#nais

By Susan B. Tuchman, Esq. and Morton A. Klein

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 to stop her — as someone surely would and should have had any speaker used NAIS’s platform to demonize Blacks, Asians, Muslims or any other ethnic or racial group, with lies. To date, NAIS has not condemned Barakat for abusing the platform she was given to fuel already soaring antisemitism.

That was not the end of the hate and misinformation at NAIS’s conference. The closing speaker, Dr. Ruha Benjamin, continued the attack on Israel and the Jewish people. Benjamin repeated the false “genocide” accusation against Israel and denied Israel’s right to defend itself — again, shamefully to the applause of the crowd. Despite marketing the conference as a “safe space” for people of “all backgrounds,” NAIS was sending the message that the conference was a safe place for everyone but Jews.

The impact on Jewish students and educators who attended NAIS’s conference was devastating. One student reported that he and other students “felt so targeted, so unsafe, that we tucked our Magen Davids [Stars of David] in our shirts and walked out as those around us glared and whispered.” A teacher described the experience as “like being punched in the gut.” These reactions were understandable: An association supposedly dedicated to inclusivity and inspiring excellence in education had instead helped to indoctrinate thousands of teachers and students to hate Israel and Jews, based on lies.

After the conference, four national Jewish communal organizations complained to NAIS that the conference “normalized” antisemitism. Debra P. Wilson, NAIS’s president, immediately responded, expressing her “profound remorse” to the four Jewish groups. She assured them that changes to NAIS’s speaker selection and content review processes were underway. NAIS also posted “an important note” on its website referring to its exchange with the four Jewish organizations. But the note downplayed the Jew- and Israel-hatred expressed at the conference, chalking it up simply to “divisive and hurtful comments expressed on stage.” NAIS did not condemn the comments or even acknowledge them as antisemitic.

Remorse is not enough

Especially at this frightening time of rising antisemitism, NAIS must do more and without further delay. It must send a forceful message directly to all its member schools and associations of schools, condemning the conference speakers by name who abused their platforms to attack Israel and Jews with falsehoods. NAIS must condemn their speech as antisemitic and explain why it is antisemitic. NAIS must also apologize for failing to fulfill its values and assure its members that it will never again promote or tolerate antisemitism, including when it is masked as criticism of Zionism or Israel.

In addition, NAIS should use its platform to educate and empower its members by encouraging them to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, including the definition’s examples of contemporary antisemitism. The IHRA definition is so widely accepted in the United States and around the world for good reason: It’s an excellent tool for understanding how antisemitism is expressed today, including related to Israel. NAIS should emphasize to its members that they cannot expect to address antisemitism effectively if they do not understand this bigotry in all its manifestations.

-Yo... sinceramente, solo espero que salga bien... me duele mucho y no quiero molestarlos más...

La mayoría ha votado por la opción de magia (hasta donde entendí).

Lo que estaba dicho de antes sobre esta opción era:

"Tenemos a un personaje (y en La Central hay bastantes) que ejerce hechicería (o magia), pero las posibilidades de que salga con los resultados esperados en el pajarito son de un 50/50. No es que se ejerza mal la magia, pero esta es una cosa incierta, que no puede ser totalmente controlada por más que se crea que sí.

Se considera innecesario hacer al pichón pasar por cualquiera de las tres anteriores y se confía su destino a la suerte de la magia. Puede salir bien, muy bien, mal, o muy mal. Se cree que, lo que sea que pase, el enano podrá llevarlo con ayuda de los demás, y si sale mal… se puede buscar una solución al problema."

Entonces vamos a dejar que @nahara-vocaloid18 haga su magia en el pajarito y esperar que salga bien. Si no es el caso, ya se verá que se hace.

El enano está demasiado adolorido y aturdido como para chillar o hacer mucho escándalo por su pico roto.. No se si eso sea bueno o malo, pero es lo que hay.

(wrt my post about getting upset at academic articles not even in my subfield) Okay, so here’s the tea. 

The interdisciplinary academic field of NAIS (Native American and Indigenous Studies) is relatively new; previously, each discipline (history and literature have the biggest presence, though scholars from lots of fields are there) might have a small contingent of scholars that studied native and indigenous topics/issues. But just as the #ownvoices movement has taken off in literary circles over the last few years, it’s also made strides in history, though it’s not called that.

Anyway, Lisa Brooks (a tribally affiliated historian/NAIS scholar) wrote a book called Our Beloved Kin, and Christine DeLucia wrote one called Memory Lands, both of which were about King Philip’s War (1675-1678). Both of them applied a new methodology to how they approached history--instead of primarily relying on interpreting archival materials, the authors spoke to the descendant communities of the Native groups involved and incorporated indigenous methods of constructing history, like oral history and allowing for traditional native ways of interpreting memory. Both books were incredibly well-received and won prestigious awards.

The American Historical Review, a top-tier history publication, asked David Silverman, a historian who studied Early American and Native American history (but who did not consider himself an NAIS scholar), to review the two books. His review was...scathing. He called into question both authors’ methodologies and the validity of NAIS as a whole. His language was unexpectedly inflammatory, and the AHR decided to format it as an exchange. Four NAIS scholars responded to Silverman’s review (including Christine DeLucia, one of the original authors), and then Silverman wrote a response to those replies. The respondents took umbrage at Silverman seemingly disparaging their entire field of study and his narrow, Eurocentric views on historical methodology. 

The entire exchange was pretty vicious, but honestly? Silverman deserved it, imo. He spewed vitriol, and when other scholars called him on it, he dug in (while trying to act *shocked* they’d interpreted his commentary as an attack on NAIS). It very much had the feel of a man gaslighting a woman and then telling her to stop being so emotional and it made me LIVID. The racism, the stodginess, and just the spitefulness...as I said, it made me big mad.