Native educators and the ADL are pushing for an apology from MassCUE after the group’s current “jarring” convention when audio system reportedly spewed “hateful” anti-Israel and Holocaust rhetoric.
MassCUE’s fall schooling tech convention — held in partnership with the Massachusetts Affiliation of College Superintendents at Gillette Stadium — apparently went off the rails throughout a panel on fairness in schooling. That’s when the dialogue reportedly delved into the present Center East battle in Israel and Gaza.
“Speakers leaned very heavily into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a very one-sided, dangerous rhetoric,” Uxbridge Excessive College Principal Michael Rubin informed the Herald.
That included references to “Israeli genocide” and “Israeli apartheid.”
A panelist additionally prompt that the instructing of the Holocaust has been one-sided, and “two perspectives needed to be taught,” recalled Rubin, whose grandparents survived the Holocaust, throughout which the Nazis killed 6 million Jews.
“It was jarring, unexpected, and unprofessional,” added Rubin, who’s additionally the president of his synagogue.
Following complaints from a number of shocked convention attendees, the Anti-Defamation League’s New England chapter lately wrote a letter to MassCUE, because the ADL pushes for a public apology.
“It is difficult to understand why an organization dedicated to education and technology would allow a panel discussion ostensibly focused on school equity to instead veer into a complex and controversial foreign conflict,” ADL New England’s deputy director Sara Colb wrote to MassCUE’s leaders.
“It is all the more concerning that once the conversation veered in that direction it was not stopped or redirected to the advertised topic,” Colb added. “Allowing a presentation purporting to be about equity and inclusion in the classroom to include a one-sided narrative of a foreign conflict, replete with hateful, biased rhetoric, does a disservice to attendees by leaving them with a biased and misinformed account of the conflict.”
MassCUE (Massachusetts Laptop Utilizing Educators) is the Bay State affiliate of the Worldwide Society for Know-how in Training.
Greater than two months after the autumn convention, the group has not addressed the Israeli-Palestinian dialogue.
“At MassCUE we take feedback very seriously and work hard to ensure we take any and all necessary steps to address concerns that are brought to our attention,” stated MassCUE Board President Casey Daigle. “This process takes time. Please know we are working through our procedures internally.”
The silence from MassCUE’s leaders has been “really concerning,” Rubin emphasised.
“How comments like these about the Holocaust don’t warrant an immediate response is really, really, really confusing to me,” added Rubin, who was given the 2024 MassCUE Administrator Award two days earlier than this panel.
“If a student was targeted by a racial slur in our buildings, we would be involving local authorities, contacting families, sending a letter to the community, but MassCUE is working through their internal procedures. It doesn’t add up,” he stated.
The manager director of the Massachusetts Affiliation of College Superintendents stated M.A.S.S. was “troubled to hear that any of the speakers at the conference may have made statements that are inconsistent with the anti-racist values of our organization.”
“We are working with MassCUE to learn more about the content in question,” added Government Director Mary Bourque.
Apart from ADL’s push for a public apology from MassCUE, the ADL is looking for the group to:
- Overview its insurance policies and vetting protocols for displays at applications and make all essential enhancements to make sure that presenters keep on subject, and that “participants will not be subjected to this sort of inflammatory propaganda again.”
- Hearken to the considerations of impacted members and individuals, and elicit their ideas on find out how to “counter the harm this presentation caused.”
- Situation a public assertion acknowledging the issues with this program and reinforcing MassCUE’s values of inclusivity for everybody.
“At a time when incidents of antisemitic hate, including in our K-12 schools, are at record highs, it is deeply wrong and dangerous to provide a platform for such hateful rhetoric or to allow a platform to be hijacked for such purposes,” the ADL deputy director wrote. “It is surprising to have to make this point to educators who purport to be concerned with equitable and inclusive classrooms for all students.”
