Concerned Jewish Faculty & Staff Corrects the Record about Cynical Smear Campaign Aimed at Lexington, MA Principal 

LEXINGTON, MA – It’s not every day a principal’s email to middle schoolers makes international news. But when Dr. Johnny Cole recently emailed seventh graders at Diamond Middle School in Lexington, Mass., his message lit up pro-Israeli-government social media accounts. The issue? Dr. Cole had apologized for a misguided session about antisemitism that left some of his students feeling “left out or erased.” Within 24 hours, right-wing outlets FoxNews and The Jerusalem Post had packaged the modest apology as ragebait, with sensationalistic and incorrect headlines claiming Dr. Cole had apologized to community members  uncomfortable with Holocaust education. The caricatures soon went viral.

In fact, the objections of Lexington parents and students were not over Holocaust education at all. Earlier this year, the school brought in an outside group called TribeTalk to run a workshop on antisemitism. The event alarmed parents when they learned that under the guise of educating their children about how to prevent antisemitism and be ‘upstanders,’ TribeTalk had conflated Jewish identity with support for the Israeli government. Parents expressed these views in a meeting with Dr. Cole and Lexington School Superintendent Dr. Julie Hackett. They invited Professor Margaret Litvin of Boston University, a founding member of Concerned Jewish Faculty & Staff (CJFS), to attend.

“TribeTalk materials and workshops do not teach the Holocaust, they exploit it,” Litvin wrote in a letter to the Lexington Observer clarifying what happened. “TribeTalk pushes the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, which mislabels political speech as anti-Jewish ethnic or religious bias.” She noted that TribeTalk and similar groups are “trying hard to ignore the plurality of American Jews who do not identify as Zionist.” Among young Boston-area Jews, according to a 2026 Combined Jewish Philanthropies survey, that percentage is around two-thirds. 

CJFS commends Dr. Cole for taking parent and student concerns seriously. His note expressed an appropriate commitment to include Lexington’s teachers, students, and parents in future efforts “to build something better.” 

The smear campaign that distorted Dr. Cole’s words follows a troubling pattern. Litvin observed that the Washington, DC-based group StopAntisemitism, which took the story to FoxNews, is “known for stunts like placing children’s content creator Ms. Rachel on its ‘Antisemite of the Year’ list.” “Such groups seek simply to co-opt our K-12 education system and public discourse in the service of a foreign government,” she said. “They do not care if they destroy our civic fabric in the process.”

Added CJFS’s Ben Allen, a professor at Emmanuel College: “Jewish people hold a wide range of views on Israel, Palestine, and many other topics. By flattening Jewish identity into a simplistic, pro-Israel narrative, groups like TribeTalk and StopAntisemitism undermine the respectful, fact-based conversations that should be happening instead.”

Concerned Jewish Faculty & Staff, a New England Jewish organization of about 300 higher education professionals, works to clarify the distinction between Jewish identity and pro-Israel political views. CJFS advises and supports education leaders at the campus, town, state, and national levels. At this perilous moment, with antisemitism and related forms of white nationalism on the rise, CJFS applauds education leaders who recognize that conflating Jewishness with Israel endangers and marginalizes Jewish people as well as Arabs, Muslims, and other minority communities.

Read Dr. Litvin’s Letter to the Lexington Observer