(The Center Square) — The Trump administration is investigating claims that New York City schools violated the civil rights of Jewish students by hosting seminars on Palestinian resistance.
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights announced Thursday that it has opened an investigation into the New York City Department of Education to determine whether it violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by discriminating against Jewish students.
The investigation is based on complaints that New York school officials recently allowed the group “NYC Educators for Palestine” to hold a series of teaching seminars focused on “Palestine, Zionism, and Resistance.”
Federal investigators said the complaints allege that the group is teaching children as young as five about “contemporary and historical Palestinian resistance,” that Zionists are “genocidal white supremacists,” and to support the terrorist group Hamas and its “martyrs” in the fight against Israel.
Those actions “teach and sow hostility and hatred towards Jewish students, potentially creating a hostile environment,” the agency said, vowing to “investigate these appalling allegations to ensure the equal treatment of all students.”
“No child should be taught by his or her teachers to hate their peers. Neither should Jewish children be taught that being Jewish somehow makes them inherently guilty or proponents of hate and violence,” Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey said in a statement. “Discrimination has no place in our schools, and, unlike the previous Administration, the Trump Administration will not turn a blind eye to antisemitic harassment.”
In a statement, a spokesperson for the New York City Education Department said the agency has received the notice and is reviewing it, but said the group is “not connected” to the city school system.
On its website, the group has called on Mayor Zohran Mamdani to require the city’s schools to include teaching about the “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians and “war crimes” committed by the Israeli government.
“As we head into the new year, Israel’s genocide in Gaza continues, and the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the West Bank persists,” the group said in one post. “These realities underscore the urgency of ensuring that NYC Public Schools are led by leadership committed to truth, justice, and the protection of educators’ and students’ rights to teach, learn, and speak freely in pursuit of a more just future.”
The department’s investigation is the latest in a series of disputes between the federal government and the nation’s largest school district over President Donald Trump’s agenda. The Trump administration previously withheld over $35 million in grants to the city after it refused to change transgender student policies. But the move was blocked by a federal judge, who ruled that the funding freeze was illegal.