Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson keynote speaker at National Council of Teachers of English Convention - Featuring Speakers Who Defend Hamas and Mourn Sinwar
Are Ketanji Brown Jackson and Kate Mckinnon happy to be sharing the stage with Sawsan Jaber?!
Sitting Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is a keynote speaker at the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Convention this week. The convention is being held in Boston. Along with Brown Jackson, keynote speakers include Kate Mckinnon (formerly of SNL now Hollywood darling), Ada Limon, US Poet Laureate and Bryan Stevenson, humanitarian and CEO of the Equal Justice Initiative. Sponsors for the event include Scholastic, Penguin Random House and Heinemann.
The theme of the convention is “Heart, Hope Humanity” - very on trend for an organization whose stated goal is “to improving the teaching and learning of English and the language arts at all levels of education.”
NCTE mission statement, adopted in 1990:
“The Council promotes the development of literacy, the use of language to construct personal and public worlds and to achieve full participation in society, through the learning and teaching of English and the related arts and sciences of language.”
NCTE’s “Vision”, adopted in 2017:
NCTE and its members will apply the power of language and literacy to actively pursue justice and equity for all students and the educators who serve them. As the nation’s oldest organization of pre-K through graduate school literacy educators, NCTE has a rich history of deriving expertise and advocacy from its members’ professional research, practice, and knowledge. Today, we must more precisely align this expertise to advance access, power, agency, affiliation, and impact for all learners.
The goal is no longer to promote the development of language and literacy, to improve teaching and learning, but to harness “the power of language and literacy to actively pursue justice and equity.” This is an activist, not educator, manifesto.
The University of San Diego, School of Professional and Continuing Education is awarding credit toward graduation for students who attend the NCTE convention.
So what are the sessions that these students might attend? Who will Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson be rubbing shoulders with at this convention?
The schedule for Thursday at the convention, when Brown Jackson will be speaking, includes:
This session helps students “advocate for the appreciation of human differences across a broad range of characteristics and traits…”
“This antiracist workshop will teach participants how to design and assess assignments that guide students’ use of these resources to address the social change they desire.”
This workshop is being led by Sawsan Jaber.
Regular readings of this substack are by now well aware of Jaber’s extremism. Later this month, Jaber will speak at the American Muslims for Palestine “Palestine Convention.” AMP is currently under investigation for terror financing ties to Hamas. Jaber took to her instagram to mourn the death of Hamas terrorist Yahya Sinwar. She has engaged in Holocaust inversion and called the documented beheading of babies on October 7th fake.
Jaber reposted a story to her instagram which stated that Palestinians should avoid “normalizing the perception” that Hamas and other “legitimate resistance” groups are terrorists because it sounds like making excuses for Hamas’ actions rather than seeing them as “legitimate resistance”. “Resistance is an obligation” and Gazan children have grown up understanding the “farce of Western democracy.”
Does any of this bother the organizers at NCTE?
Oh well, on to the next session:
And here’s Jaber again, she’ll have a busy Thursday:
This workshop on Genocide Education includes a discussion Israel-Palestine
What about Friday?:
Jaber is back leading a session on Friday. This time, with Hannah Moushabeck.
On October 7th, 2023, Moushabeck took the time to record and post to instagram a defense of Hamas’ terror attack. Is Ketanji Brown Jackson comfortable with appearing at the same convention as this person?
Moushabeck was involved in the Valley Families for Palestine “Queer Story time for Palestine” event in which toddlers were made to chant “Free Palestine.”
Moushabeck and Jaber are back together to present (their views on “liberation” are quite clear already…):
This time Jaber and Moushabeck will be joined by Nora Lester Murad and Safa Sulemein. Murad is a key voice in the campaign to ban ADL from providing educational resources in K-12 schools. In the linked webinar, Murad said :
“If we allow the ADL [and similar organisations] to control what happens in schools, we will be raising another generation of genociders”
Murad is also behind a “toolkit” for educators to avoid “false accusations of antisemitism.”
Alongside them will be Safa Suleiman:
She had nothing to say on October 7th, 2023, but took to instagram on the 15th to claim “genocide.”
These are the “experts” who will help educators “tackle urgent questions.” They mention "diverse perspectives” but none are in evidence here.
Jaber is back on Saturday to discuss how to engage “youth” in “activism”
And again on Sunday and Monday as part of the NCTE Conference on English Leadership:
Here are some more offering from the NCTE main convention:
If you think there seems to be more of a focus on Palestine than other areas in the world at this convention, I think you’d be right.
If you think I’m cherry-picking examples of the worst workshops and sessions to make a point about activism in education, I invite you to peruse the schedule for yourself. It seems to me that the vast majority of the panel sessions and workshops are concerned with issues of social justice, anti-racism and “liberation” rather than improving education outcomes for our students.
There are really two stories here: One is the outsized focus on education as activism within the NCTE. The other is the embrace of extremist voices and the legitimization of those voices by the NCTE and the presence of a sitting Supreme Court Justice.