New York: Battle in Brooklyn--A Principal's Rise and Fall

[Harold F. Schiffman]

April 28, 2008
Battle in Brooklyn | A Principal's Rise and Fall
Critics Cost Muslim Educator Her Dream School
By ANDREA ELLIOTT

Debbie Almontaser dreamed of starting a public school like no other in New
York City. Children of Arab descent would join students of other
ethnicities, learning Arabic together. By graduation, they would be fluent
in the language and groomed for the countrys elite colleges. They would be
ready, in Ms. Almontaser's words, to become ambassadors of peace and hope.

Things have not gone according to plan. Only one-fifth of the 60 students
at the Khalil Gibran International Academy are Arab-American. Since the
school opened in Brooklyn last fall, children have been suspended for
carrying weapons, repeatedly gotten into fights and taunted an Arabic
teacher by calling her a terrorist, staff members and students said in
interviews.

The academys troubles reach well beyond its cramped corridors in Boerum
Hill. The schools creation provoked a controversy so incendiary that Ms.
Almontaser stepped down as the founding principal just weeks before
classes began last September. Ms. Almontaser, a teacher by training and an
activist who had carefully built ties with Christians and Jews, said she
was forced to resign by the mayors office following a campaign that pitted
her against a chorus of critics who claimed she had a militant Islamic
agenda.

In newspaper articles and Internet postings, on television and talk radio,
Ms. Almontaser was branded a radical, a jihadist and a 9/11 denier. She
stood accused of harboring unpatriotic leanings and of secretly planning
to proselytize her students. Despite Ms. Almontaser's longstanding
reputation as a Muslim moderate, her critics quickly succeeded in
recasting her image.

The conflict tapped into a well of post-9/11 anxieties. But Ms.
Almontaser's downfall was not merely the result of a spontaneous outcry by
concerned parents and neighborhood activists. It was also the work of a
growing and organized movement to stop Muslim citizens who are seeking an
expanded role in American public life. The fight against the school,
participants in the effort say, was only an early skirmish in a broader,
national struggle.

Its a battle thats really just begun, said Daniel Pipes, who directs a
conservative research group, the Middle East Forum, and helped lead the
charge against Ms. Almontaser and the school.

In the aftermath of Sept. 11, critics of radical Islam focused largely on
terrorism, scrutinizing Muslim-American charities or asserting links
between Muslim organizations and violent groups like Hamas. But as the
authorities have stepped up the war on terror, those critics have shifted
their gaze to a new frontier, what they describe as law-abiding
Muslim-Americans who are imposing their religious values in the public
domain.

Mr. Pipes and others reel off a list of examples: Muslim cabdrivers in
Minneapolis who have refused to take passengers carrying liquor; municipal
pools and a gym at Harvard that have adopted female-only hours to
accommodate Muslim women; candidates for office who are suspected of
supporting political Islam; and banks that are offering financial products
compliant with sharia, the Islamic code of law.

The danger, Mr. Pipes says, is that the United States stands to become
another England or France, a place where Muslims are balkanized and
ultimately threaten to impose sharia.

It is hard to see how violence, how terrorism will lead to the
implementation of sharia, Mr. Pipes said. It is much easier to see how,
working through the system  the school system, the media, the religious
organizations, the government, businesses and the like  you can promote
radical Islam.

Mr. Pipes refers to this new enemy as the lawful Islamists.

They are carrying out a soft jihad, said Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, a trustee of
the City University of New York and a vocal opponent of the Khalil Gibran
school.

Muslim leaders, academics and others see the drive against the school as
the latest in a series of discriminatory attacks intended to distort the
truth and play on Americans fear of terrorism. They say the campaign is
also part of a wider effort to silence critics of Washingtons policy on
Israel and the Middle East.

This is a political, ideological agenda, said John Esposito, a professor
of international affairs and Islamic studies at Georgetown University who
has been a focus of Mr. Pipess scrutiny. Its an agenda to paint Islam, not
just extremists, as a major problem.

