Respond to prefers-color-scheme dark in app web views

Follow section front redirects in Spectrum

Enable NLP source in PCS for load testing

Switch off the News Alerts Survey Widget when we have enough responses

Poll to determine if new LUF updates are available

Allows the winning A/B test variant to be turned on without Spectrum deployment

Show infinite scrolling sections in Assembler MultiView

Show option for NLP article summaries in Action Bar

Show NLP summaries collection recirc on article pages

A general feature flag for Recipe Features that aren't yet released

Feature flag for media team features that aren't yet released

Use new Orca video player for preroll plugin in Spectrum

Show the snow tracker (instead of the heat tracker) on Spectrum

MAPLEWOOD, N.J. — Tamar Herman knew that a Muslim girl in her second-grade class always wore a hijab. But one day, Herman thought she saw a hoodie covering it. She asked the girl to remove it, she says. Then, depending whom you believe, the teacher either “brushed back” the fabric or “forcibly removed it.”

“That’s my hijab!” the girl cried out, she told her mom later. Her hair was briefly exposed.

Herman says she apologized and assumed the incident would blow over. She was wrong.

What could have been a mistake followed by an apology became a maelstrom, driven by the parents’ ire, the teacher’s statements and by social media after an Olympic fencer, who had made international headlines for competing in her hijab, lit into Herman.

“This is a hate crime,” one person wrote in a local Facebook group. “You have to fire the teacher,” said another.

Within days, a <a href="https://www.change.org/p/everyone-fire-the-teacher-that-pulled-off-a-second-grader-s-hijab-forcefully?source_location=search" target="_blank">Change.org</a> petition called for Herman to be fired; it eventually collected more than 41,000 signatures. <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/olympian-accuses-new-jersey-teacher-pulling-girl-s-hijab-school-n1281117" target="_blank">NBC News,</a> <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/education/2021/10/26/teacher-suspended-over-terrorist-comment-muslim-student/8552844002/" target="_blank">USA Today</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/22/nyregion/hijab-muslim-nj-student.html" target="_blank">the New York Times </a>carried the story far beyond this New Jersey suburb.

The local prosecutor opened an investigation. <a href="https://www.somsd.k12.nj.us/headlines/2021/10/08/district-statement-regarding-allegation-of-discrimination-10-7-21/" target="_blank">The school district touted</a><a href="https://www.somsd.k12.nj.us/headlines/2021/10/08/district-statement-regarding-allegation-of-discrimination-10-7-21/" target="_blank"> </a>upcoming anti-bias training for the staff. “We are hopeful and all agree that the alleged actions of one employee should not condemn an entire community,” the superintendent <a href="https://www.somsd.k12.nj.us/headlines/2021/10/11/seth-boyden-follow-up-update-statement-civility-respect-october-11-2021/" target="_blank">said in another statement</a>. Even the governor weighed in: “Deeply disturbed by these accusations,” Gov. Phil Murphy (D) <a href="https://www.facebook.com/governorphilmurphy/posts/deeply-disturbed-by-these-accusations-our-diversity-is-our-greatest-strength-and/4264716980320956/" target="_blank">wrote on Facebook.</a>

More than a year later, Tamar Herman remains barred from the classroom, cut off from the calling and colleagues she loved. The school district is paying her not to teach. She is still terrified by threats from strangers on the internet, she says. Multiple lawsuits have been filed, and the issue has divided this suburban community along racial and religious lines.

But what actually happened that day, and why? Did social media play an important role in holding someone accountable? Or did a town full of people, communicating via dozens of local Facebook groups, rush to judgment in a sincere but misplaced effort to take racial bias seriously?

All this time later, those questions remain unanswered.

Jeenah Moon

Joseph Wyatt had wanted to enroll his two daughters in a private Islamic school, but his wife, Cassandra, was against it. The academics weren’t rigorous enough, she thought. Instead, the couple placed their girls at the public school just down the street, Seth Boyden Elementary. Their older daughter, Sumayyah, landed in Herman’s class.

