Who Really Runs the World? The Chabad Investigation Part 7 of 9

Watch this on Rumble: https://rumble.com/v7fnbaa-who-really-runs-the-world-the-chabad-investigation-part-7-of-9.html

Part 7 — Who Gets to Teach the Children?

Opening — Adults Can Walk Away. Children Can’t.

There is a reason I wanted education to have its own episode. Adults can attend a conference, listen to a religious leader, read a declaration, hear somebody talk about global ethics and decide they want nothing to do with it. Adults can challenge an idea, investigate its source, change churches, leave an organization or simply walk out of the room.

Children don’t have that same freedom.

For most of their childhood, somebody else decides where they will sit, what books they will read, which subjects they will study and which adults will stand in front of them and explain the world. That doesn’t make education sinister. Every civilization educates its children, and every educational system transmits values whether it admits that openly or not. The important question is who chooses those values and what authority they have to impose them.

That question becomes especially important in this investigation because education wasn’t something that suddenly appeared at the end of the trail. Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, spoke directly about the moral education of children decades before the Institute of Noahide Code began appearing in the United Nations record we have been examining.

In 1983, the Rebbe began publicly promoting what became known as a “Moment of Silence” in public schools. Chabad’s own account says he believed children needed more than fear of police or punishment to become moral adults. He wanted them to recognize what he called the Creator and Ruler of the world, believing that awareness of a higher authority provided a foundation for justice and righteousness.

That immediately caught my attention.

But then I found something that complicates the story.

The Rebbe specifically argued that the school itself should not tell the child what religious belief to adopt during that silence. Chabad’s account records him warning that if schools required a spoken acknowledgment of God, a teacher or principal could pressure children toward a particular religious belief. His proposed solution was silence. Parents, rather than teachers, would tell their own children what to contemplate.

That matters enormously for this investigation.

If I only told you that the Rebbe wanted children thinking about God in public schools, I would be leaving something out. He did. But according to Chabad’s own presentation of his position, he also explicitly worried about government educators imposing their particular religion upon children. His solution was intended to preserve a role for the family while preventing the teacher from becoming the religious authority.

So we aren’t going to begin Part 7 by declaring that every educational initiative connected with Chabad or Noahide advocacy was an attempt to indoctrinate children.

We are going to follow what actually happened.

Because decades later, the language surrounding education becomes much larger than a minute of silence.

In March 2019, at a conference held at the Italian Senate, the Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Global Ethics and partner organizations proclaimed the Rome Agreement on Education for the Culture of Peace and Sustainable Development Goals. The agreement called for developing a model curriculum covering all age levels and said that model would be used to encourage national legislation toward mandatory education on a culture of peace and the SDGs.

That word changes the investigation.

Mandatory.

The Rome Agreement itself wasn’t Italian legislation. Holding the event inside the Italian Senate didn’t transform the declaration into Italian law, and it certainly didn’t make it a United Nations mandate. But the organizations themselves said their goal was to encourage legislation establishing mandatory education, and a May 2019 IPCGE event at UN Headquarters again described an aspiration to promote legislation and implementation of mandatory culture-of-peace and SDG education in UN member states.

Then the idea kept moving.

In February 2023, IPCGE and partner organizations gathered in Dubai to launch a strategy for a joint Abraham Accords model curriculum. Their published material says they intended to develop principles and values for education beginning with early childhood and continuing through academic-level education. The proposed framework drew upon UN culture-of-peace resolutions, shared values among Abraham Accords partners and the Sustainable Development Goals.

The organizers also described a path forward. Dubai would be followed by work in Rome, followed by presentation at United Nations Headquarters. IPCGE later described the proposed model as something that could be made available to parliamentarians, educators, religious leaders, media and other decision-makers, while acknowledging that countries would adapt it according to their own national and regional requirements.

Now we have something worth investigating.

Not because teaching peace is suspicious.

Not because teaching children not to hate one another is suspicious.

Not because Muslims, Christians and Jews working together on education automatically means something sinister is happening.

The question is much simpler.

What exactly did they want taught?

That is where I want to be extremely careful in Part 7. We already established that the Institute of Noahide Code participated in this broader global-ethics network. We established that Cohen connected Noahide principles with international ethical language. But that does not give me permission to take the next leap and call every culture-of-peace curriculum a Noahide curriculum.

I need the curriculum.

I need the actual lessons.

