Mohammed, a middle school student in Philadelphia, puts on his “Free Gaza” bracelet as routinely as he brushes his teeth. He often wears a keffiyeh around his shoulders, despite, he said, being told at school to take it off.
“He’s so sure about who he is and what he wants to represent, he doesn’t care,” said Mariam, his mother.
Like many young Palestinian students across the country, Mohammed, who like his mother asked to use a pseudonym for fear of reprisals, has grown more political over the last year. His grandmother lives in the West Bank, and two of his cousins were killed by the Israeli military, part of the civilian death toll of Israel’s war on Gaza.
In November 2023, Mohammed’s English teacher at Philadelphia’s Baldi Middle School, Caroline Yang, and two other seventh grade teachers, Emily Antrilli and Jordan Kardasz, sensed Mohammed and other Muslim and Palestinian students needed a safe place to express themselves. Yang opened her classroom after school. The war was around a month old, and emotions were running high on all sides.
“They don’t want us to be loud. They don’t want us to be anything.”The students decided to make posters. One listed names of Palestinian children killed by Israeli soldiers. Another showed a dove between Israeli and Palestinian flags. Some of the posters were adorned with slogans like “End apartheid,” “This is not war, this is genocide,” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Some of the posters contained red handprints; other handprints showed the red, white, green, and black of the Palestinian flag.
The teachers put up the signs, along with a Palestinian flag, in the school’s commons on November 17, 2023. The new display would accompany the flags of over 30 other nations, including Israel’s. Within an hour, before classes began, the school removed them, according to the teachers and a principal’s report obtained by The Intercept.
Soon, the posters would become the flashpoint in allegations and recriminations that included accusations of anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and anti-Muslim bias, as well as antisemitism. By the time the dust settled with the end of the school year last summer, the fallout had hit students and teachers alike. Some parents decided to pull students from the school. The three teachers had all left their jobs — and decided to file a federal civil rights complaint.
“Silencing. Erasure,” said Mariam, Mohammed’s mother, who was considering pulling both children from Baldi but ultimately kept them enrolled. “They don’t want us to be loud. They don’t want us to be anything.”
Posters made by students at Baldi Middle School, as shown in photographs from an Unsatisfactory Incident form filed about one of the teachers, Caroline Yang. Photos: Philadelphia School DistrictStrife in Schools
Across the country, students and educators who have advocated for Palestinians have faced censorship and professional repercussions. The Council on American Islamic Relations, the country’s largest Muslim civil rights organization, is suing a Maryland school district for allegedly placing three teachers on administrative leave for supporting Palestinian rights. Last October, two Minnesota public high school students were suspended for chanting “from the river to the sea.”
In Philadelphia schools, Israel’s war on Gaza had already sparked a furor. Protests erupted after a student podcast was censored by the district, and ad hoc groups have formed to make demands about Palestinian rights from the........