Activist involved in developing Social Studies Standards for Illinois makes clear the role of ethnic studies is to create student activists - " the goal of Ethnic Studies: We teach to liberate."

Meet the new national coordinator for the Coalition for Liberated Ethnic Studies - Jenine Wehbeh

Jenine Wehbeh, the new national coordinator for the Coalition for Liberated Ethnic Studies (CLES) gives a revealing interview to Jody Sokolower, founding member of CLES on the goal of Ethnic Studies and the role of activists in the classroom.

Interestingly, Wehbeh also seems to be Sokolower’s replacement as co-coordinator of MECA’s Teach Palestine project.

Wehbeh is a Palestinian public school teacher in Chicago who taught middle school social studies. According to Wehbeh’s Linkedin page, she taught social studies through a ‘critical pedagogy' - and per Wehbeh’s interview with Sokolower, Wehbeh “received a fellowship to work with the Community Responsive Education program” as a result of her involvement with the Chicago Teachers Union. Wehbeh got started in activism through organizations like the Arab American Action Network.

Wehbeh is on the Advisory Board for Umuwi Ethnic Studies - an organization whose aim is to “strengthen, protect and sustain Ethnic Studies in Chicago and Illinois.” Wehbeh signed the Zinn Education Project’s pledge to “teach truth.”

Wehbeh was part of a panel at the 2024 AMP (American Muslims for Palestine) Convention, on “community activism.” AMP is currently under investigation for terror financing and instigating violence post-October 7th.

And Wehbeh was on the Illinois State Board of Education’s Taskforce to develop Social Studies standards for Illinois.

One might ask why a teacher with a rich history of activism and very particular views on the role of activism in education and the classroom should have been chosen as a member of the Social Science Standards Revision Task Force for Illinois. Or indeed why a “commitment to social justice” in the classroom should be awarded… We should take this as a bad sign indeed for the educational priorities in Illinois.

But now to Wehbeh’s interview with Sokolower. Wehbeh does not sugarcoat the true intentions of Ethnic Studies and its advocates.

“I had the typical brown kid K-12 experience, filled with curricular violence and racism.”

Jody: Given the chaos and rightwing mania of the Trump administration, how do you see CLES’ priorities over the next year?

Jenine: We are Ethnic Studies educators, so we know more than most how this moment is connected to history and how it's grounded in time and space. I think it's easy to lose sight of that. There’s an intentional strategy for us to be thrown into confusion and chaos, so that we don't galvanize and organize and really understand what's going on.

CLES did a lot of work before I stepped into this role, asking the question: What is the coalition supposed to be doing? And folks defined three big buckets of work: reclaim, defend, and build Ethnic Studies. That’s truer than ever.

Under this administration, we need to skill up. We need to stay grounded. We need to connect and deepen our solidarity with each other. I'm hoping that CLES can be a place for folks to come to deepen their analysis, to collaborate, to hear about campaigns that have been successful, to get the skills and resources they need to develop their capacity to organize.

One of the functions of late stage capitalism is to make us feel like we're alone. When I talk to educators who want to join CLES, they're often seeking community as their number one priority. I'm hoping that, at a minimum, the coalition can be a space for educators to get connected, and for young people and their parents to see that they're not alone, that the work is happening, and that we will continue doing this work together, regardless of the circumstances.

We have a lot of amazing members on the West Coast and in the Southwest, and they're doing brilliant work. I'm hoping that we can bolster the work across the country— in the South, in the Midwest, on the East Coast, Because great work is happening in those places, too. And every location has its own context.

As educators, youth and community organizers pour in information about their local work, we can create a landscape together to understand what's happening nationally, and to build the capacity of folks to fight on the ground for what they need. If that's policy support, we'll figure that out. If that's how do I start a freedom school, we can figure that out. As coordinator, I’m not the source of all truth and knowledge on the topic. But I'm an organizer, right? Which means I put the right people in the right room together to learn and grow and share.

This is an important time to say something else. Let’s not do the work of the right for them. Let’s not self-censor. In times of repression, there’s a tendency to be cautious: “Let’s not talk about Palestine,” for example, or “let's not talk about police violence. We’ll do the other kind of Ethnic Studies, the kind that’s really multiculturalism and doesn’t threaten anyone.”

But that kind of parsing out does the work of divide and conquer for the powers that be. At this moment we need to galvanize and say, “It’s really all of us or none of us.”

Jody: In many parts of the country, the terminology of Ethnic Studies doesn’t relate to the local experience, which might be focused on Black history or Indigenous land struggles. How does that affect how we define Ethnic Studies, and how we see our work?

Jenine: This fits into the political education that I'm hoping we can do as a coalition to deepen our understanding of intersectional struggle. When I was teaching middle school, after we came back to classrooms during the pandemic, the focus of the attacks nationally was critical race theory—the rightwing narrative was about Black studies as indoctrination, and there was a wave of banning books. I remember pulling up a map for my students and showing them where laws were being passed to censor curriculum. That wasn't about Palestine explicitly.

But right now, Palestine is in many ways the litmus test. It's been called the fulcrum. News about Palestine and acts of solidarity with Palestine show us what is possible in terms of repression in the United States. But it’s not only about Palestine, right? The target moves. Look what’s happening to immigrants now. And trans youth.

