Following allegations of antisemitism, the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA) has agreed to take down controversial educational materials linked on its website. The union initially posted the materials exclusively for members as part of a collection of resources for leading classroom conversations about the ongoing violence in Gaza following October 7, 2023 — which launched conversations of antisemitism in the classroom into the mainstream.
“As trusted educators, MTA members would never want to have antisemitic materials on the MTA website, and the MTA does not promote materials that direct hate at any group,” the union said in a statement on their website. “The links to the sites containing those offensive images will be removed.”
The Special Commission for Combating Antisemitism held a hearing on Feb. 10, 2025, to address the controversy. Officials accused union President Max Page of presenting a one-sided perspective through the distribution of said materials.
The resources in question ranged from an image of a dollar bill folded into the shape of a Star of David and a link to a children’s workbook called “Handala’s Return” created by The Palestinian Feminist Collective, which narrates a history of Palestinian resistance through interactive activities.
During the hearing, State Senator John Velis (D-MA), the commission's co-chair , called the resources “incredibly one-sided.” Rep. Simon Caltado (D-MA), House chair of the commission, said in a statement that the fact “that the MTA is only just now beginning to 'review' the resources would be laughable if the subject matter wasn't so gravely serious.”
While the MTA agreed to “remove any materials that do not further the cause of promoting understanding,” Page pushed back on the notion that Massachusetts teachers were “robots who would somehow be brainwashed by a single set of resources.”
“The idea is not that everyone should agree with every single thing that is in here, or that every educator would take this and blindly present it, as they never would,” Page said when questioned about the resources, arguing that it was disrespectful to assume that teachers would not consider the materials with a critical eye.
In testimony given at the hearing, Lexington High School social studies teacher Jessica Antoline underlined the anxieties that arise from the responsibility of facilitating such sensitive conversations, especially when the “reality of our job, one that is underpaid and given impossible demands… makes us vulnerable and doubtful of our skills and knowledge, opening us up to making grievous mistakes.”
Antoline’s testimony addressed a question at the core of conversations surrounding Israel and Palestine — in the context of intense and ongoing violence, is educational neutrality a productive decision? She suggested that teachers should not feign neutrality but rather carefully explain to students how they reached a conclusion and invite them to draw their own.
“There is no such thing as presenting history ‘neutrally’ … and we are misled if we think teaching is or should be neutral,” Antoline said in her testimony. “Sometimes a value-neutral position is unacceptable. Interactive objectivity is necessary in learning.”
Antoline’s sentiment and the entire controversy involving the union’s resources speak to the overarching challenges of encouraging these classroom conversations in a time of heightened violence and contention.
Social studies teacher Samia Shoman suggests that educators should teach the history of Palestine and Israel from a “multiple narratives perspective,” which gets students to challenge their current understandings and open their minds to new conclusions, rejecting neutrality without dictating outcome.
“Teaching about this conflict can be done,” Shoman said in an overview of her curriculum for Teach Palestine, a branch of Berkeley-based non-profit Middle East Children’s Alliance. “More importantly, a justice-based approach can be used. As challenging as this can be, the reward is seeing students flourish as they think, question, and engage.”
University of Buffalo Professor Daniel P. Kotzin, who taught a course called “The History of Zionism and Israel,” suggested that his curriculum is not built around the texts and materials themselves but rather around understanding how students read the texts.
“By providing students with the opportunity to share how they read the texts, how each student understands the historical subject becomes the focus,” Kotzin said in a statement to the Association for Jewish Studies. “If they did not have an opportunity to share their judgments, those judgments would still be there, but not be acknowledged.”
Moving forward, the Massachusetts Teachers Association said that they hope the commission will redirect its efforts towards what they believe to be actual threats of antisemitism and intolerance. They stated that the commission had led them to believe that the “hearing would provide the opportunity for a thoughtful discussion about how to teach this very difficult conflict with our students.”
“Instead, the co-chair used this hearing as an opportunity to engage in political grandstanding that was disturbing to many,” the union concluded in their statement. “The way these resources were manipulated in such a fashion, so as to label the state’s largest union of educators as promoters of antisemitism, remains one of the more deplorable displays witnessed at the State House.”
As censorship of classroom materials becomes an increasingly relevant issue — with President Donald Trump issuing an executive order in Jan. 2025 demanding an end to “radical indoctrination” in schools — the commission’s ability to dictate the dissemination of these materials is crucial to the future of education. With more and more classroom content on the chopping block, these hearings are essential to how students will learn to understand, process and stand up to intolerance, for better or for worse.
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