Published by the Boston Globe on 7/1/2025 The Anti-Defamation League said Tuesday it has filed a brief with the federal Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights alleging that the Concord-Carlisle public school system has “failed to protect Jewish students from pervasive antisemitic harassment, discrimination, and retaliation.” In a statement, the ADL said there has been an “alarming pattern of antisemitic bullying, slurs, threats, and retaliation at Concord-Carlisle High School and Concord Middle School in Concord,” with at least one Jewish student “forced to leave the school district to escape the hostile climate.” “The antisemitic climate at Concord-Carlisle did not emerge overnight,” Samantha Joseph, the ADL’s New England director, said in the statement. “It was allowed to take root and persist.” “While the filing focuses largely on one student who was the target of the worst abuse, his was not an isolated case, and there is clear evidence that this was — and remains — a systemic issue,” Joseph said. Concord-Carlisle Superintendent Dr. Laurie Hunter said in a statement Tuesday the district “does not tolerate antisemitic acts between its students” and that “every report is fully investigated and addressed swiftly and seriously.” The district’s schools have “thorough response protocols, an anonymous reporting system, and ongoing training for students and staff,“ Hunter said in the statement, adding that the district communicates regularly with community members about such issues. “The district has strong relationships with local Jewish faith leaders in multiple communities to align its efforts to fight antisemitism in the schools and the Concord community,” she said. “We regularly survey students, families, and staff to ensure there is ongoing information about students’ feelings of belonging in our schools.” She said the school district is cooperating with the civil rights office and is “always looking for feedback on how to enhance our policies, processes, and programs.” The allegations described in the ADL’s brief include reports of Nazi salutes in school hallways, students breaking into teams called “Team Auschwitz” and “Team Hamas” during sports games, swastikas drawn in notebooks and on school property, and the use of antisemitic slurs. The ADL alsoalleged that the school’s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging director downplayed concerns about one of the slursas a “microaggression.” The ADL, which filed the brief Monday in conjunction with the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and the law firm Mayer Brown, said the Jewish student, who eventually left the district, reported a series of bullying incidents and his family asked the school to intervene. Despite this, district officials “issued no public condemnation of the abuse before the student’s departure” and “downplayed or dismissed” other incidents. The ADL said the harassment at Concord-Carlisle High School involved at least seven students from different social groups. The organization alleged that Concord-Carlisle administrators treated each incident as an isolated conflict, not as evidence of a hostile environment. In one instance, the ADL alleged that administrators proposed removing the Jewish student from his classroom and into independent studies and virtual classes under a “safety plan,” while the alleged bullies remained in class. The filing also said administrators were slow to respond to incidents of antisemitic graffiti at the high school in 2024 and this year. The ADL called for the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights to require the school system to conduct annual training on antisemitism for students and staff, conduct a district-wide audit of Title VI compliance, issue a “clear, stand-alone statement denouncing antisemitism,” and incorporate the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism into the school’s policies. Antisemitic harassment, assaults, and vandalism have been on the rise across New England since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza, according to the ADL. Such incidents surged at non-Jewish K-12 schools in Massachusetts in 2023 with 101 incidents reported, according to the ADL. That number fell to 50 last year.