Local non-profit Chicago Area Peace Action awarded Andrew Ginsberg, an Evanston Township High School social studies teacher, the Cleland-Tholin Pursuit of Peace Award at its annual fall benefit Thursday evening.
Ginsberg, who was reprimanded by administrators last school year for displaying a controversial “Jewish acts of dissent” poster in his classroom, emphasized the plight of Palestinian civilians during his acceptance speech at the Irish American Heritage Center in Chicago.
“I really feel like we need to stay focused not on my poster and my fight for free speech (and) hypocrisy in my school, but on what really matters — which is the genocide in Gaza … and the international-seeming consensus to just let it happen,” Ginsberg said.
According to Ginsberg, who is Jewish, administrators asked him to remove the poster in March after a complaint called it offensive. While the poster does not explicitly reference Israel or Palestinians, its creator, Jewish artist Liora Ostroff, told The Daily it was designed to “give strength” to Jewish critics of the Israeli government who may face retribution.
CAPA’s award is named for Robert Cleland, one of the organization’s founders, and Richard Tholin, a Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary academic dean and peace activist.
Catherine Buntin, CAPA’s interim president, said the organization selected Ginsberg for the award after hearing personal accounts from ETHS students at school board meetings earlier this year.
“Several of us attended some of the board meetings where amazing students stood up and talked about Ginsberg as a teacher and what he meant to them,” Buntin said. “They were just so moving, and to think that this man, who is such a gifted teacher, is being attacked by our own school board was just unfathomable.”
In July, Ginsberg filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, alleging that District 202 discriminated against him for expressing his religious identity and showing solidarity with Palestinians during the Israel-Hamas war.
In documents shared with The Daily by Ginsberg’s attorney in July, the teacher also claimed administrators retaliated against him for replacing the poster with a note to students stating that it had been “censored at the insistence of the administration.”
In his acceptance speech, Ginsberg said that, as a civics teacher, he felt compelled to protest his reprimand.
“I teach about people who’ve led movements, who have taken risks, who sometimes lost their lives,” Ginsberg said. “I teach students about those movements, and I ask them to be inspired by it, so when it came my turn — in a very much smaller way — to stand up for myself and stand up for what’s right, how can I keep teaching them and look at myself in the mirror if I didn’t also stand up?”
In response to previous requests for comment on Ginsberg’s reprimand and discrimination complaint, a District 202 spokesperson said the district does not comment on personnel matters.
However, in a guest essay published in the Evanston RoundTable in May, the District 202 Board of Education wrote that, as public employees, teachers are subject to limitations on speech that are intended to preserve a classroom environment that is “inclusive, intellectually open and balanced.”
Ginsberg received the peace award along with Sawsan Abubaker, a tax consultant and social justice activist from Chicago. The event also included a panel discussion centered around this year’s theme, titled “When Politics Fail: Conscience As Resistance.”
Among the roughly 140 attendees was Ald. Clare Kelly (1st), who taught at ETHS for 32 years, including some with Ginsberg. Recalling her time working alongside Ginsberg, Kelly described him as “a very warm, giving teacher” who encourages students to use their voice and engage civically.
“I think it’s really important — Andrew’s message of peace,” Kelly said. “I’m really impressed with how he’s persevered, despite threats from the administration, to encourage peace in the Middle East and to stop the bombing in Gaza.”
Kelly added that Ginsberg is a “model to emulate for all teachers.”
Ginsberg said his training as a union organizer taught him not to seek individual recognition and that, as a person of privilege, he should center the voices of those most affected by injustice. He added that the award ultimately belonged to student activists at ETHS and people directly impacted by the ongoing conflict.
“The real heroes are the people who are taking flotillas to Gaza; the people who are surviving; the people who keep fighting; my students, who have formed a Palestine Solidarity Club that I was honored to sponsor, who had a sit-in in the school,” Ginsberg said. “Those are the real heroes.”
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Related Stories:
— ETHS teacher reprimanded for poster files discrimination complaint
— Educators, students criticize a ‘pattern of censorship’ at Evanston Ceasefire event
