How the War in Gaza Disrupted an Elite Private School

This spring, 30 ninth graders from a progressive private school near Greenwich Village went on a field trip.

There was nothing unusual about venturing out into New York City to boost their classroom studies. At the school, Little Red School House and Elisabeth Irwin High School, this sort of experiential learning was so routine that few parents were even notified of the destination: The People’s Forum in Midtown Manhattan, a hub for gatherings of left-wing activists. Its executive director has called for the destruction of Israel.

Afterward, parents were flabbergasted to learn where the students were taken, and what they were told.

During their visit, a People’s Forum employee gave the students a 90-minute lecture on the perils of America’s support for Israel and Ukraine. The students were “a captive audience who were subjected to anti-Israel and anti-American propaganda,” according to a grievance report filed by a parent and shared with school leadership. A handful of Jewish students walked out during the presentation, upset.

Later, the head of school, Phil Kassen, sent a message to parents acknowledging that he had been aware of the plan and taking responsibility for what he said was an error in judgment. “I could have stopped this trip,” he wrote. “I didn’t.” It was not his first apology this school year.

In the eight months since Hamas attacked Israel and Israel retaliated with a military campaign in Gaza, private schools across New York have been disrupted by strife over how to manage education about the war, political expression by faculty and students, and accusations of antisemitism and Islamophobia.

Similar skirmishes have played out in public schools, which educate the majority of New York’s children. But at many private schools, where parents often pay more than $60,000 for their children’s tuition, administrators must worry about attracting future customers. At the same time, they are trying to placate teachers, including many who embrace left-wing politics, and parents who have increasingly demanded a say in how schools respond to the war.

At many private schools, administrators were ill-prepared for the emotional furor. Many teachers were eager to instruct students about Israel’s displacement of Palestinians. Some Jewish parents said they welcomed open discourse about the war as long as it did not stray into antisemitism. At several schools, there has been friction between pro-Israel students and pro-Palestinian classmates. Some students have publicly criticized administrators for not teaching them about the long history of conflict in the Middle East.

At Little Red School House and Elisabeth Irwin High School — which is known as LREI — some pro-Palestinian students said they felt silenced by administrators when they tried to educate their classmates about the conditions in Gaza.

Parents say they worry that while administrators struggle to figure out how to present factual and fair lessons about the Middle East conflict, students are turning to activists on Instagram and TikTok.

The problem is, even reasonable people with opposing viewpoints on the conflict do not always agree on basic foundational facts.

At LREI, which serves about 700 students and whose alumni include Robert De Niro and Angela Davis, some parents say they are willing to be patient.

“This is tricky and nuanced,” said Marika Condos, a mother of a graduate and two current students. “It’s uncharted territory, and it’s not something that is going to get resolved very quickly.”

But others express a growing unease.

Some Jewish parents say that their children are uncomfortable wearing Star of David necklaces in some classes, worrying it could antagonize certain teachers.

“This is in a school environment,” said Ann Melinger, whose son is a rising junior at LREI. “He shouldn’t have to feel he can’t take classes with certain teachers because he’s afraid they’re not going to like him, and that’s happening in our household. We’re selecting classes for next year and actively avoiding certain teachers.”

Politics at school

Mr. Kassen, the head of school at LREI, encourages students to strive in the classroom and beyond for social justice. “Politics not only has a place in school,” he wrote in a 2017 essay, “it is already an integral part of life in every school, because a school’s ‘politics’ inherently influence that particular institution’s student experience.”

But even less overtly political schools have found themselves consumed by battles connected to the war in Gaza.

Collegiate School’s leader resigned this month after an ​​internal audit found “disquieting problems of religious and cultural bias” at the school, including hostility toward both Jews and Muslims.

Students at The Calhoun School blasted the administration in public letters for avoiding lessons about the conflict. Some described a fraught relationship between those on either side of the divide. “Many Calhouners have ties to the conflict, but the truth is, people are dying,” a Muslim student wrote. “I feel as if anytime I acknowledge that fact, I’ll be demeaned by someone of Jewish heritage for simply being objective.”

