Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is set to headline a conference in Boston this week that will also feature activists who justified Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.
Jackson will deliver a Thursday keynote address at the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) convention. Representing educators from K-12 to college, the 100-year-old organization adopted a 2017 vision calling on members to “apply the power of language and literacy to actively pursue justice and equity.”
The four-day-long convention, which has the theme “Heart, Hope, Humanity,” will also include Sawsan Jaber and Hannah Moushabeck, two activists who have been outspoken in justifying Hamas’s October 7 attack multiple times.
Jackson faced criticism during her confirmation hearings for her membership in Harvard’s Black Student Association, which invited anti-Semitic speaker Leonard Jeffries to speak during her time at the school. Jackson told Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-NC) that she did not attend Jeffries’ speech and does not share his views.
Mika Hackner, a Senior Research Associate for the Jewish Institute For Liberal Values, said it is “distasteful and unconscionable” that NCTE put Jackson in a position where she will be appearing at an event with anti-Israel activists.
“A Supreme Court justice, a representative of the highest court in our land, charged with protecting the laws and values of our liberal democracy, should not be sharing any kind of engagement or platform with activists who promote the view that Hamas are “legitimate resistance,” Hackner said.
Hackner noted that several sessions as a whole focus on “using education as a tool of social justice activism.”
Conservative justices have faced criticism in recent years for attending events hosted by groups like the Federalist Society, with detractors questioning their ability to remain “apolitical.”
Moushabeck and Jaber will share the stage during a Friday session, “Let’s Talk about Palestine: Voice, Experiences, and Education for Liberation.” During the talk, the pair will “model ways in which teachers can be agents of justice through their roles.” Joining them in putting on the session is Nora Lester Murad, who filmed herself ripping down photos of Israeli hostages last October.
Moushabeck will also speak and present in two additional workshops about “Elevating Voices of Women from the Arab Diaspora” and “Reclaiming the Arab Narrative,” respectively.
Moushabeck has an extensive history of anti-Israel social media activity. Notably, on October 7, 2023, while Hamas was actively massacring, raping, and kidnapping Israeli civilians, she posted a video defending the terror group’s actions.
“When you reframe what’s happening, you understand why people would retaliate, why people would resist,” she stated. “We’ve seen this in history before we’ve seen this happen here on this very land when settlers took over.”
Other posts include a picture of the Palestinian flag with the words “This is the only flag I fly with pride” and a video with her wearing a “fatties for a Free Palestine shirt.”
According to the K12 Extremism Tracker, Moushabeck was involved in a “Queer story time for Palestine” event in Amherst, Massachusetts with a drag queen where toddlers chanted “Free Palestine.”
Moushabeck is currently the co-owner of Interlink Publishing Group, according to her LinkedIn.
Jaber has also justified the October 7 attacks, tweeting days after the invasion Palestinians could not be faulted, because they were “fighting for their humanity.”
“That doesn’t make them terrorists,” Jaber said. “It makes them human.”
The day after the attacks, Jaber tweeted that her “heart hurts” as her “people get demonized and massacres [sic] again.”
In a follow-up tweet, she claimed the media “didn’t report fairly” on the Black Lives Matter movement, the American southern border, or the South Dakota pipeline, adding “Why do we believe it would report fairly on Palestine?” She even used the hashtag “#StopTheEthnicCleansing.”
The next day, Jaber condemned school districts sending out pro-Israel statements about the October 7 attack, writing the statements are telling Palestinian students “their lives & lives experiences do not matter.”
When Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was killed in Gaza, Jabar shared a post mourning him, with the text “resistance never dies” and another stating “ideas are bulletproof,” according to K12 Extremism Tracker.
Jaber is scheduled to speak at an American Muslims for Palestine conference next week. The group is currently under investigation for allegedly funneling funds to the terrorist group Hamas, The Jerusalem Post reported.
Jaber is the Chair of the English Department at Maine West High School, a public school in Illinois. She will also be a presenter in several other social justice workshops including “Beyond Hope: Storytelling, Freedom-Dreaming, and Curricular Design as Pedagogies of Resistance” which will present “pedagogical tactics for bridging literacy, imagination, and activism with youth.”
Jaber will also join “Designing Spaces for Students to Reshape Their Worlds: An Antiracist Pedagogy Workshop.” Participants will learn how to design and assess assignments that guide students’ use of these resources to address the social change they desire.”
Jaber will also present at the “Toward Empowerment, Equity, and Education for Liberation: The Intersections of Critical Literacy and Social Justice” and “Cultivating an Inclusive Classroom: Utilizing Picturebooks to Support Palestinian Identity” workshops.
Jany Finkielsztein, who will be speaking at a poster session for “Multicultural Jewish Children’s Literature” told The Daily Wire it is “deeply concerning” that activists are bringing their ideology into the classrooms.
“It is deeply concerning that activists who glorify the October 7 massacre are attempting to infiltrate our schools with hateful propaganda,” Finkielsztein told The Daily Wire.
Jaber shared a video to her Instagram from writer and activist, Ijeoma Oluo, on Tuesday, that complains that NCTE has a “Palestine problem” and demanded that Finkielsztein’s employer, Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis, be disinvited from the conference.
The video was accompanied by a link to a petition accusing the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis of being a “right-wing pro-Israel group that defames educators and undermines the freedom to teach and the right to learn.”
“How can we be safe at the convention if CAMERA is there surveilling us?” the petition asks. “CAMERA is not only a political organization with which we disagree, but a racist and predatory organization that is dangerous to teachers, schools, and students.”
CAMERA fired back at the petition in an exclusive statement to The Daily Wire, accusing the organizers of creating a “hostile environment for Jewish participants.”
“It is ironic and deeply troubling that those who claim to champion inclusion are actively seeking to intimidate Jewish participants and stifle diverse perspectives,” said CAMERA Communications Director Jonah Cohen. “CAMERA’s presence at the NCTE convention is rooted in our commitment to respectful dialogue, accurate education, and the inclusion of all voices — Jewish, Palestinian, and others.”
Cohen added that he hopes Jackson and other leaders will “step up as the moral voice needed to challenge these dangerous trends.”
Other sessions of the conference taught by other educators include “Disrupting the Canon with LGBTQIA+ Themes, Stories, and Discussions,” which will focus on “incorporating LGBTQIA+ themes and stories in education,” and “the stories of transgender parents in early childhood education.” The “Past and Present of LGBTQIA+ In Elementary Education” will focus on “the importance of humanizing queer and trans content in primary schools.”
