‘TheUCLA Ethnic Studies Certificate Program is a joint project of UCLA Center X in the School of Education and the Institute of American Cultures, the central hub to four ethnic studies centers — American Indian Studies Center, Asian American Studies Center, Bunche Center for African American Studies, and Chicano Studies Research Center.’
The program is a professional development program for K-12 teachers. Applicants were able to apply for full or partial funding for the program. part in this program.
Teachers, join us for a year of building community and curriculum and cultivating our pedagogies for teaching K-12 Ethnic Studies. Applications for the 2025-2026 cohort will be open from March 15-April 16 2025. Notification of acceptance and funding will be sent by May 1, 2025.
The goals of this program include:
Preparing in-service teachers who have multiple or single subject credential in other areas to teach ethnic studies in K-12 schools
Learning and experiencing pedagogical approaches for teaching K-12 Ethnic Studies
Cultivating a Community of Practice among Ethnic Studies educators
Offering opportunities to deepen and extend content knowledge in ethnic studies
Supporting Ethnic Studies curriculum planning and implementation
Connecting to community-based spaces, people, and resources to support the learning of Ethnic Studies
Course work includes:
Two in-person courses in the summer (Classes will meet all of the following days in person from 9 am – 4pm – June 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 30, July 1, 2, 3, August 2, 2025)
Two hybrid/zoom courses during the 2025-2026 academic school year (1st and 3rd Tuesdays of each month 5:30-7:00 via zoom, in person session on Saturday, November 8, 2025 and May 2, 2026)
Courses:
Ethnic Studies K-12 Pedagogy and Praxis
Ethnic Studies Perspectives and Research
Ethnic Studies K-12 Curriculum and Course Design
Ethnic Studies Core Concepts and Content
Ethnic Studies Specialization Program participants will enroll in Four 4-unit Courses (as listed above), with a total cost of $2650. Partial and total funding are available.
As part of the program, teachers read Rethinking Schools’ “Teaching Palestine”
“Black freedom struggle took a decisive anti-imperialist turn in the late 1960s…Israel’s preemptive strikes against its Arab neighbors in the June 1967 (“Six-Day”) War and its subsequent occupation of Palestinian territories encouraged many to speak out for the first time.”
“Black Power activists increasingly saw the Palestinians as allies in a common struggle against a global U.S. empire driven by and for racial capitalism. They attempted to build solidarity to highlight what they viewed as the racism inherent in the occupation of Palestine and the colonialism inherent in the subjugation of Black Americans.”
The lesson should take up to 2 - 4 class periods. Materials needed for the class include:
- Copies of “Civil Rights, Black Power and Palestine-Israel” for every student. Enough copies of the six Palestine-Israel perspectives . For the Extension Activity: Copies of “UN Resolution 3379 — Timeline and Justification” for every student.
The six Palestine-Israel perspectives referred to are : Malcolm X, Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, Martin Luther King Jr, Bayard Rustin, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, The Black Panther Party.
Of those perspectives, only Rustin is decidedly pro-Israel and his support is characterized as out of necessity for maintaining Jewish support and jettisoning his pacifist principles.
According to the lesson plan, the NAACP also initially supported Israel because of Jewish financial support (and a mention that Jews had been founding members of NAACP) however they “moderated” their position in the 1970s when they called for the US to negotiate with the Palestinian Liberation Organization.
Here is how the lesson authors characterized the Executive Director of the NAACP’s never published statement on Israel in 1948 - “Seemingly unwilling to recognize Arab grievances as anything other than a hatred of Jews,
The lead-up to the lesson includes providing “context” of the conflict, including the “Nakba” and key terms - including imperialism, antisemitism, islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism (check-points are characterized as racist).
The goal of the lesson is to look at how different black leaders and movements views the Israel-Palestine conflict, why they thought their position was advantageous to their own movement and how it connects to the Black freedom struggle.
In the extra lesson on the UN declaration of Zionism as Racism, students are asked to consider :
“Would calling Zionism “racism” help fight racism in the United States? If so, how? Is there a risk in doing so?”
and:
“How do debates about Palestine-Israel amongst Black leaders and organizations in the 1960s and 1970s relate to what’s going on today?”
Another lesson by Adam Sanchez, “The United States and Palestine-Israel: Fifty
Years of Choices (1956–2006),” asks students “imagine...we had a government that cared about promoting equality, justice, and ending oppression.”
In describing student feedback to the lesson, which Sanchez has already taught in his classes:
He concludes with a quote from a student that the lesson helped her “understand the frustrations that led to Oct. 7” and another who said that “[t]he U.S. helped Israel ruin so many lives and helped kill countless children and civilians. People need to understand this as the buildup to Oct. 7” (Teaching Palestine, 54).