Since the Oct. 7 attack, in which Israeli authorities said about 1,200 people were killed and about 250 were kidnapped, more than 37,000 people have been killed in Gaza, according to health officials there, who do not distinguish between combatants and civilians. Almost half a million people in Gaza are facing starvation, experts say.

Steven Solnick, the outgoing head of school at Calhoun, acknowledged the divisions over the war. “The space for discussion and debate in the United States in all quarters has gotten more polarized,” he said in an interview, “and schools are a reflection of what’s around them.”

At some private schools in New York, a focus on personal identity, built into their curricula, appears to have exacerbated the tensions.

At Ethical Culture Fieldston School, where pro-Palestinian student activism — and backlash — exploded this spring, students are encouraged to join “affinity groups” that align with their racial, religious and cultural identities.

A photograph of young children wearing name tags with their names and identities (“Black,” “Jewish”) was widely shared by distressed parents this spring. A school spokeswoman said those name tags were used only at the beginning of the previous school year — and had been a mistake.

There are affinity groups for parents too.

Earlier this month, school officials sent an email urging families to “use this moment to collectively examine how to be in community with each other” and invited parents to a “listening session” about raising children in this complex and divisive moment, hosted by a group for families of color. But that meeting was abruptly canceled in favor of a meeting exclusively for parents of students of color. Most of the Jewish parents are white and were not welcome.

The spokeswoman noted that in May a separate meeting had been held for Jewish families.

School officials said in a statement that even after a difficult year, they were committed to working to keep the community connected. “During this polarizing time, our goals remain the same,” the school said.

Maps without Israel

As it did at many institutions, the unrest at LREI started with a statement sent to parents shortly after Hamas attacked Israel in October.

The email, from the head of school, Mr. Kassen, did not directly state that Hamas had invaded Israel. After parents complained, he sent a second letter, but excluded acknowledgment of the Israeli army’s bombardment of Gaza and the toll to civilian Palestinians, which drew further criticism. So he wrote a third.

Frustrations over the school’s response continued through the year. At least two teachers came to school wearing kaffiyeh — checkered scarfs traditionally worn in the Middle East that have become symbols of solidarity with the Palestinian people. The administration agreed to a celebration of Jewish American Heritage Month in May but prohibited decorations showing Israeli flags.

Some Jewish parents have criticized the school for what they see as a double standard. LREI unequivocally addressed hate crimes targeting Black people and Asian Americans in the past, they said, but its response to the killing of Jewish civilians in Israel was measured.

“After several years of rightly discussing the necessity of addressing systemic issues around identity and discrimination, the issues that have arisen around antisemitism and political bias feel as if they are being treated differently,” said Natalia Petrzela, a professor of history at the New School and the parent of an LREI middle school student.

In a statement to The New York Times, Mr. Kassen said that the school is committed to all students and families feeling safe and welcome. “Since Oct. 7th,” he wrote, “we have engaged in dialogue with many parents around these issues to ensure their concerns are heard and addressed.” (A handful of LREI teachers contacted for comment declined to be interviewed.)

Jonathan Rosen, a parent of two students and a member of the LREI board who spoke to The Times on behalf of the school, said, “As a Jew and liberal Zionist, I am not saying the school hasn’t made mistakes, but they are committed to creating a safe environment for Jewish students and Jewish families and I think that is how many Jewish families experience the school.”

The institution that eventually became LREI was founded nearly a century ago by Elisabeth Irwin, an educational reformer who imagined schools as places to address social ills and “laboratories where children could experiment with life.”

Ms. Irwin and her contemporaries emphasized experiential learning and field trips that took full advantage of New York. Children’s curiosity helped drive the curriculum.

Today, LREI charges $55,000 in tuition. It markets itself as focused on critical thinking and learning by doing. The curriculum is steeped in issues of social justice.

