An educational video on LGBTQ issues shown this month to high school students in Marin County featured a young transgender woman smiling softly, wearing a cream cardigan over a T-shirt that glorifies a Palestinian hijacker.
The T-shirt displays the image of a kaffiyeh-clad woman holding an assault rifle and the words “resistance is not terrorism.” The woman is Leila Khaled, a longtime member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Khaled gained notoriety for her role hijacking a TWA flight bound for Tel Aviv in 1969 and an El Al flight headed to New York in 1970, and has achieved folk hero status in segments of the pro-Palestiniain movement. Now 80, she is still a member of PFLP, a Marxist-Leninist militant group founded in the 1960s.
The video was produced by a nonprofit called Campus Pride in collaboration with the Chronicle of Higher Education. In it, young LGBTQ college students explain how universities can help, or hinder, LGBTQ inclusion.
Neither Campus Pride nor the Chronicle of Higher Education immediately responded to a request for comment.
Some students in the Tamalpais Union High School District, which serves some 4,500 students, were shown the video on Feb. 12 during a mandatory session called a Stop and Learn, which the district holds periodically on issues of social justice.
During a Stop and Learn last year, the district invited Ibram X. Kendi, the author of “How to Be An Antiracist,” to lead the session. Some parents objected to Kendi’s appearance because of his progressive politics and his high speaking fee.
The Khaled T-shirt, which flashes briefly on the screen during the beginning of the LGBTQ education video, has reignited debate over how to incorporate fraught political issues into public high school education in Marin County, a deeply liberal area.
A Jewish student complained about the T-shirt, according to Laurie Dubin, a former district parent and leader of an activist group called Tam Union Together. Dubin said Friday that the student wished to remain anonymous.
Tam Union Together originally formed “objecting to the Liberated Ethnic Studies framework,” Dubin said, referring to an educational consulting firm that has drawn criticism from political moderates, conservatives and Jewish groups for its radical politics and anti-Zionism. The video comes amid years of controversy over the district’s rollout of ethnic studies, a subject some parents say risks injecting left-wing ideology into the classroom. Tam Union Together was “horrified” when members learned of the Khaled T-shirt display, Dubin said. The group now has roughly 500 members, she said.
On Tuesday, the district apologized for the video in a letter sent to parents and shared with J.
“We, as a District, acknowledge that this image is troubling, particularly because of its connection to violence and terrorism against Jewish people.” Tara Taupier, Tamalpais Union district superintendent
“We, as a District, acknowledge that this image is troubling, particularly because of its connection to violence and terrorism against Jewish people,” Superintendent Tara Taupier wrote in the statement. “We apologize for any pain this has caused. This oversight does not reflect the values of inclusivity, respect, and sensitivity that we are committed to upholding.”
Khaled has sparked controversy in the Bay Area in the past. In 2020 and again in 2021, a lecturer at San Francisco State University invited Khaled to speak at two virtual events on gender, “resistance” and free speech. The invitations sparked outrage among members of the Jewish community. Multiple technology companies, including Zoom and YouTube, refused to host the events.
The PFLP has been designated as a terrorist group by the U.S. State Department since 1997.