Civil rights investigation opened for Fulton County schools amid antisemitism allegations

Fulton County Courthouse in Atlanta. Credit: Warren LeMay/Flickr via Wikimedia Commons.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has opened an investigation against the Fulton County School District in Atlanta following complaints of antisemitism against students, filed by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, Jewish Americans for Fairness in Education and the National Jewish Advocacy Center.

The March 20 announcement also included new investigations into Yale, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Scripps College and American University.

The three organizations filed a Title VI complaint with the OCR last August over persistent antisemitic bullying and harassment against Jewish and Israeli students that took place in elementary, middle, and high schools across the Fulton County system. The complaint documents numerous incidents showing how FCSD fostered a hostile climate that has allowed antisemitism to thrive in its schools at the hands of students, teachers and administrators, and says the system “has ignored pleas from Jewish and Israeli parents whose children have faced increasing physical and verbal harassment, and the District has denied the antisemitic nature of the incidents. “

In February, the school district was also hit with a civil rights complaint by the Georgia chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Asian Americans Advancing Justice, saying Palestinian students have been stopped from displaying their heritage, and that the district has been confusing anti-Zionism with antisemitism.

The CAIR complaint urges the district to reject the complaint filed by the Brandeis Center, saying the requested remedies “would suppress Palestinian identity, history and experiences,” violating Title VI. The complaint said there was an urgent need to speak out against “genocide” and cited a figure of 186,000 Palestinian deaths in Gaza, far in excess of the 45,000 figure promoted by the Hamas-run Ministry of Health, which does not state how many of the deaths were active Hamas fighters.

Denise Katz-Prober, director of legal initiatives for the Brandeis Center, said that “the families of these Jewish and Israeli students have been left to fend for themselves, by administrators who dismiss their complaints and refuse to act. It is long past due for FCSD to take swift corrective action against the antisemitism that pervades their schools.”

Among the cited incidents, the day after the Oct. 7 massacre, Jewish and Israeli students in FCSD were subject to other students yelling anti-Israel slogans and cursing at them. One Israeli middle school student was told by a classmate that “somebody needs to bomb your country, and hey, somebody already did.” A high school student approached a group of Jewish and Israeli girls and mimicked shooting them with a gun while making gunshot noises. Students have also burned “I stand with Israel” posters.

A student asked an Israeli fifth grade student if she was Israeli and then told her that she hates Jews and Israelis and they should all be killed. The same student kept approaching the Israeli student and happily describing all the atrocities that Hamas had committed in Israel, including beheading babies and butchering children. Further, some Jewish students, as young as six years old, have been told, during class and with teachers present, that Israel is entirely at fault for this war.

Nine days after Oct. 7, a second grade teacher told her class — which included two Israeli students — that the war was Israel’s fault. Further, educational materials used by FCSD teachers to indoctrinate students with one-sided history include maps that completely omit the State of Israel and erase the heritage of Jewish and Israeli students.

In April, during cultural night at a District elementary school, five Israeli mothers of FCSD students were tabling with their children when they were verbally accosted and abused by a group of Palestinian parents. The Israeli mothers were yelled at and called “Nazis.”  As the mothers began to shake and cry in fear for their children’s and their own safety, the leader of the Palestinian group – a father of another student – spat at them. After the victims complained to a school safety officer, the guard ultimately told the women that the man seemed nice, so he was not going to do anything.

The Brandeis Center stated that “Parents reported the antisemitism to school administrators on numerous occasions. But instead of taking responsive action to address the anti-Jewish hostility, FCSD denied the antisemitic nature of the incidents or offered inadequate solutions.”

The hostile environment “has become intolerable, and is ultimately denying Jewish students the full benefits of their federally-funded education and interfering with Jewish students’ ability to access their education.”

The district responded with a denial of any wrongdoing, not commenting “on the validity — or lack thereof — of the allegations in the complaint.”

The system’s statement continued, “This private group’s effort to depict Fulton County Schools as promoting or even tolerating antisemitism is false… Whenever inappropriate behavior is brought to our attention, Fulton County Schools takes it seriously, investigates and takes appropriate action.”

The system said world events spill over onto campuses everywhere, and the system “recognizes the strong feelings that were generated by the tragedy of October 7 and the continuing war in the Middle East.”

The statement concluded by asserting that “school leadership has continually communicated with parents and students with the goal of respecting one another and maintaining a focus on learning.”

“We are thrilled that the Department of Education has opened an investigation into Fulton County, and we are encouraged that the OCR is not falling for the typical excuses,” said Mark Goldfeder, CEO of NJAC. “There is a difference between protected political speech and thinly-veiled antisemitism, and this case highlights the very real danger of what can happen when perpetrators and administrators alike are allowed to confuse speech with acts and conflate politics with demonizing and discriminatory hatred. God willing the final result will be a safer space for all.”

Kenneth L. Marcus, founder and chairman of the Brandeis Center and former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education, said that while the focus has been on colleges and universities since Oct. 7, “as FCSD has shown, antisemitism also is being taught in K-12 schools and at times perpetuated by teachers and staff… FCSD must fulfill its moral and legal obligations to create a school climate free from antisemitic harassment and discrimination.”