When Education Becomes Political, Everyone Loses

For months, about 100 Jewish early childhood educators from the United States and Israel prepared for a study trip to Reggio Emilia, Italy. This was not a political event or a demonstration. It was a professional development journey to one of the world’s most respected educational destinations.

Next appeared the demand.

Before they could continue, they were presented with a statement to sign: “I distance myself from the occupation of Gaza and the violation of children’s and human beings’ rights.” This demand, it was reported, followed a protest from Italian parents connected to the local host organization, who feared these instructors may be members of the Israeli military. No other visiting group was asked to sign such a declaration. Only the Jews.

The American delegation refused to sign. Their trip was postponed. The 25 Israeli educators said they would proceed. Their visit was scheduled for October 12 to 16.

What Reggio Emilia Actually Is

This matters because of what Reggio Emilia has come to symbolize. The Reggio Emilia Approach to early childhood education was born in the aftermath of World War II, in a northern Italian town which had witnessed fascism firsthand. Its founder, Loris Malaguzzi, insisted that children are inherently capable, curious, and deserving of settings that nurture them. The approach has since spread across the globe. The North American Reggio Emilia Alliance, for example, has grown from just 200 members in 2002 to more than 20,000 today.

At its heart, this philosophy is about inclusion. It rests on the conviction that education constitutes a universal good, transcending politics, nationality, and identity. Jewish early childhood educators have long been among its most devoted practitioners, spending their careers bringing these principles into Jewish preschools and day schools across North America, places where the next generation learns what it means to be Jewish in the world.

What Was Actually Demanded

Let us be clear about what took place. These educators were not asked to affirm their devotion to child welfare—that is already the foundation of everything Reggio Emilia stands for. They were not asked to sign a broad statement about protecting children everywhere. Instead, they were asked to declare a political position on a specific and deeply contested conflict.

As Pesha Kletenik, head of Manhattan Day School, described it, the experience seemed deeply violating: “Our identities were made public, and our personal and institutional social media profiles were reviewed.” These educators were investigated, singled out for being Jewish, and then handed a test they had to pass before being allowed into a professional space.

Italian senator Ivan Scalfarotto said what needed to be said: demanding that Jews distance themselves from Israeli government policies, as a condition of participation in anything, is antisemitism. Full stop.

As Melissa Davis of Milton Gottesman Jewish Day School put it, the postponement was “a loss for the community,” a community of young children whose teachers came home without the professional tools they went to acquire.

This Is Not an Isolated Incident

I wish I could say this story surprised me. It does not.

What happened in Reggio Emilia is part of a pattern I have watched and written about for years. Jewish professionals have increasingly asked to pass political litmus tests before they can participate in mainstream institutions, academic conferences, arts organizations, professional associations, and now, even one of the most celebrated pedagogical traditions in the world.

The mechanism is always the same. A protest is lodged. Organizers, under pressure, create a special requirement, applied selectively to Jews. When Jewish participants refuse to subordinate their identity, and their right to hold complex views, to a political declaration, they are excluded. The exclusion is then framed as their own choice.

This is not political advocacy. It is conditional access to public life, determined by ethnic and religious identity. It is a form of discrimination that would be instantly recognizable and widely condemned if directed at any other group.

The Children Who Pay the Price

As president and COO of Jewish Future Promise, an organization dedicated to securing the Jewish future through education, identity, and connection, what happened in Reggio Emilia is not an abstraction for me. It is a direct assault on that mission.

Those 100 educators set out for Reggio Emilia to bring something back, new frameworks for seeing children, new tools for supporting curiosity, creativity, and belonging. They intended to return and apply those insights in Jewish early childhood classrooms, the very places where Jewish identity first takes root, where children as young as 2 and 3 begin to understand who they are and what it means to belong to the Jewish people.

The children in those classrooms lost something when this trip was postponed. Their teachers returned without the professional development they sought. That loss is real, even if it cannot be measured.

What Professional Communities Must Do

The Reggio Emilia organizers owe these educators, and the wider field, a clear, public statement. Not an internal document about keeping militarization out of schools, but a direct acknowledgment that what happened was wrong, that it will not happen again, and that Jewish educators are welcome in professional learning spaces without conditions attached to their identity.

But the responsibility does not end in Italy. Professional associations, including NAREA and its counterparts worldwide, must implement clear and enforceable standards for politically neutral professional development. Attendance at professional conferences and study programs must never be contingent on political declarations of any kind, for any group. If we allow identity-based litmus tests in one field, we invite them everywhere.

Jewish communal organizations have to also stand together in naming this publicly. The Jewish community has a long history of championing universal professional standards and civil rights, not because it serves us strategically, but because it is right. Our voices should be heard on this.

Education Must Not Be Weaponized

Loris Malaguzzi believed in what he called “the hundred languages of children, “the idea that children express themselves and understand the world through a hundred different modes of thinking, feeling, and creating. His heritage rests on the conviction that all children deserve to be seen in their full complexity, not reduced to a single language or identity.

What happened to those Jewish educators in the days before their trip was the opposite of that vision. They were reduced to a single identity, Jewish, and therefore suspect, and told to declare themselves politically acceptable before they could sit in a classroom and learn.

Education must not be weaponized. Professional development cannot come with a political toll. The Jewish educators who walked away from Reggio Emilia with their dignity intact deserve not only our support, but institutions that decline to let this happen again.