Massachusetts principal under fire for apologising for antisemitism discussion

JTA – A lesson on antisemitism went awry after the principal of a Boston-area middle school sent an obliquely worded apology letter to parents this week. 

The incident at William Diamond Middle School in Lexington, Massachusetts, initially prompted some Jewish social media accounts and conservative news outlets to conclude the principal, Dr Johnny Cole, was apologising for teaching about the Holocaust. 

A local media outlet, however, reported on Thursday that Cole’s apology wasn’t related to the Holocaust at all. Rather, he had apologised for a lesson on modern-day antisemitism that the school had contracted a local third-party Jewish group to teach. 

Following the lesson, the Lexington Observer reported, a dozen families had objected to the group’s use of material from the Blue Square Alliance, an antisemitism advocacy and monitoring organisation, because its founder, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, is a prominent supporter of Israel. This prompted Cole to write “We are sorry” to pupils who “felt like your own history, your identity, or your community was left out or erased”. 

Cole continued, “Every one of you deserves to walk into this school and feel that who you are matters ‒ Arab students; Jewish students; Lebanese students; Muslim students; Palestinian students ‒ every student.” The Observer verified and published his apology. 

The Boston Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) shed further light on the specifics of his apology. “We now understand that the letter itself , which, as written, was deeply disturbing and offensive to many members of our Jewish community, was in fact poorly worded and not reflective of the facts and context,” the council said in a statement shared with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA). 

Neither Cole nor multiple representatives of the middle school committee, nor the district superintendent, nor the school’s parent-teacher organisation responded to JTA requests for comment. None of the listed personnel associated with TribeTalk, the antisemitism education group contracted by the school district, responded to multiple JTA requests for comment on Thursday. Representatives of the Blue Square Alliance also didn’t return a JTA request for comment. 

But the details of why TribeTalk was called into the school, and what the lesson consisted of, were provided by the Observer. Citing Cole and other school officials, the paper reported that TribeTalk’s visit had been prompted by the recent discovery of graffiti of a neo-Nazi symbol, as well as what Cole had described as “a racist anti-black epithet” in the school’s boys’ bathroom. 

According to its website, TribeTalk receives support from several Jewish funders, some with direct ties to Israel, including Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston, the regional federation arm; Jewish National Fund USA, which funds land projects in Israel; the Jewish United Fund; and several family foundations. TribeTalk personnel consulted with the school’s social studies teachers on the contents of the lesson, the Observer reported. 

A summary of the approved lesson, published by the Observer, provides a window into how institutionally backed Jewish groups are teaching about antisemitism and Zionism to public school students in the post-7 October era. 

The lesson defines antisemitism as “negative assumptions or opinions aimed at the Jewish community”. Zionism, the lesson notes, “recognises the Jewish people as a people” and “recognises their deep-rooted ties to their indigenous homeland in Israel”. 

It further provides examples of when criticism of Israel is not antisemitic, according to TribeTalk, which lists “criticism of the prime minister or other politicians”, “advocating for a separate Palestinian state”, and “advocating for ceasefires” as “not antisemitic”. 

The lesson summary goes on to describe breakout sessions in which pupils discussed whether hypothetical situations were antisemitic. It included two inspired by local real-life incidents: a football team using “Auschwitz” as a play call and a teen posting “#FreePalestine” under someone else’s photo of challah. Further discussion points included a breakdown of the history of the swastika. 

None of the pupils complained or expressed discomfort during the lessons, according to the Observer. In feedback notes published by the paper, some students indicated they wanted to learn more about topics including “Zionism”, “Palestine”, and “the history of antisemitism”. Overall feedback from hundreds of children was appreciative. 

Afterwards, the school said it heard from 12 concerned parents “whose children felt really harmed by the presentation because they didn’t feel that their perspective, family background, and history was seen”, Cole told the paper. Those concerns, he said, prompted the school’s apology. 

According to the Observer, some parents were also concerned because TribeTalk sent pupils home with Blue Square Alliance stickers after the talk. 

Those stickers, Cole said he told TribeTalk, could be perceived as “challenging for some families”. 

“If there’s a conflation of these things, I’m worried it will make more people have resentment and associate Judaism with the actions of a military,” a district parent, Andrew Harris, told the Observer. 

In its own statement, Boston’s JCRC didn’t dig into the specifics of the lesson but thanked the school district for its work “to address antisemitism and all forms of hatred”, and noted that such conversations “are difficult and complex”. JTA requests for comment to two local antisemitism activist groups, Lexington United Against Antisemitism and Massachusetts Educators Against Antisemitism, as well as to the Anti-Defamation League’s New England branch, weren’t returned by deadline. 

StopAntisemitism, a popular X account that was an initial driver of inaccurate information behind the Lexington story, doubled down on Thursday afternoon, hours after the Observer’s story and JCRC’s statement had been published. 

“Where is the superintendent? Where is the school board?” the account wrote, referencing a day-old Fox News story about the incident that inaccurately claimed the apology was directed to pupils “offended by a Holocaust lesson”.