@kevindeutschjourno Henry Ford used his newspaper to publish the fraudulent “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and spent a lifetime trying to harm the Jewish people. The Broward Schools Diversity Committee is holding him up as an example of multicultural coooperation. #henryford #browardcounty #diversity #diversityandinclusion #schools
Henry Ford is a name that evokes pride for many residents in Broward County — a symbol of American ingenuity, persistence, and grit. They happily drive vehicles emblazoned with Ford’s name, connecting to his legacy as a business pioneer and exemplar of industrial might.
But for members of Broward’s Jewish community, the name Ford evokes something very different: A legacy of virulent antisemitism, lifelong efforts to dehumanize Jews, and the mass production of anti-Jewish tracts. Many historians consider Ford the most dangerous anti-Jewish propagandist in American history, citing his relentless efforts to paint Jews as the source of global evils while fueling their exclusion from scores of professions, universities, social clubs, and residential properties across the U.S. – including in South Florida.
Given Ford’s hateful history, parents of Jewish school kids in Broward County Public Schools (BCPS) were surprised to learn recently that the auto magnate’s words serve as a guidepost for the district’s Diversity Committee.
A Ford quote about “coming together” and “working together” for success is printed atop all of the committee’s meeting agendas, blatantly ignoring the man’s lifelong mission of hate.
I first told top school officials, including Superintendent Howard Hepburn and School Board Chair Lori Alhadeff, about Ford’s antisemitism and agenda quote in an X post in June 2024, figuring the Diversity Committee might not have been aware of Ford’s racism.
“Read any piece of history on internal American politics during the lead-up to World War II, and you will know Henry Ford is a terrible role model for the future. Gross oversight from @browardschools,” Jayden D’Onofrio, Chairman of the Florida Future Leaders PAC and a Western High School graduate, told the district in an X post at the time.
When Ford’s quote remained atop ensuing agendas, I again wrote district officials – including Alhadeff and BCPS spokespersons – asking whether the quote would continue being used.
Ford’s quote on top of agendas.
I asked what message the Committee was sending to Jewish families by holding Ford up as a positive example of togetherness, especially considering its members are – at least on paper – committed to fighting hate.
I asked about the Committee’s recent invitation to Broward Muslim leaders, who addressed committee members about challenges facing Muslim students amid the Israel-Hamas war.
I asked BCPS if similar invitations were extended to Jewish leaders to discuss the unprecedented levels of antisemitism plaguing U.S. Jewish communities, including in Coral Springs and Parkland. BCPS, which has one of the largest Jewish student populations in the country, was previously criticized for not doing enough to combat antisemitism at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
Finally, I asked the district to provide the substance of any committee discussions concerning antisemitism following the Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attack on Israel.
The district said no recordings or transcripts of Diversity Committee meetings exist.
A BCPS spokesperson also forwarded my questions to the Committee for a response to the above concerns. None came from any of its approximately 20 active members or leaders.
It’s troubling that a body charged with aiding diversity in our schools – while ensuring all students feel safe and welcomed – would help whitewash the racism of one of the most prominent antisemites in American history.
Unapologetic in his hatred of Jews, Ford used his influential Michigan newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, to publish antisemitic screeds from 1919 to 1927. Hitler’s Mein Kampf had nothing on the industrialist when it came to his brand of enthusiastic, antisemitic advocacy and propagation of Jewish “puppetmaster” conspiracy theories.
The local newspaper’s antisemitic articles would later become four volumes titled The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem.
Based on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fabricated text from Tsarist Russia purporting to expose a vast Jewish plot for world domination – and which Ford republished as a factual piece – The Independent’s series was as venomous as its predecessor. Alleging a vast Jewish conspiracy to destroy the U.S. from within, the series was read by hundreds of thousands of Americans and legitimized ideas that otherwise may have remained on the fringe, according to the Museum of Jewish Heritage.
Ford’s paper was engaged in an antisemitic crusade to warn Americans of Jewish “financial and commercial control, usurpation of political power, monopoly of necessities, and autocratic direction of the very news that the American people read.”
Perhaps the most famous American during the 1920s, Ford distributed his antisemitic newspaper at Ford dealerships across the nation, ensuring they reached a mass audience.
“For the Jews who are reading Ford’s rants in The Dearborn Independent, this is very frightening,” Jewish historian Hasia Diner said on PBS’ American Experience. “They’re frightened, I think, for two reasons. One, which is haunting, which is they’re aware of what’s going on in Germany. They see the rise of the National Socialist Party, and they’re tracking that at the same time. And while it’s at a very early date in Hitler’s career, they are really paying attention to what’s happening. It’s also frightening because it’s going on in their home in the United States, where they want to feel like they really belong and that they have served their country and that they are citizens and that they are viewed as real Americans.”
