment — and will be informed about the disciplinary action that will follow a credible complaint. 

The district will also administer an OCR-approved school climate assessment in which students will be asked about the prevalence of harassment, their willingness to report it and how they believe such cases will be handled. Philadelphia schools will provide the office with its findings and take steps to address any concerns. 

The Department of Education has dropped a flurry of agreements regarding K-12 and higher education discrimination complaints in the weeks before President-elect Donald Trump’s second inauguration. Trump has, on many occasions, pledged to , leaving its fate and that of its civil rights office uncertain. 

Two other higher education cases announced in late December — one focused on the system and the other at — also sprung from the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza. 

The ongoing conflict set off student protests throughout the country, including at some of the nation’s top colleges.

In the case involving five UC campuses, the department found the universities failed to respond promptly or effectively to incidents of harassment based on students’ Jewish, Israeli, Muslim, Palestinian and Arab ancestry — and some of them subjected students to different treatment regarding access to campus or university programs. 

The Cincinnati case, which included all such students except for Israeli, found the university misapplied laws governing reports of harassment or more commonly ignored discrimination complaints. 

Another case, this one announced in early January, found likely operated a hostile environment harmful to many student groups, including those of Jewish and Palestinian heritage. was also called out in the new year because its records failed to show whether it considered if nearly 100 harassment complaints — many by Jewish and Arab students — amounted to a hostile environment. 

In addition to numerous antisemitic incidents, the Philadelphia case also includes allegations of harassment against Black students. A Jewish teacher noting the hostility she and Jewish students felt, added that some of her Black students were called slaves and told to pick cotton until their hands bled. “The teacher wrote that they were traumatized and felt sick and asked who was going to help the students,” an OCR filing states. 

The Philadelphia school system also failed to maintain a required list of such complaints: a keyword search on a database where these incidents were supposed to be logged did not include several alleged offenses flagged by those who brought the complaint, OCR found. As part of the agreement, staff will be annually trained to better process, investigate and resolve such cases. 

OCR investigators examined documentation provided by an unnamed complainant, a community organization of approximately 250 Jewish families in the district and an advocacy group. The office also spoke at length with the district’s Title IX coordinator, among others.

Michael Balaban, president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, filed a complaint with the district in April 2024. He said he did so to represent the concerns of many Jewish families, who told him they feared retribution if they complained directly. 

Balaban said teachers addressing the war should have presented facts about the Middle East in neutral terms, allowing students to come to their own conclusions. He said he is grateful for OCR’s efforts and hopes the district will move forward with making school a safer environment for all. 

“I’m happy with the work that OCR did,” he told ����Ӱ��. “At the end of the day, the school board has to comply. That is really what we will be watching.”

In one case that sparked controversy, several posters, including those that read, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free,” a slogan that critics see as calling for and “This is not war, this is genocide,” were displayed along with the Palestinian flag in close proximity to an Israeli flag in the common area of a school. The principal had the materials removed the morning they were discovered. 

Interviews revealed that a group of students stayed after school in a teacher’s classroom to create the posters. Video footage showed that teacher and two others displayed the materials. A principal later told the educators their actions created a hostile environment and a subsequent report about the incident noted it had a “negative and profound impact on Israeli and non-Israeli staff and students causing feelings of alienation and outrage.”

The teachers were not named by OCR, but and ultimately quit their jobs for trying to make the school a safe space for Palestinian students. 

“The punishment is not because we hung up posters, the punishment is not because we didn’t have parents’ permission after school, they’re going to say that that’s what it is,” one of the teachers told The Intercept. “But the punishment is the fact that these posters are pro-Palestinian, they are anti-genocide, they are anti-violence towards Palestinian people.”

These incidents, along with others, have caused an ongoing furor, one that has played out at raucous school board meetings. One October 2024 session was disrupted when protestors demanded that another pro-Palestinian teacher, . Her supporters said she was being punished for her views; those who complained against her said she made credible threats of violence against Jewish parents. 

The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers did not respond to multiple requests for comment. 

The allegations of antisemitism detailed in OCR’s report, some supported by district documentation, include the following: 

• A teacher, in grading a geography assignment where students were asked to name various countries on a map, crossed out Israel and hand wrote Palestine on a list of possible answers. The school principal sent a note to families acknowledging the incident, stating that it left “students feeling unsupported.” 

