This just in: a lawsuit filed against Friends Central School (FCS) in Philadelphia in 2017 by two teachers who were fired after a Palestinian speaker they invited in February 2017 was disinvited by school officials. The order of settlement is below. (More text follows.)
The speaker, Sa’ed Atshan, teaches at Swarthmore College. FCS Students protested, walked out, were ignored. The Philadelphia Daily News slammed the administration action:
Philadelphia Daily News: Friends’ Central lacks integrity in shunning controversial speaker
“ANOTHER WEEK, another hit delivered to free speech, this one coming from an unexpected source – a Quaker school.
Ariel Eure, former teacher at Friends community School.Leila Helwa, former teacher, Friends Central School.
Last week, the head of Friends’ Central School, a Quaker private school in Wynnewood, uninvited a Palestinian who had been asked to speak by a student club. Students protested that decision, in part by walking out of an all-school gathering. This week, head of school Craig N. Sellers suspended two faculty advisers to the student group, saying – in effect – that they were inside agitators who had whipped up the student protest.
Or, as Sellers put it in a statement, the teachers disregarded “our guiding testimonies, which include community, peace and integrity.”
We see it differently. In our view, it was Sellers who disrupted the peace of the Friends’ Central community. And you can hardly call the muzzling of an invited speaker an example of integrity.”
Sa’ed Atshan, Swarthmore College Peace & Conflict Studies Assistant Professor.
The teachers’ attorney, Mark Schwartz, filed for many documents to begin discovery. At some point, the school chose to negotiate, and the settlement was entered earlier this month, more than three years after it was filed.
The terms of the settlement were not announced. Schwartz’s full statement in response to my query was: “NDA.” That is, “nondisclosure agreement.” I speculate that it was a generous amount of money, enough to move the plaintiffs to agree to keep quiet about it.
In the world of employment lawsuits, such settlements are generally counted as a qualified success: at least the plaintiffs have something for their trouble, and interrupted or terminated career.
For the record: Here is a list of the blog posts on the Friends Central School lawsuit:
According to FTC regulations, if the chicken content of canned soup falls below a certain percentage, it cannot be sold as chicken soup, but must be labeled “chicken-flavored.” In my experience, both the leadership and the culture of most Friends Schools is, at best, Quaker flavored.
Our local “Friends School” even has created their own list of “Testimonies”. Needless to say, their list does not match those of the Yearly Meeting where it is located.
I think they do try, but as they are not “Under the Care” of a Friends Meeting, having a board that is a least half Quakers, does not work for me.
The fact that they use the word “Friends” in their Name, when they are on their own, reminds me of Quaker Oats taking the name “Quaker” for marketing purposes.
Do the leaders of the school have Quaker connections?
I’m not sure.
According to FTC regulations, if the chicken content of canned soup falls below a certain percentage, it cannot be sold as chicken soup, but must be labeled “chicken-flavored.” In my experience, both the leadership and the culture of most Friends Schools is, at best, Quaker flavored.
“Artificial Quaker-flavored,” in much of my experience.
Our local “Friends School” even has created their own list of “Testimonies”. Needless to say, their list does not match those of the Yearly Meeting where it is located.
I think they do try, but as they are not “Under the Care” of a Friends Meeting, having a board that is a least half Quakers, does not work for me.
The fact that they use the word “Friends” in their Name, when they are on their own, reminds me of Quaker Oats taking the name “Quaker” for marketing purposes.