That portrait, Muslim and Arab advocates contend, is rife with a bias that
would never be tolerated were it directed at other ethnic or religious
groups. And if Ms. Almontaser's story is any indication, they say, the
message of her critics wields great power.

Ms. Almontaser watched city officials and some of her closest Jewish
allies distance themselves from her as the controversy reached its peak.
She was ultimately felled by an article in The New York Post that said she
had downplayed the significance of T-shirts bearing the slogan Intifada
NYC.

Last month, federal judges issued a ruling  related to a lawsuit brought
by Ms. Almontaser to regain her job  stating that her words were
inaccurately reported by The Post and then misconstrued by the press.

While city officials and the Education Department declined to comment
about Ms. Almontaser because of the lawsuit, a lawyer for the city said
she had not been forced to resign.

In her first interview since stepping down, Ms. Almontaser said that
education officials had pressured her to speak to The Post and had
monitored the conversation. After the article was published, she said, the
department issued a written apology in her name, without her approval.

I kept saying I wanted to set the record straight, said Ms. Almontaser,
40. And they kept telling me, You cant undo what was done. A Call to Lead

In April 2005, Debbie Almontaser got a telephone call that would change
her life. The man on the line, Adam Rubin, worked for a nonprofit
organization, New Visions for Public Schools. He was exploring whether to
help the city create a public school that would teach Arabic. The group
already had seed money  a $400,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation  but needed the right person to help lead the venture.

Everywhere Mr. Rubin went  from the mayors office to a falafel stand in
Brooklyn  people mentioned Ms. Almontaser. She was a teacher, a native
Arabic speaker and arguably the citys most visible Arab-American woman.

After 9/11, Education Department officials had enlisted Ms. Almontaser to
hold workshops on cultural sensitivity for schoolchildren. She spread the
message that Islam was a peaceful religion. She told of how her own son
had served as a National Guardsman in the clearing effort at ground zero.
She was soon attending interfaith seminars, befriending rabbis and
priests. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg honored her publicly. She became a
ready commentator for the media, prompting some Muslims to joke that she
was the citys talking hijabi.

In fact, it had taken a long time for Ms. Almontaser to embrace the hijab,
or head scarf. Born in Yemen, she was 3 when she moved with her family to
Buffalo. Her parents encouraged her to blend in. She called herself Debbie
rather than Dhabah, her given name. She began wearing a veil in her 20's,
as a Brooklyn mother whose life revolved around PTA meetings and Boy Scout
trips. She took to riding on the back of her husbands motorcycle, her head
scarf tucked beneath a black helmet. She got used to the stares and
learned to be unapologetic.

In the months following the Sept. 11 attacks, she offered other Muslim
women the lessons she had learned: The only way to claim this as your
country is to continue on with your life here, she recalled telling them.

For years, Ms. Almontaser had hoped to become a principal. But soon after
joining hands with New Visions, she faced her first challenge. To
administer the Gates grant, the school needed a community partner. Two
groups wanted the job: a secular Arab-American social services agency and
a Muslim-led organization that runs Al-Noor School, a private Islamic
establishment in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

Ms. Almontaser said she tried to remain neutral as discord erupted between
the two groups. Quietly, though, she worried that if an organization
linked to a private Islamic school took the lead, the city would never
approve the project, despite the groups pledge to keep religion out of the
curriculum.

Ultimately, a steering committee led by Ms. Almontaser voted in favor of
the social services agency. Leaders of the Muslim group walked away
feeling disrespected and distrustful of her, several of the groups members
said in interviews. It was a rupture that would come back to haunt Ms.
Almontaser.

As preparations moved forward, a design team assembled by Ms. Almontaser
named the school after the Lebanese Christian poet and pacifist Khalil
Gibran. A Palestinian immigrant had suggested the name, hoping it would
deflect any concerns that the school carried a Muslim orientation.

