Rep. Mark Harris (R-NC), who sits on the House Committee on Education and Workforce, was among the lawmakers involved in investigating several prominent school districts mentioned in the report, “Antisemitism in K-12 Schools.”
Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.), who chairs the committee, has said he launched a congressional inquiry after his office received reports Jewish students were being harassed by fellow students.
The report, released last week, describes left-wing ideology being taught as classroom curriculum in the School District of Philadelphia; Fairfax County Public Schools; and Berkeley Unified School District.
Much of the hatred for Jews can be traced back to October 2023, when Hamas launched its “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood” in northern Israel. What might sound like twisted irony – to harass American Jews after more than 1,000 Israelis were murdered – is explained in the report, since Hamas is portrayed as freedom fighters who are victims of Israel’s “colonist” existence in the Middle East.
At schools in Philadelphia and Berkely, the report states, students were taught lessons on “oppression,” “colonialism,” and “resistance.”
Describing the investigation and the report on the “Washington Watch” program, Rep. Harris called it a “35-page exposure” of how the Far Left has a firm grip on many public schools and their curriculum.
“When you have our founding fathers being portrayed as villains; when you find yourself dealing with, rather than teaching, the Holocaust; a high school teacher decides that she's gonna talk about ‘settler colonialism’ in Palestine, I mean, this is a problem,” Harris insisted.
The congressional report also rips the National Education Association, or NEA, for its decision to link antisemitism solely to “white nationalism,” a reference to anti-Jewish activists who represent the extreme right wing.
The repeated denouncement of “white nationalism” by the NEA, documented in the report with multiple examples, is described as political cover for the NEA’s radical members who oppose the State of Israel.
Those same NEA members voted to boycott the ADL, the Anti-Defamation League, in 2024 over its stance on Zionism, the belief that Israel has a legal and historical right to its ancient homeland.
Even an NEA resolution on International Holocaust Remembrance Day failed to mention Jews, the report pointed out, and the NEA pledged donations to Rethinking Schools, a communist nonprofit that supports "Palestine."
“We've been saying for some time that they've been exposing themselves, year after year, as a far left-wing group,” Harris, referring to the NEA, said.
“It has nothing to do with helping students or teachers, or parents for that matter,” he said.
“Parents send their children to school to learn reading, writing, and math — not to be taught to hate Israel or embrace radical political causes,” Rep. Walberg stated in a press release. “Yet that’s exactly the kind of material our investigation uncovered.”
