How Activists Use Curriculum And ‘Training’ To Embed Leftist Ideology In K–12 Schools

Activist organizations are developing programs teaching teachers and students to be skeptical of allegations of anti-Semitism and to sympathize with pro-Palestinian causes, documents show.

Two pro-Palestinian organizations, Participatory Action Research Center for Organizing (PARCEO) and Project48, are orchestrating programs and releasing materials blaming “white nationalism” for anti-Semitism and asking participants to think about the “bad habit” of whiteness, materials obtained by Defending Education (DE) and shared exclusively with the Daily Caller News Foundation show. Activist programs are already finding their place in schools.

PARCEO “is a research, resource, and education center” that partners with groups and institutions focused on “educational justice, racial justice, workers’ rights, gender justice, combating Islamophobia, immigrant rights, health and food justice, and more.” Project48 “was created to center Palestinians in the telling of their own history” and aims to provide “educational materials, eyewitness accounts, images, videos and artifacts” to teach “about the ongoing Palestinian struggle against colonial erasure and the return of refugees to their ancestral lands.”

Both organizations have benefited from significant direct grants from Soros-linked Open Society foundations.

The two groups joined forces to create the Palestinian Nakba program, using the Arabic word for “catastrophe” to refer to “the creation of Israel in 1948” and the territorial struggle that followed. The program is intended to be used for “individual courses, for semester-long learning, as specific thematic modules, for presentations, as well as for workshops and webinars” and addresses topics such as “settler colonialism, Zionism, refugees and the right of return,” according to the Project48 website.

One session in the program, titled “The Nakba in Practice,” asks participants to “think about the history and material consequences of the Nakba, including what was hidden and erased, what was built, stolen, destroyed, and what remains,” documents obtained by DE show. The section also covers “indigeneity” and “settler colonialism” in relation to Palestine.

Another section denouncing Zionism claims to examine the “pervasive Zionist narrative” behind the Nakba, with slideshows on “the implementation and reality of Zionist colonization in Palestine” and “Israeli intentionality behind the process.”

“The session also addresses the pervasive Zionist narrative that continues to “justify” the Nakba, despite clear and compelling facts and the experiences of Palestinians,” the description explains.

The final session covers “forms of social, political, economic, and cultural resistance underway in Palestine,” teaching students “the impact, visions, and connections between movements for justice in Palestine and around the world.” (RELATED: Virginia Democrats move to integrate ‘transgender and queer’ history into children’s curriculum)

PARCEO also created the anti-Semitism curriculum from a collective liberation framework, which attributes anti-Semitism to “white nationalism” and compares it to “other forms of racism and injustice.”

Pro-Palestinian protesters release green smoke as they gather near the White House in Washington, DC, June 8, 2024, to protest Israel’s actions in Gaza. (Photo by Mandel Ngan / AFP)

These programs are already used in class.

In 2023, the New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCORE), a “group of current and former public school educators and their allies committed to the fight for social justice in our school system and society at large,” hosted an event exploring these two programs. Most recently, an Oakland Unified School District teacher and member of Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP) helped organize a PARCEO event in October 2025 and invited school board members to attend, according to emails obtained by DE show. The event was supposed to explain “the harmful abandonment of ‘anti-Semitism’ to silence discussion about what is happening in Gaza and throughout Palestine.”

Other PARCEO materials created in collaboration with JVP describe “white nationalist anti-Semitic violence” as the primary driver of anti-Jewish hatred, warning readers that “white supremacists and white nationalists are taking advantage” of the anti-Zionist movement “to sow confusion and promote anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and racism.”

“[W]Large-scale nationalist violence is on the rise in the United States, fueled by anti-immigrant and racist manifestos, sentiments and conspiracy theories, such as the Great Replacement Theory,” reads a presentation from PARCEO and the JVP. “Jews are among the targets of white nationalist violence, alongside black people, immigrants, Muslims, and trans and queer people, among others. Our security is linked to that of all, and none of us is free unless we are all free.

The groups say opposition to Zionism is no different from criticism of “settler colonialism, imperialism, and white supremacy at the founding of the United States.”

The “positionality” program created by PARCEO and discovered by DE seeks to help participants understand their “own identity in relation to race, class, power, gender, privilege, role and position.” Participants are asked to “consider an experience… where you were aware of your race, class, gender, migration status, sexual identity, or any other part of your identity(ies)” and are encouraged to discuss how they felt.

“This is important to create an inclusive environment,” insists the organization. “If we don’t think about our own identity and how we enter and influence a space, we can unknowingly perpetuate inequalities and oppressive power structures. »

Some of the additional resources recommended in the program include an article on the “Phenomenology of Whiteness,” which “examines how whiteness functions as a habit, or even a bad habit,” and a “White Awareness Handbook for Anti-Racist Training.”

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