The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an organization that has long been scrutinized by federal authorities for its extremist connections and rhetoric, has tried to influence public school curricula for years. This report examines how the organization has built access to attempt to sway the people and institutions that decide the curricula. Our initial findings show:
- CAIR’s institutional history dictates an examination of the group’s broader education activity. Federal records place future CAIR co-founders Nihad Awad and Omar Ahmad at a 1993 meeting of the Palestine Committee, a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood structure created to support Hamas. A 1994 Palestine Committee agenda later listed CAIR among the committee’s working organizations. In 2008, the FBI sharply restricted non- investigative contacts with CAIR based in part on evidence introduced in the Holy Land Foundation terror financing trial linking the group to Hamas. In 2023, the Biden Administration removed CAIR from a list of partner organizations due to the “shocking, antisemitic statements” of its executive director Nihad Awad.
- CAIR’s school activities go well beyond efforts to obtain religious accommodation for Muslims. CAIR and its chapters have produced parent templates, educator guides, district outreach campaigns, legal advocacy programs, curriculum material, statewide pressure campaigns, and legislative proposals involving its definition of terrorism, student speech, Israel, Palestine, October 7, antisemitism, and Zionism.
- In August 2026, CAIR National explicitly extended its Unhostile Campus Campaign from higher education into K to 12 schools. Its “2026 to 2027 Back to School Resource Guide” expands CAIR’s “Unhostile Campus Campaign” to K through 12 schools by directing students, parents, and educators to resources on Palestine advocacy, Gaza, September 11, antisemitism, and definitions of terrorism, in addition to material on discrimination and religious accommodation.
- The results of CAIR’s efforts in several states are uneven. The record seems to indicate the group’s increasing influence. CAIR has built channels into K to 12 education through parents, educators, administrators, legal advocacy, state agencies, and legislation. In several cases, those channels reached the process through which educational guidance, curriculum, or statewide policy were developed.
- Our research shows that CAIR and its local chapters engaged in activities to influence the curriculum in political ways in several states. This report focuses on CAIR’s specific activities in New Jersey, Virginia and Maryland as examples of the breadth of its efforts. The results of these actions are difficult to assess but appear to be meager.
- Washington State provides arguably the strongest evidence in this report of CAIR’s access inside a state education process bearing fruit. CAIR Washington says it spent months exchanging revisions with the state education agency before a replacement curriculum guidance addressing antisemitism, Islamophobia, discriminatory harassment, student protests, and political speech was published. The public record confirms the state’s acceptance of the replacement guidance, although it does not identify who proposed the individual changes within it.
- It is highly problematic that an organization with CAIR’s documented history has been accepted as an interlocutor by school districts and state education officials on politically sensitive questions. Where advocacy efforts from outsiders like CAIR reach the level of creating guidance, curriculum, or policy development, the public must know what role CAIR played, what it proposed, and what officials accepted.