Schools Scrap Speech By Palestinian After Jewish Students Report Harassment
Millard North High School in Omaha, Nebraska. Image by Facebook
By Aiden Pink October 5, 2017
Two high schools in Omaha, Nebraska have disinvited a Palestinian speaker from giving lectures on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict after Jewish students reported that they were being harassed about her visit.
Noa Carmi, a Palestinian activist from Jerusalem who is on a nationwide speaking tour, had been scheduled to speak at Advanced Placement Human Geography classes at Millard North and Millard South high schools.
While the school dismissed concerns from a parent that Carmi would only present one side of the conflict, administrators later heard from the Anti-Defamation League that a Jewish student or students were being verbally harassed, spurring them to cancel the talks.
“We could see this was a situation that was spilling out of the classroom and becoming a disruption to our learning environment,” school district spokeswoman Rebecca Kleeman said. “Then we did take the action of canceling the speaker.”
“This whole thing is very disappointing to us,” she added. “We want to [address] controversial issues and teach our students to think critically.”
Carmi has reportedly worked with the Sabeel Liberation Theology Center, according to her biography. Rev. Naim Ateek, the founder of Sabeel, once wrote that Zionism is a “false theology” justified by a “mythical racial ancestry” that “promotes death rather than life.”
Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected] or on Twitter, @aidenpink
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Dive In
-
Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
-
Fast Forward Yarden Bibas says ‘I am here because of Trump’ and pleads with him to stop the Gaza war
-
Fast Forward Trump’s plan to enlist Elon Musk began at Lubavitcher Rebbe’s grave
-
Fast Forward Katrina Armstrong steps down as Columbia president after White House pressure over antisemitism
Most Popular
- 1
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- 2
News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
- 3
Culture How two Jewish names — Kohen and Mira — are dividing red and blue states
- 4
Opinion Mike Huckabee said there’s ‘no such thing as a Palestinian.’ It’s worth thinking about what that means
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
-
Fast Forward Yarden Bibas says ‘I am here because of Trump’ and pleads with him to stop the Gaza war
-
Fast Forward Trump’s plan to enlist Elon Musk began at Lubavitcher Rebbe’s grave
-
Film & TV In this Jewish family, everybody needs therapy — especially the therapists themselves
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.