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Brown U. ends its K-12 history curriculum used by 1 million in all 50 states. Claims of anti-Israel bias.
The Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy released a report in March of 2025 uncovering what it says are extensive foreign influence and anti-Israel bias infiltrating the US K-12 classrooms through Brown University’s Choices program. Over 1 million students use this curriculum in all 50 states. The program began nearly 40 years ago.
Brown University has been pushing back against these claims and recent news stories that “have the effect of cultivating a false narrative against its renowned and well-regarded Choices Program“, which creates curriculum for history and current issues courses taught in secondary schools across the country, saying the reports are misleading and give a grossly inaccurate narrative of renowned secondary school materials referencing academic views on Israel, Palestine and the Middle East.
In addition to the mischaracterizations about the educational materials, there are claims that the State of Qatar has funded the program, which the university says are “blatantly false”. Brown explains that the Qatar Foundation International (QFI), is a U.S.-based educational nonprofit organization not affiliated with the government of Qatar, has never contributed money to the Choices Program. Rather, QFI purchased and distributed a selection of existing Choices curriculum units to 75 teachers whose districts didn’t have funding to buy them.
The pushback against ISGAP ceased when Brown University, on April 11th, decided to end the Choices program, claiming economic reasons, saying in a school memo:
“While Choices has enjoyed a long history of providing content to teachers and school districts across the country, a detailed assessment of the program’s finances and organization has made clear that it is no longer economically viable in its current structure at Brown. Expenses for the program have significantly exceeded revenue for multiple recent fiscal years, an imbalance that is expected to worsen and cannot be responsibly and sustainably managed by existing University resources. For the past several months, we have been assessing the Choices Program in the context of the University’s financial sustainability efforts to address the structural deficit in its operating budget, as well as the increasing uncertainty about potential financial impacts of federal government actions and ongoing shifts in the national economic landscape.
We have made the difficult but necessary decision amid these financial headwinds that Brown will discontinue hosting the Choices Program, while its administrative leaders remain free to consider continuing the initiative as a separate entity independent of Brown’s resources and sponsorship. We are sharing this decision with the full community given the program’s history and engagement with faculty and other stakeholders across the University spanning decades.”
ISGAP calls for federal investigation
ISGAP calls for a federal investigation, curriculum suspension, and stricter foreign funding disclosure in K-12 education, after briefing key officials, including the U.S. Department of Education, the Department of Justice, and congressional leaders.
Congressman Kevin Kiley from California, Chair of the Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education of the House Education & Workforce Committee, “ISGAP’s latest report suggests foreign influence from Qatar has infiltrated the Choices Program hosted at Brown University”.
A newly released report by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) uncovers extensive foreign influence and anti-Israel bias infiltrating U.S. K-12 classrooms through Brown University’s Choices Program. They found the curriculum has been found to systematically distort historical facts to delegitimize Israel. The report raises significant concerns about transparency, oversight, and compliance with federal disclosure laws.
ISGAP has sent the report widely across Capitol Hill and the administration, including the Departments of Education and Justice. Congressman Kevin Kiley from California, Chair of the Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education of the House Education & Workforce Committee, noted that “ISGAP’s latest report suggests foreign influence from Qatar has infiltrated the Choices Program hosted at Brown University, a curriculum widely adopted in K-12 schools across the country. I look forward to working with ISGAP and colleagues on both sides of the aisle to assure foreign influence does not promote antisemitism at American schools.”
The investigation highlights the systematic manipulation of educational materials in the Choices Program within the same units over the last decade plus, gradually shifting its curriculum to present an increasingly anti-Israel perspective. Changes include the removal of key historical documents and the omission of others, the misrepresentation of Israel’s capital in maps, and the exclusion of balanced perspectives on Israeli history and diplomacy. Furthermore, the report reveals that Qatar Foundation International (QFI) has played an undisclosed role in shaping the Choices Program’s curriculum and teacher training, influencing how American students are taught about the Middle East and Israel.
The report also highlights a critical lack of transparency and oversight in schools utilizing the Choices Program. Schools are not informed when curriculum content is modified, and the proprietary nature of the digital curriculum prevents parents, school boards, and educators from reviewing and assessing changes. This raises serious ethical and legal concerns regarding accountability in education.
