House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) spoke out on Wednesday against California’s proposed ethics studies curriculum that espoused a political bias against both Jews and the state of Israel.
“This is the latest evidence of left-leaning institutions in our country trying to force their views in places they don’t belong,” McCarthy told The Daily Wire. “Aside from the proposed curriculum’s erasure of accurate Israeli history and promotion of the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, the entire curriculum reads as a political agenda rather than a model of free-thinking learning.”
McCarthy’s remarks were in response to the California Department of Education’s effort to update scholastic requirements, which includes a mandatory Ethics Studies Model Curriculum (ESMC). A host of anti-Israel activists assisted in crafting the educational program that subsequently has been labeled “anti-Semitic” and “anti-Israel.”
Accordingly, a draft of the curriculum reveals that Jews are omitted as an ethnic group, and while terms such as racism, sexism, cisheteropatriarchy, and Islamaphobia are all listed in the glossary, the term “anti-Semitism” is noticeably absent, reported Fox News. The curriculum also parrots age-old anti-Semitic canards, including the suggestion that Jews control the media.
Moreover, the proposed program includes a multitude of historical inaccuracies in an attempt to portray Israel as a colony that oppresses Palestinians, and further refers to “Israel-Palestine” as a country. The curriculum not only condemns Israel, but further advocates for the boycott of Jewish people and businesses.
The California State Board of Education (SBE) announced on Tuesday that the proposed draft does not meet certain state requirements and will be replaced with an entirely new one.
“Ethnic studies can be an important tool to improve school climate and increase our understanding of one another. A model curriculum should be accurate, free of bias, appropriate for all learners in our diverse state, and align with Governor Newsom’s vision of a California for all,” SBE President Linda Darling-Hammond wrote in a statement. “The current draft model curriculum falls short and needs to be substantially redesigned.”
“I’m relieved the state made the obvious decision to rethink the curriculum, but a blatantly anti-Semitic and anti-Israel agenda should never have gotten this far in the first place,” McCarthy told the Daily Wire in response to the announcement. “California’s educators have another chance to get it right, and I stand with the brave organizations and individuals who spoke out against this dangerous and irresponsible proposal.”
McCarthy also revealed to the Washington Free Beacon that he is demanding an investigation into “why and how” such an inaccurate and anti-Semitic curriculum was able to advance so far through the state’s Education Department.
“Taxpayer dollars should never be approved to fund a curriculum that whitewashes Israel’s history while simultaneously promoting the [BDS] movement, which seeks to destroy the state of Israel,” McCarthy said. “This was not simply an oversight — the California Department of Education’s attempt to institutionalize anti-Semitism is not only discriminatory and intolerant, it’s dangerous.”
He is calling on the state of California “to look into this matter further.”