Contributors
Contributors to the book include:
Nora Lester Murad.
After the murder of Yoram Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, Murad went on Instagram to explain that the attack was not antisemitic. She decries “political assassinations.”
“I don't believe in political assassinations. I don't believe in them when they target Israeli employees in Washington, DC and I don't believe in them when Israel conducts them against people in Iran or Syria or Lebanon or in Gaza, where Israel has committed political assassinations of leader after leader, after leader, including Palestinians who they were in current negotiations with.”
“The reason why it's so important to clarify that this attack was not antisemitic is because when we default into an assumption that anything happens to Jews is antisemitic, the word loses its meaning and is only a weapon to censor and discipline people who don't support Israel and who don't support Israel's genocide of Palestinians.”
“It makes sense to me that some people of conscience are going to go far to raise their voices when nothing else has made a difference.”
Murad is one of the key activists behind the campaign to get the ADL out of schools.
On October 7, 2023, Murad posted videos on Instagram, as the terrorist massacre was ongoing, stating that it offered a “glimmer of hope” that the “oppression” of Palestinians might end. Later that day, she shared the hashtag #GazaUnderAttack.
On October 17, 2023, Murad filmed herself pulling down posters of kidnapped Israelis, put up by “nutty people”, because, she claimed, the posters incite violence and are “antisemitic.” Why? Because they “make Jews scared of Palestinians.”
Murad has called the ADL “as bad as the Proud Boys.” and said that “If we allow the ADL [and similar organisations] to control what happens in schools, we will be raising another generation of genociders.”
Kiswani was a founding member of her campus branch of Students for Justice in Palestine. She has expressed support for members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
On October 7, 2023, while Hamas’ terrorist massacre was ongoing, AROC posted:
“Palestine is rising! Gaza is rising!” - AROC, Oct 7 2023.
On October 11, 2023, AROC released a statement which held “the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence we’ve witnessed across historic Palestine. In the face of such violence we recommit ourselves to the struggle for freedom and justice in Palestine, in our region, and globally.”
Samia Shoman. Shoman is a member of the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium and the leader of the Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA) “Teach Palestine” project. MECA was found to have credible links to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Jody Sokolower. Former managing editor of Rethinking Schools and former national coordinator of MECA’s Teach Palestine project.
Jesse Hagopian: Editor at Rethinking Schools. Hagopian has said that “Israel is trying to annihilate the past, the present and the future of people” and that activists told him that what they saw in Israel “was worse Apartheid than what they faced in the Jim Crow South in America.”
Hagopian has a long history of anti-Israel activism, previously covered in this substack:
Hagopian has a long history of far-left, or progressive left, activism. In 2006, “Jesse served as the campaign manager for Seattle Black Panther founding captain Aaron Dixon’s Green Party bid for U.S. senate with the message of, “Out of war…and into our communities!”” In 2011, Hagopian was part of a delegation to Israel and the Palestinian territories with Interfaith Peacebuilders (now known as Eyewitness Palestine). Eyewitness Palestine has had some unsavory associations over the years and has expressed support for convicted terrorist Rasmea Odeh.
After a return from the delegation, Hagopian took up with Black4Palestine.
Hagopian has also written about what he sees as the connection between Israel’s “settler-colonial” policies and the United States. “Rethinking Schools” and the Zinn Education Project republished the article, which calls to “free Palestine and free Palestine Pedagogy.”
Bill Bigelow. Co-director of the Zinn Education Project and curriculum editor of Rethinking Schools. Bigelow has said that :
“The first through-line is the Zionist movement’s contempt for Palestinian life…Herzl refers to Palestinians as non-Jewish communities. And that erasure of Palestinians is consistent.”
“Another through-line is Zionism’s partnership with Empire…and now of course with the US Empire…the genocide in Gaza is just impossible to imagine without the US military support.”
“The cooperation between Jews and Christians and Muslims..Zionism is an attack on that cooperation…Zionism is a movement of segregation and domination.”
Bigelow’s lessons for “Rethinking Schools” includes “Whose Terrorism?”. This lesson was promoted by Qatar government-sponsored Qatar Foundation International.
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What a disgrace this ethnic studies program is. Teaching Palestine is an ahistoric biased load of crap. Absolutely outrageous that well meaning teachers will be manipulated into believing this
What a disgrace this ethnic studies program is. Teaching Palestine is an ahistoric biased load of crap. Absolutely outrageous that well meaning teachers will be manipulated into believing this
And MAGA accuses Dems of indoctrination? This program is so antisemitic they don't even know the word. Jews decide what is antisemitic to them.