Jewish legal group urges Justice Dept to investigate alleged Jew-hatred in NYC public schools

(Oct. 26, 2026 / JNS)

The National Jewish Advocacy Center has asked the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate New York City’s public school system over alleged discrimination against Jewish students following the Hamas-led terrorist attacks of Oct. 7.

“When antisemitism drives Jewish children out of public schools, that is segregation by intimidation,” Mark Goldfeder, CEO and director of NJAC, said.

In a letter to Harmeet K. Dhillon, assistant U.S. attorney general for civil rights, the organization asked the department’s civil rights division to use its Title IV school desegregation authority to investigate the Board of Education of the City School District of the City of New York, which operates as the New York City Department of Education.

“Jewish students have an equal right to safety, and to stay,” Goldfeder said.

The request comes amid reports of antisemitism in the city’s public schools. United Jewish Teachers, an advocacy group representing Jewish educators, documented 250 antisemitic and anti-Israel incidents from October 2023 through July 2026. Nearly two-thirds involved direct acts, including harassment, threats, vandalism and assaults, according to the group’s report.

“We fully support the National Jewish Advocacy Center’s call for the Department of Justice to investigate the NYC Department of Education under Title IV,” Moshe Spern, president of United Jewish Teachers, told JNS.

“Jewish students have the same right as every other child to attend school without being driven out by hostility their own school system refuses to stop,” he said.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights opened a separate investigation into the city’s school system in April 2026 to examine allegations of Jew-hatred under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

While the city does not track the exact number of Jewish students attending public schools, the UJA-Federation estimated in 2023 that 128,000 Jewish school-age children in New York City, Long Island and Westchester County—about 63% of Jewish children ages 5 to 17 in the region—attend Jewish day schools or yeshivot. The study also estimated that approximately 75,000 Jewish children attend either public or non-Jewish private schools.