This commentary is by Boulder City Councilmembers Nicole Speer and Ryan Schuchard, who are writing in their personal capacities. Their views do not necessarily reflect the views of the Boulder City Council.
To be a Boulder City Councilmember in 2025 requires leading through overlapping trauma, mistrust and heartbreak as the gaps in our imperfect systems expand and community divisions grow. It requires understanding that everyone is hurting, and everyone’s pain must matter, even when the sources of pain are contradictory or unresolved. It requires speaking publicly knowing you’ll get a lot of it wrong, because silence is far worse. And it requires learning to hold complexity through grief, rage and fear — your own, and others’.
Complexity like we find ourselves in now.
Last week, one of our colleagues posted antisemitic content on social media that minimized and unnecessarily appropriated the Holocaust. The pain was immediate and real. Jewish neighbors reached out, stunned and reeling.
We should have spoken long before this, when speakers in council chambers conflated Jews with the actions of the Israeli government, when antisemitism crept into our civic dialogue, and when harmful rhetoric was quietly dismissed until the horrific attack on June 1. It should not have taken us this long.
The two of us have been leaving antisemitism out of our equity work. This is why we are writing about it now, and why we will be addressing it going forward.
Antisemitism, like all forms of bias, must be named clearly, no matter who perpetuates it, and no matter how uncomfortable that naming may be. Bias may sometimes hide behind nuance, but naming it clearly matters.
This is a particularly difficult moment because we are white people drawing attention to a Black woman’s antisemitic post. We appreciate the pain this creates in a community already burdened by racism, where Black voices are often silenced. It feels fraught and painful.
All these things are true; we still must call out antisemitism no matter who speaks it.
Antisemitism and racism can, and do, exist in the same moment. Boulder carries histories of both, unevenly addressed and unequally acknowledged. Some in our community feel abandoned. Others feel attacked. Some are grieving, some are furious. In truth, many are both. These overlapping generational traumas deserve ongoing responses, not just periodic reckoning when the pain spills into headlines. This is especially true in our community where bias is often met with silence, skepticism or conditional empathy. That too is part of the harm.
Since Oct. 7, we’ve had to address our own biases. We didn’t understand how antisemitism shows up in our community. We didn’t understand that antisemitism isn’t always loud, or that it can hide inside slogans, analogies and misplaced blame. We didn’t understand how deeply intertwined antisemitism is with all other forms of oppression.
We’ve learned that criticism of Israeli government policy can be principled. But conflating that criticism with Jewish identity is not. Blaming Jews for Israel’s policies is antisemitic. And silence when someone’s cultural, religious or national identity is being attacked reinforces harm, even when it’s rooted in fear of causing more.
As local officials, we continue to believe that engaging in international politics is not a productive use of the council’s time. But acknowledging trauma is. We are highly aware of how many people are struggling with what has been going on in Israel and Gaza since Oct. 7. We are too. The pain emanating from the other side of the world is overwhelming. Our hearts go out to those whose families and friends are suffering, starving and dying.
As Boulder City Councilmembers, we recognize the weight of holding the grief, anger and fear of all Boulder community members.
It’s hard to name all this pain. It’s hard to hold all this complexity. It’s even harder to do both in public. Elected officials must be able to sit with the discomfort of multiple truths. In our complicated, beautiful, imperfect city, this work requires us to show up with skills and conviction, as well as with humility, curiosity and the willingness to listen.
We do not need to choose between working to stop antisemitism and working to stop other forms of bias. They are all connected. We become a stronger, more connected community when we recognize that combatting antisemitism is a necessary part of our equity work, one that also requires consistent action in our decisions, policies and individual practices.
Bravo! Well done. May I say “better sooner than later but better later than never?”
Sometimes leadership requires the admission of a prior mistake and a promise not to repeat it. Thank you, Nicole and Ryan.
I wish this had come much sooner. But thank you. I appreciate this statement and that council members Speer and Schuchard have recognized their failure in not taking action earlier, are taking accountability now and are committing to finally include bias against Jews and antisemitism in their equity and inclusion work and work as leaders of Boulder County. Thank you. Please keep talking about this and keep calling it out. We need this from you as leaders.
Nicole and Ryan: thank you, and welcome.
Thank you for putting together your thoughts so that others may understand. Beth Isacke, Boulder Voter
This is so disingenuous. I am Jewish and this op-ed claiming to be written on behalf of Jews does not speak for me, along with many other Jews who see that criticizing Israel for its actions does not equate to antisemitism. Councilwoman Adams post was not antisemitic, and if getting hung up on the minutia of details of her posts is the issue, we are a in a privileged place where people representing us (the Jews of Israel) continue to kill innocent Palestinians (including in the West Bank where Hamas is not even present).
When these Israeli actions go uncriticized and we instead focus on speaking against those speaking out about it, we further create more animosity with the world because the world is watching how Israel is overstepping its justification in attacking Palestine because of Hamas, and instead also leveling entire city blocks and killing tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians.
Again, as a Jewish person, I feel way more safe with someone like Adams (who I have spoken about this issue many times in the past) who on the forefront confronts these issues (Adams recently even visited Nablus, Palestine (one of Boulder’s sister cities) and Israel) than those who rather dog-whistle “antisemitism” (diminishing actual acts of antisemitism) trying to keep our heads in the sand while Israel continues to kill, maim, and starve the population of Palestine. Contradictorily, the killing of Palestinian civilians is actually the antisemitism:
“In Jewish tradition, the concept of Pikuach Nefesh emphasizes the sanctity of life, stating that saving a life is equivalent to saving an entire world. This principle is derived from the Talmud (Sanhedrin 37a) and is a central tenet in Jewish ethics. Conversely, destroying a life is viewed as destroying an entire world, highlighting the immense value placed on each individual.”
Aaron, nowhere (not even a hint) in the op-ed do the authors claim to be written on behalf of Jews or to speak for all Jews so your first paragraph is simply a lie. The opinion itself stated that “We’ve learned that criticism of Israeli government policy can be principled. But conflating that criticism with Jewish identity is not. Blaming Jews for Israel’s policies is antisemitic” so your second paragraph is a red herring.
Council member Adams can be right (and progressive) on some things and still be antisemitic as she has appeared to me. I am glad that some of her colleagues have finally found the courage to stand up to her and to admit that they should have done it sooner.
The article states ” Jewish neighbors reached out, stunned and reeling” as well as inferring many times Adams’ content is antisemitic. These statements make this viewpoint of antisemitism seem monolithic, while in reality not all Jewish neighbors back up this op-ed. This Jew is more reeling and stunned in the claims this op-ed is reaching for. Adams has not conflated criticizing Israel with Jewish identity nor has blamed Jews, so where, as the article states, can “criticism of Israeli government policy be principled” without labeling the criticizer as antisemitic?
The statement that “Jewish neighbors reached out stunned and reeling” is presumably factual and does not suggest a claim that all Jews in Boulder felt the same way. Many people (including at least half of the Israeli population) freely criticize Israeli government without descending into antisemitism. On the flip side just because someone criticizes the Israeli government and uses the perhaps politically correct language of claiming to be “anti-Zionist” it doesn’t disprove the fact that some are antisemitic.
Thank you! You are good people, doing hard work. I appreciate this Nicole, and Ryan.