Social Action Committee Hosts Debbie Almontaser, Mobilizes Support
On Sunday, December 2, educator and peace activist Debbie Almontaser spoke to several dozen PSUMC members about the Khalil Gibran International Academy (KGIA) and the sustained anti-Arab, anti-Muslim attacks on the school that forced her to resign as principal. The afternoon event, sponsored by the church’s Social Action Committee, ended with a call to action; Almontaser urged people to send e-mails to the Mayor’s office protesting her resignation. She is currently suing the Department of Education for an unbiased ability to apply for the principal’s job in the DOE’s search to fill the post.KGIA has a mission is to educate students of all backgrounds and a focus on the history and cultures of the Middle East , conflict resolution and Arabic language instruction. Its initial enrollment this fall consisted of roughly 80% African-Americans, some Latinos and about 15 Arabic-speaking students. Almontaser, a 16-year veteran educator whose career has been dedicated to public education, has been centrally involved in the development of the school since 2005 and was tapped, logically, to be its principal.
But then KGIA fell victim to the anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant politics that have plagued our nation with increasing ferocity since 9/11. A campaign against the school, orchestrated in part by Daniel Pipes and fueled by right-wing blogs, has portrayed it as a “jihadist” school, tantamount to a terrorist training camp, and has focused on a smear campaign against Almontaser as its main strategy to discredit the school and force it to close.
Almontaser described in painful detail the efforts to paint her as a Muslim extremist with a sinister agenda for KGIA—“the jihadist principal”—and the ultimately successful effort to set her up in a New York Post article in which her words were distorted and taken out of context. The Post piece then became the excuse for forcing her resignation.
In addition to describing the vicious personal attacks on her and the racist narrative in which they were framed, Almontaser made a crucial point to the PSUMCers gathered on Sunday: It was the unwillingness of others to stand up for her, to speak out against the anti-Muslim smear tactics that allowed the campaign against her to succeed. The Department of Education hung her out to dry. Mayor Bloomberg and Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott both choose to accommodate the Post-driven fear-mongering rather than stand up for a City worker who has done exemplary work for decades. Other politicians ran and hid. The United Federation of Teachers president, Randi Weingarten, stuck her finger in the wind and spoke out against Almontaser. “All that it takes for evil to succeed,” Edmund Burke observed long ago, “is that good men [sic] do nothing.”
That was perhaps the most important lesson for those gathered to hear Almontaser, and the Social Action Committee is responding with a letter-writing campaign to support Almontaser’s efforts to set the record straight and win back the job she was unfairly ousted from. Contact the Social Action Committee to find out what you can do to help, and visit the Communities in Support of KGIA website for more information.