On the afternoon of Oct. 6, 2021, Cassandra Wyatt picked up her girls from school and headed to Dunkin’ for an afternoon treat. As she was talking on the phone, she noticed her 7-year-old tugging on her arm, trying to get her attention. Finally, she looked down and listened.

“My teacher pulled my hijab off my head,” Sumayyah told her, Wyatt said.

Wyatt wasn’t sure whether to believe her and called another mom in the class, who was driving home with her own daughter. Wyatt heard the other girl’s response from the back seat of their car. “Oh yeah, the teacher pulled off her hijab.”

Wyatt called the principal to complain, saying that Herman had not just taken off the hijab but told her daughter she had nice hair, according to the district incident report. The school district declined to comment for this story.

Sumayyah Wyatt, second-grader at Seth Boyden Elementary

“My teacher pulled my hijab off my head.”

The next day, Wyatt logged onto Facebook. “Hi I am new to this group,” she wrote on a page called SOMA Justice, which is devoted to issues of race and inequality in the area. “My daughter told me that her teacher took her Hijab off her head and said she can’t wear this in school in front of her class.”

In this telling, the teacher didn’t just make a mistake. She acted purposefully.

In an interview, Wyatt said she initially assumed the teacher was having “some type of meltdown” or a “mental breakdown.” But Wyatt’s anger deepened when Herman’s attorney <a href="https://villagegreennj.com/schools-kids/attorney-says-accused-south-orange-maplewood-teacher-did-not-remove-students-hijab/" target=_blank>told a local reporter</a> that the teacher mistook the hijab for a sweatshirt hoodie, thinking the religious covering was underneath. Herman isn’t apologizing, Wyatt thought. She’s justifying.

Soon, someone — Wyatt said she can’t remember who — messaged her that Herman is Jewish. On Facebook, she shared her views about this discovery:

“SHES JEWISH!” Wyatt wrote on the SOMA Justice page. “Period TRY &amp; CHANGE THAT! Imma print 1000 SHIRTS THAT SAYS HERMAN IS JEWISH!” She repeated the same sentiment in at least four posts and comments on other posts: “I JUST FOUND OUT THE TEACHER IS JEWISHHHHHHHHHH … that’s why I believe she did it now I’m furious,” she wrote. Wyatt also noted Herman’s religion in a <a href="https://rumble.com/vnktof-nj-hijab-story-mothers-facebook-live-session-she-deleted.html" target=_blank>Facebook Live video</a>.

Asked about these comments, Wyatt said she meant that Herman should have understood the sensitivity of the hijab, since observant Jews also wear religious garb. But, she added, “I think that she’s racist. I think she’s anti-Muslim.” The Wyatt family is Black. Later, she amended her comments to say she wasn’t sure if Herman was racist or anti-Muslim.

Administrators of the SOMA Justice Facebook group, understanding how incendiary her original remarks about Jews were, said they took the posts down and removed her from the group.

“It definitely made a lot of Jewish folks feel unsafe,” said Khadijah Costley White, a Rutgers University professor who is the founding executive director of SOMA Justice. Wyatt, she said, “was clearly preoccupied, over-preoccupied, with [Herman’s] Jewish identity.”

Soon after the incident, Wyatt moved her daughters to a different public school. One day, she arrived there wearing a pointed message — a T-shirt with the image of four Muslim women wearing combat boots and carrying AK-47 assault rifles on the front. On the back, it bore the words, “Keep your hands off my hijab.”

Joseph Wyatt, her then-husband, also pinned Herman’s actions on her religion. In a recent interview, he fulminated against Jews in America.

“They think they’re chosen by God,” he said. “They come with the money. They monopolize a lot of stuff for money. The Jews — the Semitics — they run Hollywood. They run a lot of stuff. It’s all Jewish names.” He also complained about attacks on Kanye West, who goes by Ye, over the artist’s antisemitic views about the power Jews have.

The conflict in the classroom that day was, “no doubt,” about religion, he said. “There’s always been a conflict with the Muslims and the Jews … That’s why they are fighting in Palestine.”

The teacher may say it was a mistake, he said, but “it was no mistake to her.”

