"Never Forget" Being, Ironically, Memory-Holed In Boston

Did I say "apologize"?  

"Grovel" might be a better term:

The principal at William Diamond Middle School in Lexington, Massachusetts sent an email apologizing to students for a session about antisemitism, discussing the Holocaust and the modern world. 

The principal wrote, “We are sorry…We are sorry because every one of you deserves to walk into this school and feel that who you are matters – Arab students; Jewish students; Lebanese students; Muslim students; Palestinian students – every student.”

As for the next step, the principal writes that teachers and families will work on “a way of learning about hate, prejudice, and justice that includes all of our communities and all of our histories.”

Here's the letter the principal, Johnny Cole, sent to the students:

Dear 7th Grade Students,

A few weeks ago, your class participated in a session about antisemitism connecting the learning you had done in Social Studies class about the Holocaust to the modern world. The goal was an important one: to help you recognize hate, understand where it comes from, and encourage you to speak up against it. That is an important goal that is very important to the Lexington community.

We have learned from speaking to some of your families that the experience did not feel that way to some of you. Some of you felt unseen. Some of you felt like your own history, your identity, or your community was left out or erased. Some of you left that session feeling less safe, not more. We have heard this from families, and we believe you.

We are sorry. Not because the topic was too hard; hard conversations are part of growing up and part of what we do here at Diamond. We are sorry because every one of you deserves to walk into this school and feel that who you are matters — Arab students; Jewish students; Lebanese students; Muslim students; Palestinian students — every student. And in this case, we missed the mark and did not achieve what we hoped to do.

Here is what we are doing next. We are working with your teachers and with families in our community to build something better — a way of learning about hate, prejudice, and justice that includes all of our communities and all of our histories. We are also going to ask some of you, our students, to help us shape what that looks like, because you have already shown us you have important things to say.

If you want to talk to a teacher, a counselor, or to us directly, please do. We are here for you. Your voice matters here at Diamond and always.

Let this sentence roll around in your noggin for a moment:  "Some of you felt like your own history, your identity, or your community was left out or erased. Some of you left that session feeling less safe, not more".  

When it becomes impossible to talk about any part of history without including every thematically similar but (mostly) unrelated part of history, then teaching and learning history becomes impossible.   

Beyond that?

He isn’t validating outrage, but acknowledging the concerns expressed to him by students - and possibly their parents. We don’t know from this if these students had any curricular coverage of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, the Nakba, the Israeli genocidal campaigns in Lebanon or…

— Dr. Sherifa Zuhur (@SherifaZuhur) June 22, 2026

All that says maybe.  And may deserve academic coverage.  

But shutting down learning about the attempt to erase an entire ethnic group - which succeeded in erasing about a third of that population from the planet, and is still underway in some quarters of the world - because it isn't an exhaustive catalog of every ethnic grievance, real or imagined, is...

...well, let's be honest.  That's the goal.