Concerned Jewish Faculty & Staff Rejects Censorship of Student Art by the Public Schools of Brookline to “Protect” the Israeli Flag

Concerned Jewish Faculty & Staff Rejects Censorship of Student Art by the Public Schools of Brookline to “Protect” the Israeli Flag 

BROOKLINE, Mass.– Should we stop teaching students to respect different viewpoints if some parents are offended by them? That’s the message the Brookline public school district is sending with its new art show censorship policy. In the process, it offers a disturbing picture of how authoritarian policies travel around the world and are imposed in local communities.

After an exhibition on May 20 at the Florida Ruffin Ridley Elementary School, the right-wing social media account StopAntisemitism.org posted a snapshot of one student’s artwork to its 350,000 followers. It included several national flags, including those of Israel, Ukraine, Lebanon, Iran, Palestine, and the United States. One of two Israeli flags in the artwork had a wooden craft stick inserted through the middle. StopAntisemitism called the piece “a vile display,” neglecting to share the student’s accompanying note, which spoke of the need to raise awareness about “the horrible things going on” in the world.

StopAntisemitism.org was set up in 2018, and has targeted hundreds of individuals for expressing political opinions about Israel. Among them was the children’s entertainer Ms. Rachel after she voiced sympathy with young people in Gaza. It has been funded by the family foundation of Israeli-American real estate tycoon Adam Milstein, a top Republican donor who also gave thousands of dollars to the far-right group Accuracy in Media, which doxxes pro-Palestinian college students. StopAntisemitism’s focus on protecting the Israeli flag reflects draconian laws that were enacted in Israel over the past decade to control political expression, as well as the authoritarian views of President Trump and his supporters. 

Following the art show at Ridley, some Jewish and Israeli families told the school principal that they felt their “identity, heritage and community” were “targeted” by the student project. Hours later, the principal announced that the piece had been removed from the show, and that a formal investigation was being launched by the district’s civil rights coordinator under its antisemitism policy. An update by the principal reported that the investigation found no evidence of discrimination, but because the artwork was “reasonably perceived by Jewish and Israeli community members as invoking antisemitic tropes, and caused significant distress,” the district would create “a systemic review process to evaluate student work before public exhibition.”

But was the perception of antisemitism “reasonable”? This was disputed by many of Ridley School’s Jewish families. “Antisemitism is real,” two parents observed, “and we live with it. But when our ethnic and religious identity are conscripted into a foreign nationalism, real antisemitism becomes harder to see and harder to fight.” The school’s actions had normalized “the very kind of ethnic generalization that antisemitism traffics in.” The parents received no substantive reply from the principal.

At the request of several Brookline residents, Concerned Jewish Faculty & Staff contacted the district superintendent. Administrators, they wrote, were propagating “a false and dangerous stereotype that labels all Jewish people as ethnonationalists more devoted to Israeli imagery than to free speech. It unnecessarily invites legally suspect viewpoint discrimination. It avoids and indeed hobbles the kind of restorative discussion that is so badly needed. Such a policy will not lead to good pedagogical or political outcomes in Brookline.” 

Jewish parents and community members continued to write school administrators, defending the artwork and questioning the district’s shortsighted response. Who gets to decide, they asked, whether student expression is causing “pain” to members of one group or another, and that official intervention is necessary? They, too, were ignored.

Faced with the school district’s blanket refusal to engage, people aired their concerns in the local press. “The public schools should not be censoring their students and taking away their legal rights,” one Brookline resident protested. “Artwork provides opportunities to have open discussions, instead of ‘taking action.’” Another wrote: “Allowing political pressure to dictate student art boundaries fails to foster critical thinking. We must protect students’ rights to question symbols and power structures without censorship.”  “School and district leaders engaged in a common conflation,” observed another. “It should be acceptable to criticize Israel, as it is any country. Judaism is a religion and culture. Criticism of Israel is not inherently antisemitic. Indeed, I am among the many Jews who believe that Israel is engaged in genocide against Palestinians. Israel’s behavior must be called out, and art is an excellent means to do so.”

CJFS rejects the creeping authoritarianism reflected by the new Brookline school district censorship policy. Pressure by right-wing influence campaigns and their wealthy donors protects nobody from antisemitism. Instead it harms our schools and communities, ignores the political diversity of the Jewish community and falsely associates us with the restriction of civil liberties. We call on the district to reverse its policy.