The report also exposes the opaque legal and financial structure of the Choices Program, which operates under Brown University’s name while maintaining an ambiguous status that obscures compliance with federal disclosure laws. There is substantial evidence suggesting that Brown University may have failed to disclose foreign funding as required under the Higher Education Act. Additionally, the report raises concerns about the potential exposure of student and teacher data to third-party entities.
Dr. Charles Asher Small, ISGAP’s Executive Director, said: This is a direct attempt to manipulate American students by embedding ideologically motivated foreign propaganda in their education. Foreign entities with known ties to extremist ideologies should not be shaping how our children learn about history and the Middle East. The lack of transparency and oversight in this case is a threat to educational integrity and democratic values. American students should not be used as pawns in foreign propaganda campaigns. It is time to demand transparency, accountability, and an end to the silent manipulation of our children’s education.
Memories of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) foreign influenced programs at US colleges and universities
Congressman Kevin Kiley from California, Chair of the Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education of the House Education & Workforce Committee, noted, “I am grateful that the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) has dedicated significant effort to investigating antisemitism and foreign influence in K-12 curriculum. As Chairman of the Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education, I recently co-led the PROTECT Our Kids Act to prevent federal education funds from supporting schools partnered with or funded by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Similarly, ISGAP’s latest report suggests foreign influence from Qatar has infiltrated the Choices Program hosted at Brown University…I look forward to working with ISGAP and colleagues on both sides of the aisle to assure foreign influence does not promote antisemitism at American schools,” said Rep. Kiley.
Many of the CCP programs have closed, if not all, throughout the US, including two in Rhode Island – one at Bryant, and a smaller one with URI.
Francene D. Reichel Sokol, Ph.D, of ‘Mothers Against College Antisemitism’ added, “The findings in this report are deeply alarming. Brown University’s Choices Program is not just an academic curriculum—it is a vehicle for foreign influence and the systematic indoctrination of students against Israel. The lack of transparency, the distortion of historical facts, and the documented involvement of Qatari funding underscore the urgent need for oversight and accountability in K-12 education. No parent should have to worry that their child’s education is being manipulated by undisclosed foreign interests. We call on policymakers and school districts to take immediate action to ensure that our classrooms remain places of learning, not propaganda”.
KEY FINDINGS FROM THE REPORT:
• Systematic Anti-Israel Bias – Over multiple editions, the Choices Program has erased key historical facts, distorted maps, and rewritten history to cast Israel in a negative light.
• Foreign Interference in U.S. Education – Qatar Foundation International (QFI) has covertly shaped the Choices Program curriculum, influencing how over one million students learn about the Middle East.
• Lack of Transparency & Parental Awareness – Schools using the curriculum are not informed of content changes. Parents and school boards have no oversight, and the Choices Program’s financial and legal structure remains alarmingly opaque.
• Possible Federal Law Violations – Brown University may have failed to disclose millions in foreign funding, violating the Higher Education Act, which requires institutions to report foreign donations exceeding $250,000.
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Policy Recommendations were made
To counter the detrimental influence of the Choices Program and Qatar/QFI on US
secondary education, the following measures should be implemented:
- Prohibit any further direct Qatari/QFI funding of US secondary schools and
teachers. Require full disclosure under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of
any Qatar-linked funds (and other foreign funds originating from anti-
democratic sources) already received by US secondary schools or K-12
educators. - Open a Federal Government investigation into the Choices Program to
determine its ownership structure, its affiliations, contractual relationships,
foreign sales, contributions, and donations. The investigation should explore the
QFI resource materials used as part of the Choices Program workshop and
explore the impact of donors’ funding or sponsorship of the Choices Program on
curricular content changes and professional education. - Add a provision to Section 117 of the Higher Education Act of 1965 that mandates
disclosure by all entities that operate within or at an institution of higher
education. - Require transparency in the sale of social studies curriculum to secondary
schools with respect to the funding sources behind such curriculum, the
changes made to curricular materials, and the identity of all parties that are
permitted to access school or student data. - Require transparency with respect to the professional education of teachers to
help minimize the potential for influence and manipulation over classroom
content and pedagogy. - Require transparency on the part of schools by granting parents and legal
guardians access to the same curricular resources their children are able to
access.
IN RESPONSE TO THESE FINDINGS, ISGAP CALLED FOR IMMEDIATE ACTION:
• Immediate suspension of the Middle East Choices Program for K-12 student pending a comprehensive review.
• A federal investigation by the U.S. Department of Education and Department of Justice into undisclosed foreign influence on K-12 education.
