For years, California Democrats have defended their landmark program to put ethnic studies classes in high schools across the state.

In the face of national right-wing media attacks and local critics, the state’s governing supermajority passed a law in 2021 making ethnic studies a graduation requirement, which supports school boards to develop their own curricula for the courses.

But one particular area of study threatens to unravel the Democratic consensus: Palestine.

In the past year, state lawmakers have teamed up with community groups and the lobbying coalition Jewish Public Affairs Committee of California, or JPAC, in a push to regulate the ethnic studies program. They’re aiming to pass a law that curbs local school board control over ethnic studies curricula in response to classwork focusing on the history of Israel and Palestine that they say has promoted unprecedented bigotry against Jewish students.

The bill’s backers are framing the effort as a way to ensure that ethnic studies “will combat all forms of hate,” as one of the bill’s authors, Assemblymember Dawn Addis, wrote in a March 30 op-ed. “At a time when the federal government is trying to rewrite American history by banning diversity initiatives, California must persist in elevating the lived experiences of everyone in this country,” wrote Addis, whose office did not respond to inquiries from The Intercept.

But as right-wing groups oppose the bill and ethnic studies more broadly, a coalition of critics warn that the new controls could lead to the same type of state censorship in schools that has been put into law in conservative states like Texas and Florida.

“This language goes far beyond supporting culturally-responsive education in a general sense, and echoes educational gag order legislation we’ve seen in other states nationwide,” said PEN America spokesperson Suzanne Trimel in a statement. “This could result in state officials forcing a school or educator to pull certain materials they believe aren’t “fair” or don’t provide enough variety of perspective, concepts that are difficult to define.”

Assembly Bill 1468 introduced in February, would create new state standards for the ethnic studies classes that California schools must offer by the beginning of this coming school year.

The discipline has its roots in California’s college student strikes of the 1960s and was codified into state education law after years of deliberation in 2021. In that legislative process, teachers and scholars advocating for a more explicitly anti-imperialist approach in line with its radical origins lost out: Lessons on Palestine were excised from the law before it passed, and the left wing of the ethnic studies movement was sidelined from the process.

But still, the law required schools to begin offering an ethnic studies course by the fall of 2025, and schools teaching the course had the choice to develop curricula on their own, working with consultants and local communities or drawing upon guidance from the state.

Under the new law, standards will be written by a panel of academic experts in a specific subset of disciplines — African American studies, Latinx/Chicanx studies, Asian American/Pacific Islander studies, and Native American studies — with additional input from representatives of communities most frequently impacted by hate crimes according to state law enforcement.

The bill’s author has also promised more “traditional” scholars will be chosen by the governor. The state’s current model curriculum on human rights and genocide, within the history and social science category, briefly characterizes the Nakba as an event in which “Palestinians left Palestine.”

The California Department of Education would also receive all materials approved by........

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