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By Melissa Langsam Braunstein
(December 2, 2025 / Jewish Chronical) October 7 was more than two years ago, but the Jew-hatred it maximized in American K-12 schools remains. Congress has noticed and is now investigating allegations of antisemitism and considering whether legislative fixes are required as a remedy.
Last Monday, House committee on education and workforce chair Tim Walberg announced an investigation into California’s Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD), Virginia’s Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS), and the School District of Philadelphia (SDP).
These districts have until December 8 – that is, next Monday – to provide requested documentation. That includes anonymized charts of antisemitism-related complaints the districts have received since October 7 and any actions taken, along with documentation related to school happenings and contracts that reference “Jews, Judaism, Israel, Palestine, Zionism, or antisemitism”. Philadelphia must also provide documentation on anti-discrimination training.
These districts’ actions (and inaction) have already generated legal filings and damaging headlines.
For Berkeley, this is also round two: superintendent Enikia Ford Morthel testified before Congress about BUSD’s Jew-hatred problem, which she downplayed, in May 2024. That followed the Brandeis Centre and ADL’s February 2024 civil rights complaint, alleging BUSD failed “to end non-stop bullying and harassment of Jewish students by peers and teachers since October 7”.
Among the cited problems, teachers “promote[d], support[ed], and organize[d] walkouts and activities,” where students chanted “Kill the Jews” and a teacher directed second graders to write “Stop Bombing Babies” on papers they posted by the lone Jewish teacher’s classroom.
Marci Miller, director of legal investigations for the Brandeis Center, explained BUSD merits continued attention: “Complaints from 2024 have still not been addressed, parents have experienced retaliation as a result of their complaints, and reports of incidents of antisemitism in the district are ongoing.”
In Fairfax, problems date back years. The Zionist Organization of America “filed a complaint against the district with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights” back “in January 2022”, Susan Tuchman, director of ZOA’s Center for Law and Justice, told me. ZOA’s “14-page complaint described in heartbreaking detail what Jewish students were facing, including “Heil Hitler” salutes, Jewish “jokes”, and coins being thrown at them, along with swastikas drawn on “desks and [in] school bathrooms”. Nearly four years on, this complaint “remains unresolved” and Fairfax “district officials are still failing to respond to [antisemitism] effectively”.
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