• Students drew swastikas and the Hitler salute on a paper left on a classmate’s desk, and called the child “Big nose,” “Rich kid,” and “Cracker.” The student was put in a headlock and thrown into a trash can. The student reported the incidents to a teacher, but no action was taken until their parents notified the principal. The district transferred the student to a new school. 

• The teacher whose supporters rallied for her reinstatement wrote on social media: “Another Educator Misconduct Complaint to the Pennsylvania Department of Education and Another Dismissal. What’s the end goal here? … I guess I can’t expect anything less from Zionist genocide supporters. Zionism is Racism.” Another teacher, showing support for the post, responded with an expletive-filled rant against “all those who are trying to get those of us who speak out against a literal genocide in trouble.”

• The dismissed teacher i by name on social media: “I asked y’all nicely to keep my name out y’all mouth…Y’all been harassing me for almost a year…You can report me to the Department of Education 10 million times… What you want to happen won’t.” The next day, the teacher posted to her public Instagram account, “Blacked owned [gun emoji] shops in or near Philly? Asking for a friend.”

• Another teacher wrote on social media that, “These Zionists are no different from the swarms of white supremacist spectators cheering on the public lynchings of over 3,000 Black people.”

• Another wrote: “Let’s not be confused about this complaint, this is a group of racist white parents trying to get black teachers and staff fired, for fear that their children will learn the truth. (that their parents are racist.)” 

One teacher’s social media accounts were shared by the district with an external law firm so it could conduct an investigation. According to the district, the firm concluded the educator did not engage in discrimination or harassment based on religion or national origin.

The civil rights office said it requested a copy of the firm’s findings, but the district refused, citing attorney-client privilege. Christina Clark, a district spokesperson, told ����Ӱ�� some information was shared with OCR.

In an effort to address rising incidents of antisemitism and Islamophobia, New York City’s Education Department launched an anti-hate hotline, officials said Monday.

The goal is to streamline related to hate, harassment, and discrimination, adding another avenue on top of a four-year-old online portal for all bullying complaints.

The hotline (718-935-2889), staffed with Education Department employees, will be open from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday-Friday. Callers can remain anonymous, but the pre-recorded greeting suggests having your student’s ID number or your staff ID number to “expedite your call.”

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“There is zero tolerance for hate in our schools,” incoming Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos said in a statement, “and this new hotline will help ensure incidents are reported and addressed.”

The announcement was part of a suite of initiatives the Education Department highlighted as the city commemorated the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 terror attacks by Hamas on Israel, which killed more than 1,200 people. More than 250 people were taken hostage and Israel’s subsequent attack on Gaza has killed , including many children, and has led to a.

Prior to the new hotline, students and staff members could report incidents with their school or through a bullying portal the department launched in 2020 in response to a

From September to January last school year, the city saw roughly 440 school reports about incidents related to ethnicity or national origin, up about 30% from the same time the year before, . There were nearly 290 reports related to religion, up nearly 78% from the year before.

, according to the annual school surveys. About 40% of the middle and high school students who responded to the survey reported seeing harassment based on race, ethnicity, religion, or immigration status, up from 30% in 2019.

Many people had been asking the Education Department to create a hotline or dedicated way to specifically report hate-rated incidents, including , who faced a raucous student protest over her support of Israel in the aftermath of the attacks on Oct. 7, 2023.

Marder recently sued the city for failing to protect her before students began marching in the hallways, calling for her ouster. She has, however, remained at the school — she now helps oversee student discipline as one of the school’s deans — and has been heartened that the new school year has started off relatively calm under a new principal. She spent much of the past year calling on outgoing schools Chancellor David Banks to create a hotline like the one that was just launched.

“I’m very happy they are finally doing this though it shouldn’t have taken a year,” she told Chalkbeat.

As , the Education Department’s Office of Safety and Prevention Partnerships expected to deploy additional staffers to public schools on Monday, officials said. And ahead of Oct. 7, Education Department officials sent reminders to principals about the role of schools to create safe spaces for students to engage with current events — but in ways that ensure schools don’t take political stances, officials said. Students have previously complained that

Additionally, the Education Department this fall is offering new anti-discrimination staff training with a specific focus on antisemitism and Islamophobia. The city’s Hidden Voices curriculum — which focuses on historical figures whose stories seldom get told — is expected to release installments by the end of the school year on Muslim Americans and Jewish Americans, and the city is encouraging of different cultures and their histories. The school system’s is continuing to meet this year, as a way to demonstrate to students how to build bridges across different groups.

This story was originally published by . Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. Sign up for their newsletters at . 

