‘Festival of Jew hate’ – Antisemitism dominates private school conference

Professor Ruha Benjamin, a speaker at the conference who teaches at Princeton, accused Israel of “genocide” during her presentation.

By World Israel News Staff

An annual conference of American private schools featured talks accusing Israel of genocide and downplaying the October 7th terror onslaught, causing Jewish participants to fear for their safety.

The 2024 National Association of Independent Schools’ (NAIS) annual People of Color Conference, held in Colorado last week, devolved into a “festival of Jew hate,” one participant told the New York Post.

Approximately 8,000 students and teachers from hundreds of the most prestigious private schools in the U.S. attended the NAIS conference.

Dr. Suzanne Barakat, an Islamophobia and social justice activist, used her platform to rail against Zionism and slam Israel.

Calling the founders of modern Israel “colonists,” Barakat accused Israel of committing “ethnic cleansing.” Barakat also brushed over the October 7th Hamas massacres, referring to the slaughters as an “assault,” rather than the most brutal terror attacks in Israeli history.

After the conference, the NAIS released a statement about Barakat’s remarks, saying that “while some attendees shared the speaker’s perspective and felt both seen and heard, others were deeply hurt and outraged.”

“Nobody could even bring themselves to say the word ‘antisemitism’ in the acknowledgement,” said Sarah Shulkind, the director of Los Angeles Jewish private school Milken, told the Post.

“Most horrifying is that the thousands of educators that were in that room teach at the nation’s most elite schools . . . they stood and cheered,” Shulkind continued. “It reveals to me two things: virulent, unapologetic Jew hate, and profound ignorance.”

Professor Ruha Benjamin, another speaker at the conference who teaches at Princeton, accused Israel of “genocide” in Gaza during her presentation.

The ideas promoted at the conference are essentially “indoctrination for them to bring back to the school,” a New York City private school mom told the Post.

“There’s no transparency. I don’t know if one of my daughter’s teachers were there … I want to know that the teachers and students that went are now going to be un-indoctrinated.”

In a letter to the NAIS, Jewish advocacy groups including the Anti-Defamation League and American Jewish Committee condemned the anti-Israel speeches at the conference.

“Jewish students and faculty attending [the conference] were forced to hear this damaging and antisemitic rhetoric repeated time and again and watch as their peers applauded,” the groups wrote.

“These occurrences, along with others reported by Jewish attendees, display a fundamental undermining of the principles of inclusivity and equity that NAIS stands for, and a marginalization of Jewish students and educators at a time of skyrocketing antisemitism.”

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