Congress Launches New Antisemitism Investigation Into Berkeley Schools

A congressional committee on Monday launched a new investigation into reports of antisemitism into Berkeley’s school district, raising concerns that the schools failed to protect Jewish students’ civil rights.

The House of Representatives’ Education and Workforce Committee outlined the allegations in a letter sent to three school districts nationwide: Berkeley Unified School District, Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia and the School District of Philadelphia.

“Jewish and Israeli students have allegedly been regularly bullied and harassed,” since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, according to the letter from Education and Workforce Committee Chair Tim Walberg (R–Michigan) and Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education Subcommittee Chair Kevin Kiley (R–California).

The committee said that Jewish students in Berkeley schools were “subjected to open antisemitism in their classrooms and hallways.”

“Some teachers and administrators across BUSD allegedly facilitate and encourage this hostility, while others fail to act in response to it,” the letter from Walberg and Kiley continued.

Berkeley’s school district has been at the center of federal antisemitism investigations in K-12 schools since February 2024, when the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and the Anti-Defamation League filed a formal complaint with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, alleging that Jewish students had been subject to “severe and persistent” discrimination in Berkeley schools.

That May, BUSD’s Superintendent, Enikia Ford Morthel, testified before Congress in proceedings led by Republican lawmakers — similar to those held months earlier with leaders of prominent colleges and universities. She said that antisemitism is not pervasive in Berkeley schools.

But Berkeley parents and advocates who believe the district has continuously failed to investigate alleged antisemitism praised the new investigation.

“I think it’s necessary and … good because the complaints against Berkeley Unified have not yet been resolved,” said Marci Miller, the Director of Legal Investigations with the Brandeis Center, which is run by a former education department official from Trump’s first administration.

“And, because when the Superintendent was called before Congress last time, there seemed to be a lack of accountability or even acknowledging that there was an issue in the first place,” she continued.

The committee letter cited specific incidents of antisemitism at BUSD schools in recent years, including an allegation that during a pro-Palestinian walkout at Berkeley High School in 2023, students yelled “Kill the Jews,” and that a teacher at the school displayed a photo of a fist destroying the Star of David, describing it as “standing up for social justice.”

Parent Ilana Pearlman, who pulled one of her children out of BUSD over antisemitism concerns, said she’s filed multiple complaints with the district that have gone unaddressed for years.

“There’s that sense of, ‘I told my parents something, I told my teacher something that happened, and nobody did anything,’” she told KQED. “That’s kind of how I feel in the district in general. I, as an adult, said, ‘These things have happened,’ and nobody’s done anything.”

Miller said there have been more than 100 such complaints lodged with BUSD since January 2024.

“What matters is the takeaway and the impact that that still has on my children of this noticing … that it might be unsafe to be Jewish,” Pearlman said.

The district said in an email on Tuesday that it would respond “appropriately” to the Committee’s letter, which demands a plethora of documents related to curriculum, school activities, partnerships and contracts that refer or relate to Jews, Judaism, Israel, Palestine, Zionism or antisemitism, as well as a chart of all complaints of antisemitism the district has received since Oct. 7, 2023.

A BUSD spokesperson added that Ford Morthel addressed the specific claims of the letter at the May 2024 hearing.

“Our babies sometimes say hurtful things. We are mindful that all kids make mistakes,” Ford Morthel told lawmakers at the time. “We know that our staff are not immune to missteps either, and we don’t ignore them when they occur.”

She also said that when students and staff district addressed alleged incidents of antisemitism through education, restorative justice and discipline.

“We do not publish our actions because student information is private and legally protected under federal and state law,” she told lawmakers at the time. “As a result, some believe we do nothing. This is not true.”

Berkeley substitute teacher Christina Harb, who is Palestinian American, said that some of the allegations had been disproven.

“There’s only one parent that makes the claim that she heard [‘Kill the Jews’],” during the walkout mentioned in the letter, Harb told KQED. She said another incident lawmakers cited, that a teacher allegedly put a drawing by students that said ‘Stop Bombing Babies’ outside the one Jewish teacher at the school’s classroom, was taken out of context.

“It was not placed outside of her classroom because it’s her classroom. It was placed on an anti-hate wall that’s been in place since 2017,” she said.

Harb believes that BUSD teachers and administrators have done their due diligence to address antisemitism concerns. She said she’s worried that the current investigation will instead be used to silence Muslim and Palestinian kids in Berkeley schools — a number of whom have reported incidents of discrimination to the district, and even filed their own ongoing federal civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.

“It’s just really clear that BUSD is just being used really as a chess piece in a much, much broader agenda — a pro-Israel agenda,” she told KQED.