Protecting Jewish students or chilling speech? Inside California’s ‘hardest’ fight over antisemitism

By Yue Stella Yu and Mikhail Zinshteyn CalMatters Emotional fights erupted over a controversial attempt this year to counter antisemitism in schools by restricting what teachers teach in classrooms exposing a political quagmire for California Democrats who needed to balance the requirements of Jewish communities against the fury of a growing pro-Palestinian base Tears welling in her eyes Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan paused mid-sentence to calm herself on the Assembly floor RELATED Newsom signs controversial antisemitism bill that sets up first-in-the-nation measures Almost a century ago the Nazis forced her grandmother to flee Austria leaving behind her great-great-grandmother who died in the Holocaust the Jewish Democrat from San Ramon advised her fellow lawmakers Last year she explained her daughter recounted her that the bathrooms at her school had been vandalized with swastikas Related Articles California s Prop promised mass medicine for defendants A new scrutiny shows how it s going California restaurants will have to disclose food allergens on their menus under new law Gov Newsom signs a reparations research law but vetoes other racial justice proposals Gov Newsom signs controversial bill letting relatives care for kids if parents are deported Check out several wildfire-related bills that Gov Newsom signed last week My children deserve to show up at school and not have to face hate crimes in their building to face the symbols that represented the end of their relatives she announced Stories like hers as well as Hamas attack on Israel on Oct prompted California s Jewish lawmakers to make countering antisemitism in schools their top priority this year They sought to create a list of words and ideas that could not be mentioned in classrooms including heavily disputed asserts about Israel The effort sparked the biggest the greater part emotional legislative fight of the year Should the governing body regulate what can be taught in schools If so how far should it go At issue was Assembly Bill which Gov Gavin Newsom signed into law this month after it went through multiple major sometimes last-minute rewrites during months of political tussling Champions have argued the law will protect Jewish students from rising bullying and discrimination sometimes from teachers While the state does not collect facts on antisemitism in schools reports of anti-Jewish bias statewide have doubled between and according to the California Department of Justice Last year more than of all hate crime events in California were anti-Jewish even though Jewish people make up about of the state population We cannot hide from the profoundly unfortunate truth that Jewish kids are being isolated made to feel unwelcome and verbally and physically attacked And far too often our schools are failing to protect them Assemblymember Rick Zbur a Los Angeles Democrat and co-author of the bill stated during a May hearing when the bill started as merely a promise to curb antisemitism in schools Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur speaks to lawmakers during an Assembly floor session at the state Capitol in Sacramento on Oct Photo by Fred Greaves for CalMatters By July it had undergone a major overhaul including determining that any instruction that directly or indirectly deny Israel s right to exist equating Israelis with Nazis or disrespecting the historical cultural or religious significance of Israel to the Jewish people would count as creating an antisemitic learning surroundings It reinvigorated debates over whether criticism of Israel s founding or even the belief that Jewish people should have an independent country in their ancient homeland counts as antisemitic something Jewish thinkers do not agree on Mainstream Jewish groups maintain that anti-Zionism a broad term that generally opposes the idea of a standalone state with a Jewish-majority population is antisemitic A multitude of Jewish academics however don t think it is antisemitic on its own but they agree that blaming individual Jews for the actions taken by the Israeli cabinet is antisemitic That July version of the bill drew heavy opposition from a vast coalition of learning groups from teachers unions to school boards civil rights advocates and Muslim neighborhood organizations who feared censorship of pro-Palestinian voices and infringement upon academic freedom They would remain opposed through its a great number of iterations and a large number of of them urged Newsom to veto it RELATED Cal State targeted by federal authorities in antisemitism inquiry Their concerns lingered even as the bill was ultimately watered down in the final days of this year s legislative session to address bias more broadly The final version no longer mentions the Israel-Hamas war and bars using professional growth materials that violate the state s anti-discrimination laws It also requires factually accurate instruction that is free of advocacy personal opinion bias or partisanship a controversial element the bill s authors commented they ran out of time to tackle and promised to clean up next year In its current form this bill only reinforces broader national trends of silencing constitutionally protected speech erasing historically relevant curriculum and persecuting anyone who expresses even the slightest opposition to the federal administration reported Assemblymember Robert Garcia a freshman Democratic lawmaker from Rancho Cucamonga and former facilitator and school board member who ultimately abstained from voting on the measure The squabble over the bill was messy marked by hundreds of attendees hourslong hearings and accusations of bad faith from both sides Bauer-Kahan called a teachers union advocate who opposed the bill antisemitic After the bill passed out of the Legislature a handful of pro-Palestinian activists protested from the Assembly gallery for more than an hour yelling You will all have blood on your hands Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan speaks in backing of SCR which would designate May as California Holocaust Memorial Day on the Assembly floor at the state Capitol in Sacramento on April Photo by Miguel Gutierrez Jr CalMatters The tension highlights the discomfort for California Democrats who despite having traditionally defended Israel have had to reckon with a base growing increasingly critical of Israel They faced a tough choice Patronage the bill and liability upsetting specific of the bulk powerful labor allies as well as their pro-Palestinian constituents or oppose the bill and threat being labeled as antisemitic or unwilling to combat antisemitism Amid the pressure particular Democratic lawmakers voted for the bill even as they warned it could be used to censor free speech Others abstained instead of taking a side I m really surprised that California state legislators would want to even touch it because it s just so radioactive right now declared Kim Nalder a political science professor at Sacramento State University It just feels like at this political moment we want to lower the temperature not shine a spotlight on procedures in which we might target each other The issue was such a hot potato that multiple lawmakers avoided tackling it early in the legislative process when agenda differences are often ironed out explained Sen Sasha Ren e P rez a freshman progressive Democrat from Pasadena who chairs the Senate Coaching Committee When the bill arrived in her committee in June it still had no substantive language Particular lawmakers