“That’s the arrogance. She never apologized to Sumayyah. She never apologized to us,” he said. “If you make a mistake, you have to apologize, even if it ain’t in your heart.”

Tom Pennington

It took less than a day for word of what happened in Tamar Herman’s classroom to reach Ibtihaj Muhammad, an Olympic fencer who graduated from the South Orange-Maplewood, N.J., school district. Muhammad <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/03/14/meet-ibtihaj-muhammad-the-history-making-olympian-who-called-out-sxsw-for-telling-her-to-remove-her-hijab/" target="_blank">made international headlines</a> for competing in her hijab in 2016 and had already published the first of two children’s books celebrating the hijab.

Muhammad posted unsparingly about the classroom incident on her <a href="https://www.instagram.com/ibtihajmuhammad/?hl=en" target=_blank>Instagram</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ibtihajmuhammadusa/" target=_blank>Facebook accounts</a>, where she has hundreds of thousands of followers.

“Imagine being a child and stripped of your clothing in front of your classmates,” she wrote. “This is abuse.” She told her followers to contact the principal and superintendent. She named Herman — even uploading a photo of her in a follow-up post — and tagged CAIR, an Islamic civil rights group, which responded the next day by calling for Herman to be fired immediately.

Herman and Muhammad knew each other. They worked out together at the same gym and had each other’s cellphone numbers. Herman had asked Muhammad to speak at her school, and the pair were friends on Facebook (which is where she found the photo of Herman she posted). The teacher had hung a poster of Muhammad in the hallway outside her classroom and talked about her accomplishments in class.

Herman couldn’t believe that Muhammad would post about her without first checking in or asking what happened.

She texted the fencer. “I considered you a friend,” she wrote, asking Muhammad to take the post down. “Not only is it 100% untrue, it was very hurtful to read.”

Muhammad responded tersely: “So Sumayyah is a liar?” Herman replied that anyone making these accusations would be a liar and that she doubted Sumayyah actually said that.

Two days later, when Muhammad had not replied or changed her post, Herman tried again: “You are tremendously influential, and as a result, your sharing of this misinformation has turned my life upside-down overnight,” Herman texted. “I have been receiving threats and am being hounded by the media.”

Muhammad never replied. Through her lawyer, she declined to comment on this story.

A fresh blow also landed from an unexpected source.

The South Orange-Maplewood community has a substantial Jewish population and three synagogues. Three days after the classroom encounter was Shabbat, and one of the leading rabbis, Jesse Olitzky of Congregation Beth El, spent the day thinking about how hard it must have been for the second-grader.

In a public post on his Facebook page, where he has nearly 5,000 friends, Olitzky said he had been thinking about how he struggled as a child when people asked about his kippah, or head covering.

“A young child was scared and made to feel less than because of her religious head covering,” he lamented.

He said his initial intention was to refrain from sharing his thoughts “until there was clarification about what exactly happened, not wanting to share a knee-jerk reaction to a social media post, as our society is often guilty of.” But he overcame that reluctance, thinking about lessons from the Torah about the need to stand up for others. “I know that if this were to happen to me, or my children, I would hope my neighbors would stand with me.”

Rabbi Jesse Olitzky, Congregation Beth El

“A young child was scared and made to feel less than because of her religious head covering.”

Herman had attended his synagogue as a child, and this felt like one of her own turning on her, friends say.

It also felt personal to Talya Rothenberg, a member of Beth El who had taught alongside Herman and felt “there is just no way” Herman did what she was accused of. She found herself paralyzed by Olitzky’s Facebook post.

“I was afraid to comment on his post to say you have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said. “You read about how people get swept away and they’re all, like, ready to — I’m trying to find a better word than ‘lynch’ — a person.”

She and others messaged Olitzky privately, asking him to take down the post, which he ultimately did. He acknowledged that he had rushed to judgment but did not admit that on Facebook, she said. He did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this story.

On the day of the hijab incident, Tamar Herman had been a teacher for more than 30 years, including about 20 at Seth Boyden Elementary School, a stately brick structure set in the least wealthy part of town.