Maud Maron, who New York City Schools removed for “derogatory conduct” in June, can now resume her post on lower Manhattan’s coveted District 2 council. She has also been criticized for making anti-transgender comments against students. 

In her ruling, federal judge Diane Gujarati also deemed the New York City Department of Education’s  anti-harassment policy — which was used to remove Maron — “chilled … expression” and likely violates the First Amendment because of its vague language.

The policy, D-210, is so unclear that it prevents “a person of ordinary intelligence – before such person is subject to investigation” from understanding what conduct is prohibited, the judge wrote.

Schools Chancellor David Banks removed Maron for comments made in the New York Post in which she called an anonymous Stuyvesant High School student author a “coward” and accused them of “Jew hatred” for an op-ed accusing Israel of genocide in Palestine in the student paper.

In December, a 74 investigation revealed Maron also said in a private chat that, “there is no such thing as trans kids,” among other disparaging remarks. In response, Banks called Maron’s behavior “despicable” but did not include the anti-trans comments in documents outlining her removal. 

In a text, Maron told ����Ӱ�� Wednesday she was reinstated because, “free speech still means something in this country. The people who voted for me won today because they were also deprived of their voice by the Chancellor’s unconstitutional decision.”

The judge’s decision was issued after Maron and two other parents sued the Department of Education, the education council for District 14 and its leadership for allegedly stifling their speech. Gujarti’s decision granted an injunction to stop the DOE from enforcing the anti-discrimination policy via removing council members. Their .

Department of Education officials said Gujarati’s decision makes it more difficult to safeguard children. 

“We are disappointed by a ruling that limits our ability to protect students from harmful conduct by parent leaders. Even prior to the court’s ruling, we began reviewing the applicable Chancellor’s regulation and are preparing to propose revisions and initiate our public engagement process,” said spokesman Nathaniel Styer. 

The department, Styer added, is reviewing the ruling for “next steps” and will continue to support district councils in complying with the law. 

Gujarati’s ruling did not call for the reinstatement of Tajh Sutton, who is the only other parent to be removed from a district council post after a D-210 investigation, because it is a separate case. Gujarati’s ruling stated that there is no proper request before the Court to “identically extend” Maron’s relief to Sutton and therefore “is not addressed herein.” 

Sutton, formerly president of Williamsburg’s District 14 council, was removed after their official X account posted a toolkit for a student walkout for a ceasefire in Gaza.  DOE officials said the materials were “perceived by many community members as anti-Israel and antisemitic.” 

As also reported by the , Sutton moved her district’s meetings online to limit threats – which included being mailed an envelope of human feces and death threats –  which the department later said violated open meeting laws. CEC 14’s official X account also blocked Maron. Both actions were categorized in Gujarati’s ruling as limiting free speech. 

Ultimately, “the judge upheld the right to free speech even if that speech is offensive,” said David Bloomfield, former DOE counsel and professor of education law with Brooklyn College and the City University of New York Graduate Center. 

He added the ruling doesn’t justify the “odious” statements made, rather their right to be said in the first place, and that the system likely knew this was a possibility but would “rather be slapped down by a court than allow [Maron’s] behavior to persist.” 

“The First Amendment guarantees a marketplace of ideas,” Bloomfield said. “When the government intrudes on that, it’s hard to defend.” 

In the first move of its kind, the nation’s largest school district removed two prominent elected parent leaders from community education councils after controversial rhetoric against transgender students and student advocacy for Palestine.

Elected to serve two-year terms on the city’s closest equivalent to school boards, parents Maud Maron and Tajh Sutton were removed Friday from lower Manhattan’s District 2 council and northern Brooklyn’s District 14, respectively. 

Maron appeared in court June 18, seeking an injunction and reinstatement, alleging the Chancellor’s decision was a violation of free speech. The Education Council Consortium, a parent advocacy organization, has demanded Sutton’s reinstatement and criticized the Chancellor for equivalating Maron and Sutton. 

“It is a sad day when New York City Public Schools is compelled to take the actions I have ordered today, but the violations committed by these two individuals have made them unfit to serve in these roles,” Schools Chancellor David Banks said in the Friday press release announcing the removals. 

In closing their statement denouncing Sutton’s removal, the Education Council Consortium said, “it is indeed a ‘sad day’ when New York City Public Schools uncovers a new way to further erode any confidence in this administration.”

