By Cara McClellan with data analysis by Megan Gall

Across the country, large numbers of Black students are pushed out of the classroom and into the juvenile or criminal justice system through the school-to-prison pipeline. National data on school-based arrests and referrals to law enforcement reveals that Black and Latinx students are disproportionately targeted for harsh punishment. Moreover, national data shows that Black girls are the fastest-growing demographic affected by school discipline, arrests, and referrals to the juvenile justice system. For Black girls, the pathways to the juvenile justice system disproportionately involve unaddressed social-emotional needs at school. Despite this reality, students’ educational experiences are often left out of conversations about juvenile or criminal justice reform—in particular, the experiences of Black girls in schools. Baltimore is beginning a substantial effort to reform policing and its criminal justice system. Still, the experiences of Black girls in Baltimore City Public School System (“BCPSS”)—and the pathways that lead to their involvement with the justice systems—have been largely overlooked in this process.

New York: NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Thurgood Marshall Institute, 2024. 48p.

By Linda Maizels

Following the October 7 Hamas attack, some parts of the left not only blamed Israel for the aggression, but also expressed hostility toward Jewish supporters of Israel because of their assumed privilege.

• This type of animosity is not new. It began during the 1960s and 70s, especially after the Jewish State’s victories over a coalition of Arab nations in the 1967 War, and it can be linked to the ideology of some parts of the New Left, which included recurring attempts to link Israel with European colonialism and Jews with whiteness and privilege.

• Analysts of the period responded to these tactics by describing a “new antisemitism” that illustrated the parallels between hostility towards Israel’s legitimacy as a state and hostility toward the authenticity of the American Jewish community as a minority ethnic group.

• In the 1980s and 1990s, the focus of the political left trended toward promoting multiculturalism and diversity. This tolerance was not all-inclusive, however, and the animosity toward Israel demonstrated by some factions within the left was coupled with hostility toward Jews, who were seen not only as white and privileged, but also as a particularly malicious example of some of the worst elements of whiteness.

• Against the backdrop of the second intifada and the rise in violence that characterized the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the opening years of the 21st century, vocal factions of the left on American college and university campuses labeled Israel a racist and illegitimate state founded through settler colonialism and fueled by apartheid.

• At the same time, Jews were denigrated both for supporting Israel and for their supposed white privilege.

• Critics claimed that these attacks on Israel, Zionism, and Jews often crossed the line into antisemitism. They also pointed out a seeming double standard in which hostile rhetoric toward Jews – whether it was connected to Israel or to whiteness – was framed as protected political speech, while hateful language towards other minority identity groups was more likely to be condemned and silenced.

• The conclusion of this analysis is that some elements of the left have deep, serious, and systemic issues, not only with Israel but also with Jews.

  Washington, DC: George Washington University Program on Extremism. 2024, 23pg

By Katherine Sorrels, Lora Arduser, Danielle Bessett, Vanessa Carbonell, Michelle McGowan, and Edward Wallace

In early March of 2020, Americans watched with uncertain terror as the novel coronavirus pandemic unfolded. One week later, Ohio announced its first confirmed cases. Just one year later, the state had over a million cases and 18,000 Ohioans had died. What happened in that first pandemic year is not only a story of a public health disaster, but also a story of social disparities and moral dilemmas, of lives and livelihoods turned upside down, and of institutions and safety nets stretched to their limits. Ohio under COVID tells the human story of COVID in Ohio, America’s bellwether state. Scholars and practitioners examine the pandemic response from multiple angles, and contributors from numerous walks of life offer moving first-person reflections. Two themes emerge again and again: how the pandemic revealed a deep tension between individual autonomy and the collective good, and how it exacerbated social inequalities in a state divided along social, economic, and political lines. Chapters address topics such as mask mandates, ableism, prisons, food insecurity, access to reproductive health care, and the need for more Black doctors. The book concludes with an interview with Dr. Amy Acton, the state’s top public health official at the time COVID hit Ohio. Ohio under COVID captures the devastating impact of the pandemic, both in the public discord it has unearthed and in the unfair burdens it has placed on the groups least equipped to bear them.

Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 2023, 341pg