With antisemitism growing at an alarming rate across the world, including in K-12 schools, it is indefensible that the National Association of Independent Schools, or NAIS — the largest association of independent schools — is contributing to the problem. Its recent “People of Color” Conference, attended by approximately 8,000 educators and students and touted as its prized commitment to equity and justice in teaching and learning, turned into what some described as a “festival of Jew hate.” Yet to date, NAIS has failed to condemn the antisemitism expressed at the conference, let alone acknowledge it.

NAIS prominently featured Dr. Suzanne Barakat as the keynote speaker at the conference, who used her podium to falsely and offensively accuse Israel of “genocide.” Had she been truthful, Barakat would have lodged the genocide accusation against Hamas, the U.S.-designated terrorist group that is openly committed to destroying Israel and murdering every Jew. Barakat not only downplayed Hamas’s slaughter, rape and mutilation of bodies in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, but also rationalized the terrorist group’s atrocities. Instead of using her microphone to educate the audience of teachers and students about the historical fact that Jews are indigenous to the land of Israel going back thousands of years, Barakat labeled Jews as “colonists” and disgracefully stated that Israel was “founded on ethnocentric superiority and an inherently systemically racist framework.”

Almost more troubling than Barakat’s antisemitic speech was the response to it: Thousands of educators at the conference, who teach at some of our country’s most prestigious schools, stood up and cheered.

Barakat was blatantly violating NAIS’s commitment to equity and justice in teaching and learning, but not a single NAIS official intervened........

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