A December investigation by ����Ӱ�� previously revealed Maron said in a private chat that, “there is no such thing as trans kids.” Banks categorized her remarks as “despicable” and promised to take action. By March, a petition to remove her from Stuyvesant High School’s school leadership team for “bigotry” amassed more than 700 signatures. In April, the DOE ordered her to cease “derogatory” conduct. 

For months, parents and city leaders condemned Maron for leading a push to re-examine the city’s guidelines for trans students’ participation in sports, and for calling an anonymous student author a “coward,” accusing them of “Jew hatred,” for an op-ed accusing Israel of genocide. 

Across the East River, Sutton was subject to investigation for supporting a student walkout for a ceasefire in Gaza, including posting a digital toolkit and protest chants. In the letter listing his reasons for removing her, Banks said the materials shared by Sutton were “perceived by many community members as anti-Israel and antisemitic.”  

The reported Sutton, then the president and only Black member of District 14 council, had support from many families in her district who believe she was “unfairly targeted” for her advocacy for Palestine and that the DOE did little to safeguard her council against death threats. Sutton said she was also mailed an envelope of human feces. 

In a recent op-ed in the , Maron defended her actions and revealed Banks’s “official” reasoning for her removal pointed to the comments made against the anonymous student author. “But the real reason the Chancellor wants to remove me is because the Democratic establishment in New York City is furious because I know the difference between male and female and am willing to say so in polite company.” she wrote. 

In the letter issuing Sutton’s removal, Banks alleged Sutton violated open meetings laws for moving council meetings online, a decision she maintains was made over safety concerns after violent threats and multiple police reports, for which the DOE offered to provide additional NYPD officers at in-person meetings. 

Sutton told ����Ӱ�� she was never questioned by the DOE’s equity council for the alleged OML violations, only regarding her advocacy. state that videoconferencing or hybrid meetings may be permitted under “extraordinary circumstances,” and do not state that violations may result in removal. 

“If we were so out of compliance, why did you wait until June to remove me?” Sutton said. “Because you were waiting for Maron’s situation to get so hot that you could remove us together, so you could pretend that what I did is equal to what she did.”  

David Bloomfield, an education law professor with Brooklyn College and the City University of New York Graduate Center, believes it was no accident Maron and Sutton were removed simultaneously, and questioned the precedent set for free speech. 

“He seems to be treating them as similar situations and trying to balance the scales by removing a left wing member and a right wing member,” said Bloomfield.

While he did not question Banks’s legal right to remove Maron and Sutton, Bloomfield charged the precedent set is, “precisely what the First Amendment is supposed to protect against, which is the chilling of speech and particularly of political speech.” 

Maron is one of three plaintiffs Sutton, Banks and District 14’s council for violating the First Amendment and suppressing parent voices. She has recently launched a consultancy group called ThirdRail, which promises to “help neutralize counterproductive DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] initiatives” and build “flourishing workplaces where ideas – not ideologies – inspire strategy.” 

So it’s perhaps piling on at this point to note that, a century ago, the profoundly antisemitic beliefs of Harvard’s leaders built the cradle that nurtured the much-reviled college admissions essay. Eliminating it now in 2024 would be a concrete and dramatic repudiation of Harvard’s troubled past — and makes even more sense in the wake of last summer’s Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action. Which Harvard also lost.

But first, some history. In the summer of 1922, President Lawrence Lowell told Langdon Marvin, a Harvard Overseer, that “apart from the Jews.” the university’s admissions method was working well. As Jerome Karabel explained in The Chosen, the problem wasn’t the process but the outcome: Too many of the wrong type of men were getting in. By 1925, when 28% of the class was Jewish, Harvard’s leaders feared the environment was so poisoned that Anglo-Saxon Protestants would no longer enroll their sons.

Marvin suggested adopting a “character standard,” like the Rhodes scholarship used, to halt “.”  So in 1926, Harvard added a personal essay that could be scrutinized to assess the applicant’s fit. 

Given Harvard’s prominence and influence, the essay soon became a fixed feature of the application at other Ivies, and eventually, universally. The Jewish population quickly fell to a more manageable 15% where it stayed until the 1950s.

Around 1975 Harvard decided that Asian kids with great grades and elite test scores were the new problem. Thankfully, application readers — like at many other elite universities — could scrutinize prospective students’ essays for additional evidence. When the plaintiffs in the Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard case reviewed 160,000 student files they discovered — who’d have guessed it? — that on traits like “positive personality,” likability, courage, kindness and being “widely respected,” the University’s application readers gave Asian student of any ethnic group.