communicated her to not touch it either while others left it up to her to take care of it she reported The ball got thrown to me she stated CalMatters And people knew that they were doing that People would end up being very angry on both sides California s Jewish lawmakers introduced the bill in response to intensifying clashes in schools and college campuses nationwide over the Israeli-Hamas conflict in Gaza For a few Democrats the timing couldn t have been worse The war has forced a tidal shift within the Democratic base as voters endorsement for Israel s military campaign tanked over the past two years That has forced selected Democrats even moderates who have historically backed Israel to condemn the country and pull away from pro-Israel donors Young Democrats are also more critical of Israel than their older peers so any vote that could be perceived as silencing pro-Palestinian voices is risky A very strong part of Democratic and leftist values that we are seeing expressed now is anti-genocide or anti-war Nalder mentioned For my students who are politically current this is one of the chief issues that they care about The bill also came as President Donald Trump ordered immigration agents to arrest attendee activists critical of the Israeli leadership and withheld billions of dollars in funding from universities for their alleged failure to protect Jewish students At least half a dozen other state Legislatures sought to fight antisemitism in schools this year with several adopting a highly disputed definition of antisemitism in state schooling codes Enraged selected opponents accused California Democrats of taking a page out of Trump s playbook But the Democratic lawmakers had to balance all that with the threat of upsetting the Jewish region a key voting block A no vote could be construed as antisemitic making the lawmaker vulnerable to challenges in the next polling Nalder explained The bill was the sole priority of the -member California Legislative Jewish Caucus which is composed entirely of Democrats and led by Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel of Encino and Sen Scott Wiener of San Francisco who chair the budget committees in their respective chambers Neither would speak with CalMatters about what happened with the bill Gabriel s office did not respond to several CalMatters emails seeking an interview whereas Wiener declined to comment pointing CalMatters to the bill authors instead David Bocarsly executive director of the Jewish Citizens Affairs Committee which sponsored the bill declared the caucus backing was crucial The Jewish caucus was able to leverage their influence and respect with their colleagues and effectively represent the Jewish society s requirements he disclosed P rez acknowledged the political challenge telling CalMatters she would have preferred to hold the bill until next year but announced legislative leaders had promised to deliver a bill the governor could sign this year She revealed chosen colleagues notified her it was an impossible situation to tackle They felt like there was no winning she stated Regardless of what they would try to do to make amendments to it people would end up being very angry on both sides A debate over academic freedom The clash over AB is the latest episode of yearslong strife over how to teach about marginalized communities in California s K- schools and who should be included In past years the fight primarily focused on ethnic studies a mandatory high school curriculum on the history and civilization of groups such as Latinos Asian Americans African Americans and Native Americans The state adopted a model curriculum in after years of fine-tuning amid disputes over which ethnic minority groups to teach about and criticism from Jewish advocates who accused past versions of being antisemitic Jewish lawmakers championed a bill earlier this year that aimed to tackle antisemitism by restricting the ethnic studies curriculum but the effort was stopped early in its tracks and legislators turned to AB instead This is a bill about protecting Jewish students and it shouldn t have been controversial stated Bocarsly of JPAC If we don t teach empathy and understand it we re going to build a generation of intolerance and that s what we re trying to correct for He reported AB was the hardest political fight in JPAC s history and that the initial definition of an antisemitic learning ecosystem was only meant to offer teachers guidance But opponents had two major concerns that the bill s initial definition of antisemitic learning climate risked silencing discord about Israel and that even in its final watered-down version it could chill free speech and open teachers up to lawsuits for teaching about anything controversial Jews are largest part safe when democracy flourishes when pluralism flourishes not when rights are taken away explained David Goldberg president of the California Teachers Association and a Jewish father to three children who attend residents schools A classroom at a high school in Imperial County on Dec Photo by Kristian Carreon for CalMatters What s safe for Jews was itself a matter of disagreement among the bill s backers and dissenters Bocarsly explained CTA leadership s opposition to every version of the bill shows that they have little interest in supporting a bill that would protect Jewish students Goldberg in an interview called that accusation a lot of chutzpah frankly The fact the bill even tried to prescribe what an antisemitic setting looked like in classrooms was concerning to Kenneth Stern a scholar on hate More than years ago he was the lead author of the highly controversial definition of antisemitism that s been adopted by specific states this year It all but labels anti-Zionism as a form of antisemitism Now nearly countries including the U S have embraced the definition Though Stern wrote the definition he opposes using it to restrict speech in schools arguing that it could threaten academic freedom and fuel censorship by chilling discussion about controversial topics Stern noted despite all the revisions made during the process the final version will likely make antisemitism worse The law creates an antisemitism prevention coordinator to advise development and legislative leaders and says the person in that role should use federal guidelines published under former President Joe Biden as a basis for decision-making The controversial definition of antisemitism Stern wrote is labeled as the largest part prominent definition of antisemitism in those guidelines though it mentions others I understand why people care about preventing antisemitism in schools he reported They want the Legislature to do something I think the legislators are sincere that they want to do something This is the wrong thing Educators like Goldberg worry the bill could allow bad-faith critics to also dispute a wide array of controversial topics taught in schools Will it become the basis for critics of the transgender district to pressure teachers to say there are only two genders he wondered Gabriel Kahn a Jewish instructor in Oakland who stated he s being investigated by his school district after challenging the content of an antisemitic training last year mentioned he fears prosecution for voicing the need to distinguish between antisemitism and criticism of Israel What I m largest part afraid of is that in the Democratic state of California we can pass a censorship bill that protects a foreign nation from criticism implicitly he reported What does that say about the future of academic freedom in our country CalMatters reporter Carolyn Jones contributed reporting