Tensions are high at Oak Park and River Forest High School, reflecting global strife over the war in Gaza, as pro-Israel and pro-Palestine students and parents report unfair treatment, bullying, harassment and feeling unsafe at school.
The school, for example, has received 16 formal complaints since Oct. 7, but eight were anonymous complaints and therefore not investigated, officials said. Five complaints were determined to have already been dealt with. Of the three remaining complaints that were investigated, two alleged antisemitism and one alleged harassment of the school’s Middle East and North African student group. Those, a spokesperson said, were followed up in a manner that “focused on taking an educational approach preserving the dignity of all involved and ensuring a safe learning environment.”
The situation, however, escalated at last week’s school board meeting after one parent called for the firing of one teacher and the removal from advisory posts of two others amid allegations of perpetuating antisemitism, racism or misinformation about the war.
“You need to know that your Jewish students at Oak Park and River Forest High School live in a climate of fear,” Amy Guralnick, the mother of an OPRF sophomore who received hostile comments from another OPRF student last fall, told the board.
Arab and Muslim students also have reported fears for their safety and of bullying.
At the meeting, OPRF Supt. Greg Johnson and board president Tom Cofsky acknowledged that it has been extremely difficult to navigate the strong feelings exhibited by students and families on both sides of the Israel-Gaza war, but they said the school’s goal is to support all of its students as best it can.
“I, along with members of my team, have met with dozens and dozens of community members in different formats and groups, as we are trying to better understand not only what is going on in our community and how it is affecting our students,” Johnson said.
Like Johnson, Cofsky said the months since the attack have been very difficult for the school to navigate as it tries to support all of its students who are suffering pain.
“People are hurting and we are hearing it from multiple sides,” Cofsky said, adding that the war has brought pain to a number of students and divided the community.
“This is an issue that is toxic and it’s unfortunate that issues that exist from the other side of the world people are bringing into our community, for a reason, for all valid reasons, and then using that against their brother and sister in our school, in our community,” Cofsky said.
But parents and community members said the district has not done enough.
A call to fire a teacher over social media posts
In his first request, the father of two OPRF students, Nate Mellman, called for the school to fire teacher Anthony Clark over what he said he believed were antisemitic social media posts Clark responded to or shared.
During the public comment portion of last week’s meeting, Mellman, of River Forest, said that in January, Clark inaccurately posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, that the OPRF student who in 2018 airdropped the image of a swastika at a school assembly was Jewish. Clark’s post was part of an exchange with someone who was apparently a former OPRF student.
“The air drop in the auditorium. Remember that? That was a Jewish student,” Clark posted on X Jan. 28. “Doesn’t change that antisemitism is horrible & wrong, but I don’t make things up, especially when I was one of the primary people standing against it.”
The student who airdropped the swastika is not and was never Jewish, according to Oak Park Temple Rabbi Max Weiss, who helped, along with the boy’s pastor, counsel the boy after the incident. Johnson also told Wednesday Journal that his understanding is that the student who airdropped the swastika is not Jewish. Wednesday Journal viewed a screenshot of Clark’s post, but the post has now been removed.
Mellman also noted that Clark, in January, reposted a tweet that cast doubt on evidence that Israeli women were raped by Hamas attackers. Clark also reposted a tweet from someone called Megatron saying Israel stole “half the organs from dead Palestinians.”
It was widely acknowledged after a December 2023 New York Times investigation that Hamas used sexual violence against women. There is no evidence that Israel is harvesting organs from Palestinians. It is, however, viral misinformation taken from 2009 when an Israeli pathologist acknowledged that they did take samples from dead people, including Palestinians, without consent, something they said ended in the 1990s.
“When a teacher posts that a ‘Jewish student’ airdropped a swastika in an assembly but it’s clear that it was a non-Jewish student who did it, when a teacher reposts that Jews steal organs from dead Palestinian, and when a teacher reposts that Jews were not raped on October 7th, we, as a community, need to hear from you,” Mellman told the school board. “We need to hear you speak immediately and forcefully denouncing such rancid posts and ensure the community that you’re on it.”
Johnson and the school board, as is typical during the public comment portion of the meeting, did not respond to the comments of Mellman or other speakers.
Both Johnson and Cofsky declined to talk about Clark or his status.
“We are definitely not going to comment on any personnel matters,” Johnson told Wednesday Journal. “But I will say that we would certainly never make any decision about how to hire or fire or do anything like that, human resource related, based off of comments at a board meeting.”
Clark has not responded to inquiries from Wednesday Journal made by telephone, text message and email. Clark, a special education teacher at OPRF, is a community activist who has twice run unsuccessfully for Congress against Danny Davis in the 7th District and finished last among six in a race for Oak Park village trustee in 2021.
A call to remove MENA student club advisors
In his second request, Mellman also called for the school to remove the two faculty sponsors of the school’s Middle Eastern and North African student club. He claimed that the MENA sponsors should be removed because they permitted a post on the club’s Instagram page that showed a drawing of a bulldozer crashing through a fence under the words “Decolonize Palestine.” It is believed to be a reference to the Oct. 7 attack, when Hamas fighters bulldozed a hole in a border wall and streamed into southern Israel. Under the drawing, the post says that MENA has the ability to sell such T-shirts and asks for designs.
