Two years and eight months into her term on the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, Dr. Nili Kaplan-Myrth, a high-profile advocate for the Jewish community and other marginalized groups, announced her resignation during a school board meeting on June 3. She was the only Jewish trustee on the school board.
Kaplan-Myrth’s tenure has been challenging, to say the least. When she advocated for mandatory masking during the COVID pandemic, she received countless antisemitic insults—even death threats—via social media and email, for which the police did lay charges against some of her critics. The school board has tried to censure her several times, prevented her from coming to meetings or speaking, and she has been in a running battle with a rival trustee over what she considered was racism against her because she is a white, Jewish Israeli-Canadian.
But things came to a head recently after an email campaign by the National Council of Canadian Muslims to the board, accusing her of anti-Palestinian racism. Kaplan-Myrth said the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board is so “toxic” and “dysfunctional” that she had to quit, for her own mental health and for the safety of her family.
She joins Ellin Bessner of The CJN Daily to explain how she hopes her resignation is a wake-up call to what’s going on in school boards across North America—and why her problems may not be over.
Transcript
Nili Kaplan-Myrth: So this is my final time speaking as an Ottawa Carleton District School Board Trustee. As of this evening, I am resigning. A fellow trustee asked me to explain why I am leaving, and so if you will oblige, I will have a few final words. It may take me four minutes, not three.
Ellin Bessner: That’s the voice of Dr. Nili Kaplan-Myrth announcing at this week’s meeting of the Ottawa- Carleton District School Board that she was resigning, even though she still had more than a year left to serve in her four-year term. It was a surprising turn of events for the high-profile Ottawa trustee as the only Jewish member of the capital city’s school board. Kaplan-Myrth’s tenure has made headlines ever since she was first elected in October 2022 when she, who’s a family doctor, asked that masks be made mandatory in schools to combat the spread of COVID during the pandemic. She was then targeted by anti-vaxxers and even neo-Nazis, so much so that the board had to create a safety plan for her, but then shared details of it with Rebel News. She had to stop using her office phone, and her school board email was closed because of it all. The board censured her for violating the Code of Conduct after she complained about all the hatred she was receiving and nobody was doing anything about it.
It’s been a similar story whenever Trustee Kaplan-Myrth has acted as a vocal advocate against antisemitism, which she feels became rampant in the school board itself and also in the classrooms. Again, she’s faced censure and a flood of antisemitic and now anti-Zionist comments on social media, by phone, and email too, even death threats to herself and her family. She says she has to lock her health clinic door between patients.
Throughout it all, Kaplan-Myrth didn’t back down. She brought in the Ottawa police. At least three people have been charged successfully from the public for harassing her. She’s proud of having pushed the school board to hire its first-ever Jewish Equity Coach to help Jewish students and staff cope with hatred in the classrooms.
But now the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak, came after Kaplan-Myrth recently objected to a Jewish person who is both a member of the Independent Jewish Voices group and Queers for Palestine wearing a keffiyeh while speaking during a school board meeting. Kaplan-Myrth said this was an act of aggression against Jewish and Israeli students and staff. Since then, the school board and she have been swamped with emails from the National Council of Canadian Muslims, a campaign accusing her of racism against Palestinians. That group also held meetings with the board and demanded the Jewish trustee be dealt with. A new censure motion against her was filed. So now Kaplan-Myrth has resigned.
Nili Kaplan-Myrth: Parents, of course, and children understand the antisemitism that they’ve experienced in their classrooms, in their schools, and even from their teachers and the systemic antisemitism at that level. But to understand what goes on, the dysfunction at the school board level, it’s really hard to grasp how bad it is unless you go and you sit in a room behind those closed doors.
Ellin Bessner: I’m Ellin Bessner and this is what Jewish Canada sounds like for Friday, June 6, 2025. Welcome to the CJN Daily, a podcast of The Canadian Jewish News and made possible in part thanks to the generous support of the Ira Gluskin and Maxine Granovsky Gluskin Charitable Foundation.
