A Pennsylvania middle school teacher has been placed on administrative leave, accused of calling a Muslim seventh grader a “terrorist.”
The incident is alleged to have taken place Jan. 16 at Central Dauphin Middle School in Harrisburg after the student asked the teacher to change seats, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a civil rights group, said in a news release.
“I do not negotiate with terrorists,” the teacher told the student, according to CAIR, which described the student as Palestinian Lebanese American.
Adam Rahman, the boy’s father, said at a news conference Monday evening that his son is doing “OK” but that the incident will “always resonate in his head” and he’ll “wonder if the next teacher will say the same thing.”
“He felt like the room was spinning and he was the only one and there was nobody to help him,” Rahman said. “These teachers are supposed to be the mentors, the people who you look up to, and if that fails, there’s nothing.”
The Central Dauphin School District said it was aware of the allegations that the teacher “made a derogatory comment” to the student during an after-school program at the middle school. It did not identify the educator.
The district said the allegation incident goes against the district’s values and the policies set for staff members.
“Central Dauphin School District has zero tolerance for hateful and racist speech, and we have launched an internal investigation into this matter,” it said in a statement. “While we cannot comment publicly on personnel matters, the teacher involved in the alleged incident is on administrative leave pending our investigation.”
Rahman said that it is not the first time his family has experienced “red flags” in the school district but that this was the “tipping point.”
“When teachers say it, that’s when I have to go to the school and confront this,” he said.
Rahman called for more education in geopolitics in the district so students can “learn more about different backgrounds, especially in the Middle East.”
Community leaders demanded cultural sensitivity and anti-bias curriculum and training at Monday’s news conference.
In a statement, the Harrisburg Palestine Coalition said what it described as the teacher’s “deeply embedded racism” may stem partly from “exposure to misinformation and war propaganda by mainstream news coverage of Palestine.”
“Central Dauphin School District must do more to ensure that education on Palestine is correctly taught in its classrooms,” the coalition said.
In a statement, CAIR’s Philadelphia branch called the incident a “racist, anti-Palestinian verbal assault” that made the teacher “unfit to teach any students.”
The district’s superintendent, Eric Turman, said Sunday that there was no update on the investigation to share.