In February 2007, the Department of Education announced that the school
had been approved. It would eventually encompass grades 6 through 12,
teach half of its classes in Arabic and be among 67 schools in the city
that offer programs in both English and another language, like Russian,
Spanish and Chinese. Ms. Almontaser designed a recruitment brochure to
attract the schools first class of sixth graders.

The leaflet cited the words of Mr. Gibran: In understanding, all walls
shall fall down.

Opposition Forms

Irene Alter, a peppy, retired Queens schoolteacher, was sitting at her
computer one morning that February when she read an article in The New
York Times about the Khalil Gibran school, she said. A series of questions
flooded her head.

Which courses would be taught in Arabic? How would Israel be treated in
the study of Middle Eastern history? Then in April, she read an op-ed
article by Mr. Pipes in The New York Sun.

Conceptually, such a school could be marvelous, Mr. Pipes wrote, but in
practice, it was certain to be problematic. Arabic-language instruction is
inevitably laden with Pan-Arabist and Islamist baggage, he wrote,
referring to the school as a madrassa, which means school in Arabic but,
in the West, carries the implication of Islamic teaching.

Given how little Mr. Pipes knew about the school at the time, the word was
a bit of a stretch, he said in a recent interview. He defended its use as
a way to get attention for the cause. It got the attention of Ms. Alter,
60, who contacted Mr. Pipes and, with his encouragement, helped form a
grass-roots organization in response to the school project. Mr. Pipes
joined the advisory board of the group, which called itself the Stop the
Madrassa Coalition.

Mr. Pipes, 58, has emerged as a divisive figure in the post-9/11 era. An
author of 12 books who has a doctorate in history from Harvard, he has
made a career out of studying and critiquing Islam. His research group,
which he established in downtown Philadelphia in the early 1990s, seeks to
define and promote American interests in the Middle East, according to its
Web site.

Among his supporters, Mr. Pipes enjoys a heroic status; among his
detractors, he is reviled. Those sharply divergent views reflect the
passions that infuse Middle Eastern politics, arguably nowhere in the
United States more than in New York City.

Mr. Pipes is perhaps best known for Campus Watch, a national initiative he
created to scrutinize Middle Eastern programs at colleges and
universities. The drive has accused professors of, among other things,
being soft on militant Islam and sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. It
has stirred widespread controversy and, in some cases, may have undermined
professors bids for tenure.

Mr. Pipes was joined in the monitoring effort by other self-declared
watchdogs of militant Islam. Their Web sites are often linked to one
another and their messages interwoven. One critic, David Horowitz, founded
Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, a campaign aimed at college campuses. He
noted in an interview that monitors of radical Islam have increasingly
trained their sights on nonviolent Muslim-Americans.

They don't throw bombs, but they create political cover for ideological
support of this jihadi movement, he said.

Mr. Pipes places Muslims in three categories, he said: those who are
violent, those who are moderate and those in the middle. It is this middle
group, he argued, that now poses the greatest threat to American values.

Are these people who are not using violence but who are not fully
enthusiastic about this country and its mores, its culture  are they on
our side or are they on the other side? he asked.

Ms. Almontaser never considered herself unenthusiastic about America, she
said. But as the conflict over the Khalil Gibran school intensified, she
came to be seen by many through Mr. Pipess lens. In his article in The
Sun, he referred to Ms. Almontaser by her birth name, Dhabah, and called
her views extremist. He cited an article in which she was quoted as saying
about 9/11, I don't recognize the people who committed the attacks as
either Arabs or Muslims. (As The Jewish Week later reported, Mr. Pipes
left out the second half of the quote: Those people who did it have stolen
my identity as an Arab and have stolen my religion.)