I need to know whether God appears in them, whether Noah appears in them, whether the Seven Laws appear in them, whether “global ethics” appears in them, which values are presented as universal, who defines those values and whether children are being taught religious commandments or ordinary civic principles that happen to overlap with them.

And there is another question that may be even more important.

Who gets the final say?

The Rebbe’s Moment of Silence placed the religious decision with the parents. The teacher was supposed to remain silent. The family supplied the spiritual meaning. Decades later, the international initiatives we are following discuss model curricula, educators, religious leaders, governments, parliamentarians and mandatory education.

Those aren’t automatically the same project.

So I am not going to pretend they are.

But I am going to put them next to each other and investigate what changed.

Because once governments begin deciding which universal values every child should learn, the issue is no longer merely what those values are. The issue becomes who defines them, who teaches them, whether parents can disagree with them and what happens when one person’s “universal value” is another person’s religious doctrine.

Adults can walk away.

Children can’t.

And that is where Part 7 begins.

Investigation 1 — The Moment of Silence

Before we follow international curricula, mandatory education and parliamentary conferences, I want to go back to 1983, because this is where the educational philosophy becomes much clearer. On January 24 of that year, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson argued that American public schools should begin each school day with a moment of silence. This wasn’t simply a proposal to give children sixty seconds to calm down before class. In the Rebbe’s own explanation, the silence had a moral and explicitly theological purpose.

The Rebbe believed something essential had been removed from public education. Children could be taught mathematics, science, history and language, but those subjects couldn’t by themselves answer why a person should use knowledge for good rather than selfishness. His argument was that morality ultimately required recognition of an authority above human beings. During the moment of silence, he wanted a child to reflect upon the existence of God as that child’s parents had explained it.

That point needs to remain in the investigation because describing the proposal as purely secular meditation would misrepresent what the Rebbe was advocating. In another 1983 address, he said the silence should give children an opportunity to think about the Creator of the world and God’s awareness of human conduct. He even encouraged children to petition the president and members of Congress for legislation requiring schools to begin the day with such a moment.

But then I found something equally important.

The Rebbe did not want the public-school teacher deciding what the child should believe.

In July 1983, he explicitly addressed the danger that a teacher could use religion in school to impose a particular belief upon students. His answer was that the school should provide silence while the parents supplied its meaning. He compared parents providing the child’s spiritual subject for contemplation with parents sending food to school for the child’s physical nourishment.

Later that year, he made the distinction even clearer. He argued that the proposal wasn’t a government-composed prayer. The child would ask a parent or grandparent what to think about during those sixty seconds, thereby keeping the teacher or principal from determining the child’s religious content. He even addressed parents who didn’t want their children thinking about God during that period, saying they could instead instruct them to contemplate principles of justice and righteousness, which he connected with the Seven Noahide Laws.

There it is.

The Noahide connection.

But look carefully at what the evidence actually establishes. The Rebbe connected the moral principles behind the Moment of Silence with his Noahide worldview. He did not propose that public-school teachers spend that minute teaching children the Seven Noahide Laws. In fact, his stated structure deliberately removed the teacher from deciding what the child should contemplate.

That distinction matters tremendously for where this investigation is going.

The Rebbe wanted government to create the space, but he wanted parents to determine the content.

There was also a much larger national controversy happening around him. Moment-of-silence legislation wasn’t something Chabad invented. By the mid-1980s, numerous states already permitted or required periods of silence in public schools. Supreme Court records from the period identified twenty-five states with some form of moment-of-silence provision, although their wording and purposes varied considerably.

And courts were fighting over where the constitutional boundary actually stood.

New Jersey had enacted a law requiring public schools to permit a one-minute period of silence for private contemplation or introspection. Parents, students and a teacher challenged it. A federal district court struck the law down in 1983 after concluding from its legislative history that its actual purpose was religious, and the Third Circuit later dealt with the case.

This gives us another warning for the rest of Part 7. Two educational programs can look nearly identical on paper and still raise very different constitutional questions depending upon their purpose, implementation and content. Sixty seconds of silence isn’t automatically religious instruction, but calling something “silence” doesn’t automatically make its governmental purpose secular either.

And now I understand the Rebbe’s proposal more precisely than I did when we began.