About 28 percent of the student body qualifies for free or reduced-price lunches, a contrast to schools serving children “up the mountain” in the pricey homes where, on a clear day, you can see the Manhattan skyline. The district has long encouraged students from elsewhere to transfer into Seth Boyden, in hopes of creating a racial balance that better represents the district as a whole. Last year, with the help of these transfers, about 30 percent of children there were White.

Herman spent her career incorporating diverse faiths and cultures into her teaching, her attorneys said. She gave a lesson featuring a girl in a hijab. She had a collection of appreciative notes and emails from parents and positive evaluations, including one that said she created a “climate and culture” of “respect and learning.”

Herman had no disciplinary record. But in a lawsuit filed against the school district, the Wyatts recounted three other complaints from parents to the administration that, lawyers said, cast doubt over Herman’s tolerance. In 2017, Herman allegedly gave a Black girl’s snack bar to a White girl who was also claiming it, saying she trusted her more. In 2020, she allegedly yelled into the ear of a Black girl and later defended herself by saying simply, “I was having a bad day.” And on the day of the hijab incident, Herman is alleged to have snatched a water bottle out of the hand of a student, another Black girl.

“It was a pattern that the school district was aware of but either purposely or negligently refused to document or to appropriately address,” the Wyatts’ lawyer wrote in a filing.

One of Herman’s attorneys declined to go into detail but called the allegations “grossly misconstrued and inaccurate.”

From her telling, the incident with Sumayyah Wyatt was an unfortunate misunderstanding. When the principal called her in the next day to ask what happened, Herman told her that as soon as she realized she’d pulled down a hijab and not a hoodie, “she immediately pulled it back and said sorry,” according to a district incident report.

Later, Herman added that the girl’s face was partly obscured by a mask, and she worried that this “hoodie” was blocking her line of sight. She also denied many of the details that the family reported, including that she told the girl that her hair was beautiful and that she did not have to wear the hijab to school anymore.

The district acted swiftly. After her meeting with the principal, Herman was asked to leave her classroom, placed on administrative leave and escorted out of the building. She was told not to set foot on school property or talk to other teachers.

The Essex County prosecutor launched an investigation, and the school district’s inquiry <a href="https://villagegreennj.com/schools-kids/more-details-emerge-in-hijab-incident-as-south-orange-maplewood-district-deals-with-fallout/" target=_blank>was put on hold</a>.

Three months later, in January 2022, <a href="https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/essex/2022/01/19/maplewood-nj-teacher-pulling-hijab-wont-face-charges/6581205001/" target="_blank">the prosecutor said</a> there was not enough evidence to bring charges. Yet in the months that followed, the school district appears to have done little to resolve the situation. It could not simply fire Herman, who has tenure. But it also has not held a hearing to examine the facts or let her defend herself. A district spokeswoman had no comment, and the superintendent did not return a call seeking comment.

“A false accusation was posted online, and my life was turned upside-down overnight.”

Herman remained on administrative leave, stewing in her house, scared to leave for fear that she would run into someone who might hurt her. She received death threats, her lawyers said, and was so frightened she sold her house and moved. She began experiencing “devastating headaches” and had trouble sleeping, charged one of her lawsuits. “She has been damaged.”

“The past year+ has been a nightmare,” she said in an email response to questions. “For the past 20 years, I have given my heart and soul to all of my students. In the blink of an eye, my reputation as a dedicated and caring teacher was destroyed.” She added: “A false accusation was posted online, and my life was turned upside-down overnight.”

From the start, she had her defenders, and with time, her allies began to speak out more forcefully. A friend and former colleague, Alice Solomon, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EEdzS1AIbo&t=7673s" target=_blank>addressed</a> the January 2022 school board meeting, right after the prosecutor announced there would be no charges. She said Herman was a gentle person who could never have done what she was accused of. Solomon also asked that the district address the antisemitism connected to the case.

“Maybe, as seen on so many lawn signs, maybe hate has no home here, but it sure does on the internet,” she concluded. The school district had spoken out in response to the allegations of bias against someone who was Muslim, but not against someone who was Jewish.

