Censorship is a loaded word. It is defined in this article as the suppression or removal of content by an administrative body because they consider it offensive or harmful to the community. Censorship is a topic of conversation at Urban, with some students wondering: Where is the line between protecting the comfort of the student body and censoring student voices?
Leili Kamali ’25 — a member of MENA (the Middle Eastern North African affinity group) who was outspoken during her time at Urban, specifically about Palestine — shared how she believes censorship manifests in a school setting. “In a school institution, censorship is [the] action of blocking a student’s right to share their opinion, their voice and their ability to learn from the people around them [in order] to protect institutional goals and beliefs — whether or not that’s openly [the reason],” she said.
Assistant Head for Student Life Charlotte Worsley helps create and enforce school policy. “I don’t really think there is censorship at Urban. Censorship, to me, is unreasonable and rooted in power. And honestly, there’s nothing we do at the school that isn’t reasoned,” she said. “You might disagree with the reasoning, … but I don’t think I’ve ever done anything at the school that I haven’t had to be able to reason out and justify and ground in the core values or the handbook.”
Although it is not necessarily censorship, some students note that certain topics are more taboo than others at Urban. Discussions about specific controversial topics — such as drugs and sex — are integrated into Urban’s curriculum. The health curriculum provides a safe space for students to learn about and discuss both topics in depth. However, students recognize that spaces for other sensitive conversations remain limited.
“Urban is choosing … to prioritize student comfort over actual growth,” Lucy Sylvester ’26 said. “I think there [is] leniency in some things that Urban has destigmatized, … but there are certain subjects so taboo and so hard to discuss, … and it’s like [we] have to name everything as a ‘hard conversation.’”
Jason Ernest Feldman, dean of equity, inclusion and belonging, explained how he feels hard conversations should take place within a school. “In the moments when it’s not as opt-in, or things [are said] in a classroom, or in other spaces where we’re about to lean into a hard conversation, … we want to make sure that we’re here for the same reason,” he said. “Once we’ve decided that we’re all agreed in the same context, [we can ask:] ‘is this a conversation that’s better held in affinity?’”
The school has limited formal discussions of the Israel-Palestine conflict to a small handful of school-sanctioned discussion groups, which Urban hosted following the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks in Israel.
Kamali found Urban’s efforts to make space for difficult conversations — especially around the Israel-Palestine conflict — inadequate in the past. “There’s the conflation between feeling unsafe and feeling uncomfortable,” she said. “This meant that if Middle Eastern students, or any other students, wanted to talk about Palestine, … we were making people feel unsafe.”
In October 2025, Sylvester made an art piece for the Resistance Project in her media arts class, Making Media Matter, and put it up for display in the hallway. Sylvester’s painting was a cutout that depicted a Palestinian child with their head wrapped in a keffiyeh — a traditional Middle Eastern scarf — along with the words “Free Palestine” arranged above the child in cut-out letters.
The next day, the administration and art department took the piece down. Sylvester failed to meet the criteria for displaying artwork at school by not completing the iteration process, putting her piece up late — after her teacher had taken the rest of the resistance art display down — and not including an artist’s statement. The student handbook’s artistic expression policy requires that artwork with challenging or controversial content be displayed in a clearly defined context with other controversial or challenging pieces.
The painting did not violate the content guidelines outlined in the student handbook for publicly displayed student artwork, which prohibits work containing negative stereotypes, vulgarity, nudity, violence, weapons, illegal substances, sexual imagery, disregard for school rules or demeaning content based on identity. According to the handbook, “Student work may not humiliate, dishonor or insult anyone in the community.”
Sylvester reflected on the situation. “I want Urban to think that the point of going to a school like this is for students to be challenged, both politically and mentally,” she said. “I know that some student voices aren’t heard, and that pisses me the f*** off. … I don’t think Palestinian students are being heard. Granted, a great deal of that issue is that we don’t know if any students at our school identify as Palestinian. I also think that Israeli voices are not being heard that well.”
Visual Arts Department Chair and art teacher Kate Randall helped create the artistic expression policy and is currently updating it alongside the administration. “Rather than censorship, the art department’s policy is an invitation to dialogue. It places the responsibility back on students to … create work that is more nuanced, layered, and thoughtfully articulated,” Randall wrote in an email exchange with the Urban Legend. “Echoing a slogan or phrase from mainstream culture often reinforces an existing message rather than transforming it into art. We are asking students to dig deeper[.]”
The artistic expression policy is not the only part of the handbook that administrators have changed in recent years. In 2023, the administration updated the Schoology Bulletin Board policy, specifically prohibiting posts that contain opinions, spark debate or include personal commentary, as well as posts that could make people feel pressured to attend events.
Worsley shared her perspective on the Schoology policy changes. “With every decision we make about students voicing opinions publicly at Urban, we seek to balance our commitment to free speech with the needs of the community. The context of Urban’s core values is key because how an individual shares their opinions impacts the community and we are committed to both,” she wrote in an email exchange. “In our handbook, we have numerous sections that take these values and provide more concrete guidelines as to how we honor individual opinions while also requiring that students don’t just say what they want, when they want and how they want but that they do it in a context committed to the community.”
Feldman explained why he believes the Schoology policy is not censorship. “To me, a really clear policy or a really clear system or structure is an equity initiative,” he said. “It’s not about the individual person or what they’re trying to say — it’s about an … agreement that we all have as a community, … to belonging and dignity in our community.”
Kamali reflected on why she felt censored at Urban. “In hindsight, all of these experiences that I went through … felt really tied to my identity as a Middle Eastern person,” she said. “I feel like I was … specifically chosen as a target for censorship because of my Middle Eastern identity, even though I feel like that [identity] positions me the best to talk about issues about the Middle East.”
Kamali shared a specific time when she felt this way. “When I was in London for my junior fall [semester program], Jason [Ernest Feldman] emailed me wanting to have a meeting with him over Zoom. When I logged onto the Zoom, him and Charlotte [Worsley] spoke to me about posting about nuanced issues on social media,” she wrote in an email interview. “I immediately asked if they had seen the things I had posted, and they both said no.”
She specified that the article she reposted on Instagram gave a brief overview of Hamas’ attacks on Oct. 7, 2023 and included the death toll. “Jason told me a student came to him and told him that what I posted on my Instagram made them feel unsafe,” she wrote.
Kamali said that she felt her Middle Eastern identity contributed to that student and the administrators’ reactions. “Without me even saying anything about my opinions or … political beliefs, an assumed set of beliefs [were] placed on me.”
Feldman declined to comment on the situation.
Explaining how she felt Urban administrators, such as Feldman and former head of school Dan Miller, justified censoring her, Kamali said, “I was told [that] kids at [Urban] only want to go to class. They want to do their homework, they want to go to soccer practice, they want to take their calc test and they want to go home. They don’t care about what you have to say.”
Worsley pointed out that Urban administrators have to balance multiple aspects of student life as an educational institution. She said, “There’s a tension between speaking your mind and living in the community, and Urban’s trying to own that dynamic.”