The Stop the Madrassa Coalition focused primarily on Ms. Almontaser as a
strategy, said Mr. Pipes, because the group could get little information
about the school itself. The coalition quickly publicized several
discoveries. Ms. Almontaser had accepted an award from the Council on
American-Islamic Relations, a national Muslim organization that critics
claim has ties to terrorist groups (an assertion the group adamantly
denies). In news articles, Ms. Almontaser had been critical of American
foreign policy and police tactics in fighting terrorism. She also gave
$2,000 to Representative Cynthia A. McKinney of Georgia, whom Mr. Pipes
and others have characterized as an Islamist sympathizer. (Ms. McKinney,
who is no longer in office and did not respond to requests for an
interview, has had a strong following among Arab-Americans in part because
of her criticism of the Patriot Act.)

Critics of the Madrassa Coalition say its tactics are typical of campaigns
singling out Muslims: They lean heavily on guilt by association. The
nuances of the claims against Ms. Almontaser were lost as the controversy
lit up the blogosphere, said Chip Berlet, a senior analyst at Political
Research Associates, a liberal organization outside Boston that studies
the political right. One Web site, MilitantIslamMonitor.org, displayed
photographs of Ms. Almontaser wearing her hijab in different styles,
suggesting that she had undergone a public relations makeover to disguise
her Islamist agenda. The criticism of Ms. Almontaser and the school spread
to newspapers, eliciting negative editorials in The Daily News and The New
York Sun.

Ms. Almontaser was stunned, she said: Her school would touch upon religion
only in its global studies class, following the same curriculum as all New
York public schools. She tried to keep her head down, she said, and set
out to recruit students, half of whom she hoped would be Arab. But
opposition to the school mounted after critics learned that its advisory
council included three imams (along with rabbis and priests), that there
would be an internship for students with a Muslim lawyers association and
that the proposal for the school suggested it might offer halal food. (The
advisory council never met and has since been dismantled, and the school
does not offer halal food, Education Department officials said.)

As the attacks continued, Joel Levy of the New York chapter of the
Anti-Defamation League published a letter defending Ms. Almontaser in The
Sun. Mr. Levy made reference to the possibility that his organization
would provide anti-bias training to Ms. Almontaser's staff.

The letter caused a stir among some Arab-Americans, who were bothered by
Ms. Almontaser's ties to Jewish groups. In late June, Aramica, an Arabic
and English newspaper based in Brooklyn, ran a cover story with the
headline Zionist Organization Supports Gibran School Principal, focusing
on the link between Ms. Almontaser's school and the Anti-Defamation League.

In just five months, Ms. Almontaser's image had been transformed. She was
rendered a radical Muslim by one group and a sellout by another.

T-Shirts, and a Resignation

At first, some city officials rallied to Ms. Almontaser's side. Among them
was David Cantor, the chief spokesman for the Department of Education, who
wrote in an e-mail message to the editor of The New York Sun, Seth Lipsky:
I wont allow Dan Pipes a free pass to smear Debbie Almontaser as an
Islamist proselytizer who denies Muslim involvement in 9/11. It is a false
picture and an ugly effort.

But behind closed doors, department officials were nervous, Ms. Almontaser
recalled. With her help, she said, they drafted a confidential memo of
talking points to review with reporters: the school was nonreligious, for
example, and Ms. Almontaser was a multicultural specialist and diversity
consultant.

The Stop the Madrassa Coalition pressed its campaign. In July, one of its
members, Pamela Hall, made a discovery that would elevate the controversy.
At an Arab-American festival in Brooklyn, she spotted T-shirts on a table
bearing the words Intifada NYC. The organization distributing them, Arab
Women Active in the Arts and Media, trains young women in community
organizing and media production. The group sometimes uses the office of a
Yemeni-American association in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Ms. Almontaser sits on
the associations board.

Ms. Hall took a photograph, and a few weeks later, the coalition announced
on its blog that Ms. Almontaser was linked to the T-shirts.

On Aug. 3, Ms. Almontaser received a call from Melody Meyer, a spokeswoman
for the Education Department. What does Intifada NYC mean? Ms. Almontaser
recalled Ms. Meyer asking.