Dr. Kaplan-Myrth says what she’s gone through during her time as a trustee on the Ottawa Carleton District School Board has been “brutal”, and she just wants it to stop. All the infighting among trustees, all the money and resources she worries have been spent on Code of Conduct spats, all the attacks and harassment, and the Israel-Palestinian crisis being played out in school board politics before and since October 7th.
Now, hers isn’t the only allegation of mismanagement that the Ottawa Public School Board is dealing with right now. The Ontario government has also threatened to take over control of the board, citing financial mismanagement and a long-running budget deficit. Dr. Kaplan-Myrth joins me now from her Ottawa clinic to explain what she hopes her resignation will do and what comes next.
Welcome back to the CJN Daily, Dr. Kaplan-Myrth.
Nili Kaplan-Myrth: Thank you.
Ellin Bessner: It’s been a couple of days, 24, 48 hours since your letter of resignation. Let me ask you why you didn’t decide to tough it out until the end of your term. What was it that made you say, I can’t go any further?
Nili Kaplan-Myrth: So in my first year, I was accused of racism for calling out white supremacy. That white supremacy was literally, I was referring to people carrying swastikas and Confederate flags. I wasn’t found in violation of the Code of Conduct in that, but that was nine months of hellish people targeting me. All of the Jew hate that was directed at me because of that meant that I had to give up my phone, I had to quarantine my email, daily calls to the (Ottawa police) Hate Crimes unit. Then at the end of that, when they actually sort of held the trial, when it was decided that I was not in violation of the Code of Conduct, one of the trustees was making her concluding remarks and said, “Well, you’re just a white woman.”
I unmuted myself, which I wasn’t allowed to do, and I said, “I object. I’m a Jewish woman who has faced unbelievable antisemitism and you’ve been out to get me since Day One.”
Because I said that and because I spoke publicly about their silences in the face of antisemitism, I was then within days given another Code of Conduct complaint from this trustee who’s been going after me, and that one stuck. So I had to sit out three months of not being allowed to participate on committees. That was right before October 7th. Then October 7th happened and then the anti-Zionism started targeting me as well as the previous, just sort of, Nazi Jew-hate.
The Advisory Committee on Equity was taking a very anti-Israel stance at their meetings, but I was the only Jew in the room. I was always the only Jew in the room. I was the only Jew in the room as a school board trustee and then on this committee. So I kept putting up my hand and saying, it’s not appropriate. Can you please leave politics out of this? Because Jews also need to be able to access the Equity Committee. A whole series of nasty emails were sent around and still I didn’t quit.
I didn’t quit because, you know, in conversation with some of my mentors and in conversation with Jewish leaders, it was kind of the feeling was, you don’t let the bastards win. You don’t leave just because they’re being hateful. You keep showing up and doing your work. So that’s what I did.
The straw that broke the camel’s back was a few weeks ago.
Ellin Bessner: Yeah. This was April 8th.
Nili Kaplan-Myrth: Yeah. Because I raised my hand at that meeting because a person who was representing the Equity Committee came to a school board meeting in protest against Israel. I raised my hand and said, “Look, I don’t think that people around the room realize that this Equity Committee representative is wearing a keffiyeh to protest Israel, but I don’t feel like it’s appropriate to antagonize Jews and Israelis. I am Jewish and I’m Israeli and the Jewish students and the Jewish staff, most of us are Zionists, and most of us are going to feel like now the Equity Committee is taking a position, a geopolitical position that it shouldn’t be.” I emphasized that it’s not the actual garb, it’s not the actual keffiyeh that’s the problem. The person who is wearing it posts on social media and says things that are extremely anti-Israel and posted themselves that they choose to wear the keffiyeh as a protest against Israel.
Ellin Bessner: Right. And this person, our listeners may not know, is Jewish who was with Independent Jewish Voices. All right, having said that, why was it the straw that broke the camel’s back?
Nili Kaplan-Myrth: So immediately, thousands of emails started flooding in, accusing me of racism.
