OUR COMMUNITY
continued from page 23

24 | MARCH 23 • 2023

FIRST APOLOGY
A statement emailed to the Bloomfield Hills
School District by BHHS Principal Lawrence
Stroughter that afternoon explained to parents
that the event was student led and organized,
and that administrators met with each speaker
to discuss the intent of the assembly. Other
panelists included members of the Asian,
Black, Indigenous and Transgender commu-
nities.
The statement continued: “During the
assembly for the 10th graders, one of the
speakers deviated from the prompts without
prior knowledge by any of the organizers and
discussed the conflict in Gaza from their own
personal political perspective and experience.
This discussion was outside of the parameters
of the assembly and was addressed by the high
school administration immediately after the
speaker left the stage.
”
Yet she continued to veer off topic during
the three subsequent assemblies. No one from
the administration or faculty stopped her from
speaking. One Jewish student said Stroughter
nudged her to return to the topic, yet she did
not. So, the entire student body was exposed
to her personal viewpoint on the complex
topic of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“We denounce any speech that targets indi-
viduals or groups based on religion,
” the state-
ment read. “We are sorry for the harm that
was caused to our community as a result of the
speaker’s message. We acknowledge that our
work toward an equitable school community
is always ongoing.
”
But Jewish students, parents and commu-
nity leaders criticized the statement as weak,
vague and inaccurate because it did not men-
tion how Arraf singled out Israel and Jews and
how she was allowed to continue her off-topic
rhetoric. Early on, the JCRC and ADL both
issued statements regarding the incident.
Parents interviewed by the JN harshly crit-
icized the Bloomfield Hills Schools adminis-
tration for passing the buck to students in the

statement and not responding to parent and
student concerns that they exposed the entire
student body to biased anti-Israel rhetoric.
In a letter addressed to the school board
shared with the JN, parent Jennifer Arkin
Camens, who has a freshman and a senior
at the high school, asked why an event that
was supposed to address bias and promote
diversity included a guest speaker that instead
encouraged it. She wrote in the letter that in
the vetting process for speakers, one look at
Arraf’s social media feeds, which are filled
with anti-Israel statements, should have been
enough to disqualify her from speaking.
“Where is the accountability?” she wrote.
“
A letter from Principal Stroughter saying
the speaker went off prompt is not enough
to undo the damage to your students and the
entire Jewish community … The goal of the
assembly was to help students understand
how discrimination affects people. Instead
of reaching said goal, you have effectively
discriminated (against) the Jewish students in
your school. What a shame.
“How do you as a public school during an
assembly on diversity allow (someone who
encourages bias)?” Camens wrote. “To have
your speaker say that Hamas is not a terrorist
group and it’s the Jews who are killing people
in Gaza is outrageous. How does this elimi-
nate hatred? Instead, it directs hatred to the
entire Jewish community.”
Stacy Arsht Fox, who has a freshman
and a senior at the high school, said it was
completely inappropriate for Arraf to spew
“propaganda” to impressionable teenagers
who have no in-depth knowledge of the
complexities of the history of the Arab-Israeli
conflict on a day designed to teach students
about personal accounts of discrimination
they may have experienced growing up in the
United States.
“
A diversity day was not the place or the
time for this woman to bring up the conver-
sation on whether anti-Zionism is antisemi-

tism. She doesn’t get to teach this to my child.
Everything she said was taken out of context;
there was no one there to give an opposing
viewpoint, and now impressionable teens
think Israel is a police state.”

PRODUCTIVE MEETING
Jewish leaders and school administrators
met for hours on Wednesday, March 15, in
emergency meetings to figure out how to
build paths of reconciliation on a high school
campus that overnight had become deeply
divided.
Meanwhile, students reacted. Some arrived
at school that day draped in a Palestinian
flag. Circulating rumors of swastikas at
BHHS were investigated by Bloomfield
Township Police and found not true. And on
Thursday afternoon, there were reports of
people waving Palestinian flags in the park-
ing lot, chanting “We Love Kanye West.”
Rabbi Robert Gamer, head clergy at
Congregation Beth Shalom in Oak Park as
well as president of the Michigan Board of
Rabbis, said he and clergy from Congregation
Shaarey Zedek, Temple Israel and Temple
Beth El as well as representatives from the
Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit,
JCRC/AJC and the ADL, spent the bulk of
Wednesday meeting with school officials.
“The school administration now fully rec-
ognizes that the failure rested squarely with
them, that they dropped the ball on this, and
they are owning up to it,” Gamer said. “When
Arraf started speaking about Israel as an
apartheid state — and we all know apartheid
has no place in this world — by default, what
she was saying was that Israel has no place
in this world. The administrators now have

“WE MADE A MISTAKE … WE OWN
WHAT WENT WRONG AND WILL
IMPROVE OUR PRACTICES.”

— BLOOMFIELD HILLS SCHOOLS SUPERINTENDENT PAT WATSON

TOP: Bloomfield
Hills High School
RIGHT: BHHS
students sent out
an Instagram call
to wear Palestinian
garb to school
in solidarity with
Palestinian students.