In last summer’s affirmative action decision, the court ruled unconstitutional the use of racial preferences in college admissions, putting the personal statement back in the news. In its decision, the court pointed admissions officers to a narrow path they could walk in finding evidence of an applicants’ merit from her essay. But the court’s discussion only served to underline, a century later, the essay’s subjective and fundamentally discriminatory purpose.

As any parent of a high school senior can tell you, the admissions essay is a nightmare. With the rare exception of the University of Chicago, which puts its prompts to a student vote, the topics are solipsistic and encourage applicants to stretch their experiences to the limits of credibility. Since everyone knows they’re being scrutinized unfairly, writing the personal statement becomes a metacognitive exercise in guessing what College X wants, while being told to “be yourself.” Brilliant advice for stressed out 17-year-olds emerging from puberty and trying to define themselves, by acting just like their peers.

For some the process involves hiring “counselors” who “advise” the student on how best to tell their story. High schools devote class time to helping students prepare their essays. Time that might be spent discussing actual literature, which suggest just six percent of high school graduates can do really well.

Less advantaged children tell of the or oppression to catch the eye of the application reader. Perceval Everett’s 2001 dark satire Erasure — which just netted an Oscar for best adaptation — cleverly captures the zeitgeist.

Evidence that the three data points most predictive of a student’s success in college are their high school GPA, the challenge of their course load, and their standardized test scores. In a misguided effort to increase diversity, many colleges stopped requiring test scores, but seeing the results, are now reversing course.

To the extent that colleges believe a student’s grades in English or history do not confirm his or her writing ability, they could require a graded essay from one of their junior year classes. It would be far more insightful – and less subjective than the recommendations that are the bane of many teachers’ existence. (And yes, Harvard also invented the recommendation letter as another way to ensure their students were “the right sort.”)

As we approach the 100^th anniversary of Harvard’s spawning of a racist tool to discriminate, while not appearing to do so, it would be a real sign of contrition were the leadership in Cambridge to announce they are jettisoning this shameful legacy. Apart from atoning for their own original sin, this would make it safe for other schools to follow Harvard’s example. As Harvard Law grad Joseph Welch once said, “You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

founded the International Charter School in Brooklyn and writes frequently on education.

Amid reports of heightened antisemitism and Islamophobia in schools and colleges since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, a senior Education Department official said the agency has received a “huge, huge influx” of civil rights complaints that have led to a surge in federal investigations. 

Since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas terrorists on Israel and the subsequent bombing and invasion of Gaza by the Israeli military, the into schools’ and colleges’ responses to complaints of discrimination based on shared ancestry, which includes antisemitism and Islamophobia. 

Of the new investigations, the senior official told ����Ӱ��, 19 are in response to conduct that unfolded in schools in the last two months alone. Of the incidents since Oct. 7 that are now under investigation, 17 took place on college campuses. 

Last fiscal year, by contrast, the office opened 28 shared ancestry investigations over the entire 12-month period. The year before, there were just 15. Such inquiries seek to determine whether schools adequately respond to incidents that create hostile learning environments in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on race, ethnicity or national origin. 

“We are deeply concerned about the incidents that we’ve seen reported in schools all over the country, and about the safety of students, and the protection of non-discrimination rights for students in P-12 schools as well as in institutions of higher education,” Catherine Lhamon, the department’s assistant secretary for civil rights, said in an interview Wednesday with ����Ӱ��. “We’re very, very concerned about what we’re seeing in schools.”

Though officials declined to comment on the specifics of active federal investigations, a spike in reported antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents in and outside of schools have convulsed the nation and elevated student safety concerns. 

Near Louisiana’s Tulane University, a clash between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel and police are investigating a as a potential hate crime targeting an Arab Muslim student. At Rutgers University, officials chapter following claims the group disrupted classes and vandalized campus. At Harvard University, a rabbi to hide the campus menorah each night of Hanukkah due to vandalism fears. In California, a with involuntary manslaughter and battery after an alleged physical altercation broke out at a demonstration that led to the death of a Jewish protester. 

Outside of schools, police said a 6-year-old Chicago boy was in an alleged anti-Muslim attack, and in Burlington, Vermont, three college while walking down a sidewalk over Thanksgiving weekend. 

The escalating confrontations have embroiled school leaders, who have been criticized for failing to clamp down on hate speech and discrimination. Just days after in Washington about rising antisemitism on college campuses, Elizabeth Magill resigned as University of Pennsylvania president. She and the presidents of Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were accused of being equivocating and evasive after giving carefully worded replies to repeated questions about whether calling for the “genocide of Jews” violated their schools’ code of conduct. Magill responded that it’s “a context-dependent decision,” underscoring school leaders’ obligations to ensure safe learning environments while protecting people’s free speech rights. 