• Congressional oversight hearings on the relationship between Brown University and the Choices Program.
• Stronger enforcement of disclosure laws, including mandatory reporting of all foreign funding received by K-12 schools under an amended Section 117 of the Higher Education Act.
• Mandatory registration of QFI under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) for its activities in U.S. schools.
• Full transparency in K-12 curriculum development, requiring schools to provide parents with access to all social studies resources used in classrooms.
The full report can be accessed here.
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Brown confronts false characterizations of its Choices Program school curriculum
Misleading reports give grossly inaccurate narrative of renowned secondary school materials referencing academic views on Israel, Palestine and the Middle East.
Brown leaders and program organizers maintain that any claims that the curriculum is antisemitic are blatantly and egregiously false. Reports and concerns about Brown’s Choices curriculum seem to be based on an article that quoted from one element of a full set of school materials that, by design, present divergent views on the historical Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Instructors are given guidance on how to use the rigorous curriculum, encouraging students to hear multiple perspectives of the debate of the historical and contemporary conflict, according to leaders at Brown.
“A writer selectively extracted words and phrases to fit a constructed narrative critical of the role of education in campus climate around the Middle East conflict and issues of Israel-Palestine,” Brown leaders said. “It has been troubling to see some news outlets begin to simply echo that narrative without contacting Brown University at any time to discern whether the characterization of the Choices Program curriculum on the Middle East was accurate. It definitively is not.”
Brown’s Choices Program is designed to help educators guide thoughtful consideration of diverse views as part of a rigorous curriculum. For more than 30 years, Choices has provided carefully researched scholarship to help educators teach about challenging issues. A key element of this has always been presenting multiple perspectives and sources that can be in tension or even conflict with each other.
Choices curriculum materials address the topic of antisemitism both historically and in terms of the contemporary threats and growing violence against Jewish people. These include full curriculum units on genocide, terrorism, the Russian Revolution, and human rights, as well as the Middle East. Choices has partnered with organizations such as the renowned Illinois Holocaust Museum near Chicago and numerous Holocaust and genocide centers to put its curricular materials in the hands of teachers nationwide.
It is common for Choices curriculum materials to present strongly opposing points of view and then ask students to evaluate them and develop their own questions and conclusions. The carefully designed lessons invite students to challenge and grapple with different perspectives from diverse viewpoints.
“We recognize that the issues covered in some of our curricular materials, and in particular our unit on the Middle East, are of deep importance to many people,” program administrators said. “Indeed, the text itself acknowledges this explicitly and repeatedly as the following excerpt indicates:
“Note: These sources focus on Israel and the Palestinian territories of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The people who live in the area have different beliefs about what this land should be called, who should govern it, and who has a right to live there. The state of Israel was created in 1948, but it has not been recognized by all people or states in the Middle East. Israel’s borders have shifted over the course of a decades-long conflict that continues today. The adjacent territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip are widely recognized as Palestinian territories, but the borders between Israel and these territories continue to be a subject of disagreement. This text acknowledges this complex and contentious history.” (Source: The Middle East: Questions for U.S. Policy, Choices Program, Providence, Rhode Island, 2022.)”
Choices Program materials focus on developing analytical skills so that students can engage thoughtfully and carefully with difficult topics and conflicting ideas. With Choices based in Brown’s history department, program leaders work directly with professors, public scholars, educators, policymakers and other experts who contribute to developing and reviewing curriculum units. Choices staff also work with those experts to include up-to-date information for new and updated units.
The curriculum comes with a strong recommendation to educators that the materials be considered in their entirety — including readings, lesson plans, primary sources and video content. It is in this full context that the value of teaching multiple perspectives can be understood and evaluated, according to the University.
“We unequivocally reject claims that including views about the range of scholarship on the Middle East is antisemitic,” Brown leaders said. “As is the case with many subjects in the social sciences and humanities in a rigorous education, students must be encouraged to learn based on interrogating and confronting a range of perspectives.”
Some news reports have extracted words and phrases from scholars from around the world from the fields of history, humanities, Middle East studies and American studies, a subset from a broad range of multifaceted materials.
“Including content from one set of viewpoints among many does not mean that the materials in general represent that one viewpoint,” Brown leaders said. “The curriculum is appropriately inclusive of a range viewpoints and academic scholarship.”
