Investigating Antisemitism at Stuyvesant

On May 8, junior Milo Smulansky and sophomore Nisan Safanov traveled to Washington D.C. to speak at a press conference hosted by the House Republican Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government addressing antisemitism in K-12 schools. The students were able to attend through the organization Parents Defending Education—a national conservative non-profit dedicated to ‘depoliticizing’ public schools. In a room with 35 reporters, both students expressed grievances with the administration of Stuyvesant and New York City’s Department of Education (DOE), as well as with The Spectator’s publication and correction of an article in Volume 114 Issue 10 titled “Black and White: The Withheld History of Palestine and Israel.”

Previously, in March and April, meetings were held between Jewish Stuyvesant students and administration about the presence of antisemitism at Stuyvesant. Students compiled their personal experiences and prepared proposals of action for the administration. Some of their suggestions included amending the Stuyvesant curriculum to promote education on the Israel-Palestine conflict, hosting the Anti-Defamation League to speak about the topic, and asking Principal Yu to release a statement via email condemning the Spectator article. When their requests were not pursued, Smulansky and Safanov took their concerns to Washington. “This would have been over if [the administration] wrote a one sentence email. It shouldn’t have been, but it would have been because I was that willing to make concessions, just to get something, and I got nothing.” said Smulansky.

A major point of backlash from liberal Stuyvesant students towards the testimonies was the influence it might have on the 2024 presidential election by painting Republicans as allies of the Jewish community. “I was actually invited to [the Washington trip]. They tried to recruit me, and I looked up the woman who was inviting us, and she was a Fox News opinion writer and an anti-trans activist. And I had really no interest in that, because the last thing I want to do is empower the Republican Party,” junior Leo Schneiderman said. 

Anticipating such backlash, Smulansky pointed out that his testimony was, at its core, apolitical. “I’m not at the abortion hearing or the immigration hearing or the marijuana hearing. I will gladly testify against any of those Republicans on another issue,” Smulansky said. “I’m presenting an issue that any human should care about, and the fact that most people are silent and that it’s been left up to Republicans who want to use it as a political power play, that’s what’s tragic. Not that I went and gave a testimony, an apolitical testimony.”

Within the context of today’s political climate, some viewers found it difficult to separate Smulansky’s speech in support of Jewish people from a speech in support of Israel. Although the speech did not directly distinguish between the two, Smulansky certainly intended it to. “I'm not asking you to support Israel. I’m not asking you to support Zionism, not asking you for any of this. I’m asking you to fight antisemitism [...] I’m not here to say anyone who's critical of Israel is an antisemite. I’m here to say that an antisemite is an antisemite, and don’t be fooled if they try to frame it as anything else.” Smulansky said. “I’m not pretending they're not connected. I’m saying they are connected in that the way that antisemitism presents itself is through political, ideological debates of these things.”

Smulansky emphasized that his presence at Congress was meant to represent the experiences of Jewish students at Stuyvesant. “There are people who want to speak out, but what’s stopping them isn't that it's not a big enough issue. It’s that it’s such a big issue that it’s stifling them. So I went there as an individual Jew, as a Jewish student of Stuyvesant.” Smulansky said. “I’m not disparaging Jews who are afraid—of course they're afraid—but by going up and speaking against antisemites, I’m proving that you can’t keep your head down. [...] I know I’m right. I absolutely know for a fact that antisemitism is wrong and that what a lot of Jewish students have experienced is antisemitism, and that they’ve been turned away by people who are aware that it was antisemitism.”

Smulansky’s and Safanov’s testimonies received mixed reactions from students at Stuyvesant. “I was so happy that somebody was finally talking about antisemitism, as I haven’t had any actual antisemitic experiences at Stuy, but I have experienced a culture around reposting and normalizing things that were antisemitic. His testament actually brought the conversation to Stuy, which I thought was really beneficial to the Stuy community,” freshman Maxanne Wallace-Segall said. “However, they did two things that I did not agree with. They put generalizations on the Stuy community and administration. I think that while there have been antisemitic incidents at Stuy, the extent that they were talking made it sound like this issue was caused by the administration, and I don’t feel that.” 

Within Stuyvesant, the Jewish Student Union (JSU) has served as an outlet for many students to discuss their shared Jewish identities as well as receive support for experiences with antisemitism. “The Jewish community has felt profoundly isolated. Although we have been physically safe from violence and for the most part verbal assault, many of my JSU members have spoken to me, heartbroken that friends of theirs have shared harmful opinions, such as the statement that the hostages ‘deserved it.’ Some of my members told me that while they were grieving for lost family and friends, they felt scared to mention that they had lost family in Israel, as if saying that would be a controversial, political opinion. Our grief was politicized, forcing us to navigate politics while mourning loved ones, instead of feeling supported,” junior and JSU President Adina Salant wrote in an email interview. 