Ellin Bessner: Anti-Palestinian racism.
Nili Kaplan-Myrth: That’s right. But they couldn’t make the white supremacist racism label stick. So now they’re trying for anti-Palestinian racism.
Now, I am a progressive Israeli. I am a Jew who just went with my synagogue on a trip to Israel, where we spent all of our time meeting with leaders like Mohammad Darwashe, who speaks to Arab-Israeli relations. We are not a family that has ever done anything that would remotely suggest that we don’t support and accept all people. My career has been supporting everybody and standing up against hate. In fact, in my standing up against hate for everybody, and as a trustee, I had just done that.
I had just spent months advocating for my schools, which are predominantly Muslim, Arab, and other racialized groups. I held a town hall meeting with my constituents, translated into Arabic. I was the only trustee who bothered to do that. I’m going out on a limb standing up for groups, and at the same time, suddenly I’m being bombarded with these emails calling me racist.
It doesn’t matter that they took what I said out of context, and it doesn’t matter that they are ignoring the fact that the speaker themselves was not Arab, Muslim, or Palestinian, but actually Jewish, and I knew that. I wasn’t saying that they couldn’t wear whatever they want to wear or do whatever they want to do politically in their life as a Jew outside of their role as a representative to the Equity Committee. But on the Equity Committee, we have a responsibility to represent everybody, and that’s what I was saying.
Ellin Bessner: Was it the emails that come back, or that you’re called racist, or that you’re just, threats to your family and mental health?
Nili Kaplan-Myrth: So then, no, then the trustee submitted a third code of conduct complaint accusing me of racism, anti-Palestinian racism. And I just, like, that’s not okay.
This is a trustee who herself is supposed to be undergoing antisemitism remediation because during the Capitol Pride parade last year, she said some horrible, horrible things to Jews, and she was found in violation of the code of conduct for that.
But unlike me, where I was barred from participating in committees for three months because I said, I object, I’m actually a Jew, she was not barred from anything and she took over my place on the Equity Committee, which is ironic, and hasn’t completed her antisemitism training. In the meantime, she is going out of her way to cause me further harm. And at this point, it really falls into the, you know, the realm of defamation because the things that are being said about me, that’s not just fair comment. Those are statements that are harmful to me and to my reputation, both as a trustee as well as a physician.
Ellin Bessner: This is kind of like a Selina Robinson kind of thing.
Nili Kaplan-Myrth: So, okay, so Selina Robinson came and she spoke at our synagogue on a panel about antisemitism. I chatted with her afterwards. I said to her, “Selina, how do you know when it’s time to leave?” Because what I hear and what makes it really hard to step down is people say, “Nili, you’re heroic, you’re so strong, you’re out there, you’re fighting for us, you never give up.” Right?
Ellin Bessner: And.
Nili Kaplan-Myrth: But then at the same time, I’m like, well, but I’m the one who has to wake up every morning to antisemitic death threats. Then I have to go into a workplace that’s toxic, sit with a group of people who not only don’t say, “Hey, Nili, that’s really horrible that this is happening,” but actually say things like one of the trustees said to me behind closed doors, well, said to the whole group, “Well, Nili only ever speaks for Jews,” which is so unfair and untrue.
But it is, I mean, just demonizing me and making the antisemitism seem like… Well, I mean, the same trustee said to me, “If you don’t want the, you know, death threats, then stop speaking.” So, it’s really hard to walk away. But what Selina said to me was, “You know, when you’re at a point where the good, the good that you can contribute is no longer going to be effective, and, you know, when basically the harm outweighs the good, then you leave.”
I was going to stick out the fourth year and then I was going to retire and say, like, I’m not running for another term. But when my family and my friends were just kind of looking at what the damage was from this really toxic workplace, as a doctor, I tell my patients all the time, leave a toxic workplace, don’t stay in a toxic workplace.
Ellin Bessner: Do you regret the two years and eight months that you’ve served?