“Prints can be centered around Palestinian solidarity like the attached examples,” the post said.
The teachers are not being named because of safety concerns.
Mellman posed a rhetorical question to the school board and administration “How long would you allow a student club to post on social media the sale of T-shirts celebrating the death of George Floyd?”
Neither teacher has responded to emails or phone calls from Wednesday Journal.
Johnson declined to comment about them.
“We aren’t going to make any decisions based off of comments made at a public board meeting,” Johnson said.
At the same time, school leaders have been getting pressure from those supporting MENA.
At a January school board meeting, seven adults, some of whom said they are Jewish, made public comments raising concerns about how students of Middle Eastern ancestry are treated at OPRF. Scores of people also have signed a Protect MENA students petition denouncing the “repeated incidents of bullying of Arab and Muslim students.” The letter calls on the school to support student free speech and asks the school to suspend “any plans to incorporate a district definition of antisemitism as part of the DEI language.”
Signers also demanded that OPRF support the free speech of all students, commit to ending Islamophobia, anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab racism at OPRF, commit to racial ethnic sensitivity training specific to MENA, Palestinian, Arab and Muslim students, support the MENA student association as a safe space, offer grief counseling to students — both Palestinian and Israeli — who have been directly affected by the crisis, and to create a MENA Advisory Board of parents and community members. The letter also calls on the OPRF administration to apologize for previous mistakes affecting MENA students.
Tim Milinovich, the father of a MENA member and the chairman of the biblical theology department at Dominican University, also told Wednesday Journal that he fears that pro-Israel parents are trying to describe opponents of Israel’s war on Gaza as antisemites to discredit criticism of Israel.
“My concern is how people use the term ‘antisemitic ‘to their own advantage,” Milinovich said. “There are some individuals who feel any criticism of the state of Israel’s any action, is antisemitic which is just flat wrong. That’s not how antisemitism works.”
Milinovich also defended the two advisors.
“The two sponsors have been outstanding,” Milinovich said. “They’ve been standing beside our students. They’ve been helping students who have been directly impacted, whose family has been directly impacted by the assault, to receive trauma counseling. They’ve been able to work with the group, even while they’re receiving these unfair attacks, to be able to celebrate Palestinian heritage, Arabic heritage. No, to me those two faculty members deserve to be commended and the attacks on them are beyond unfortunate, they are unacceptable.”
Defining antisemitism
Students and parents, including speakers at the meeting such as Temple Har Zion Rabbi Adir Glick and a current OPRF student, raised concerns about the climate at OPRF as it concerns Jewish students, and called on the school to define antisemitism.
Many have been pushing for the school to define antisemitism and to explicitly prohibit it as part of the school’s diversity, equity and inclusion policies. They have met with administrators who, they said, promised action but so far nothing has been done.
“Here we are in February and the OPRF administration has achieved nothing as far as I can tell,” said Renee Slade, mother of junior, Alana, who was in Israel Oct. 7 as part of a study abroad program and later evacuated.
“The thing that stings the most about [the MENA supporters’ petition] is its one-sided view that we need language regarding Islamophobia but not antisemitism,” she said.
“My family and other members of the Jewish community have been allies to other marginalized communities. We’ve listened to and supported and voted for and donated to support Black and Brown lives, immigrants, economically underserved populations and others and now we, we are looking at trauma and pain and misinformation and discrimination and instead of support, community members are blaming Jews and saying that we don’t need protection and specifically asking that there not be a definition of antisemitism. So, I’m here today to ask you, the board and administration, to take a ‘yes and’ approach. Yes, we need to adopt a definition of Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism, and yes, we need to adopt a definition of antisemitism. Yes, we need to support Islamic students and yes, we also need to support Jewish students.”
Rebekah Levin, a member of the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace and the group Committee for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel and one of the people who spoke at a January school board meeting, told Wednesday Journal she doesn’t believe OPRF needs to define antisemitism.
“I don’t think we need to come up with a definition of antisemitism, I think we have a very accurate and well used definition which is hatred or discrimination against people because they are Jewish, period,” Levin said. “That’s antisemitism to me. I think the reason that’s there’s considerable concern about this is that there has been a purposeful conflation of the terms antisemitism and anti-Israel or anti-Israeli government and the notion of antisemitism is being used to weaponize people who are fighting against the criticism of Israel.”
Johnson and Cofsky said they don’t think it is necessary for the school to adopt a definition of antisemitism because current policies prohibit discrimination based on religion, among other factors.
“Our thoughts about this have certainly evolved,” Johnson said. “This is an incredibly, incredibly complex issue, not only here locally of course but globally and finding the right way to work through this issue that has layers upon layers and is very much tied to people’s identities, their passions, how they identify themselves both individually and culturally. Our approach has to be, and it has been, to meet with people, to listen to and engage in conversation and only determine really a path forward after we gather as many voices and thoughts as we can.”
Cofsky also said he believed the school’s existing policies are adequate to handle all kinds of discrimination.
“We can always make it better but I’m not seeing that as a solution or a need here,” Cofsky said.