So how does that affect how we define Ethnic Studies? Ethnic Studies is the way that we view and read and write the world critically and intersectionally and in deep solidarity with each other. In Chicago, for example, we don't have the California label of Ethnic Studies, right? But we do Ethnic Studies really well, and it's very much connected to youth organizing in the classroom, and in the streets. Our collective liberation is connected. And that's really the goal of Ethnic Studies: We teach to liberate.

Jody: Historically, Ethnic Studies has been seen as a college subject and, more recently, a high school subject. But in the past year there's been a flood of interest from elementary and middle school teachers and parents for curriculum to help children understand what’s happening in Gaza and throughout Palestine. How does that impact CLES’ work?

Jenine: During the Black Lives Matter uprising, I was often asked, “Aren’t children too young to learn about police violence? About racism?” But they know what's happening. Our silence as adults and as facilitators in the classroom creates a sense of shame: “I'm not supposed to know about this. I'm not supposed to understand or having feelings about this.”

Young people are having these conversations from early childhood. They understand injustice deeply. They understand fairness deeply. So it is critical that we invest in centering their experiences and their questions in our classrooms in a meaningful way. Otherwise, we’re irrelevant. Or worse.

Of course you have to scaffold content. I wouldn't teach a 5th grader the same way I would teach a 12th grader or someone in a college course. But all young people are asking questions. I have a niece who's eight and a nephew who's five. They’re Palestinian and Puerto Rican, and they very much know what's going on. And so in our home we are in constant conversation: How do we talk about Palestine? How do we talk about their experiences? How do we talk about what they're hearing at school, what they're seeing on TV and what they're watching on their ipads ?

That’s the work and it doesn't start at high school. The younger they are, the more inquisitive they are, and we have to be ready to support them.

In CLES, we define Ethnic Studies as K-20 and beyond, outside the classroom as well as in. When I'm having those conversations with my niece and nephew, those are Ethnic Studies moments.

Jody: That leads into my next question. Especially in an era when we’re seeing escalating repression of progressive curriculum, how do you see the relationship between fighting for liberatory education in public schools and building alternative spaces like freedom schools?

Jenine: I use this analogy a lot: We are many streams pouring into an ocean of collective liberation. Many folks have taken on the mantle of policy work, fighting for Ethnic Studies courses, requirements, training and curriculum. That is critical work.

At the same time, history has shown us that schools are inherently unjust and violent spaces. From their earliest days, public schools in the United States were not intended to do the thing that we're asking them to do, which is to teach and learn in community, to teach and learn for collective liberation. Think of SNCC’s freedom schools. That model is still absolutely necessary.

One way or the other, we’re going to do right by our young people. We're going to teach them Black history. We’re going to teach them Xicanx history, and American Indian history, and what solidarity looks like.

We have agency. We can do this ourselves. We don't need a school district to tell us yes or no, you can do Ethnic Studies or you can’t, and if you can, we're going to patrol how you do it. Ethnic studies can happen in your backyard. For example, here in Chicago we have programs that are teaching youth the history of the Young Lords in Chicago, the history of the Puerto Rican struggle for independence.

We need to keep thinking outside the box, because fighting inside institutions is exhausting and emotionally draining. And it is a fight that we're going to have to fight forever, because once you win that policy change, you have to stand there and defend it.

We have a radical lineage that doesn't actually need the system; we can do something different ourselves.

Jody: How is CLES organizing to protect teachers, administrators, and students from anti-Ethnic Studies and other rightwing attacks? What are the priorities in terms of protecting and defending our work?

Jenine: At our first national convening this year we included a Know Your Rights session. Looking [at the] larger picture, one priority is to increase the capacity of the coalition. I'm part-time, and I’m the only paid staff. Everybody else is giving from their heart and their time for free. I’m hoping to build the capacity of our membership to be able to fight effectively.

There are brilliant organizations across the country that are fighting on the legal front, and we have the people who are under attack. So let’s build the bridges, figure out what makes the most sense in this moment, what support is needed, and how do we get the support to the right places.

We are already doing rapid response work—writing letters and op eds, organizing folks to show up at school board meetings. That model can be turned into an amazing resource. One of my goals is to create a rapid response toolkit that we can offer folks across the country. I've heard from many people that the first time they stepped into a school board meeting was when the board was about to pull their Ethnic Studies program, or close their gender neutral bathroom, or ban books in the library. They’re asking basic questions: How do I get on the speakers’ list? How do I create a talking point? That’s one kind of the capacity building that we have to take on as organizers.

So those are my hopes or visions, anchored in bringing people together. I can’t stress enough the sense of isolation that people have when they're under attack, it can feel so profound and all encompassing. Just knowing you have a support network that sees you and hears you and that’s by your side is sometimes the biggest thing that we can do.

Wehbeh makes very clear the priorities of these activists. Education is about indoctrinating children into one particular way of viewing the world and into becoming activists in service of that view. And activists will find a way to push their political goals and ideologies - working “within” or “outside” the “system.”

Why would the Illinois State Board of Education welcome these activists in to help determine how social studies should be taught across the state?

Thank you Jody and Jenine for this illuminating interview!