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As a teacher in the lowest-paid high school district in San Mateo County, I increasingly find myself living in fear of doing what I believe is right. My job is to help students understand the world around them. That should not be controversial. Yet discussing the realities of what is happening in Palestine and Gaza, events funded in part by U.S. tax dollars and debated daily on the world stage, can feel professionally dangerous. The burden is not simply the possibility of a complaint or a lawsuit. It is the constant feeling of surveillance. Every lesson, every slide deck, every email, every classroom discussion carries the possibility of scrutiny by people looking not to understand what is being taught, but to find grounds for attack. That pressure follows me home. It sits in the back of my mind while planning lessons, answering emails, or trying to enjoy a weekend.
What makes this fear real is that it is not hypothetical. Across California, ethnic studies teachers have faced records requests, public accusations, online harassment, and campaigns designed to turn them into examples. In San Mateo County, educators have watched colleagues become targets simply for teaching about Palestine, colonialism, or systems of oppression. Teachers whose names appeared in metadata have been identified and publicly attacked. Some have had their personal information circulated online. Some have seen photographs of family members posted online by rightwing political activists. The message is unmistakable: teach certain truths, and you may become the next target.
The tragedy is that this climate does not simply affect teachers. It affects students. When educators begin to wonder whether a lesson is worth the risk, when they hesitate before discussing historical facts, or when they avoid important questions because they fear political retaliation, students lose access to the honest education they deserve. The objective is not necessarily to win every argument. The objective is to make entire subjects too dangerous to teach.
This is why the fight over ethnic studies is not really a fight about curriculum.
It is a fight about power.
The latest example comes from the Sequoia Union High School District. Following a lawsuit brought by six Jewish families, the district entered into a settlement that includes significant changes to district policy. Supporters of the lawsuit argue that these measures are necessary to address antisemitism and protect Jewish students. Every student deserves protection from discrimination and harassment. The concern arises elsewhere. Critics of the settlement, including district parent Aaron Thacker, have pointed to provisions that would require teachers to present controversial issues through a framework of strict neutrality and could increase outside influence over instructional content.
At first glance, this sounds reasonable. After all, who could oppose balance? But history teachers immediately recognize the problem. Should we teach both sides of slavery? Both sides of segregation? Both sides of climate science? History is not a debate tournament. The purpose of education is not to pretend every argument possesses equal merit. The purpose is to help students evaluate evidence and reach conclusions.
Schools should absolutely remain connected to the communities they serve. Parents should be informed. Community members should be heard. But there is a profound difference between community participation and community veto power. Public schools exist to educate students, not to serve as battlegrounds where organized political groups can remove any material they find objectionable. If every constituency gains the power to erase uncomfortable history, eventually all that remains is multiplication tables and perhaps a recipe for vanilla pudding. Even then, someone will probably object to the pudding.
The Sequoia case is not an isolated incident. Across California, ethnic studies has become one of the primary battlegrounds in a broader political struggle over history, identity, and power. Santa Ana Unified became a focal point after litigation brought by the Louis D. Brandeis Center and allied organizations resulted in a settlement requiring the redesign of ethnic studies courses and the removal of certain materials. Similar controversies have emerged in Palo Alto, Hayward, Mountain View-Los Altos, San Francisco, and other districts. At the same time, records requests and public pressure campaigns have become increasingly common tools for scrutinizing educators who discuss Palestine or employ anti-colonial frameworks in their classrooms.
AB 715 has intensified these concerns. Supporters view the law as a necessary protection against antisemitism. Critics worry that it creates incentives for districts to overreact to complaints involving discussions of Palestine, Zionism, colonialism, or Israeli state policy. The practical result is often not outright censorship but something more subtle and more effective: self-censorship. Teachers begin asking themselves not whether a lesson is accurate, but whether it will generate a complaint.
What is happening in California is part of a broader national trend. Organizations such as the Louis D. Brandeis Center, the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, StandWithUs, and the Deborah Project have become increasingly influential actors in educational debates involving Israel and Palestine. These organizations describe their efforts as necessary interventions against antisemitism. Many educators see them as increasingly influential forces shaping what can and cannot be discussed inside public schools. These organizations now play a significant role in shaping educational policy and public debate.
What is striking is how many teachers still misunderstand what these developments reveal.
One of the greatest victories of the ruling class inside education has been convincing many teachers that they are something other than workers. We are encouraged to think of ourselves primarily as professionals. We possess degrees. We perform intellectual labor. We are experts. From these facts many educators draw the conclusion that our interests somehow differ from those of nurses, warehouse workers, transit operators, hotel workers, longshore workers, and countless others who sell their labor to survive.
The attacks on ethnic studies expose how fragile that illusion has become.
