‘This Is the Equivalent of a Show Trial’

A Lower Manhattan resident and Stuyvesant High School parent elected to serve on the Community Education Council (CEC) for District 2 of the New York City public school system has been removed from her post by Schools Chancellor David Banks.

Maud Maron, a onetime candidate for the City Council, was first elected to the CEC for District 2 in 2019, and then re-elected in 2021 and 2023. The CEC is a 12-seat panel responsible for advising on educational policies, and providing input to the Department of Education (DOE), on matters of concern to the district.

On June 14, Mr. Banks announced that he was invoking his power under a set of DOE rules known as D-210, which say that CEC members “shall not engage in any conduct that subjects any person or entity to discrimination or harassment,” and stipulates that violating this regulation “may serve as a basis for discipline, even if it does not rise to the level of a violation of federal, state or local discrimination laws.”

Mr. Banks’s rationale for removing Ms. Maron hinges upon an anonymous essay published by the Stuyvesant student newspaper, The Spectator, in February. The opinion piece, titled “Black and White: The Withheld History of Palestine and Israel,” included this statement: “Israel continuously steals land, discriminates against Palestinian Israelis, imposes housing restrictions that deprive Palestinians of necessities, slaughters peaceful protestors, and imprisons children who are younger than us. It is baffling that classifying Israel as an apartheid state is even up for discussion.”

Ms. Maron, who is also an elected member of the Stuyvesant’s School Leadership Team, disagreed vehemently with this piece and told the New York Post that “the byline should read ‘coward’ instead of ‘anonymous.’”

In a June 14 notification to Ms. Maron, Mr. Banks wrote, “several complaints regarding your statement were received… and an investigation was initiated under Chancellor’s Regulation D-210… The investigation found that your statement to the Post constituted conduct involving derogatory and offensive comments about a student, and unnecessary aggressive speech that served to intimidate and cause others to have concern for their personal safety. Your statement was further found to have created a foreseeable risk of disruption within the district and school community, especially in light of the highly public forum in which it was made.”

A legally required “conciliation meeting” was held on May 21, attended by Ms. Maron, her attorney, and a phalanx of high-level DOE officials. At this meeting, Ms. Maron defended her statement to the Post.

Mr. Banks was unswayed. He concluded, “at the heart of this determination is a finding that you engaged in a public, personal attack against a student. You did so in the context of an issue that is highly politically charged, in a climate in which harassment and targeting of those who express unpopular opinions is common, and in a tabloid publication whose articles often provoke extreme reactions. Predictably, your conduct provoked a number of other highly offensive and hostile attacks against the anonymous student author and Stuyvesant students in general.”

Ms. Maron says, “The language in D-210 is broad enough to give anybody who cares about the First Amendment a heart attack. I still don’t know how he determines whether political speech is ‘aggressive, derogatory, or offensive,’ which are purely subjective judgments, let alone whether speech is ‘unnecessarily’ so.”

“I fully stand by my comment to the Post,” she continues. “I was elected to my office precisely because the voters in District 2 are aware of my political views. He may not agree with my viewpoints, but my voters tend to do so, and I won my election in a fair and open democratic process.”

“I could not have possibly ‘intimidated’ an anonymous person who is not known to me or to the public by criticizing that person, or by criticizing that person’s speech,” Ms. Maron says. “But I have indeed suffered a good deal of harassment and targeting for my opinions, which are not universally popular.”

“This is the equivalent of a show trial,” she says, “I feel like I’ve been treated very unfairly. DOE can use this process to get rid of dissenting voices, and it will have a chilling effect on future CEC members, who will be afraid to say what they actually believe.”

In a statement, Mr. Banks said, “in accordance with State law and Chancellor’s Regulations, I issued orders removing a member of Community Education Council 2.” He said this order was “rooted in my responsibility to ensure our families are represented by leaders who respect students and follow State law. We have consistently and repeatedly made it clear that parent leaders must observe high standards of ethics, integrity, and decorum.”