False claims about Choices Program funding
QFI also co-sponsored a Choices Program workshop for Wyoming teachers, along with the Wyoming Geographic Alliance, in 2019. QFI had no input or editorial control over the workshop or the content in the curriculum units.
“A basic principle of the Choices Program and Brown University is academic freedom and scholarly integrity,” Brown leaders said. “There are no political or editorial interventions into our work, and we would reject any funding that attempted to impose restrictions or conditions on our materials.”
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A video used in the curriculum – titled: “How does the government of Israel use militarized borders to control Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza?”
Choices currently offers curriculum units on topics such as: The American Revolution: Experiences of Rebellion; Confronting Genocide: Never Again?; Indian Independence and the Question of Partition; Immigration and the U.S. Policy Debate; and The Vietnam War: Origins, History, and Legacies.
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April 11th full Provost letter announcing the Choice Program will end on June 30th
“I am writing today with an important update on the Choices Program, an initiative housed in the history department at Brown with a mission to increase access to high-quality curricular content and strengthen education about history and current events in secondary schools in the U.S. and beyond.
While Choices has enjoyed a long history of providing content to teachers and school districts across the country, a detailed assessment of the program’s finances and organization has made clear that it is no longer economically viable in its current structure at Brown. Expenses for the program have significantly exceeded revenue for multiple recent fiscal years, an imbalance that is expected to worsen and cannot be responsibly and sustainably managed by existing University resources. For the past several months, we have been assessing the Choices Program in the context of the University’s financial sustainability efforts to address the structural deficit in its operating budget, as well as the increasing uncertainty about potential financial impacts of federal government actions and ongoing shifts in the national economic landscape.
We have made the difficult but necessary decision amid these financial headwinds that Brown will discontinue hosting the Choices Program, while its administrative leaders remain free to consider continuing the initiative as a separate entity independent of Brown’s resources and sponsorship. We are sharing this decision with the full community given the program’s history and engagement with faculty and other stakeholders across the University spanning decades.
Even as we face the need to end the University’s sponsorship of the program, we recognize and appreciate its decades-long positive impact. Choices originated more than 30 years ago in the academic programs that today comprise the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. Its original mission was to help secondary school students understand contemporary policy choices, and the program evolved over time both to present scholarship on a wider range of policy choices and also to make that scholarship accessible to high school students. Topics explored in the program’s curricular materials range from the American Revolution, the Civil War, and the Civil Rights Movement, to timely issues such as nuclear weapons expansions, U.S. policies on foreign aid, the origins of conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and Russian-American relations.
As the program expanded its reach, it continued to create curricula relevant to policy decisions nationally and around the globe, but rooted in historical scholarship. In 2018, the program moved to Brown’s Department of History, as a self-funded unit, and its historical focus was reinforced. The decision around that time to shift to a digital model, in which educational materials could be purchased online, was critical for sustaining the program financially, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic and the rapid move to remote learning in 2020. More demand for digital curricula, and increased government funding to school systems during and after the pandemic, allowed the program to be financially successful during this period.
In recent years, however, the program has faced both financial and staffing challenges, and the outlook for future curriculum sales appears to be weaker than in prior years. In Summer 2024, Deputy Provost Janet Blume and Dean of the Faculty Leah VanWey began working with the history department and Choices Program staff to assess the financial and organizational status of the program and to review possible pathways forward. This assessment took on heightened urgency as Brown leaders began considering additional financial measures in recent months to address the University’s persisting budget deficit, and to plan for potential external impacts on major revenue streams. This includes potential threats to federal funding, uncertainty around economic volatility that could have an impact on Brown’s endowment, and a potential increase on the federal tax on college and university endowments.
These factors led to the decision for the University to discontinue hosting Choices. We made this decision after consultation with leaders from the history department and shared this difficult news with Choices staff on Thursday, while also conveying that the program’s leaders may choose to explore establishing the initiative as a separate, independent entity that would not be financed or hosted by Brown. Deputy Provost Blume and Dean VanWey will work with the history department and Choices staff with the expectation that Brown’s sponsorship of the program will end by June 30, 2025. Program staff will receive support services as part of Brown’s ongoing commitment to support its community members, and the University will notify all active customers and vendors to end current contracts and provide guidance on the implications of this transition for them.
For more than 30 years, the Choices Program has provided carefully researched scholarship to help educators teach about challenging issues. We are committed to supporting customers of the program during this transition”.
Sincerely,
Francis J. Doyle III, Provost