Karen Feldman, a longtime New York City history teacher, left the classroom after confronting what she says became a politicized culture in the public schools—one that, she argues, pushed pro-Palestinian activism and bred hostility toward Jewish students and Israel, prompting a federal civil rights probe into educator conduct in the nation’s largest district.

For 26 years, Karen Feldman taught history in New York public schools. Her specialty: Holocaust education, a difficult topic, but one Feldman taught with particular care. She says she always aimed to present facts and encourage critical thinking in a safe classroom setting.

“I always took pride in bringing truth and critical thinking and a nurturing environment that would spark discussions that would enable students to really learn from each other,” Feldman said. “I never ever brought my political beliefs into the classroom. A teacher should be politically neutral. And I always try to present the facts.”

Feldman says that after about 2015 she began noticing ideological shifts in K-12 instruction, and she places a lot of that change on a rise in diversity, equity and inclusion approaches. She describes those ideas as turning into a binary story of oppressors and the oppressed, which she believes warped classroom dynamics.

“I started to see these scary and dangerous trends happening. Lack of critical thought, not only within the student body, but even and especially with the newer teachers that were coming into the system, which impacted our professional workspace, our discussions, curriculum design, and so forth.” Feldman recounted. The tensions, she says, intensified after 2020.

Then one day on school grounds she says she was surrounded by about 10 angry students who shoved her and threw objects. Their confrontation, Feldman says, was connected to her politics and support for Israel and the former president. “They knew I was Jewish,” Feldman said. “They knew my kids, my husband’s Israeli. We go to Israel for the summers. I’m a proud Jew and supporter of Israel. And it was a dare. And it had this political connection from the Trump administration to the Israeli government, to all people who are Israeli or proud Jews, must be racist.”

Not long after the incident she left teaching and helped start the New York City Public School Alliance, which aims to push back against Jew hatred, antisemitism and what its founders call Jewish erasure in city classrooms. She has focused particular attention on a group known as NYC Educators for Palestine and calls their platform not just pro-Palestinian but anti-American.

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“It is a pro-Palestinian ideology, but I don’t think that’s all it is,” she said. “It’s an anti-American ideology. We know it’s vilifying Israel. Whatever starts with the Jews never ends with the Jewish. Right?” Federal investigators have since taken an interest in whether members who are classroom teachers are promoting anti-Israel material to students, including in early grades.

The Department of Education’s civil rights office opened a probe into New York’s Department of Education, targeting allegations that some teachers pushed anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian messages and created a hostile environment for Jewish students. “No child should be taught by his or her teachers to hate their peers,” Kimberly Richey, Department of Education Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights. “Neither should Jewish children be taught that being Jewish somehow makes them inherently guilty or proponents of hate and violence.”

An Instagram account linked to the activist group shows members holding a banner while covering faces with emojis, and the group has described goals like organizing educators, developing curriculum and pushing divestment from Israeli securities. City officials say the group is not formally affiliated with the public school system even as complaints pile up and incidents rise.

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Parents say they worry about classroom focus shifting from literacy and critical thinking to political messaging aimed at young students. “It worries me that there are teachers that are, you know, so radicalized and so focused on sending messages like this rather than focusing on really crucial skills like literacy and critical thinking. And they are having an influence on young minds,” Bail said. “I just want to make sure that…all perspectives are being presented to the kids, because then they can make their own decision about the way they think.”

The probe coincides with a documented rise in antisemitic incidents in New York schools, which watchdogs report climbed sharply from 2022 to 2023. New York City’s Department of Education declined to comment on specifics of the investigation but reiterated that activist groups are not school system affiliates.