A middle school principal in Lexington, Massachusetts, is facing criticism for an email sent to seventh-grade students apologizing for an educational session on antisemitism. Principal Johnny Cole of William Diamond Middle School reportedly stated that the lesson, which connected social studies learning about the Holocaust to the modern world, had made some students feel "unseen" and that their "own history, identity or community was left out or erased."
"We are sorry because every one of you deserves to walk into this school and feel that who you are matters—Arab students; Jewish students; Lebanese students; Muslim students; Palestinian students—every student. And in this case, we missed the mark and did not achieve what we hoped to," Cole wrote in the email, according to a social media-attributed letter. The stated goal of the session was "to help you recognize hate, understand where it comes from and encourage you to speak up against it."
Organizations critical of the apology, including the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA) and AntisemitismWatch, condemned the principal's actions. Deborah Lipstadt, former US antisemitism envoy, called the email "the toxification of Jewish history, life and community, making it untouchable." Trisha Posner, founder of AntisemitismWatch, stated, "This is how they will try to erase Jewish history." CAMERA CEO Kurt Schwartz argued that "Holocaust education is not an affront to any student’s identity, and it is not something for which a school should apologize."
Critics pointed to past incidents at William Diamond Middle School, including the drawing of swastikas in a boys' bathroom and an instance where Principal Cole reportedly approached a Jewish student wearing a sweatshirt with an "anti-Nazi message." The student, eighth-grader Teagan Murtagh, wrote in a letter to the editor of The Lexington Observer that she was told by the principal that her sweatshirt, which read, "Save the bees. Plant more trees. Clean the seas. Punch Nazis," had made students feel threatened. Murtagh, a descendant of a Holocaust survivor, stated that at her school, "students drew neo-Nazi symbols on the bathroom walls in December and the only schoolwide response was a statement on the announcements telling us to be kind."
CAMERA urged Lexington Public Schools to implement concrete actions, such as establishing a clear process for reporting hate and bias incidents, strengthening instruction on Jewish history and identity, and providing staff with professional development on confronting antisemitism. Schwartz asserted that "leadership should be responding with moral clarity, not suggesting that the act of teaching about the Holocaust has somehow ‘missed the mark.’"