Ms. Almontaser was stumped, she said. She knew of the group. But she had
never heard about the T-shirts, she said she told Ms. Meyer, adding that
intifada meant uprising and was linked to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Most reporters lost interest in the T-shirts after Ms. Meyer explained
that neither Ms. Almontaser nor the school was linked to them, but The
Post persisted. Ms. Almontaser said Ms. Meyer and Mr. Cantor pressured her
to respond to the newspaper in an interview.

I said, Wait a minute,  recalled Ms. Almontaser, who was critical of The
Posts coverage of Arabs and Muslims.  I am not comfortable doing the
interview.

Ms. Meyer promised to monitor the conversation, Ms. Almontaser said, and
Mr. Cantor instructed her not to be apologetic about the T-shirts. While
both Ms. Meyer and Mr. Cantor said they could not comment on the case, a
city lawyer said that Ms. Almontaser was told to avoid discussing the
T-shirts and intifada altogether, and was never pressured to speak to The
Post.

During the Post interview, Ms. Almontaser said, she told the reporter,
Chuck Bennett, that the Arab womens organization was not connected to her
or the school, and that she would never be affiliated with any group that
condoned violence. Then Mr. Bennett asked her for the origins of the word
intifada, she said.

The educator in me responded, Ms. Almontaser said. She explained, with Ms.
Meyer listening in on the three-way phone call, that the root of the word
means shaking off. Ms. Almontaser then offered what she described as a
lengthy explanation about the evolution of the word and the negative
connotation it had developed because of the Arab-Israeli struggle.

The thought went across my mind to be extremely careful with my words  not
to offend the Jewish community and not to offend the Arab-American
community, she said. I was feeling pressure from all sides.

Although Ms. Almontaser said she never spoke to the reporter about the
T-shirts, she defended the girls in the organization because she believed
that the reporter was set on vilifying innocent teenagers.

After the reporter hung up, Ms. Almontaser recalled, Ms. Meyer told her,
Good job.

The next day, The Post ran the article under the headline City Principal
Is Revolting  Tied to Intifada NYC Shirts. The article quoted Ms.
Almontaser as saying that the girls in the organization were shaking off
oppression, words that The Post, according to a ruling by federal
appellate judges, attributed to Ms. Almontaser incorrectly and
misleadingly.

Complaints about Ms. Almontaser began pouring into the Education
Department, and Mr. Cantor informed her that an apology would be issued in
her name. Ms. Almontaser objected, she said, and asked that the department
clarify her comments to The Post, which she said were distorted, rather
than apologize.

Mr. Cantor insisted on an apology, she said, and e-mailed her the proposed
wording. The first sentence was not negotiable, she recalled him telling
her. The apology began: The use of the word intifada is completely
inappropriate as a T-shirt slogan for teenagers. I regret suggesting
otherwise. Ms. Almontaser responded in an e-mail message that Mr. Cantor
should change the latter sentence to I regret my response was interpreted
as suggesting otherwise.

The press office issued the original apology. Pressure soon mounted for
Ms. Almontaser to resign. Randi Weingarten, the head of the teachers
union, published a letter in The Post criticizing Ms. Almontaser for not
denouncing ideas tied to violence. On Aug. 9, Deputy Mayor Dennis M.
Walcott asked Ms. Almontaser to step down, she said. The mayor wants your
resignation by 8 a.m. tomorrow so he can announce it on his radio show,
Ms. Almontaser recalled Mr. Walcott saying.

She said he promised her that in exchange for her resignation, the school
would still open, and she would remain employed. She resigned the next
day, taking an administrative job at the Education Department. She kept
her principals salary of $120,000.

On his radio program, Mayor Bloomberg announced that Ms. Almontaser had
submitted her resignation, which was nice of her to do.

She's certainly not a terrorist, he said, adding that she was not all that
media savvy maybe.

