On April 4, the student newspaper of Shalhevet High School in Los Angeles, the Boiling Point, published an article titled “The same exact hurt.” The article, which was a feature story on two local Muslim teenagers’ views on the Israel-Hamas War, was later publicized on the newspaper’s Instagram on April 11. By the end of that day, the article had been removed from all Boiling Point platforms, including the print edition in which it was published.
Rabbi David Block, Shalhevet’s Head of School, asked Joelle Keene, former newspaper adviser of the Boiling Point for over 21 years, to remove the article following negative feedback from members of the Shalhevet community. Upon his request, Keene and members of the Boiling Point staff replaced print editions around Los Angeles that featured the censored article with new, shorter versions that excluded it.
“[The Boiling Point] had always endeavored to cover all sides of everything,” Keene said. “That is what I taught my students … and if you’re only getting to one side, you haven’t tried hard enough.”
In an article the Boiling Point published on June 2 about this incident entitled “School censors story about LA Muslim teens and war,” Block explained that he felt the original article could “give people the wrong impression about Shalhevet,” which motivated his decision to censor it. After numerous comments on the newspaper’s website expressing disapproval of the initial article and several extreme examples of negative feedback were sent to the school and the newspaper, these sentiments were confirmed.
The Lion’s Tale reached out to Block for an interview, but he was unavailable. Additionally, no Boiling Point reporters were willing to be interviewed.
According to Keene, the Boiling Point’s editorial board disagreed over the decision to censor the article, causing the staff to become “divided in a rather painful way.”
“I think that reflects what was going on in the larger society, not just in the Boiling Point, not just in Shalhevet,” Keene said. “There’s so much division. So we felt it even in our own staff.”
Since Keene left Shalhevet at the end of the 2023-2024 school year, she is unable to report on the long term effects of the censorship on the Boiling Point staff. However, she does recall the staff experiencing a “chilling effect” post-censorship, where “students were afraid or were more hesitant about broaching lots of subjects.”
Like Shalhevet, CESJDS is not automatically granted freedom of speech and freedom of press under the First Amendment because it is a private school. Instead, JDS has its own student-initiated Press Rights Protocol since 2020, a policy started by former Lion’s Tale Editors-in-Chief Oren Minsk (‘21) and Alex Landy (‘21) that protects the Lion’s Tale reporters’ First Amendment rights.
“Torah Lishma [love of learning] requires that we provide spaces for constructive dialogue, civil dialogue,” High School Principal and Head of Upper School Campus Dr. Lisa Vardi said. “[The Lion’s Tale] is a space to have these conversations. It is a public space that promotes pluralism; the opportunity to share multiple perspectives.”
While Vardi admits that it is sometimes “scary” to be the principal of a school with a student-run, uncensored newspaper, she agrees with Keene and emphasizes how important it is to amplify all student voices.
“If [student journalists] don’t have the freedom to do and report what they want to do and report, then journalism becomes just another homework assignment,” Keene said.