The Israel-Hamas war is affecting California’s efforts to fulfill ethnic studies mandates.
A January 2024 article published at Inside Higher Ed, a news source focused on higher education, asked, “Is anti-Zionism core to ethnic studies? Should it matter? These questions have stoked debate about plans for a University of California admissions requirement.”
Legislation requiring a semester-long ethnic studies course for all high school students beginning in 2025 was signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2021 (Assembly Bill 101). The Conejo Valley Unified School District (CVUSD) launched a pilot course in 2022 and made the course offering permanent in 2023, two years ahead of the state deadline.
The University of California was expected to add the high school course as an admission requirement for incoming students by now, but as journalist Sara Weissman explained in her Higher Ed piece, “the process to draft and approve course criteria has dragged on for more than two years and been at the center of controversy about how Israel would be discussed in high school ethnic studies classes, if at all.”
“CVUSD has made public statements supporting BLM and Asian communities. Why not the Jewish community?”
—parent Julie Jacobs
A 2021 EdSource article covering the new requirement wrote, “The legislation authorizing the creation of an ethnic studies curriculum stated that it should draw attention to the four ethnic and racial groups whose history and stories have been traditionally overlooked and have been the focus of college ethnic studies courses: Blacks, Latinos, Native Americans and Asian Americans.”
After receiving complaints, EdSource noted, “The model curriculum includes lesson plans on Sikh, Jewish, Arab and Armenian Americans, which were added after those groups objected to being left out in earlier drafts.”
The current standoff resulted from an October 9, 2023, statement in which UC Board of Regents Chair Richard Leib and UC President Michael V. Drake, M.D., “in the wake of a violent weekend in the Middle East” wrote, “Our hearts are heavy in the face of the horrific attack on Israel over the weekend, which involved the loss of many innocent lives and the abduction of innocent hostages, including children and the elderly. This was an act of terrorism, launched on a major Jewish holiday.”
The UC Ethnic Studies Faculty Council responded with its own statement to the Board of Regents on October 16, 2023, saying it “rejects recent UC administrative communications that distort and misrepresent the unfolding genocide of Palestinians in Gaza …”
A group of 115 education, civil rights and religious organizations followed up with an October 25, 2023, email to the UC Board of Regents, President and Chancellors, and published by the AMCHAInitiative.org, a higher education antisemitic watchdog group, detailing their concerns about the Ethnic Studies Faculty Council comments. The email said, “UC faculty who cannot acknowledge that the Hamas massacre is terrorism and a crime against humanity, and who state that anti-Zionism and the elimination of the Jewish state is a core value of their discipline, must not be trusted to establish state-wide ethnic studies standards for California students.”
The email concluded, “The UC Ethnic Studies Faculty Council’s disastrous admissions requirement proposal must be immediately rejected.”
How does this affect ethnic studies locally?
In preparing the pilot course at CVUSD, in which 88 students participated, faculty described, “The goal of Ethnic Studies in America is to help students understand their own identity and that of those around them by accurately portraying the cultural and racial diversity of our society in pursuit of the American Dream. The content of the course seeks to empower all students to engage socially and politically and to think critically about the contributions and struggles of diverse communities. In an effort to achieve this goal, the Ethnic Studies course includes the documentation of the experiences of diverse communities in order for students to develop a more complex understanding of the American experience.”
It continues, “Ethnic Studies encourages students to explore the historic struggles, current experiences, and perspectives of people of color, including where the axes of racial and ethnic identity intersect with gender, class, sexuality, and other components of what may define an individual or community … students in the Ethnic Studies course will develop a more inclusive understanding of the United States and its past by examining dominant narratives and critical or counter-narratives, centering the history of people of color in the United States, California, and Ventura County, and their relationship to systems of power. Ethnic Studies attempts to develop students’ awareness of civic and social responsibility, justice, and their ability to be agents of change in their communities. Ethnic Studies challenges ‘racism, discrimination, and oppression and the systems that continue to perpetuate inequality.'”
CVUSD ethnic studies faculty took students on a field trip to the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, a visit the teachers want to make annual.
During the November 1, 2023, school board meeting, parent Julie Jacobs asked the board to make a statement condemning Hamas’ attack on Israel during the public comments section of the meeting.
“CVUSD has made public statements supporting BLM and Asian communities,” said Jacobs. “Why not the Jewish community? … No statement means the board is indifferent.”
Board trustee Lauren Gill replied, “Talking through difficult issues doesn’t extend to foreign affairs. We don’t affect foreign policy.”
