Max Samarov
Algemeiner, July 19, 2023
“When Jews raised concerns and asked to be included as well, the districtresponded that, “Jewish Studies and Israeli Studies are not part of the Ethnic Studies discipline.”
In June 2023, the Hayward Unified School District (HUSD) in Northern California signed a contract worth over $90,000, with a group called the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium (LESMCC).
The LESMCC is tasked with training HUSD teachers and helping create curriculum materials for ethnic studies courses, which are a graduation requirement in the district. On the surface, none of this screams “antisemitism,” but it is contracts like this one that could lead to bigotry against Jews becoming institutionalized in K-12 public schools.
Numerous states and school districts have begun offering or requiring ethnic studies for students in high school, and even earlier. Their broad goal is to educate about groups that have been left out or misrepresented in traditional US history. Ethnic studies courses are seen as a solution, because they center Black, Latino, Asian, and Native American communities, and sometimes cover Jews or others.
While empowering students to understand America’s diverse society, fight racism, and build a better future is vital, HUSD’s embrace of LESMCC shows how such efforts can go off the rails.
For Jews, France has always been a country of paradoxes. On one hand, it freed them from Europe’s historic bondage…
The LESMCC was formed in 2020 by writers of the first draft of California’s Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (ESMC), which was rejected by state officials in 2019.
That draft was widely criticized for promoting antisemitism, anti-Israel narratives, and other forms of bias. However, the LESMCC insisted that this curriculum represented the only authentic way to teach ethnic studies. Since then, they have been marketing their services directly to California school districts.
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