To Schneiderman, a major aspect of antisemitic rhetoric has been an especially vitriolic and indiscriminate hatred towards Zionism. “I think another distinction that I hear made very little is the distinction between being an anti-Zionist and hating Zionists. Because you can hate a political ideology, right? You can say ‘I'm an anti-Zionist’ and not be antisemitic. But if you say ‘all Zionists are pigs,’ or ‘all Zionists deserve to die,’ or ‘I hate all Zionists,’ that is 90 percent of Jews,” Schneiderman said. “And that does not shield an ideology from criticism. But if you say ‘I hate all of an adherence to an ideology, they should all die,’ and that ideology happens to include the vast, vast majority of an ethnic group, that's racism. So I think there’s nothing wrong being anti-Zionist, but if you say ‘death to the Zionists,’ that's antisemitic.”

On May 31, there was a pro-Palestinian anti-Zionist student protest held at Tweed courthouse, just a 10 minute walk from Stuyvesant along Chambers Street. The protest was attended by a plethora of students across New York City, including an estimated 30 Stuyvesant students. The protest remained non-violent and the NYPD was present. 

The following day, Jewish sophomore Ellis Thompson posted a statement on Instagram about antisemitic harassment and threats he received while observing the protest. “I was talking to one of the people handing out different ceasefire proposals by Israel and Hamas. A man came up to me and yelled in my ear calling me a ‘[EXPLETIVE] Zionist propagandist’,” Thompson said. 

Jewish sophomore Alice Solganik was also present at the protest and watched the interaction between Ellis and the agitator half a block away. “I saw this man two centimeters away from Ellis’ face, flailing his arms like crazy. I decided to call Ellis because I was worried for his safety. Listening over the phone was horrifying,” Solganik said.

Thompson began to record audio of the event, soon after he heard the man’s antisemitic remarks. “He screamed that all Jews should die, which he later corrected to saying that ‘All bad Jews should die’ after I started recording. He then said that ‘every single Jew he ever met should die.’ [...] It’s almost as if he realized on some level that what he was saying was preposterous and self corrected 10 percent of it.” Thompson said. Thompson emphasizes that he created the post on Instagram not to discredit the pro-Palestenian movement but to showcase the reality of antisemitism at the protest. “Nobody around did anything, including some Stuyvesant kids who were being interviewed for a newspaper nearby,” Thompson said.

Many Jewish students have found themselves fearing antisemitism in pro-Palestinian spaces, despite their support of the broader pro-Palestinian protests. “At this protest, they didn’t do a good job in distinguishing themselves [between] people who are advocating in good faith [and] people who are being antisemitic,” said junior Abel Bellows. “I feel like it’s possible to make a distinction, but there isn’t a distinction that’s being made, and then I think that leads to incidents like [what happened to Thompson].”

While some Jewish students at Stuyvesant have experienced antisemitism, to many the school itself is still relatively safe. “I don’t feel particularly unsafe at Stuyvesant. I did right after October 7. Like, I’m generally not an easily offended person, but I was seeing people support Hamas, and immediately I found that extremely upsetting,” Schneiderman said. “Milo believes we should have no tolerance for antisemitism, but I think generally there is a level of tolerance for basically all bigotries, because if you crusade against them, it makes them worse.”

Smulansky opposes this sentiment of tolerance, believing that little incidents are the seeds of greater violence. At the press conference, he referred to antisemitism as a cancer that needs to be excised no matter how small it begins. “There are people who have experienced it and who do want change. It doesn't matter how many people haven't. It matters that there's a significant quantity of people who have [...] Listen to Jews when they tell you that they're experiencing something,” Smulansky said. “Society is a sum of its individuals. If enough individuals stand up, it will become clear that certain rhetoric is unacceptable.”

Smulansky hopes for powerful multilateral action, not just silent nodding and solidarity. “I’m here to condemn antisemitism, and everyone should condemn antisemitism and disregard the politics, because it’s a moral issue, not a political issue. It really is. It’s not politics. Posting a swastika is not politics, telling Jews that they’re self-centered—it’s not politics, you know. [...] It’s antisemitism.” Smulansky said. He proposes that Stuyvesant create an Israel-Palestine history elective in order to create a well-informed forum of discussion for this issue. “It would allow issues to be tackled, complexity to be tackled. It’s a taboo right now, which leaves people to turn to the loudest person as their source of information, because we're not actually learning.” He envisions the course being taught by Islamic History teacher Zachary Berman and Jewish History teacher Robert Sandler.

Bellows also calls for increased discussion between the affected communities to ease tensions. “I think that it would be a positive thing to have the school create more opportunities for discourse between different groups on the issue of Israel and Palestine to create more of a feeling of connection between the Jewish and the Muslim community as a way to reduce the amount of antisemitism or Islamophobia that exists in the community,” Bellows said. “When people are really listening, and then when people have more conversations [and build relationships with] with people that have different views [...], I think it encourages them to be more aware of what they’re saying and how it might be impacting different groups of people.”

Since the press conference, the faculty has had a seminar about teaching difficult topics in the classroom—featuring The Spectator article—and the principal has inquired about suitable texts for discussion among students. As the administration takes action, students themselves can also contribute by conducting productive, empathetic conversations. “I think that most of our problems as a school community have come from a simple lack of communication. I have spoken to many students who [have] posted antisemitic or hateful things or shared concerning opinions, and the vast majority of them were receptive, understanding, and apologetic,” Salant said. “Only when we understand and feel comfortable with each other can we come to any helpful conclusions.”