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The College Board has notified the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) that it has removed a video from the resources platform for its AP World History after a CAM-organized petition drew attention to its “disturbing inaccuracies about the history of the Jewish people and State of Israel.”
“Jew-hatred is fueled by ignorance, and it is unacceptable that students are being taught lies about Israel,” the CAM petition — addressed to College Board President David Coleman — said. “Hatred can only be fought with truth!”
In a reply sent to CAM CEO Sacha Roytman earlier this month, Trevor Packer, head of the Advanced Placement Program, wrote, “The content you highlighted is part of an AP Daily Video produced by high school teachers who have taught AP World History. We have now removed the video from our platform because, as you noted, it was inaccurate. Moreover, it did not align with the curriculum for the course, which contains none of the statements you flagged. The video should have been reviewed more carefully.”
“I also wanted to share some helpful information about our courses,” Packer added. “AP does not produce curriculum or teaching materials. We develop the curriculum framework for each AP course, leveraging input from Higher Education professors and high school teachers who are subject matter experts in their fields. Our frameworks align with introductory level college courses, designed for the high school classroom. School districts and educators then use our frameworks to develop their own local curricula. We also curate resources that schools can use to supplement their students’ learning experiences, including videos, but such resources are never required and are not assessed on the AP Exam for college credit. The video referenced in your petition was never a requirement for the course and as I noted above, has now been removed.”
The full text of the CAM petition follows:
The curriculum of the College Board’s AP World History course — a popular elective among university-bound US and Canadian high school students — features disturbing inaccuracies about the history of the Jewish people and State of Israel that, if left uncorrected, could fuel antisemitism, which is on the rise across the globe.
In the course’s Topic 8.6, titled “Newly Independent States,” several unfounded claims are presented as facts, raising questions about the intent of the curriculum’s authors and casting doubt on the credibility of the course as a whole.
For example, the course material says, “Jews occupied Palestine during the Roman Empire” — a false assertion that perverts the real history of the region, which is that Jews lived in what was then called Judea (from which the word “Jew” is derived) long before the Romans invaded in the 1st century BCE.
It also says, “The establishment of Israel in 1948 created resentment in Palestine and other nearby Arab countries. These religious tensions led to wars and terrorism.”
This statement vastly distorts and oversimplifies the Arab-Israeli conflict and ignores the extensive history of Arab violence against Jews in the area that would become the State of Israel decades before 1948, including, but not limited to, the riots of 1929 and the general revolt of 1936-1939.
Furthermore, the course material says the wars of 1948 and 1967 “both resulted in Israel taking over more territory” — without mentioning the circumstances of these wars, each of which were defensive in nature for Israel.
The material also defines Zionism as “a movement to return Jews to Palestine.” However, Jews originated in Judea, not “Palestine.” Zionism describes the national liberation movement rooted in the Jewish right to self-determination.
Anti-Zionism is a contemporary form of antisemitism, which has been made clear by the global outburst of Jew-hatred that accompanied the latest Israel-Gaza violence. According to a new Anti-Defamation League (ADL) survey, 77% of Jews in the US are more fearful of antisemitism following the recent surge.
Jew-hatred is fueled by ignorance, and it is unacceptable that students are being taught lies about Israel.
We demand the College Board correct the historical errors in the “Newly Independent States” curriculum. Hatred can only be fought with truth!
