Education and Workforce Vice Chair Burgess Owens, who represents Utah’s 4th district in Congress, took part in a recent subcommittee hearing addressing antisemitism in K-12 schools. The session, titled “From Playground to Classroom: The Spread of Antisemitism in K-12 Schools,” examined how antisemitic ideas are appearing in teacher training programs and classroom curricula across the country.
Owens opened the hearing by stating, “Antisemitism is a terrible cancer that not only threatens the wellbeing of Jewish students, but also the emotional and spiritual health of every other student affected by it. … Children are not born to judge each other based on race, creed, color, or culture.”
During the hearing, Owens questioned witnesses about the spread of antisemitic concepts within educational institutions. Nicole Neily, President and Founder of Defending Education, testified that many teachers colleges focus more on activism than on teaching fundamental skills. Ms.Neily said: “Teachers today in teachers colleges are not learning how to be better educators, how to teach phonics. Instead, they’re learning to view the world through an oppressor-oppressed matrix. … These are teachers colleges that are at state schools, they’re at private schools, and the fact that our teacher licensing pipeline mandates that you must have a teaching degree from these schools … means that you have to marinate in these ideas steeped in critical race theory, queer theory, [and] anti-whiteness privilege.”
Rachel Lerman from the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law described a case involving ethnic studies materials containing antisemitic content uncovered during litigation in California. Ms. Lerman stated: “We found members of the committee that approved these curriculas saying, ‘How do we handle the Jewish problem?’ … One of the Jewish teachers who was on the committee [was] called an effing baby and a colonialized mind.”
Dr. Brandy Shufutinsky from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies discussed foreign funding’s role in spreading antisemitic materials into American classrooms. Dr. Shufutinsky explained: “Part of that is coming from Qatari Foundation International where they’re funding Arabic language and culture classes in multiple school districts in multiple states. Some of that course material then is a complete revision of history, obviously demonizing the state of Israel and also misdefining Jews as an ethno-religious group.”
Burgess Owens has served as U.S. Representative for Utah’s 4th District since 2021 (https://owens.house.gov/). He succeeded Ben McAdams after winning election to Congress (https://bioguide.congress.gov/search/bio/O000234). Owens was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1951 and now lives in Salt Lake City; he graduated with a Bachelor of Science from the University of Miami in 1974.
