A Pennsylvania middle school teacher has been placed on administrative leave after allegedly calling a Muslim seventh grader a “terrorist.”
The alleged incident took place Jan. 16 at Central Dauphin Middle School in Harrisburg after the student asked the teacher to change seats, according to a news release from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a civil rights group.
“I do not negotiate with terrorists,” the teacher allegedly told the student, according to CAIR, which described the student as Palestinian Lebanese American.
At a press conference Monday evening, Adam Rahman, the boy’s father, said 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.
The district did not identify the educator but said the alleged 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,” the district 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 this 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 on geopolitics in the district so that students can “learn more about different backgrounds, especially in the Middle East.”
At Monday’s press conference, community leaders demanded cultural sensitivity and anti-bias curriculum and training.
In a statement, the Harrisburg Palestine Coalition said the teacher’s alleged “deeply embedded racism” may partially stem 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 to share on the investigation.