Nili Kaplan-Myrth: I don’t regret it. I achieved lots. I mean, the stands that I took for students with disabilities, the stands that I took for LGBTQ students, the stands that I took for Black, African, Caribbean, and other racialized students, the stands that I took for Muslim students, the stands that I took for Jewish students, all of it was important.
And my voice, I mean, even at our very final meeting, where the meeting at which I resigned, you know, I was speaking up strongly on a whole variety of issues.
I feel like they wasted my superpower. Because my superpower is I can speak very clearly and I can advocate very strongly for issues in public education, in public health. I can look at what’s happening at a societal level. I mean, before medicine, I was an anthropologist. This is what I do. Instead of being able to use that strength, they demonized me and shut down everything because I kept also saying, “Don’t you dare, you know, be silent when I’m telling you that I’m getting this anti-Jew hatred.”
Ellin Bessner: So what can we understand about the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board? What does your leaving signify about what they are?
Nili Kaplan-Myrth: I sent a letter to the Minister of Education to say that the OCDSB should be, it should really be investigated for its governance dysfunction, not just for its financial dysfunction. They refused to take seriously the antisemitism that students and staff were bringing to them for years. It was really only when I stepped in and started speaking publicly to them that they couldn’t just keep brushing it under the carpet.
The leadership there, you know, we’ve had the same chair there for most of the last 15 or so years, has allowed this to fester. There are two things. One is the very ingrained antisemitism that they just allow to fester. Then the other thing is that they’re not sophisticated enough to understand how extremist groups and populist groups outside of the school board are influencing their policy and their programs.
By that I mean, when we’re bombarded with thousands of emails, they assume that that’s legit. Even somebody, one of the trustees said to me, “Oh, well, I must have actually done something to really upset the Arab and Muslim and Palestinian community, because look, we’ve received thousands and thousands of emails.” I can’t explain to them, but somebody generated a way to do that and I can’t explain that the Jewish community is tiny.
Even if every single Ottawa Jew, you know, sends a letter that is going to pale in comparison to what they can receive from a mass email campaign. And that happened with anti-trans hate as well. And it happened with the anti-vax stuff. And I knew that that was what was happening each time. I think the senior staff, the director of education understood that. But the trustees are persuaded by it. And that’s the dangerous thing. That’s the cautionary tale that is true for not only Ottawa, but also for the Toronto District School Board, for school boards across Canada and around the world.
We’ve seen that already in the United States, and it scares me. And so I needed to leave. I can’t continue to be, I can’t be the voice for the Jewish community that gets personally pummelled for speaking and I can’t be the voice for people with disabilities or for trans rights or for any other group when I then get pummelled with antisemitism. And they don’t acknowledge that. These are outside forces that are really well organized.
We need leadership that isn’t weak. We need strong leadership that can understand that. School boards, yes, we’re underfunded, yes there are many systemic issues facing public education that have nothing to do with Ottawa. But school boards are under threat by these disinformation campaigns and extremist groups. And we need strong principled voices.
My real concern is that good people won’t choose to be trustees because who would want this job? I would not recommend it to anybody.
Ellin Bessner: For $16,000 a year.
Nili Kaplan-Myrth: Right. Which, you know, I understand is more than somebody might earn who’s working in other jobs working very hard. It’s not the money, it’s just the, you know, this is a part-time job on top of a full-time job, which I was prepared to spend hundreds and hundreds of hours doing all of the work and really taking it seriously. But what I can’t do is do that in exchange for my well-being or to allow them to, frankly, just demonize Jews more generally. Because that is what has happened.
Ellin Bessner: How does this impact what’s going on in the classrooms? That’s what I think parents and families need to know.
Nili Kaplan-Myrth: Students and staff, families who are Jewish who have been experiencing institutional antisemitism, they have other means available to them to complain. The problem is that it takes a lot of energy, it takes a lot of legal know-how, and ultimately, it’s expensive to try to take on a school board, and the school board will endlessly have funds to just hire big law firms and throw out any complaints.
