The Philadelphia public schools hosted a series of "liberation" workshops for students taught by a convicted felon who has argued that Jews control the media and was involved in torching a police car.
Anthony Smith, who has also praised the Hamas "freedom fighters" behind the October 7 terrorist attacks, facilitated workshops for hundreds of students—including some as young as seventh grade—as part of a partnership between the school district and the W.E.B. Du Bois Movement School for Abolition and Reconstruction, a self-described "political education program for aspiring revolutionaries."
Held between 2025 and 2026, the workshops drew more than 150 students and included a session titled "Imagining A World Without Prisons," according to emails and documents obtained by North American Values Institute (NAVI). Other facilitators included Eliana Atienza, a University of Pennsylvania student who participated in the school's "Gaza Solidarity Encampent," and Geo Maher, a Penn lecturer who was pushed out of Drexel University after he tweeted in 2017, "All I want for Christmas is white genocide."
Attendance at each "Liberation Symposium" was mandatory, though students could choose between different sessions. The workshops were endorsed by Assistant Superintendent for School Performance Jeffrey MacFarland, who thanked the organizers of the symposium in a February 2025 email, and appear to have had the sign-off of the district's social studies director, Ismael Jimenez, who sits on the Movement School's board.
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