The president of the Long Beach Unified school board apologized Monday for failing to intervene when a speaker made Islamophobic and xenophobic remarks at a recent board meeting.
“There is no place for language or actions that undermine the dignity, safety or sense of belonging of any member of our community,” school board president Diana Craighead said. “I personally will be more proactive, more vigilant about hate speech because it has no place where our students are concerned,” she said.
Her comments came immediately after Khalid Hudson, advocacy manager of the Council on American-Islamic Relations of Greater Los Angeles, urged the school board to establish policies to act in the moment to prevent hate speech — and potentially violence — in the future.
Hudson referenced three men who were killed at the Islamic Center of San Diego on Monday in a shooting currently being investigated as a hate crime. “The rise of Islamophobic attacks nationally has also impacted us locally,” he said, referencing an increase in reported civil rights violations against Muslims as well as recent hate-fueled incidents in the Greater Los Angeles Area.
CAIR recently singled out an incident that occurred in Long Beach. On April 15, a man who identified himself as Rudy Kraus attended an LBUSD board meeting and used his public comment period to speak about Islam, claiming the district was “putting false ideas in the minds of children.” He falsely claimed that Muslims teach pedophilia and violence and said that “the greatest crime of the mind ever perpetrated in the history of the world is Islam.” He proposed forcing imams to testify in congressional hearings, what he called the “Muslim ideology trials.”
Board members allowed him to use his full three minutes before reminding him that his time was up and continuing with the remaining speakers during the public comment period.
Following the meeting, the executive director of CAIR-LA sent an open letter to LBUSD school board members calling on them to take stronger action. “At the bare minimum, the Board President owed the audience (and the broader community) a clear, unequivocal statement condemning the hate speech that had just been delivered,” he wrote. “The silence that followed was deafening,” he wrote.
The district released a statement condemning the hate, yet some said the district needed to take a stronger stance and apologize to Muslim community members who are hurting, especially in light of recent violence.
On Monday, Craighead took responsibility for the decision to let Kraus continue speaking and said she had hoped that allowing him his full time would “de-escalate the situation” because he was already agitated. “I appreciate the invitation to prevent those types of comments from being made,” she said.
Board of education guidance states that “remarks by any person addressing the Board which denigrate the religious, racial or personal characteristics of any person are discouraged.”