He wasn’t asking teachers to conduct Noahide lessons. He wasn’t proposing that the government write a Noahide prayer. He wanted government to require or provide a silent space at the beginning of the school day because he believed children needed daily moral reflection grounded, ideally, in awareness of the Creator. But he wanted the child’s family—not the government employee standing at the front of the classroom—to determine what that reflection meant.

That actually creates an interesting tension with what we are going to encounter later.

In 1983, the Rebbe’s solution to religious diversity was to keep the teacher silent.

Parents supplied the values.

Parents supplied the theology.

Parents decided what their children contemplated.

If that were the end of the story, Part 7 would be very short.

But it isn’t.

Because once we move forward several decades, we stop encountering only sixty seconds of parental reflection. We begin finding conferences discussing education for universal values, model curricula, parliamentarians, national legislation and eventually the phrase “mandatory education.”

Before we get there, however, we need to answer something much simpler.

The Rebbe wanted the Moment of Silence put into law.

Did that actually happen anywhere?

Investigation 2 — Did It Become Law Anywhere?

The answer is yes. Moments of silence did become law in American public schools. But this is where I have to separate three different things that could easily get blended together: the Rebbe advocating for a Moment of Silence, states independently enacting moment-of-silence statutes, and evidence that those states enacted their laws because Chabad directed them to do so. Those are not automatically the same claim.

By the early 1980s, moment-of-silence laws already existed in multiple states. A federal appellate opinion from 1983 noted that at least eighteen states had enacted similar laws permitting daily moments of silence in public schools. That included Alabama, Florida and Georgia. So the basic legislative idea was already much larger than Chabad and cannot accurately be described as something the Rebbe simply invented and then imposed upon American schools.

But the timing is interesting because 1983 is also when the Rebbe began making the issue a highly visible part of his public message. He wasn’t merely saying that schools should permit children to pray privately. As we established in Investigation 1, he wanted government to establish a period of silence while leaving the content of that silence to the child and the child’s family. The school would provide the time. The family would provide the meaning.

Then came one of the most important Supreme Court cases in this story.

Alabama had enacted a 1978 statute providing a moment of silence for meditation. In 1981, Alabama added another statute authorizing a moment of silence for “meditation or voluntary prayer.” That seemingly small addition became central to Wallace v. Jaffree, which reached the United States Supreme Court in 1985. The Court struck down the later statute after examining its legislative history and concluding that it had been enacted for the purpose of returning voluntary prayer to public schools.

But something very important is often missed when that case is summarized.

The earlier Alabama moment-of-silence statute wasn’t the provision the Supreme Court invalidated. The federal appellate record explains that the earlier statute simply required a period of silence for meditation and that the challenge to that provision had been abandoned by the time the case reached the Supreme Court. The constitutional problem centered on the later statute and the evidence concerning its religious legislative purpose.

That distinction opened an important door.

A state could potentially require silence without having the government tell children to pray.

And that is remarkably close to the distinction the Rebbe himself was making. Whatever his personal theological reason for wanting the silence, his proposed mechanism was that the teacher should not prescribe the child’s religious thoughts. The government creates the quiet period, while the child and family determine what happens internally during it.

We can see that structure very clearly today in Florida.

Florida’s current law requires principals in public schools to have first-period teachers set aside at least one minute and no more than two minutes every school day for a Moment of Silence. But the statute goes further: teachers are specifically prohibited from suggesting what students should reflect upon. Instead, teachers are directed to encourage parents or guardians to discuss the Moment of Silence with their children and suggest how that time should be used.

Read that structure carefully.

The school supplies the silence.

The teacher doesn’t supply the belief.

The parent supplies the guidance.

That sounds strikingly similar to the model the Rebbe was advocating decades earlier.

But similarity isn’t proof of causation.

Florida’s legislative history shows another important development. In 2002, its statute merely permitted local school districts to establish a brief period of silent prayer or meditation. The current mandatory statewide structure came later. In 2021, Florida changed the statute so every public school’s first-period classroom must observe the daily Moment of Silence.

So yes, the concept absolutely entered law.

But can I say the Rebbe caused Florida’s law?

Not from the evidence I have examined.

Can I say Florida enacted Noahide law?

No.

The statute doesn’t teach the Seven Noahide Laws. It doesn’t mention Noah, Chabad, the Rebbe, Judaism or even require belief in God. In fact, it prohibits teachers from suggesting what students should think about. A Christian child can pray to Jesus. A Jewish child can think about God according to Judaism. A Muslim child can reflect according to Islam. A nonreligious child can simply sit quietly. The law regulates the existence of the silence, not the child’s thoughts.