Harvard University President Tuesday after facing similar scrutiny for her testimony at the congressional hearing and unrelated plagiarism allegations.

Of the 29 active federal Title VI investigations opened since Oct. 7, just eight are focused on incidents in K-12 schools — including at three of the nation’s 10 largest districts. Among them are the New York City Department of Education, the Clark County School District in Las Vegas, Hillsborough County Schools in Tampa, Florida, and the Cobb County School District in suburban Atlanta.

Though the circumstances prompting the investigations remain unknown, many of the institutions included on the Education Department’s list of active investigations have experienced high-profile incidents involving discrimination. 

In New York City, a raucous, and prompted a lockdown after a teacher posted a picture of herself at a pro-Israel rally on social media. Also turning to social media, one student said the teacher “is going to be executed in the town square,” and another promoted “a riot” against her. 

In suburban Atlanta, the Cobb County School District sparked controversy following the Hamas attack to the school community that warned of an “international threat,” noting that “while there is no reason to believe this threat has anything to do with our schools, parents can expect both law enforcement and school staff to take every step to keep your children safe.” Because of the message, several Muslim parents said their children had become the targets of Islamophobic bullying. 

In , the civil rights office highlighted hypothetical instances that put school districts at odds with their Title VI obligations. Among them: A Jewish student is targeted by his peers with swastikas and Nazi salutes but his teacher tells him to “just ignore it” without taking steps to address the harassment. Another example involves school officials failing to remedy a Muslim student’s complaints that she was called a “terrorist” and told “you started 9/11.”

Even before the most recent conflict between Hamas and Israel, law enforcement agencies across the U.S. have reported an uptick in hate crimes over the last several years, including on campuses. 

Reported hate crimes surged 7% between 2021 and 2022, released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in October, including a 36% increase in anti-Jewish incidents — which accounted for more than half of incidents based on religion. Among all reported hate crimes, 10% occurred at K-12 schools and colleges.

The Education Department last month released its most recent Civil Rights Data Collection, the first since the pandemic. Students reported 42,500 harassment allegations during the 2020-21 school year, including bullying on the basis of sex, race, sexual orientation, disability and religion. Of those, 29% involved harassment or bullying on the basis of race while only a sliver — 3% — involved students saying they were targeted because of their religion. 

The current climate has put Jewish college students on edge, according to , a nonprofit focused on eradicating antisemitism. Since the beginning of the academic year, 73% of Jewish college students said they’ve been witness to antisemitism. Prior to this school year, 70% reported experiencing antisemitism throughout their entire college experience. Yet just 30% of Jewish college students said their college administration has taken sufficient steps to address anti-Jewish prejudice. 

During a televised interview on MSNBC Friday, Jonathan Greenblatt, the national director and CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, said he thought conditions would improve on college campuses for Jewish students because the Title VI investigations now being launched by the Education Department would force college administrators to take action. 

Muslim Americans of all ages have similarly . In a two-week period between Oct. 7 and Oct. 24, reports of bias incidents and requests for help at the Council on American-Islamic Relations surged 182% from the average 16-day period in 2022. 

As lawmakers call on school leaders to take a stronger stance against hate speech, they’ve faced pushback from free speech advocates. Earlier this month, New York of “aggressive enforcement action” if they failed to discipline students “calling for the genocide of any group of people.” In a statement, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a right-leaning nonprofit focused on students’ free speech rights, said Hochul’s admonition “cannot be squared with the First Amendment.”  

“Colleges and universities can and should punish ‘calls for genocide’ when such speech falls into one of the narrowly defined categories of unprotected speech, including true threats, incitement and discriminatory harassment,” the group said in the statement. “But broad, vague bans on ‘calls for genocide,’ absent more, would result in the censorship of protected expression.”

The senior Education Department official said that schools must “navigate carefully” their obligations under Title VI and the First Amendment. Even if a student’s speech is protected, the official said, school leaders still have an obligation to uphold all students’ nondiscrimination rights.

“What concerns me is when a school community throws up its hands and says, ‘This speech is protected and so there’s nothing more for us here,’” said Lhamon, the assistant secretary for civil rights. “That may be true, but that’s only true where a hostile environment isn’t created that the school needs to respond to.”