The final draft was criticized by authors of the original version as watered down and substandard, with all of them demanding their names be stripped from the proposal. In one ongoing conflict, Jewish and pro-Arab groups have accused each other of discrimination and trying to silence each other’s histories. California’s ethnic studies debate highlights some of the difficult questions educators will face in an era when the US is redefining its heroes and asking whose stories should be told. More than three-quarters of California’s 6.2 million public school students are nonwhite. “We’ve worked to bring justice to what we believe the ethnic studies movement to be about,” Tony Thurmond, the state superintendent of public instruction, told reporters.