That makes this a fascinating piece of our investigation because something the Rebbe strongly advocated undeniably exists in American law, yet that fact alone doesn’t establish Chabad control over the lawmakers who enacted it.

There is a difference between influence and ownership of an idea.

There is also a difference between religious motivation and the legal text ultimately enacted.

The Rebbe could look at a secular Moment of Silence and consider it useful for advancing his moral vision. A Christian organization could support exactly the same law because it creates an opportunity for Christian prayer. A secular parent could support it because children benefit from quiet reflection. Those groups could support the same statute while disagreeing completely about why it matters.

And this is exactly the problem we encountered in Part 6 with “global ethics.”

Different people can travel through the same doorway for completely different reasons.

So our answer to Investigation 2 is carefully limited. Yes, moments of silence became law in multiple American states. Some became mandatory. Florida today provides an especially interesting example because its law requires the silence, forbids teachers from directing the student’s reflection and explicitly places discussion of its use with parents or guardians.

What we have not established is a hidden chain of command running from Chabad to those state legislatures.

And we have not established that Moment-of-Silence legislation constitutes Noahide legislation.

That evidence matters because Part 7 is about education, and I don’t want to begin calling ordinary educational policies “Noahide” merely because somebody within the Noahide movement supported them. We need direct connections before making direct claims.

But now the story moves beyond American classrooms.

Because decades after the Rebbe was asking American schools for sixty seconds of silence, the organizations we have been following began talking about education on an international scale.

Not one minute.

Not one state.

Not even one country.

They began discussing values, culture of peace, Sustainable Development Goals, national legislation and educational programs that could cross borders.

And that takes us to Investigation 3.

Then education becomes international.

Investigation 3 — Then Education Becomes International

The Moment of Silence began with a relatively narrow proposal. Give children a short period of silence at the beginning of the school day, keep the teacher from prescribing the child’s religious thoughts and allow the family to provide the meaning. But when I follow the organizations at the center of our investigation forward several decades, education starts appearing in a very different setting.

It becomes international.

The Institute of Noahide Code itself had already defined education as part of its work. A United Nations quadrennial report covering 2011 through 2014 describes the Institute’s mission as bringing peace and unity through the Laws of Noah. According to that UN-filed report, the Institute developed programs and publications intended to encourage practical adherence to the Seven Laws and disseminated its research to institutions and individuals around the world. That is important because it establishes that education and dissemination weren’t merely later additions to the Institute’s mission.

But as we discovered in Part 6, the language eventually expanded beyond teaching the Seven Laws themselves.

By 2016, the Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Global Ethics was connecting education with a much larger international strategy. Its event history describes a July 2016 gathering at United Nations Headquarters around the idea that peace had to be built not only on the benches of parliamentarians but also on the benches of schools. The argument was that preventing violent extremism couldn’t be accomplished through military or governmental force alone. Education had become part of the strategy.

Then watch how quickly the idea begins moving through institutions.

IPCGE records a September 2017 meeting in Rome with Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin concerning the role of religious leaders in promoting culture-of-peace education. The following day, it records an Italian Senate meeting concerning the role of parliamentarians in building peaceful and inclusive societies through a culture of peace and the Sustainable Development Goals. By 2018, the organization’s published history was already describing a planned United Nations forum devoted to promoting national legislation on education for a culture of peace and the SDGs.

This is no longer sixty seconds of silence.

Now we have religious leaders.

Parliamentarians.

International institutions.

National legislation.

And education.

But before connecting all of that directly to Noahide law, there is another piece of evidence we have to examine.

On May 30, 2018, IPCGE held what it called a Multi Track Council Forum at United Nations Headquarters, hosted by Bulgaria’s UN mission. The title was “Sustaining Peace and Conflict Prevention Through Multi Track Education and Initiatives for the Culture of Peace and SDG’s.” The published agenda divided the discussion among education, diplomacy, religion, social justice, culture and the arts. Participants included Christian, Jewish and Muslim religious representatives, peace organizations, cultural figures and educators. Rabbi Yakov David Cohen appeared in the second panel and was identified as founder of the UN NGO Institute of Noahide Code.

That tells me two things simultaneously.

First, Cohen and the Institute were directly present inside this developing international education network. I don’t have to infer that connection from somebody knowing somebody else. His name and organization appear directly in the published program. Second, the program wasn’t presented as a Noahide educational conference. The participants represented multiple religions, organizations and disciplines, and the stated subject was education and initiatives for a culture of peace and the SDGs.

That distinction is going to become extremely important.

Because the Institute’s own material from the same period explicitly says IPCGE and the Institute of Noahide Code were cooperating to mobilize cultural and religious ethics in support of the UN development goals. It says those goals contain ethical principles found within many cultures and religions, especially concerning social and environmental justice. The strategy was therefore intentionally broader than simply teaching Noahide theology.

Yet the Noahide objective didn’t disappear.

The Institute’s UN civil-society profile lists education among its fields of activity and describes a strategy involving parliamentarians, religious leaders, media figures, academics and business leaders. According to the organization’s own mission statement filed in the UN system, those groups would support legislation by teaching, publicizing and putting into practice the “global ethics” the Institute identified within UN resolutions. The same mission statement then discusses the Noahide Code and the need for a universally accepted code.

So now education sits directly inside the structure we uncovered in Part 6.

The Institute has an explicitly Noahide mission.

Cohen participates in an international multi-religious network.

That network talks about universal ethics, culture of peace and Sustainable Development Goals.

Parliamentarians pursue legislation.

Religious and educational leaders help transmit the values.

But none of that yet proves that schoolchildren were being taught the Seven Noahide Laws.

That is the line I don’t want to cross without evidence.

In fact, the Institute’s current educational material demonstrates why the distinction matters. Its website openly offers a Noahide Code course explaining the Seven Laws. Separately, it advertises religious-understanding workshops, global-citizenship seminars and school partnerships connected with the Moment of Silence. The Institute itself therefore distinguishes explicitly Noahide education from broader educational activities involving religious understanding and global citizenship.

That makes it dangerous to assume that every educational program connected to the Institute is secretly the Seven Laws.

We have to open the program.

We have to read the curriculum.

We have to examine the actual language.

And that is exactly what becomes possible as this story moves forward.

Because by March 2019, the international educational initiative had reached the Italian Senate. IPCGE and its partner organizations proclaimed the Rome Agreement on Education for the Culture of Peace and SDGs. They called for cooperation to develop a model curriculum covering all age levels, intended for parliamentarians, educators, media, religious leaders and decision-makers.

And then I encountered the phrase that changes the entire investigation.

The organizations didn’t merely want governments to make this education available.

Their published agreement said the curriculum was intended to encourage national legislation in UN member states toward “mandatory education” on a culture of peace and the Sustainable Development Goals for all age levels.

That doesn’t mean the United Nations mandated it.

It doesn’t mean Italy enacted it.

And it doesn’t mean the proposed curriculum was Noahide law.

But the organizations themselves used the word.

Mandatory.

So now we need to find out exactly what they meant by it.

Investigation 4 — “Mandatory Education”

There is one word in the Rome Agreement that I don’t want to soften, because the organization itself didn’t soften it.

Mandatory.

The March 7, 2019 Rome Agreement on Education for the Culture of Peace and Sustainable Development Goals says the participating organizations wanted to cooperate in developing a model curriculum for all age levels. It then says that model would be presented as an outline to encourage and support national legislation in UN member states toward mandatory education on a culture of peace and the SDGs. The stated objectives included world peace, combating violent extremism, hate speech, antisemitism and racism, along with environmental protection and sustainable development.

That is considerably more specific than holding a conference about peace.

They weren’t merely proposing an optional booklet that interested schools could download. The Rome Agreement envisioned a model curriculum that parliamentarians, educators, religious leaders, media figures and other decision-makers could use according to national requirements, while the organizations sought support from institutions including the European Union, African Union, ASEAN, Arab League and Council of Europe. The stated destination was legislation.

And this wasn’t language appearing only on IPCGE’s website.

The World Academy of Art and Science, one of the organizations involved, published its own account of the Rome meeting. It described the agreement as an effort to develop a culture-of-peace curriculum for all age levels and said the model was intended to encourage national legislation in UN member states making that education mandatory. That independent partner account confirms that “mandatory” wasn’t simply an accidental word buried somewhere in IPCGE’s description.

The Italian Senate connection also needs to be described precisely.

