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.