So on the ground, it means that if a student in a classroom is experiencing overt Jew hate of any form, whether it’s somebody drawing a swastika on the floor or putting up a map that has obliterated Israel, the teacher in that classroom isn’t backed up by the principal, the superintendent, or the director of education to say, hey, that is actually just as bad discrimination as if something anti-Black or anti-Indigenous or any other form of discrimination were happening in our classroom. So it’s really hard for those students and also for Jewish staff to get anybody to even recognize the Jew hate.
And then, you know, what happens in a district is you have the director of education, but you have the school board. And if the chair of the board and the trustees on the board are also, you know, every time students came and families came to delegate and to speak to us about antisemitism, they were met literally with silence. I was the only person who would put up my hand and ask questions. And so the Jewish community, you know, is faced with the same thing. Like, do you just leave the school board? Do you just go somewhere else? Do you go to another board? Do you go to the Catholic school board, you know, because ironically, you might have more support there. Or do you, you know, leave and go to private school?
Ellin Bessner: So what do you recommend? I was going to ask you this later, so let’s ask quickly now. What would you recommend to any Jewish families who are thinking of sending their kids to the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board next year, or teachers work there?
Nili Kaplan-Myrth: My kids are all grown up. But, you know, if I were now faced with that with a young child, I would not be necessarily comfortable sending them. Like, I, you know, when I was at that phase in my life, I was a medical student, and I couldn’t afford to send my kids to, you know, anything other than the local public school. And so I would have been stuck with it, but it’s kind of like I shouldn’t have to leave as a trustee, and Jews should obviously be safe in their local public school. And that’s what we have to push for. And, I hope, you know, somebody holds OCDSB’s feet to the fire, holds the district and the board accountable.
Ellin Bessner: Right. So. But just to end off, what happened to you is happening elsewhere. This is my opinion, if you speak out, you get accused of anti-Palestinian racism like you did. And so what happens then? Then you have to be quiet because then you have to fight lawsuits.
Nili Kaplan-Myrth: Right? I mean, I’m not gonna wade into that. I think it’s just a dangerous time. It’s a dangerous time to be, not just to be Jewish, but to be outspoken as a Jew who isn’t going to tolerate antisemitism.
Ellin Bessner: Dr. Kaplan-Myrth, it’s been an honor to speak to you.
Nili Kaplan-Myrth: Thank you.
Ellin Bessner: And that’s what Jewish Canada sounds like for this episode of The CJN Daily, made possible, in part thanks to the generous support of the Ira Gluskin and Maxine Granovsky Gluskin Charitable Foundation.
A group representing Jewish parents of students in the Ottawa public board. JPOSA says Dr. Kaplan-Myrth’s resignation is a “direct consequence of the board’s failure to protect Jewish voices and to ensure a safe and inclusive school environment.” And they also are calling for the Ontario government to investigate the board.
A school board spokesperson says trustee Donna Blackburn will complete her antisemitism training by the end of the summer. And the board wishes Dr. Kaplan-Myrth the best for her future and thanks her for her service.
One programming note: Next week, our show will have a couple of surprises to announce, so stay tuned.
Our show is produced by Zachary Judah Kauffman and Andrea Varsany. The executive producer is Michael Fraiman. And our music’s composed by Dov Beck Levine. Thanks for listening.
Show Notes
Related links
- Watch Dr. Nili Kaplan-Myrth’s resignation speech at the June 3, 2025, OCDSB meeting (at the four-hour mark) or read it here.
- Learn about the threats against her that resulted in a conviction in 2025, in The CJN.
- Hear a previous interview with Kaplan-Myrth when she was initially sanctioned by the Ottawa public school board in 2024, on The CJN Daily.
Credits
- Host and writer: Ellin Bessner (@ebessner)
- Production team: Zachary Kauffman (senior producer), Andrea Varsany (producer), Michael Fraiman (executive producer)
- Music: Dov Beck-Levine
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