The conference took place in the Italian Senate and was hosted by Senator Lucio Malan. A message from then-Senate President Maria Elisabetta Alberti Casellati welcomed the meeting and expressed support for its general purpose. The English translation published with the conference material describes the goal as introducing a compulsory component focused on a culture of peace into educational systems.

That is meaningful political access and support.

But it still isn’t an Italian law.

A conference inside a parliament doesn’t equal parliamentary adoption. A supportive message from the president of a legislative chamber doesn’t equal a vote of that chamber. And an agreement signed by participating organizations isn’t automatically binding upon the country where the meeting occurred.

That distinction becomes even more important when the initiative moves to United Nations Headquarters two months later.

On May 7, 2019, IPCGE held another roundtable at UN Headquarters, this time hosted by Guatemala’s UN mission. The stated goal was to develop a strategy for implementing the Rome Agreement. The accompanying “Isaiah Declaration” expressed support for a partnership among parliamentarians, religious and civic leaders and the United Nations aimed at promoting legislation and implementing mandatory culture-of-peace and SDG education in UN member states.

Again, look at what we have and what we don’t have.

We have an advocacy organization using UN facilities with the sponsorship of a member-state mission.

We have parliamentarians and civic and religious leaders discussing legislation.

We have a declaration explicitly advocating mandatory education.

What we do not have is a United Nations resolution ordering countries to adopt this curriculum.

That distinction cannot be skipped.

The initiative continued. On May 21, IPCGE held a forum in Paris focused on mobilizing parliamentarians and civic leaders to implement culture-of-peace and SDG education through legislation. Its published material describes the goal as building a coalition of parliamentarians and other leaders to establish mandatory education from kindergarten through academic studies.

Then, on September 5, the campaign returned to UN Headquarters. IPCGE’s published program described its goal as implementing a culture of peace through legislation for mandatory education “from kindergarten through academic studies.” It also referenced the Rome Agreement, the May UN declaration and subsequent European activity as parts of the developing campaign.

So by this point, I don’t think there is any question about what IPCGE was advocating.

They wanted legislation.

They wanted education.

And they wanted that education to be mandatory.

But now we reach the question that matters most for this investigation.

Mandatory education in what?

Because the phrase sounds much more alarming until we open what the organizations actually said they wanted children taught. Their public descriptions emphasize a culture of peace, tolerance, combating violent extremism, opposition to racism and antisemitism, environmental protection, sustainable development and the SDGs. The Paris material even speaks about schoolbooks teaching equality, mutual respect, tolerance and democratic principles.

Those aren’t the same thing as teaching children the Seven Noahide Laws.

And so far, the documents we have examined do not establish that the proposed mandatory curriculum required students to accept Noahide theology, prohibited idolatry, taught Noahide blasphemy law or instructed children that rabbinic Noahide jurisprudence was legally binding upon them.

That absence matters.

But the Noahide connection to the broader network also doesn’t disappear simply because the proposed educational language is secular and interfaith. As we established in Part 6, Rabbi Yakov David Cohen and the Institute of Noahide Code participated directly in this global-ethics network. IPCGE had already described its strategy as harnessing cultural and religious ethics to promote legislation and social action, while its 2016 material said religious, academic and media leaders would have roles in implementing proposed legislation.

That leaves us with a very specific question.

If governments were being encouraged to make this education mandatory, who would determine what went into it?

That is where the word “mandatory” becomes significant to me. Not because teaching peace is automatically threatening, but because voluntary values education and compulsory values education raise different questions. Once attendance is required, the content matters enormously. Who defines peace? Who defines tolerance? Who defines extremism? Which religious values qualify as universal? What happens when a parent’s understanding of morality conflicts with the curriculum?

Those questions can’t be answered by the word “peace.”

And they can’t be answered by the word “Noahide” either.

We need the actual material.

The Rome Agreement itself anticipated that problem by calling for development of a model curriculum rather than claiming that one had already been completed. It said the outline would eventually be made available to parliamentarians, educators, religious leaders, media and decision-makers and adapted according to specific national requirements.

The World Academy later reported that it and the World University Consortium were supporting IPCGE in compiling a model curriculum proposal that could be made available to government officials, parliamentarians, educators and private citizens around the world.

That gives us our next trail.

Because I don’t want somebody telling me what the curriculum was supposed to accomplish.

I want to see what they actually built.

Who wrote it?

