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Very Different Responses to Antisemitism in N.Y. High Schools
(Los Angeles Jewish Journal) Rafael Medoff - At Hillcrest High School in Queens, a teacher recently committed the high crime of posting a photo of herself at a pro-Israel rally on her personal Facebook page. She didn't post the photo on the school's website or tack it up on a bulletin board near the cafeteria. It was in her personal space, on her personal time. But four hundred students responded by rioting for hours on Nov. 20, waving Palestinian flags, damaging school property, and chanting for the teacher to be fired. Some posted threats against the teacher on social media. The teacher was forced to hide in a locked office for hours. School Chancellor David Banks downplayed the severity of the students' action and sought to "understand" the student mob. "They were doing what 14- and 15-year-olds do," Banks said on Nov. 27. A more principled and effective response to antisemitism among high school students may be found in the example set by German-American high school principal Ralph W. Haller in Queens, NY, in 1944 at Andrew Jackson High School, just four miles from the scene of the recent riot. After five students were caught painting antisemitic slogans in Queens Village, Haller announced a new policy that any student involved in antisemitic acts would not be permitted to graduate. He told a meeting of parents on Feb. 12: "I consider such [antisemitic] activities totally in contradiction to everything that the America of today or the America which we hope to have tomorrow stands for." Since he was authorized to deny a graduation diploma to any student who gave evidence of "poor American citizenship," he vowed to henceforth classify antisemitic activity as un-American. The writer is founding director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies.