Here & Now

Noon Wednesday with guest Jeff Spitzer-Resnick

Marisa Wojcik:

Welcome to Noon Wednesday. I’m Marisa Wojcik, a multimedia journalist with Here & Now on Wisconsin Public Television. So a couple weeks ago some high school students from Baraboo were in a photo that surfaced and they are appearing to be giving the Nazi salute symbol and it’s kind of gone viral around the world. It’s not kind of, it has gone viral around the world–

Jeff Spitzer-Resnick:

Most definitely.

Marisa Wojcik:

There has been response internationally to this photo that surfaced even though it was done last spring. So a couple weeks has passed and here to kind of unpack some of this is Jeff Spitzer-Resnick. And you are a civil rights attorney here in the Madison area as well as the president of your synagogue and thanks so much for joining us.

Jeff Spitzer-Resnick:

I’m glad to be here.

Marisa Wojcik:

I want to start with just, can you briefly tell me what your initial reaction to this was when it happened a couple weeks ago.

Jeff Spitzer-Resnick:

Well I think like many people, I mean you see that photo and like the old phrase pictures worth a thousand words, there’s been some claims that there wasn’t instruction to give a Nazi salute. It is what it is. Very few people I know have looked at that photo and not seen a Nazi salute and it’s horrifying. It’s horrifying not only as a person who’s Jewish, who’s president of my synagogue, who has members who live in Baraboo. But that we live in an era where, I was just talking with some buddies like when did it become okay again to exhibit anything related to Nazis? So that’s an unfortunate era we’re living in and to see school children and not young ones, high schoolers doing this is frankly horrifying.

Marisa Wojcik:

Has anything about your perspective on this change throughout the two weeks from your initial reaction, has there kind of been a change in the conversation that you’ve observed?

Jeff Spitzer-Resnick:

I think it’s kind of gone back and forth and all around. On one hand I think there are a lot of really good people in Baraboo as well as in much wider community who like me see this as unfortunate as it may be as a teaching moment as a way to not only teach students and citizens of Baraboo why that photo was so horrifying but also what it means. And it’s not just about anti-Semitism, it’s about white nationalism and all that means to people who are not of, as the Nazis would put it, Aryan so to speak. But at the same time there’s definitely some people out there who, there’s one group who’s like, “Hey, this was just a joke.” or “It wasn’t really a Nazi salute.” And that’s kind of disturbing because Nazi salutes just aren’t funny in any way shape or form. And then here’s another group that’s kind of, I wish these outsiders, liberal activists or whatever, would just stay out of our backyard. I’ve even had some conversations with people who, I’m sure there’s a lot of people in Baraboo who think they’re decrying social media and they’re, as one person put it to me, they just want to put the genie back in the bottle. And what I told this young man is actually a student there, I said you know in this day and age we don’t get to put the genie back in the bottle. The question is, how you handle the genie once it’s out. And again as I’ve written in a couple of blog posts, one which was an open letter to the school board. And I do want to be clear that open letter was also sent directly to each school board member. It’s a school district, it’s a teaching opportunity. And how they handle it moving forward I think is not only very important for the community of Baraboo, but if they do it right it could be an example nationwide, worldwide, et cetera.

Marisa Wojcik:

Right, right. That’s what I think about is, this is in Baraboo, Wisconsin, but this could have happened at any school in the United States, right?

Jeff Spitzer-Resnick:

Absolutely. And the thing is I’ve been in communication with other Jewish groups and they sent me recently kind of a whole four-page list of anti-Semitic incidents from 2017, they haven’t compiled the 2018. And so we’ve had them here in Madison with the defacing of the Spanish civil war monument before, not this past Rosh Hashanah but the year before over by the gates of heaven synagogue. In fact my synagogue started there that Shaarei Shamayim in Hebrew means gates of heaven, so we took our name from that place. It was very disturbing to see that, literally people had to walk by swastikas as they were walking into this holy sanctuary on the holiest day of the year. Some of whom were actually Holocaust survivors. So this is not an isolated incident and unfortunately I think in large part to presidents kind of I would say, if it’s not active at least passive encouragement of this kind of behavior. It’s come way more out into the open and there’s kind of safe space been created for these kinds of things in a way that I don’t think even as little as two, three years ago, not that we didn’t have these things happen but I think it’s become far more frequent. And I think some data around hate crimes shows that.

Marisa Wojcik:

Well let’s talk a little bit about the school came out and said they’re not going to punish the students involved in this action because the action itself is protected by free speech, it also happened off school grounds and not at an official school event. So some of what the school is able to do might be limited there too, but in terms of the First Amendment being used as a reason not to punish students or to call them out. Is this kind of symbolic speech protected if it is kind of veering towards such an intense gesture?

Jeff Spitzer-Resnick:

Well, as I recently wrote, well, I certainly believe in the First Amendment, it’s in our Constitution, we should all support the First Amendment. It is not unlimited in terms of its protection and it’s particularly not unlimited in school settings. School students do not have the strong First Amendment rights as you or I do for example if we were just sitting out on the street or even doing something on this television program right now. Now I do want to be clear, I don’t advocate punishing these students, I think it’s a teaching moment. And I’ve said that repeatedly, they need to be taught how to be good critical thinkers. There’s a restorative justice moment. They need to be taught why joke or not joke something like this is really hateful and inappropriate. So good lawyers can debate whether or not this is First Amendment protected speech. I don’t think it is, I think there are school districts all over that have right in their policy and in fact do punish, for example exhibition of gang signs. How is this any different? And I think sadly what we see is perhaps some racial difference in terms of punishment where we see more commonly students of color who exhibit or flash gang signs innocently or not–

Marisa Wojcik:

Or even kneeling during…

Jeff Spitzer-Resnick:

Kneeling during the National Amendment or national, excuse me…

Marisa Wojcik:

National anthem.

Jeff Spitzer-Resnick:

National anthem, thank you. Sorry about that. So I think there’s some real concern about differential treatment. If you look at Baraboo’s policy they actually have a policy that says, “We want to make sure “we don’t have a hostile environment here.” Well, look at what a Nazi salute does. Is that hostile environment or not, I think most of us can agree. As far as the off school property, I happened to be an expert in school discipline. I defend lots and lots of students related to school discipline. If it’s a school related activity, which a prom is, and that’s when the photo was taken, it does not have to be on school property for the schools to exhibit discipline. And under honor Wisconsin law, Wisconsin school districts have tremendous authority to suspend and do other disciplinary activities around students. My concern with the superintendent’s throwing up the First Amendment piece is, now we’re talking about the First Amendment instead of educating the students.

Marisa Wojcik:

Right. Is this setting a precedent as well?

Jeff Spitzer-Resnick:

Possibly. And in what… So that story got picked up because this is viral. I mean she needs to understand the whole world is watching every step they make. So when she threw up the First Amendment as a defense first instead of saying, this is what we’re going to do to educate our students. This is the curriculum that we are mandating our teachers to teach. These are the speakers we’re bringing in to teach our students from, and frankly it should start back in kindergarten not wait till high school about not just anti-Semitism and Nazism, some of people have said let’s do Holocaust education, absolutely it should be done but not limited to that. Because the Nazi salute is a much broader symbol of white nationalism which is a very scary trend in our country right now.

Marisa Wojcik:

So recently the Baraboo News Republic had a story talking with a guardian of two middle school students.

Jeff Spitzer-Resnick:

I saw that.

Marisa Wojcik:

And one student heard from one teacher that what these students in the photo did was wrong. The other middle school student heard from a different teacher saying, “Oh, it’s just a joke. Boys will be boys.” The district has like a guidance policy for talking with students and it’s kind of vague, it acknowledges that they’re under a global lens and that they need to acknowledge that this happened. But beyond that it doesn’t give a lot of instruction as to how teachers should be talking about this with students. And the guardian of these two middle school students said that they would just prefer that teachers not talk about it at all. Is this part of the process in terms of… It sounds like not everyone’s on the same page yet.

Jeff Spitzer-Resnick:

Well I think that’s part of the problem. And I think that’s exactly why, even though they might not like to move quickly and they are engaging in some community conversations, which I think is great. And what the wider community does may depend on how those community conversations come together, I think there’s another one coming up tomorrow evening. But that example is very disturbing in terms of here we have just two children and two different teachers getting two very different messages. Now the parent might wish it to go away but that gets back to the genie back in the bottle, it’s not going back in the bottle. And so to wish it to go away, sorry folks, it’s not going to happen. It’s just not going to happen. And so since it’s not going away and it is a real thing, I’m sure its conversed about not only in school but in the community every single day in Baraboo whether they like it or not that’s where the school district, starting with the superintendent and the school board need to be real clear. Now I don’t know and I’m sure it’s a personnel issue whether after seeing that report the administrator went and talked to that middle school teacher who said it was just a joke or whatever. But it begs the question about how uniform the instructions going on in Baraboo. We could then take another kind of launchpad if you will and what about elsewhere? What our other school districts doing? What are they telling their staff? I actually reached out to some of the diversity staff at DPI. Tony Evers quite immediately came out and said, “This is shameful, we’re going to…” And I’m not quoting him, but something like that. “We’re going to take a look at it.” I haven’t heard anything else from DPI. I reached out to them, they said they would be in touch with the school district. But this is a moment for the State Department of Public Instruction to take leadership not just with Baraboo and again not necessarily for punishment if you will but for helping to develop curriculum. Make sure that not only our students but now from that guardians example we could say, teachers are educated. I’ve got to assume that some of these teachers really don’t know what happened during the Holocaust, what Nazis are, what a Nazi salute is. What the Nazi salute means to people like me and many other people.

Marisa Wojcik:

But I have to wonder, I spoke with a teacher from Baraboo recently and just their personal opinion was, the school district is feeling a lot of pressure. But how much are we supposed to be putting on the school district versus families and parents and the community? And there’s a lot of influence that kids are getting outside of the classroom and so you kind of have to mix that into the larger influence and so you know.

Jeff Spitzer-Resnick:

I completely agree and it’s why I mentioned the political leadership in the environment that we live in right now. My rabbi and I have talked about why did this particular incident, it’s not like there’s never been a picture of people flashing Nazi salute before. Why did this particular picture take off and become viral? And I believe it’s because of the time we’re in and the leadership we have at the top of our nation. That being said, that means all the more the education absolutely the family level. But guess what? We don’t get to mandate how parents educate their children. Should we suggest? Absolutely. Where are the best and most appropriate suggestions going to come from? Our schools. We only have one place where we have an opportunity to have some kind of uniform and mandated instruction of our children. Not in people’s homes. It should happen, we can agree with that. We should teach our children to read and write and behave and all that stuff. But our schools have that role. We have a lot of tax money for that. And we expect them to educate our children in all manner of things and not just in academics, behavior included. I’m a big believer that it’s not just about the three R’s in school, the old reading, writing, arithmetic. If we don’t teach our children how to behave appropriately in society, I don’t care how strong their academics are, they’re not going to succeed in life and we’re going to have lots of trouble going down the road.

Marisa Wojcik:

Can school districts get ahead of this and be proactive and kind of learn from maybe something that could have happen–

Jeff Spitzer-Resnick:

I think, I think they have in fact. I’ve received a lot of context since I’ve written you know a couple of these blog posts and that have been republished elsewhere. And one of them was from a nearby rural Madison School District superintendent who said, “Hey, we haven’t had an incident like this “but I want to talk to you about “doing some training of our students “so that we don’t have a problem like this.” Fantastic. That’s exactly the kind of proactive work that I would like to see in every school district large or small. I think there’s also a rural element to this. I said we have Jewish members who live in Baraboo, go to school in Baraboo, but there aren’t very many Jews there and there aren’t very many Jews in rural communities all over. I moved to Madison 33 years ago, I was stunned to realize that for many people particularly if they moved to Madison from rural Wisconsin and I’ve done work all over the state, I was the first Jewish person they ever met. First one. They had no idea. And that puts a little extra onus I think when you don’t have that cultural background and experience on school districts to say. And we could put lots of other categories. There may not be any African-American kids, or there may not be any kids of Latino descent or whatever, that doesn’t mean we don’t need to teach cultural background and why. Like I said, the Nazi salute goes beyond anti-Semitism and into white nationalism. And what that means, most people in this world whether it’s physically or virtually online are not just going to stay in their little tiny rural place, they’re going to be out in the world. And what does it mean when they have a larger audience if you will. Baraboo’s finding that out in a big way.

Marisa Wojcik:

Well Jeff, thank you so much for joining us and talking to us–

Jeff Spitzer-Resnick:

You’re welcome.

Marisa Wojcik:

If you want to hear more from Here & Now and Wisconsin Public Television visit wpt.org. And thanks so much for joining us on Noon Wednesday.