Which organizations participated?

Which religious traditions contributed?

What age did it begin?

What values did it define?

Did the Seven Noahide Laws appear anywhere inside it?

And did the curriculum that eventually emerged resemble the traditional Noahide Code, or something entirely different?

That takes us directly into Investigation 5.

Building a model curriculum.

Investigation 5 — Building a Model Curriculum

Now we reach the point where I expected to find a finished curriculum. After Rome called for mandatory education, I wanted to know what somebody intended to put in front of a five-year-old, a twelve-year-old or a college student. If governments were eventually supposed to consider legislation around this idea, then speeches about peace weren’t enough anymore. I wanted lessons, subjects, learning objectives and the actual values being proposed.

The first thing I discovered is that the Rome Agreement itself did not contain that finished curriculum. In March 2019, it called for cooperation to devise a model curriculum covering all age levels. The agreement said the resulting outline would be available to parliamentarians, educators, media, religious leaders and decision-makers, who could use it according to their own national requirements. In other words, Rome established the objective and the political strategy, but the curriculum still had to be built.

By April 2020, the World Academy of Art and Science reported that it and the World University Consortium were supporting IPCGE through the “compilation of a model curriculum proposal.” The Academy said the proposal would eventually be made available to parliamentarians, government officials, educators and private citizens around the world. That wording matters because, even a year after Rome, the material I found still describes a curriculum being compiled rather than a completed international syllabus already operating inside schools.

Then the project takes another major step in 2023.

On February 12 and 13, IPCGE and several partner organizations gathered in Dubai for a roundtable specifically titled “Strategy for Joint Abraham Accords Model Curriculum for the Culture of Peace and SDG’s.” The published announcement says the purpose was to develop agreement among Abraham Accords partner nations about the main principles and values that should be included in a model curriculum covering early education through academic-level education.

That gives us something much more concrete.

They were discussing principles and values for children beginning in early education.

But look carefully at what they said those principles would be based upon. The Dubai announcement identifies three foundations: United Nations resolutions concerning a culture of peace, shared values among Abraham Accords partners, and the Sustainable Development Goals. It doesn’t say the curriculum would be based upon the Seven Noahide Laws. It doesn’t identify Chabad texts as educational source material, and it doesn’t describe rabbinic Noahide jurisprudence as the curriculum’s legal foundation.

That is important evidence against making the leap too early.

There is also another piece of evidence I didn’t want to ignore. The Global Imams Council publicly announced in February 2023 that it had become a strategic partner in developing the curriculum. Its description says representatives had participated in the Dubai roundtable and that the objective was agreement about principles and values for education from early childhood through academic levels. The organization describes the project as peace education based upon UN culture-of-peace resolutions and the Sustainable Development Goals.

So Muslims weren’t simply sitting in the audience.

They were participating in building it.

The Dubai participants also included Jewish, Muslim, political, academic and civil-society representatives from different countries and organizations. That fits what we discovered in Part 6: the network was genuinely interfaith and international even though explicitly Noahide organizations and advocates had participated in the broader movement.

Then I followed the curriculum from Dubai to Rome.

IPCGE described the next phase as taking place at Sapienza University of Rome, where the Chair of Religion and Law at the Faculty of Law would examine pathways toward developing the joint curriculum. The project would also include meetings with religious leaders and a meeting in the Italian Senate. After that, the proposed model was intended to reach United Nations Headquarters as a “best practices” outline available to parliamentarians, educators, religious leaders, media and other decision-makers.

And there is academic evidence that this wasn’t merely an event announcement.

Fabio Franceschi of Sapienza University published a 2023 academic article specifically examining “Strategies for a Model Curriculum for the Culture of Peace and the Role of Law.” Its abstract describes a model curriculum developed by a heterogeneous group of institutional and non-institutional civil-society actors in connection with Abraham Accords countries. Franceschi emphasizes peace education, human rights, intercultural law, conflict resolution and developing the knowledge, attitudes and skills necessary for a culture of peace.

Again, that isn’t a Noahide curriculum on its face.

And this is where our investigation becomes much more interesting than the theory we started with.

If I wanted to force the evidence into the claim that somebody was secretly building a Noahide curriculum for the world’s children, I could point to Cohen’s earlier participation in this network, the Institute of Noahide Code, global ethics, parliamentarians, mandatory education and international conferences. Put all those pieces close enough together, and they can sound alarming.

