ADL Responds to Mountain Brooks Criticism of Diversity Education Program

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BIRMINGHAM, Alabama (WBRC) – If attendance at last night’s city council meetings was any indication, the Mountain Brook School Board will soon hear from dozens of parents concerned about how their children are learning about diversity in the classroom.

The controversy was over the program the Mountain Brooks diversity committee wanted to use, called No Place for Hate, organized by the Anti-Defamation League.

The Anti-Defamation League provided data on the number of schools it has worked with with 1,600 in the past year alone, reaching 1.4 million students and 100,000 teachers.

This includes all schools in the city of Huntsville.

The controversy over the program arose as the discourse on critical race theory grew, prompting Mountain Brook to sever ties after the parental uproar.

Somehow over the past ten-day week, the volume has gotten way too high, said Rip Andrews, a resident and relative of Mountain Brook.

ADL released this statement, saying in part:

UPDATE: They also posted this open letter to Mountain Brook on June 29th.

A Jewish parent said Mountain Brook needed the training after May 2020 when mountain Brook teens were caught on social media displaying swastikas.

As a kid, as a Jewish kid growing up in Mountain Brook, starting in second grade when a girl told me she couldn’t play with me because I had killed Jesus, Elizabeth Goldstein said.

She says the problems are ongoing.

It always happens, it happens to my friends’ children at this school, Goldstein said.

The Mountain Brook Schools said in a statement that they will pursue a different framework for diversity education outside of the ADL framework.

This school council meeting will take place on July 12th.

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