Even at an Anti-Racist Educators’ Summit, Decrying Genocide Proved Controversial

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Struggle and Solidarity: Writing Toward Palestinian Liberation

When physician and human rights activist Suzanne Barakat was invited to give a keynote address at the People of Color Conference (PoCC) in December 2024, she was excited and did not anticipate that her remarks would elicit a barrage of hate. After all, friends had previously told her that the conference was one of the few places where educators of color and their anti-racist allies felt at ease. Moreover, many had told her that they typically left the multiday event invigorated.

The annual event is sponsored by the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS), a 62-year-old professional organization of faculty and staff at more than 1,700 U.S.-based private boarding and day schools; according to the NAIS website, the PoCC is meant “to provide a safe space for leadership and networking for people of color and allies of all backgrounds in independent schools.”

Barakat told Truthout that her speech was meant to cover a multiplicity of themes: religious discrimination as well as the personal toll of Islamophobia. It was also meant to touch on other forms of hate and prejudice, including antisemitism — topics she honed after discussions with NAIS staffers in advance of the conference.

She began her presentation with a brief but vivid account of the 2015 murders of her brother Deah Barakat, a 23-year-old dental student at the University of North Carolina, his 21-year-old wife Yusor Abu-Salha and Yusor’s 19-year-old sister, Razan Abu-Salha, a North Carolina State University undergraduate, while they were eating dinner in their home. She described the crimes as “a deliberate and targeted attack” that was downplayed in press reports as the result of a parking dispute, a charge she vehemently contests.

Barakat then zeroed in on a host of other important topics, including the Syrian civil war, before turning to Israel’s war on Gaza.

“On October 7, Hamas fighters launched an unprecedented assault in which hundreds of Israelis were killed or wounded and civilians kidnapped,” she told the crowd. “I cried often over every mother’s pain over losing a child, whether Israeli or Palestinian, at the frivolity with which we were treating the sanctity of all life. … What has followed over the past year is the unfolding of a genocide right before our eyes.”

The address led to a prolonged standing ovation.

Taaj Davis, assistant to the dean of students and a history teacher at the Woodberry Forest School in Virginia, heard Barakat’s speech and told Truthout that his main takeaways were that, “First, Islamophobia is a life-and-death issue no matter where it is happening in the world; and second, that the best way to protect Muslim lives is to educate ourselves and our young people about the religion.”

As a young Muslim, and as the only Muslim teacher at Woodberry Forest, Davis said that he was buoyed by Barakat’s keynote. Nonetheless, his elation quickly soured when the following day’s opening plenary began with an apology to the audience by NAIS staffer Caroline Blackwell, who lamented that the speech had allegedly made some audience members uneasy.

Shortly thereafter, NAIS President Debra Wilson issued a second apology to conferees for what she dubbed Barakat’s “divisive” presentation. (Neither Blackwell nor Wilson responded to Truthout’s multiple requests for an interview.)

Like Davis, A.M. — who spoke under a pseudonym because their school has a longstanding policy prohibiting staff from speaking to the press — was angered by the apologies. “I am part of NAIS’s Greater Middle East Affinity group, which is made up of people who share a cultural identity. Although my family is Christian, this was the first time in my life that I saw someone from my background represented on stage,” they told Truthout. “Seeing Suzanne at the podium was emotional for me. In all my years of schooling, I never had a teacher from the Middle East. Seeing her speak was validating. But the apologies undid the positive feelings I’d had and told me that many people simply don’t want to hear Middle Eastern perspectives.”

The Zinn Education Project is demanding that the NAIS “correct the record and issue a public apology” to both keynote speakers, charging that they have been “unfairly smeared.”

Ruha Benjamin’s Keynote Added to the Furor

By the time Ruha Benjamin took the stage for her keynote address a day later, she’d already heard about the unfolding brouhaha over Barakat’s remarks. But nothing prepared the author, 2024 MacArthur award winner and Princeton University professor for the backlash she and Barakat experienced.

“My speech was supposed to connect the conversations about equity and inclusion to developments in technology and cover how technology can reproduce social injustice and inequity,” Benjamin told Truthout. “I also wanted to connect these topics to current issues, and because I’d just spent two days participating in The Phoenix of Gaza XR, an interactive virtual reality ‘tour’ of Gaza before and since October 7, I brought this into my presentation.”

The Gaza XR project, she explained, was created by a homesick Palestinian graduate student at California State University who hired a photographer to film everyday life in the region. “He started the project in 2022, before the [Israeli military] leveled entire communities, and the footage gives viewers a chance to see the architectural and cultural life in Gaza before the war intensified. It then depicts the destruction of the past 15 months.”

