Thursday, January 11, 2007 Older Editions

New policy eyed for AHS speakers

By April Guilmet

The School Committee will review its policies on inviting speakers to the schools in the wake of last week's visit by the controversial pro-Palestinian group Wheels of Justice.

While Principal Peter Anderson said there were no problem incidents during the day, when speakers spoke in classrooms, Anderson halted a nighttime presentation to the community after repeated outbursts during a question-and-answer session.

As a result, many parents, teachers, citizens and students attended Tuesday's School Committee meeting, to discuss what happened at Andover High on Friday, Jan 5.

School Committee member Deb Silberstein said existing policies on controlling outside speakers would be reviewed and updated in time for the next meeting. Committee Chairman Tony James said he was committed to having a set of safeguards to ensure controversial topics are addressed in a civil, balanced and accurate manner.

"We need to be more scrutinizing about who we bring in, not bring in speakers we haven't heard first," Superintendent Claudia Bach said. "I truly regret this whole thing occurred - one that has caused so much pain for so many."

On Tuesday, several people who had attended the public Wheels of Justice event questioned what the school's policy is, with one calling Friday's talk "hate speech." Parent Scott Israel questioned the qualifications of the speakers.

"Is a 25-year-old theater major capable of teaching students about this?" Israel asked, referring to speaker Joe Carr. He said he believed both sides of the debate would best be left to those who are more informed. Fellow resident Robert Hinton called last week's presentation "a failure of moral courage."

"A hate group was invited to speak at our high school. This shouldn't have happened," Hinton said.

While Wheels of Justice had been banned from speaking at the school last October, Anderson reversed this decision when teachers' union president Tom Meyers and two other social studies teachers threatened a First Amendment lawsuit. A presentation on the First Amendment by four attorneys was held Jan. 3. Speakers from Project David, a Boston-based group that says on its Web site that it "promotes Arab-Israeli understanding," were scheduled to offer another perspective to students, and then to the public, on Wednesday, after Townsman deadline.

During Tuesday's meeting, social studies teacher Mary Robb said she was approached by a colleague last fall about the possibility of Wheels of Justice visiting the school. She wasn't familiar with the group, she said, so she called some colleagues and former professors who were.

"I learned they had a huge bias," Robb said, which she saw as a way to demonstrate the power of true and false media messages. "I want my students to learn about bias in the media."

While Robb was one of six social studies teachers to support inviting Wheels of Justice, she said she was strongly opposed to threatening a lawsuit to bring the group to town.

The purpose of the Wheels visit, she said, was for students to decide for themselves if they'd accept or reject Wheels' message. "And they wowed me with their compassion, intellect and understanding," Robb said.

"My students had the chance to see flawed media messages at their worst. And they did it beautifully," Robb said. "But most of them also said they were appalled at the behavior of the adults Friday night."

Several Andover High students, including Nick Platt, have formed a group called the Youth Action Alliance. In a letter to the Townsman they said, "We believe that the adults of the community should develop an atmosphere in the town that can be a positive model for the youth. That is not what we saw demonstrated in the 'forum' on Friday night."

Friday's event

Last Friday evening, three speakers, Joe Carr, Hassan Fouda and Mazin Qumsiyeh, stood before 150 or more attendees in the packed Andover High School library. Several police cruisers lingered outside the school's doors. Inside, slides depicting the ongoing strife between Israelis and Palestinians flashed across the screen. Multiple audience members loudly heckled the speakers.

"Don't take everything we tell you as the gospels. Decide for yourself," said Qumsiyeh.

A medical geneticist by profession, Qumsiyeh said he, like all of the group's speakers, are volunteers. The Palestinian son of a Greek Orthodox father and Lutheran mother, Qumsiyeh said he's lived through the occupation of Israel, and claimed that approximately half of the Iraqi and Palestinian populations continue to live in similar conditions. He pointed to a slide of a green hillside where he said he'd picnicked as a child.

"But look at it today," Qumsiyeh said, motioning towards a barren rubble.

"This is pure propaganda," shouted one person; another, "You're lying."

Several people walked out when Qumsiyeh said there were hundreds of Palestinian villages destroyed by Israelis in the 1940s. Anderson reminded the audience they weren't there to debate.

"If you don't want to listen, leave," he said.

Wheels speaker Hassan Fouda said his goal was for all faiths to work for peace. After showing a film of a Palestinian home being demolished, allegedly by Israeli troops, he encouraged people to "know if their tax money was funding this injustice." He referred to the strife between Israel and Palestine as "ethnic cleansing."

The group's third speaker, Joe Carr, 25, said he was raised in Missouri, but had traveled in the Middle East during the period he spent volunteering for a Christian peace mission.

"There are many parallels between the occupation of Palestine and the occupation of Iraq," Carr said.

He performed a rap song he'd written after witnessing the death of fellow American activist Rachel Corrie, 23, who was killed while trying to prevent a Palestinian home from being destroyed.

During the question-and-answer period, many of the audience's outspoken members said they considered Wheels of Justice to be an extremist, anti-Semitic organization.

The final straw for Anderson came after School Committee member David Samuels spoke to the Wheels representatives.

"You got here through a series of mishaps and insubordinate teachers. But you still have the right to speak," Samuels said. "But I have a problem with you soliciting phone numbers and e-mails from minors attending our school."

Samuels was referring to a contact list passed around during the Wheels' daytime visit. Samuels wanted to know why the group collected the information, and the audience erupted in shouting, prompting Anderson to conclude the meeting.

Anderson later confiscated the contact list, saying he planned to send out letters asking parents' permission to use the student's information.

Qumsiyeh, who said the group had visited schools all over the country, said, "We've never had such an aggressive response before."

Zach Lebowitz, a 2005 graduate of Andover High and nephew of Pam Lebowitz who formed a group opposed to the Wheels visit, said, "I ended up yelling at them when they wouldn't answer my questions."

Anderson said he'd hoped the evening's discussion would be an opportunity for learning, not chaos. "I believe high school should be a focal point of learning for all ages - not just for students," he said.