In 2019, according to the Jewish newspaper The Forward, historian Bill McGraw, editor of The Dearborn Historian, published an entire issue about Ford’s beliefs concerning Jews because he felt they had not garnered enough attention.
“In general, metro Detroit and its institutions tend to treat Mr. Ford gently when it comes to his dark sides,” McGraw wrote. “But his antisemitism is much more than a personal failing.”
“It’s undeniable that Ford was antisemitic and used a variety of platforms to promote his unabashedly hateful comments about Jews,” Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL wrote in a letter to The New York Times in 2019. “Ford’s antisemitism is a stain on his legacy — a stain that shouldn’t be whitewashed.”
Whitewashing is precisely what the BCPS Diversity Committee appears to be doing by ignoring Ford’s antisemitism, and the fact he was an unrepentant racist.
The libels spread by Ford are especially painful to think about today, when Jews across the world are routinely beaten, harassed, and discriminated against under the guise of “anti-Zionist” advocacy.
A Zionist is someone who supports the existence of an independent Jewish state – a movement that led to Israel’s declaring independence from the colonial British Mandate for Palestine in 1948. Around 95 percent of Jews globally support Israel’s right to exist.
But the issues concerning the BCPS Diversity Committee run deeper than their seemingly whitewashing Ford’s antisemitism.
The body’s meeting minutes from Nov. 7 and Dec. 5, 2024, show that Naima Khan-Ghany attended as a guest speaker and “led the conversation on the challenges the Muslim students are experiencing in the current climate that exists in the schools,” according to meeting minutes.
That’s an important and noble aim. Trouble is, Khan-Ghany has a documented history of boosting antisemitic voices and of making antisemitic and anti-Israel social media posts, including calls to boycott Israel and Israeli products.
A previous member of the Diversity Committee, she was removed from that role in 2023 over past antisemitic remarks.
A longtime educator and community leader, Khan-Ghany has done important work to help communities, separate and apart from her antisemitic actions. Unfortunately, she’s also used social media to post videos of antisemitic speakers and spread antisemitism and falsehoods about Israel.
Khan-Ghany has written that Israel oppresses Palestinians, espoused Palestinian “liberation” from the Jewish state, and wrote that “from the river to the sea…. Palestine will be free.”
The phrase “From the River to the Sea” can be used to call for the elimination of Israel or the ethnic cleansing of Jews living there, to be replaced with Palestinian control over the entire territory from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, according to the American Jewish Committee, led by former congressman Ted Deutch.
The phrase refers to the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. It includes the entirety of Israel in addition to the West Bank and Gaza, which are not a part of Israel, the AJC said.
“Do not help them to fund the slaughter of our women and children!” Khan-Ghany wrote in a May 2021 Facebook post condemning Israel.
Khan-Gany has every right under the First Amendment to speak her mind. But given her hatred of Israel, many parents would agree she shouldn’t be leading a Diversity Committee conversation on prejudice.
The Committee is far from the only taxpayer-funded entity looking the other way when it comes to Jew-hatred.
Khan-Ghany was also a panel moderator at a major Muslim community conference held in January at the Coral Springs Performing Arts Center, which is owned by Coral Springs. Among the panelists for her event was Coral Springs Vice Mayor Nancy Metayer Bowen.
When Jewish Coral Springs resident Zalman Teitelbaum wrote the vice mayor to say he was concerned about certain merchandise at the conference he believed glorified deceased Hamas terrorist leader Yahya Sinwar, she wrote him back to say she and the commission “firmly condemn antisemitism in all forms and remain committed to fostering open communication and dialogue within our community.”
Teitelbaum stressed he had no issue with Muslim community members celebrating their culture, families, art, and education at the conference, but was troubled by what he said were antisemitic items and speakers with a history of antisemitism at an event held inside a city-owned facility.
Fighting antisemitism in Coral Springs and Broward as a whole starts in our schools, so it’s worth asking: Have any Jewish leaders been invited to share their community’s concerns with the BCPS Diversity Committee?
Have Jewish students and parents been given a platform by the Committee to express their fears and experiences in Coral Springs, Parkland, and across Broward ?
The silence on these matters is deafening.
Diversity and inclusion cannot be selective. They must include everyone — including groups like Jews who have historically been targeted and marginalized.
It’s time for the Diversity Committee to answer these questions and ensure that the values they claim to uphold are not undermined by ignorance or hypocrisy.
Broward’s Jewish community deserves better. All of our students do.
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