Leading US private school association apologizes for antisemitism at conference

A leading US private schools organization has apologized for antisemitic rhetoric at a conference it held in Colorado.

The National Association of Independent Schools event, called the “People of Color Conference,” came under harsh criticism for anti-Israel rhetoric that Jewish groups said veered into antisemitism and made Jewish students feel unsafe.

“There is no place for antisemitism at NAIS events, in our member schools, or in society,” the president of the association, Debra Wilson, wrote in a letter Thursday to Jewish leaders expressing “profound remorse” over the event.

The apology was a response to criticism from the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, the Jewish Federations of North America, and Prizmah, an association of Jewish day schools.

Last week, the leaders of those groups wrote to Wilson expressing “deep concern” about the conference, saying some of the rhetoric “normalized antisemitism.”

The event’s keynote speaker, Dr. Suzanne Barakat, a physician, called Israel a “racist” endeavor, accused Israel of genocide and downplayed the October 7, 2023, Hamas invasion, the letter said.

A Jewish student said he and his classmates felt “targeted” and “unsafe” at the conference, compelling them to conceal their Stars of David under their shirts and exit the event, the letter said.

“That any student would feel the need to conceal their identity at our conference is antithetical to our mission and our values,” Wilson said in her response.

She pledged to implement “meaningful changes” ahead of future events, such as requiring speakers to submit their presentations in advance.

The National Association of Independent Schools is a nonprofit based in Washington, DC, that provides services to more than 2,000 schools in the US and abroad. It had a budget of around $23 million last year.

The People of Color Conference was held in Denver, Colorado, from December 4 to 7. The event was advertised as part of the association’s “commitment to equity and justice in teaching, learning, and sustainability for independent schools.”

David Bernstein, the founder of the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values advocacy group and a critic of progressive antisemitism in schools, said the event’s anti-Israel rhetoric was an outgrowth of NAIS’s embrace of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) ideology. The progressive framework promulgates a binary worldview that often casts Israel as an oppressor, Bernstein told The Times of Israel.

“They’ve adopted a very specific worldview and we make a mistake to treat this as if it’s a one-off event, rather than emerging directly out of NAIS’s basic ideological framework,” he said.