A letter submitted to the school district in February 2022 by members of the community asked for officials to acknowledge and renounce the antisemitism “that has surfaced in the course of the campaign against Ms. Herman.” It also asked for a hearing to adjudicate the accusations against her. Herman also questioned in a legal filing why the school district had spoken out in response to allegations of Islamophobia but not antisemitism.

Early last year, Cassandra Wyatt showed up at Herman’s door unannounced, Herman said. According to Herman, the mom told her that her daughter loves Herman and talked about her all the time, wishing she were still her teacher. It was all a misunderstanding, the mom told her, and her daughter “blows things out of proportion,” Herman recalled.

Asked about this encounter, Wyatt said she would not confirm or deny that she went to the teacher’s house.

In some respects, the community has moved on. At a recent school board meeting, members debated whether a board member could serve as a liaison to a local foundation, but not a word was said about the case of Tamar Herman.

The local teachers union was well represented at the session, but not one teacher, including the union president, would comment on the situation or the teacher. In fact, the union has said nothing publicly about the case.

In the courts, though, the players had a lot to say.

Herman has filed two lawsuits, both of which are pending. The first alleges that the district violated her due process rights by putting her on administrative leave without a hearing — and that it discriminated against her based on her religion, among other charges.

The second lawsuit, charging defamation, is against Muhammad, the fencer, and Selaedin Maksut of CAIR New Jersey, who had repeatedly called her a racist who ought to be removed from the classroom.

Maksut declined to comment, but in a motion to dismiss the case, his attorneys argued that his statements were “substantially true” given that Herman admitted to pushing back the hijab, and that opinions he expressed were constitutionally protected speech.

Muhammad’s attorneys have not yet filed their response. Her Instagram and Facebook posts castigating Herman remained on the internet until the lawsuit was filed in October.

In the Wyatts’ case against Herman and the district, the parties reached a settlement of $295,000, and after some drama and demands for more, the Wyatts said this week that they will accept it.

Herman, still out of the classroom and isolated from the world, is hoping the courts will deliver her closure as well. “I feel incredibly betrayed by all that has happened to me,” she said. “I’m hopeful that this [defamation] lawsuit will bring justice.”

Sumayyah and her sister no longer attend the public schools. After the incident, Cassandra Wyatt moved their daughters to an Islamic school, their father’s preference all along.

“Islam is the foundation,” Joseph Wyatt said. “I’m not worried about Sumayyah being a lawyer. I’m not worried about Sumayyah being a judge. That’s not success to me. I could have a million dollars. Success is having a clean heart.”

Story editing by Adam B. Kushner. Photo editing by Mark Miller. Copy editing by Phil Lueck. Design by J.C. Reed.

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated the last name of a Beth El member. She is Talya Rothenberg, not  Talya Rosenberg. The article has been corrected.

Nieman Fellowship, Harvard University, 2003-2004

Livingston Award for National Reporting, 1999

First place, Shutdown “Feddie,” for coverage of the government shutdown, National Press Foundation (team award), 2014

First place, series, North American Agricultural Journalists (team award), 2008

Third place, beat reporting, Association of Health Care Journalists, 2007

George Polk Award for Justice Reporting for “George Floyd’s America," 2021 (team award)

Education Writers Association, finalist, beat reporting; finalist, feature writing, 2021

Educations Writers Association, finalist, beat reporting, 2020

DREAM TOWN: Shaker Heights and the Quest for Racial Equity

Washington University in St. Louis, A.B. in political science and international development

Laura Meckler covers the news, politics and people shaping American schools. She previously reported on the White House, presidential politics and immigration for the Wall Street Journal, as well as on health and social policy for the Associated Press. She is author of DREAM TOWN: Shaker Heights and the Quest for Racial Equity, about her hometown.

Laura Meckler

washpost

A teacher pushed back a student's hijab, dividing this New Jersey town

the-washington-post

Joseph Wyatt, Sumayyah Wyatt, 8, Asiyah Wyatt,7, and Cassandra Wyatt pose for a portrait in Maplewood, in New Jersey 

For The Washington Post

A teacher pushed back a girl’s hijab. Lawsuits and death threats followed.

She pushed back her student’s hijab. Was it a mistake or an act of hate?