This progressive education model and the school’s embrace of social activism are part of what has attracted families to the school.

But this year, as much of the political left has been galvanized by opposition to Israel and the war in Gaza, Jewish parents at the school became concerned about teachers’ politics entering the classroom.

In November, some parents of sixth graders were startled when they visited their children’s classroom. On display were several maps of the Middle East created as part of a student geography project on which Israel did not exist. In its place some maps were labeled “OPT,” for Occupied Palestinian Territory.

Afterward, parents received an apology and explanation from the classroom teacher that some found disquieting. “I shared with students that Israel is a recognized country,” the teacher wrote. “I also shared that Palestine is also on that land and is recognized by 135 countries. I offered them the choice of including Palestine on their maps or not.”

Through the winter, the administration found itself sandwiched between two groups: young faculty members who expressed passionate concern about the war and the rights of Palestinians, and a group of Jewish parents who said they wanted the school to teach about the conflict, but in a neutral way. The school held an assembly on antisemitism and Islamophobia, but avoided deep discussion of the conflict in classrooms.

Tensions erupted in April, when the ninth-grade students were taken to The People’s Forum, located in an office building in Midtown. The organization has emerged in recent months as a key player in the Palestinian liberation and anti-Israel protest movements that have engulfed the city.

The group sponsored a rally in Times Square on Oct. 8 to “to stand with the people of Palestine, who have the right to resist apartheid, occupation and oppression,” according to social media posts. It has provided support for pro-Palestinian university protests, which it refers to as “The Student Intifada.”

According to the grievance report, The People’s Forum employee who made the presentation to the LREI students said that the war between Russia and Ukraine “would stop if America stopped funding Ukraine and implied the same with Israel.” The report said a ninth grader “raised his hand and rebuffed this by sharing that he believed that America’s involvement helps keep the world safe and that without it Ukraine would cease to exist. The staff leader dismissed this, said he was a communist and began referring to the students as comrades. As the conversation turned more pointedly to anti-Israel rhetoric, a few students stood up and left.”

When the students returned to school, the complaint said, they met with the school’s head of diversity, equity and inclusion, who told them that hearing “controversial and polarizing viewpoints was good practice for subsequent years’ social justice trips.”

Several days later, Mr. Kassen emailed ninth-grade parents to apologize. “I should not have put the students in the position to visit the organization, both due to their call for the ‘destruction’ of Israel, and due to the fact that their more general political views had the kids being in well over their heads,” he said.

Officials at The People’s Forum did not respond to requests for comment.

About a week later, Mr. Kassen angered some parents anew when he informed them that teachers had received antisemitism training. Parents discovered in quick internet searches that the curriculum had been developed by pro-Palestinian activists.

(A director of the company who provided the training said that those involved are committed to challenging antisemitism, Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian bigotry.)

The People’s Forum’s visit and the training “was a big turning point,” said Ms. Melinger, a parent. “I don’t care if you think it’s not antisemitic,” she said. “It is felt to be by some in your community, and there are so many other groups to choose from.”

She strongly considered moving her son to a new school but worried that a transition would hurt his grades.

Ms. Melinger said she wants the school to educate her son about the Middle East conflict and realizes that parts of that education will be painful. “But there has been no dialogue,” she said, “and in the vacuum, teachers are taking matters in their own hands.”

Students are as well. The last week of school, an LREI group called Students for Peace and Justice in Palestine sent a message with online resources to the entire high school. “We hoped to send this email earlier, but we were not allowed to, due to restrictions from administration,” it said. It was signed by two students and a teacher.

The resources included the Arab news network Al-Jazeera, which has the most extensive operation in Gaza of any media outlet and was recently banned by Israel.

The list also included more than a dozen Instagram handles of journalists and activists whose posts range from dispatches from Palestinian journalists in Gaza to a cartoon depicting an arm painted like the American and Israeli flags holding the severed head of a child near the word “Rafah.”

“Our goal is not to tell people what to think,” the email said, “but to give people more critical thinking tools.”