Throughout her speech, Benjamin said she focused on the ways technology like Gaza XR can be used by educators to supplement book learning — in this case, by highlighting the humanity of Palestinians. “This was important to me because I’d seen that any attempt to generate empathy or connection to their plight has been rendered problematic,” she said. “I felt that speaking openly about the genocide was the least I could do.”

The backlash following her keynote was immediate. Benjamin reports that she received a slew of hate mail calling her “a Hamas whore” and worse. Barakat, she adds, received even harsher pushback, much of it menacing, as coverage of the conference captured national headlines in The New York Times, the New York Post, and other print and online publications.

The coverage followed a letter sent to NAIS and signed by the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, The Jewish Federation of North America and Prizmah: Center for Jewish Day Schools. The communication called Barakat’s remarks “extreme” and “biased,” and charged that she had downplayed the Hamas terror attack on October 7. It further alleged that Jews at the conference had been subjected to “a hostile environment.”

Shortly after the letter was circulated, the conservative New York Post reported that NAIS had sponsored “a festival of Jew hate.” The outlet also reported that Jewish leaders intended to boycott future NAIS events and were calling on the current NAIS leadership to resign. The media coverage did not include the text of either Barakat or Benjamin’s remarks in this reporting.

Although no one thus far has resigned from NAIS, the group has significantly tightened its policy for vetting future speakers. In a letter to organization members, Wilson wrote, “Going forward, all keynote presentations will be submitted in advance, including detailed outlines or full remarks along with slides and materials.” She further stated that “last-minute changes will not be permitted without explicit review and approval.”

For Taaj Davis and A.M., this capitulation is extremely disappointing.

“I emailed NAIS,” Davis told Truthout. “I didn’t ask the reason for the change or the apologies since that was clear, but I asked them how they define genocide. I also said that conflating a critique of Israel’s government with antisemitism is wrong. I did not get a response.”

Similarly, A.M. says that both the policy change and apology have pushed them to rethink their relationship with the organization. “The PoCC was always a safe place for us to be ourselves,” they said. “We felt that it was possible to bring our vulnerabilities into the room, but that safety has now been blown to shreds.”

At the same time, Davis and A.M. want to challenge the pervasive blurring of antisemitism and anti-Zionism. Nonetheless, they take comfort from the fact that national and international organizations — from the American Friends Service Committee to Amnesty International, to the International Federation of Social Workers now refer to the war as a genocide.

Hatred of U.S. Muslims Is Increasing

Barakat’s timely address comes as anti-Muslim attacks have skyrocketed in the U.S. According to “Fatal: The Resurgence of Anti-Muslim Hate,” a report released by the Council on American-Islamic Relations last April, 8,061 complaints of anti-Muslim bias were recorded in 2023, the largest number in the group’s 31-year history.

What’s more, writers and scholars — including Ta-Nehisi Coates, Maura Finkelstein, Aisha Abdel Gawad, Lisa Ko, Viet Thahn Nguyen, Sonya Posmentier and Andrew Ross — have been derided for their outspoken support of the Palestinian people. Likewise, college and university students have suffered widespread repression for organizing in solidarity with Gaza, with more than 3,200 campus protesters arrested between October 2023 and November 2024. While many have had their charges dismissed, newly imposed rules meant to stifle campus dissent have led to expulsions and yearlong suspensions on several campuses. In addition, dozens of activists have been threatened with incarceration or put on probation while others have been deemed “persona non grata” by their institutions.

“I criticized a foreign government. That is not the same as promoting hatred of a religion.”

Having allies helps, Barakat and Benjamin say, but the imperative of calling out Israeli genocide remains essential. Both women are also quick to make clear that despite being on the receiving end of overt hostility, they have also been shown a great deal of support. A letter generated by the Zinn Education Project is demanding that the NAIS “correct the record and issue a public apology” to both keynote speakers, charging that they have been “unfairly smeared” for their conference remarks. More than 20 organizations have signed on (among them, Drop the ADL from Schools; Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine at Columbia, Barnard and Rice universities; Historians for Peace and Democracy; Jews for Racial and Economic Justice; Jewish Voice for Peace; and Teaching for Change). More than 100 individual signers, including several former NAIS leaders, have added their names.

“In my talk, I gave the example of IBM, a company that played a role in the Nazi Holocaust,” Benjamin said. “We tend to associate the Holocaust with a few people, but it involved a whole bureaucracy of evil. When we look at other horrific examples, we can see that it takes a mass of people to enable a genocide. In today’s world, we are all complicit if we allow technology to be used to harm others or quash the voices of people who are raising concerns. We have to tell the truth.”

Suzanne Barakat agrees. “If my only focus in the keynote had been Islamophobia’s impact on me and my family, my address … would have been a silencing of Palestinian voices, both Muslim and Christian” she told Truthout. “I criticized a foreign government. That is not the same as promoting hatred of a religion.”