Three days later, Ms. Almontaser was replaced by an interim principal,
Danielle Salzberg, who is Jewish and speaks no Arabic.

Chaos in a New School

On Sept. 4, the Khalil Gibran International Academy opened its doors at
345 Dean Street as parents ushered their children past a throng of
reporters, photographers and television crews.

Chaos soon erupted inside. Students cut classes and got into fights with
little consequence, said staff members, parents and students. At least 12
of the 60 students showed signs of behavioral problems or learning
disabilities, said Leslie Kahn, a licensed social worker and counselor who
was employed at the school until January. (Education Department officials,
who denied repeated requests by The Times to visit the school, said there
are currently six special-needs students there.)

Something is flying through the air, every class, every day, Sean R.
Grogan, a science teacher at the school, said in an interview. Kids bang
on the partitions, yell and scream, curse and swear. Its out of control.

Physical altercations are frequent, Mr. Grogan and others said, with Arab
students and teachers the target of ethnic slurs. I just don't feel safe,
said an Arab-American student, 11, who will not return to the school next
year.

In the first days after Ms. Almontaser resigned, she felt numb, she said.
Her support among Arab-Muslims remained uneven. Had she not alienated some
who wanted more of a role in the schools creation, the whole community
would have stood behind her, said Wael Mousfar, president of the Arab
Muslim American Federation. A lot of our kids would be part of that
school.

Ms. Almontaser soon found herself flanked by a new group of supporters,
including Jewish and Muslim activists, who began lobbying for her to be
reinstated as the schools principal. On Oct. 16, Ms. Almontaser announced
that she was suing the Education Department and the mayor. She claimed
that her First Amendment rights had been violated because she was forced
to resign after she was quoted as saying something controversial.

She requested that the city be prevented from hiring a permanent principal
until her case was resolved. A judge rejected the request, and Ms.
Almontaser appealed. In March, a federal appeals court upheld the ruling,
but the judges were sharply critical of the citys handling of Ms.
Almontaser's case.

This was a situation where she was subject to sanction not for anything
she said, not for anything she did, but because a newspaper reporter
twisted what she said and the result of it was negative press for the city
and the Board of Ed, Judge Jon O. Newman told a city lawyer at a hearing
in February.

Ms. Almontaser's case will proceed in the Federal District Court in
Manhattan.

The Stop the Madrassa Coalition continues to protest the school. The group
sued the Department of Education in October, requesting detailed
information about the schools creation, faculty and curriculum. While the
department has handed over thousands of records, the coalitions lawyer
said the documents leave many questions unanswered, including which
textbooks the school is using to teach Arabic. A department spokeswoman
said that a list of textbooks selected for the school was sent to the
lawyer last fall.

The coalition has also broadened the reach of its campaign. Some members
have joined with the Center for Policy Research in American Education, a
new organization that will research the influence of radical Islam on
public schools around the country.

In recent weeks, conditions at the Khalil Gibran school have improved,
said several students and staff members. Holly Anne Reichert, who was
appointed as the permanent principal in January, said in an interview that
she had reduced some of the disruptive behavior by minimizing class sizes.
She added that the media attention had led to a chaotic experience for
students. Adults have created this, and children are the ones who have had
to endure, she said.

The school will move to a larger space in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, by next
fall.

Ms. Almontaser still attends interfaith dinners and awards ceremonies.
During the day, she works for the citys Office of School and Youth
Development. Part of her job entails evaluating other schools.

In an odd twist of fate, she was sent to the Bronx last fall to review a
small, innovative school that had opened the same month as Khalil Gibran.
It also taught a foreign language: Spanish. The students seemed to be
thriving. As Ms. Almontaser walked the hallways, she was shaken, she said.

It wasn't that I was envious that her dream materialized, said Ms.
Almontaser, referring to the principal. It was seeing her sixth graders,
her teachers, and seeing that she did it. And I didn't get a chance.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/04/28/nyregion/20080428_SCHOOL_VIDEO.html?hp#

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