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Educators Worry Palestine Censorship Could Reshape Public Education Entirely.

lawmakers who sponsored House Bill (HB) 937 seemed more committed to preventing teachers and pupils from criticizing Israel than preventing discrimination against Jewish students

New efforts to shut down honest discussion of Palestine could restrict everything from literature to science classes.

By Marianne Dhenin , Truthout, November 29, 2025

A wave of bills introduced this year in state legislatures across the country sought to censor Palestine-related education in public schools. Several passed with the support of pro-Israel Democratic lawmakers, a trend that educators and First Amendment advocates told Truthout reflects the alignment of pro-Israel groups with MAGA forces. As these efforts continue, many said they fear public education could be reshaped far beyond social studies classrooms and the topics of Israel and Palestine.

“The censorship of Palestinians is the same as the ‘Don’t Say Gay,’ and the anti-critical race theory attacks on Black history,” Nora Lester-Murad, an organizer with the #DropTheADLfromSchools effort, told Truthout. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is one of a number of pro-Israel groups supporting regressive public education legislation across the country. “Yes, it’s Zionist, and yes, it’s promoting Israel, but it’s also part of this right-wing effort to take public education in a direction that’s away from critical thinking and that’s anti-liberatory.”

This year, legislators in at least eight states — including Arizona, Arkansas, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Tennessee — introduced bills that would directly adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism in public schools. That definition equates criticism of Israel with antisemitism. Dozens of civil society and rights groups, as well as unions of educators, have warned against its adoption because of its power to chill or suppress speech critical of Israel or Zionism.

Michael Berg, an organizer with Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) in Missouri, said lawmakers who sponsored House Bill (HB) 937 seemed more committed to preventing teachers and pupils from criticizing Israel than preventing discrimination against Jewish students. “They were attached to the IHRA definition, so it shows that it’s very specifically about speech about Israel,” he said. Organizers succeeded in stopping HB 937 in Missouri this year, but Berg told Truthout they are already preparing to fight a new iteration of the bill in the upcoming legislative session.

Other states have made similar efforts, including California, where Democrats hold a supermajority in the state assembly. There, this year’s Assembly Bill (AB) 715 was the latest in a series introduced under the guise of curbing antisemitism, but whose critics argue are censorship bills that undermine the implementation of earlier legislation mandating ethnic studies courses in public schools. AB 715 does not define antisemitism, but calls for using the Biden-era United States National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism as “a basis to inform schools on how to identify, respond to, prevent, and counter antisemitism.” That white paper claims that “the United States has embraced” IHRA’s definition as a “valuable tool” in countering antisemitism. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 715 into law in October; the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) filed a suit challenging the law in federal court in November.

Meanwhile, this August in Massachusetts, another Democratic stronghold, the state’s Special Commission on Combating Antisemitism approved recommendations meant to curb antisemitism in schools. The recommendations call on districts to teach IHRA’s definition of antisemitism in anti-bias trainings for teachers and school administrators. A statewide coalition of labor unions, civil rights groups, and progressive Jewish organizations warned that rather than countering antisemitism, the recommendations “pit some Jewish students against other marginalized populations” and will likely “undermine safe learning and working environments for students and teachers.”

These moves dovetail with a federal agenda to remake the nation’s public schools and historical programming at other public institutions, such as museums and national parks. Since his return to office, President Donald Trump has signed executive orders demanding an end to “radical indoctrination in K-12 schooling” and “restoring truth and sanity to American history.” The administration advocates teaching a whitewashed and aggrandizing version of the nation’s past that Trump, in one executive order, called “patriotic education.”…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

The recent wave of bills limiting Palestine-related speech in public schools also harms students. “We believe that antisemitism is being used to censor education on Palestine, and we believe that our students have a right to understand both sides of an issue,” Seth Morrison, spokesperson for JVP’s Bay Area chapter and an organizer with CCDPE, told Truthout. “We’re not saying don’t talk about Israel or don’t talk about the Holocaust. What we’re saying is that there are many open issues here and that Arab and Muslim students especially are being intimidated and censored because of IHRA and related activities.”…………………………………………………………………………………….. https://truthout.org/articles/educators-worry-palestine-censorship-could-reshape-public-education-entirely/

December 2, 2025 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Education, USA