CAIR, which blamed Israel for Oct. 7, ‘authentically interested’ in helping students, Philadelphia superintendent tells House panel

(Oct. 23, 2026 / JNS)

Tony Watlington, superintendent of the School District of Philadelphia, told the House Education and the Workforce Committee in a Sept. 18 interview that the Council on American-Islamic Relations is “authentically interested” in supporting district students.

The superintendent of the public school district, which has about 200,000 students in 330 schools, was talking about a group that blamed Israel for being attacked on Oct. 7 and which the Biden administration dropped after initially including it in an advisory role on the national strategy to combat Jew-hatred.

According to a transcript of the interview, which the House panel released this week, Watlington said he was unaware of any Jewish leaders on his transition team, even though the then-executive director of CAIR’s Philadelphia office was part of the team. The superintendent also said that he was not aware of CAIR’s reputation of Jew-hatred.

He told the House panel that he found “the individuals representing CAIR to be authentically interested in the well-being and support of our students and interested in helping the School District of Philadelphia to become the fastest-improving large urban school district in the country.”

He told the committee that he needed to know more context to know if a workshop that the CAIR leader offered, titled “American Jews and political power: myth or reality?” was concerning.

Democrats on the panel suggested that because the CAIR regional leader is Jewish that he was a Jewish leader on the transition team.

Monique Braxton, a spokeswoman for the district, referred JNS to a public statement in which she said that the committee’s report “distorts and mischaracterizes our record.”

“The district has taken serious steps to combat all forms of hate in our schools, including a new record management system, revised policies, mandatory annual training for staff and appropriate disciplinary actions,” she said. “We remain committed to fostering a safe and welcoming environment for our students and staff.”

‘Highly problematic organization’

On Wednesday, the George Washington University Program on Extremism released a report detailing what it said are CAIR’s attempts to influence K-12 education.

The council is “in many ways, a highly problematic organization,” and it is “troubling to think CAIR has any sway on shaping school curricula,” the report stated.

It noted that CAIR was an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terror financing trial. The report added that the Biden administration removed CAIR from its strategy on Jew-hatred and that the council’s executive director had said that he was “happy to see people breaking the siege” on Oct. 7.

Shortly after Oct. 7, CAIR Philadelphia circulated letters to parents asking them to challenge their schools for expressing support for Israel after the attacks, per the report. The letters, which CAIR California created, accused Israel of being an “apartheid state” engaged in “war crimes” and said that Gaza is an “open-air prison,” the report stated.

“Palestinians, the letter said, had been ‘occupied, brutalized and terrorized’ for more than seven decades,” it stated. “Hamas was not identified. Neither were the decades of Hamas’s suicide bombings and attacks against Israeli civilian population. Nor were enumerated the killings, kidnappings or attacks on Israeli communities that had prompted the school statements CAIR wanted parents to challenge.”

The letters stated that CAIR does not endorse violence against civilians, but the disclaimer got lost in the council’s “wider California resource package,” which included accusing Israel of illegally occupying “Palestine” since 1948, the year the State of Israel was established, according to the report.

CAIR Philadelphia co-sponsored an event with Philadelphia Parents for Palestine that had a panel titled “Zionism is racism.”

Philadelphia Parents for Palestine is a parent group seeking to remove “Zionist teachings and agenda” from school curriculum and add Palestinian, Arab and Muslim voices, the report stated.

CAIR was supporting “an education network no longer arguing only over Israeli policy, Gaza or the conduct of a particular government,” the report said. “The target had become Zionism.”

The Program on Extremism report also examined CAIR’s activities in K-12 schools in other states and found that the council’s efforts have produced “uneven” results. Washington state was “arguably the strongest evidence in this report of CAIR’s access inside a state education process bearing fruit.”

According to the report, CAIR Washington pushed back against the Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction’s 2024-25 school year guidance on Jew-hatred and student activity.

CAIR Washington’s objections included the guidance referring to “from the river to the sea” as Jew-hatred and relying too much on the Anti-Defamation League, the report stated.

Following CAIR’s pressure campaign, the state agreed to rewrite the guidance, and CAIR claimed it received drafts of the guidance and edited them in “back-and-forth revisions” with the state until the two sides agreed on a final document, per the report.

The revised guidance, released in June 2025, is currently the official guidance used for the state’s K-12 schools and does not credit CAIR, the report stated. (JNS sought comment from the Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction.)

The report also said that CAIR New Jersey and the group Teaching While Muslim developed a curriculum in September 2022 about how schools should teach the Sept. 11 attacks. That curriculum stated that 9/11 was “directly influenced by U.S. foreign policy” and included a copy of Osama bin Laden’s “Letter to America,” which CAIR’s national office said shouldn’t have been part of the curriculum.

CAIR New Jersey claimed it sent the curriculum to nearly 30 school districts, but the report noted no public record confirms that any schools in the state adopted it.

David Collins, a retired FBI agent and a co-author of the report, stated on LinkedIn that “CAIR has spent years building access to the people and institutions that shape American public education.”

“The question is, how many people are paying attention?” he wrote.