Nick Bernardini

Nick Bernardini [Nicholaus Bernardini] is a Philadelphia high school teacher who has expressed support for Hamas terrorism, demonized Israel and engaged in anti-Israel activism in his role as a teacher. His activism and social media posts were in the wake of the October 7, 2023 attacks which left approximately 1,200 Israelis dead.

As of August 2024, Bernardini was listed on the website of Samuel Fels High School as the “Social Studies/STC [school technology coordinator]/PFT [Philadelphia Federation of Teachers] Building Representative.” Samuel Fels High School is part of the School District of Philadelphia (SDP).

In November 2023, after Hamas terrorists murdered nearly 1,200 Israelis on October 7, 2023, SDP offered teachers an anti-Israel professional development course. The curriculum claimed that Israel was carrying out the “colonization of Palestine” and that Israel’s war against Hamas was a “genocide in Gaza and the West Bank.”

The course was titled: “Decolonizing the Curriculum: Brief History of Palestine and the Creation of Israel: Contextualizing the Current Conflict and Genocide.” A summary on the SDP portal said teachers would be “better equipped to have conversations and facilitate lessons with their students” about Israel. The course was listed as "Subject(s): Social Studies/History." After local news sites publicized the course, SDP removed it from the portal.

SDP continued to come under pressure from activist groups to teach anti-Israel material in K-12 classrooms, including groups representing teachers and parents. Two such groups were the Racial Justice Organizing Committee (RJOC) and the Philadelphia Educators for Palestine (PEFP), led by SDP high school teacher Keziah Ridgeway.

RJOC organized anti-Israel “teach-ins” in late 2023 and throughout 2024. RJOC also provided “Educator Lesson Plans” for teachers, listing as a resource the Teach Palestine Project, a pro-terror and anti-Israel teaching resource. In May 2024, PEFP called on SDP to meet six demands. Among them were: “to unequivocally condemn the ongoing genocide waged on the Palestinian people” and “to release a ceasefire resolution [with regard to Israel’s war against Hamas terrorists].”

SDP had been under investigation by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights since April 2024. In May 2024, a group of over 200 parents filed a complaint against the district. The complaint alleged there was “persistent harassment and bullying of Jewish students” and “inflammatory anti-Jewish and anti-Israel messages on social media and even in the classroom” by teachers and administrators at schools across Philadelphia.

In June 2024, Bernardini expressed support on Facebook for SDP’s director of social studies curriculum Ismael Jimenez, who has expressed support for Hamas terrorism, denied Hamas war crimes and spread hatred of Israel and America. Bernardini wrote: “I’ve never met a person more dedicated to seeking justice in my whole life…I’ll stand with this man through any battle, he leads with a focus on humanity.”