Teachers sell their labor for wages. We work inside institutions we do not control. We face increasing surveillance, growing workloads, declining real wages, and expanding political interference in our labor. School boards, administrators, courts, legislatures, and increasingly outside political organizations shape the conditions under which we work. When political actors attempt to dictate curriculum, they are not simply intervening in an academic debate. They are intervening directly in the labor process itself.
The problem is not merely that teachers have forgotten they are workers. The problem is that this misunderstanding leaves educators politically disarmed. It encourages us to believe that expertise alone will protect us. It encourages us to believe that if we simply produce enough evidence, enough studies, enough policy papers, those in power will eventually recognize the value of ethnic studies and leave us alone.
Yet while educators produce research, opponents organize. While teachers write reports, opponents file lawsuits. While academics debate, political organizations build networks capable of exerting pressure on school boards, districts, and legislatures.
One side understands that power matters.
The other too often behaves as though evidence alone can overcome organized political pressure.
It cannot.
The reason Palestine has become the focal point of so many of these conflicts is not difficult to understand. Students are watching one of the defining political and humanitarian crises of their generation unfold in real time. They see destroyed neighborhoods, displaced families, bombed hospitals, and mass civilian casualties. They see protests across the globe. They see governments defending actions that millions of people condemn. They see international legal bodies debating questions that only a few years ago would have seemed unimaginable.
Naturally, they ask questions.
The remarkable thing is not that students want to discuss Palestine. The remarkable thing is that anyone imagines they will stop asking.
At the local level, teachers face complaints, investigations, and records requests. At the state level, legislation expands oversight. At the national level, advocacy organizations coordinate legal and political campaigns. Internationally, all of this unfolds alongside growing political conflict surrounding Palestine and Israel. These are not separate developments. They are interconnected expressions of a broader struggle over historical memory, political consciousness, and who gets to define reality.
Many educators continue to look toward union leadership as the primary vehicle through which these attacks will be defeated. Yet the experience of recent years suggests otherwise.
Teachers need unions. Workers need unions. The attacks on public education would be even worse without them.
But it is a mistake to assume that stronger union leadership, by itself, will solve the problems described in this article.
Faced with attacks on ethnic studies, Palestine solidarity, and democratic rights inside schools, union leadership has too often responded with carefully worded statements, procedural objections, lobbying efforts, and appeals to elected officials. These actions are not worthless. But they remain inadequate to the scale of the problem.
This should not surprise us.
Trade unions emerge to defend workers within existing society. As they grow, they develop bureaucracies whose primary role becomes negotiating the terms under which workers function within that society. The bureaucracy seeks stability. It seeks predictability. It seeks accommodation where possible. Its role is mediation.
Yet the struggle over ethnic studies is not ultimately a dispute over contract language or workplace procedure. It is a political struggle over historical memory, democratic rights, and political consciousness. Such struggles inevitably push beyond the limits of what union bureaucracies are designed to confront.
The central problem is not the weakness of unions.
The central problem is the weakness of working-class consciousness.
A bureaucracy can negotiate contracts.
A bureaucracy cannot substitute for a politically conscious working class.
The defense of ethnic studies will not be won through better press releases. It will not be won through another committee meeting. It will not be won by waiting for sympathetic politicians to rescue us.
It will be won, if it is won at all, by educators recognizing themselves as part of a broader working class whose interests extend far beyond the walls of any individual school.
The fight over ethnic studies is not fundamentally about a course. It is not fundamentally about a lesson plan. It is not fundamentally about a lawsuit.
It is a struggle over consciousness.
Students who learn to analyze colonialism, militarism, racism, economic exploitation, and state power may eventually begin asking uncomfortable questions about the institutions governing their lives. They may begin connecting local experiences to global realities. They may begin recognizing patterns that those in power would prefer remain invisible.
That possibility is what makes ethnic studies so threatening.
The attacks on ethnic studies are therefore not merely attacks on curriculum. They are attacks on historical memory, political consciousness, and the ability of ordinary people to understand the forces shaping their lives.
The defense of ethnic studies cannot be separated from the defense of Palestine solidarity. Neither can be separated from the broader struggle for democratic rights. Nor can any of these struggles be separated from the fight for working-class organization and consciousness.
The task before us is not merely defending a course.
It is developing the consciousness and organization capable of connecting these struggles.
The future of ethnic studies will not ultimately be decided by courts, administrators, legislators, or school boards. It will be decided by whether educators come to understand their struggle as part of a broader struggle being waged by working people everywhere.
Teachers should not have to choose between their conscience and their livelihood. But preventing that choice requires more than courage. It requires organization. It requires solidarity. Most of all, it requires educators to stop imagining themselves as isolated professionals and begin acting as workers whose future is bound up with the future of the broader working class.
That is the real fight.