The spread of a controversial Soros curriculum on anti-Semitism has ignited new concerns among parents, educators, and Jewish community leaders as attacks on Jews reach historic levels nationwide. Leftist billionaire George Soros’s Open Society Foundations (OSF) awarded $50,000 to PARCEO to develop its “Curriculum on Antisemitism from a Framework of Collective Liberation,” an educational program critics say minimizes real anti-Jewish hatred while advancing anti-Israel activism.
Jewish faculty at New York City’s High School for Community Leadership warned the curriculum amounted to a “one-sided indoctrination” on the Israel-Hamas war. The program’s creators, Nina Mehta and Donna Nevel—both members of Jewish Voice for Peace—argued in an introductory essay that “antisemitism has been misused to serve an anti-liberatory agenda.” Mehta separately claimed “there are many many examples of fabricated cases of antisemitism instigated by those standing against human rights and justice for the Palestinian people.”
The curriculum has already appeared in New York, California, and even at Northwestern University, where PARCEO and Jewish Voice for Peace hosted a workshop to counter the school’s mandatory anti-Semitism video. The American Jewish Committee said the program “makes bizarre and radical claims about antisemitism even over ostensibly uncontroversial matters,” highlighting a presentation alleging that reporting anti-Jewish hate crimes contributes to the “continued oppression, incarceration and murder of [Black] people.”
Many advisers to the curriculum have documented ties to Samidoun, which the U.S. sanctioned as a front for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a designated terrorist group. Some, including Robin D. G. Kelley, have praised “revolutionary combatants” and argued that “fighting anti-Semitism is part of the broad struggle for planetary liberation.”
The Soros-backed initiative unfolds as 60 percent of all hate incidents target Jews, and FBI director Christopher Wray warned Jewish Americans are “uniquely targeted” by foreign terrorist groups.
