BUZZ
Teacher who posted ‘Zionism is racism, settler colonialism, genocidal violence’ helped write social studies curriculum
A U.S. House of Representatives Education Committee investigation has accused the Philadelphia and Berkeley, California school districts of teaching students to “hate Israel” and “embrace radical ideas.”
That’s how The Philadelphia Inquirer summed up the report with its October 21 headline.
Two years ago, the School District of Philadelphia agreed to a settlement with the U.S. Department of Education regarding accusations of antisemitism.
But the House committee determined that “district curricula promote ideology justifying violent resistance and legitimize radical groups that incite antisemitism.”
The district’s world history curriculum had students choose a “resistance movement” to “honor,” among them the terror group Hamas’ Great March of Return, while second graders are taught about “environmental justice” and “the impact of bias, injustice and privilege on a global scale.”
When SDP Superintendent Tony Watlington Sr. was interviewed by the committee last month, he was asked if comments such as “compar[ing] Zionists to white supremacist spectators cheering for public lynchings of Black people” were “appropriate.”
Watlington responded that he “wouldn’t use that language,” adding whether it was protected speech would be “someone else’s determination.”
According to the committee, the teacher who made the comments on social media (whom The Inquirer doesn’t identify) is Norman Shaw MacQueen, whose Instagram and LinkedIn accounts currently are set to private.
Another of MacQueen’s posts claimed “Zionism is racism, settler colonialism, Islamophobia, genocidal violence, and antisemitic.”
The committee noted MacQueen also is a member of the Racial Justice Organizing Committee, which a year ago made an Instagram post declaring “All resistance is righteous.”
Two months after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack against Israel, MacQueen helped plan a professional development titled “Decolonizing the Curriculum: Brief History of Palestine and the Creation of Israel: Contextualizing the Current Conflict and Genocide.”
The workshop reportedly had the approval of PSD Director of Social Studies Ismael Jimenez. In January of 2025, MacQueen was selected by the district to “serve as a social science curriculum writer.”
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Watlington said the district is “in the process of standardizing its social studies curriculum” and thus would “no longer allow staff to write” lessons.
On October 21, SDP spokesperson Monique Braxton said the House investigation “distorts and mischaracterizes” the district’s record.
Braxton added district officials “take concerns about antisemitic harassment or discrimination very seriously, just as we do not condone or tolerate Islamophobia, racism, or discrimination against any ethnic, racial or religious group.”
Three thousand miles to the west, National Review reports that Berkeley Unified School District teachers were “discouraged” by the local National Education Association affiliate “from sharing certain controversial lessons ‘directly with families.’”
These included one which noted the phrase “from the river to the sea” could be considered “a call for freedom and peace” and “avoided describing Hamas as a terrorist organization.”
District fourth graders were taught the terms “colonization,” “decolonization,” and “settler,” as well as the “explanation” that history “is often presented from a colonizer’s perspective” (and thus the “importance of decolonizing historical narratives”).
The district also:
- asked fifth graders “critique empire and its relationship to white supremacy, racism, patriarchy, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, anthropocentrism, and other forms of power and oppression at the intersections of our society” in a unit titled “Defining Democracy”;
- taught the term “Founding Fathers” is “harmful” because it fails to “acknowledge the Indigenous communities who lived here before colonization”;
- “encouraged” elementary school teachers to use the alphabet book “P is for Palestine” during April’s Arab American Heritage Month — which contains a page stating “I is for Intifada”;
- held educator workshops on “teaching Palestine” in which Hamas was described as “fighters in Gaza who were angry about how Israel has been treating people in Gaza.”
Two years ago, a Berkeley district task force recommended “both financial and educational reparations” for students who are descendants of slaves. And in response to 2020’s Black Lives Matter movement, the names of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were removed from two district elementary schools.
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