But proximity isn’t proof.

When I examine the curriculum-development documents themselves, the publicly stated foundations I can verify are culture-of-peace resolutions, Sustainable Development Goals, Abraham Accords shared values, tolerance, human rights, intercultural understanding, conflict resolution and opposition to extremism, antisemitism and racism.

So far, I haven’t found a published curriculum from this initiative telling children they must obey the Seven Noahide Laws.

I haven’t found lessons prohibiting idolatry.

I haven’t found a lesson teaching Noahide blasphemy law.

I haven’t found rabbinic courts being proposed for schoolchildren.

And I haven’t found evidence that children would be taught that the authority behind these international values came from the Noahide covenant.

That doesn’t mean such material cannot exist somewhere. It means I cannot claim it from the documents I have found.

What I can establish is that there was a real effort to build an international model curriculum around values its organizers considered universal. The project involved religious leaders, academics, civil-society organizations and political figures. It covered education beginning in early childhood. Its advocates envisioned the model being presented internationally and potentially adapted by different countries. Earlier IPCGE advocacy had explicitly connected this educational objective with legislation.

And something else is changing.

Rome in 2019 talked about creating a model curriculum for UN member states. Dubai in 2023 narrowed the immediate development process around the Abraham Accords and shared values among participating nations, while still describing the resulting model as something potentially useful much more broadly. The project appears to be evolving from a global aspiration into an attempt to build something through a smaller group of countries and institutions first.

That gives us the next trail.

Because Dubai wasn’t supposed to be the destination.

It was a stage.

The plan explicitly described Dubai, then Rome, and then presentation of the initiative at United Nations Headquarters. And from there, the educational campaign would continue appearing in international political settings.

So now we follow the curriculum geographically.

From Rome to Dubai.

Investigation 6 — From Rome to Dubai

Now I want to follow the project chronologically, because something important happened between Rome in 2019 and Dubai in 2023. The ambition remained international, but the strategy became more focused. Instead of beginning with every United Nations member state at once, the organizers eventually concentrated on a smaller group of countries connected through the Abraham Accords and attempted to develop a model that could later be presented more broadly.

Rome gives us the starting point. On March 7, 2019, IPCGE and its partners proclaimed the Rome Agreement at a conference held in the Italian Senate. The agreement called for developing a model curriculum for all age levels and using that model to encourage national legislation in UN member states toward mandatory education on a culture of peace and the Sustainable Development Goals. It also said the curriculum should be adaptable to different national requirements.

That distinction is important. They were not proposing one identical textbook that every country would be forced to use. The published plan envisioned an outline that different countries could adapt. But the aspiration was unquestionably international, and the organizations explicitly wanted parliamentarians and governments involved.

The campaign continued through 2019. IPCGE’s September UN Headquarters material referred back to the Rome Declaration and described legislation for mandatory education from kindergarten through academic studies. It also cited a Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly written declaration supporting IPCGE’s initiative and calling for national legislation concerning culture-of-peace and SDG education. Again, that declaration was not binding European law, but it demonstrates that IPCGE was actively taking the proposal to political institutions outside Italy.

Then several years later, the project appears in a more focused form.

On February 12 and 13, 2023, IPCGE and partner organizations convened a roundtable in Dubai titled “Strategy for Joint Abraham Accords Model Curriculum for the Culture of Peace and SDG’s.” The participating organizers included IPCGE, the Global Center for Integrity and Righteousness, the Jewish Council of the Emirates and Alsadiqin, with additional sponsors identified in the published material.

This wasn’t simply another conference saying education is important.

The stated objective was to develop agreement among Abraham Accords partner nations concerning the main principles and values that should appear in a model curriculum extending from early education through academic-level education. The organizers identified three foundations for that curriculum: United Nations culture-of-peace resolutions, shared values among Abraham Accords partners and the Sustainable Development Goals.

That is the point where I have to stop and compare Dubai with Rome.

Rome said all UN member states.

Dubai began with Abraham Accords nations.

Rome spoke about developing a model curriculum.

Dubai spoke about developing agreement over the actual principles and values that should go into that curriculum.

Rome envisioned an international model.

Dubai appears to have been an attempt to begin constructing it through a smaller coalition.

And the Dubai organizers openly said they still intended to take the resulting model outward. Their published plan says the February roundtable would be followed by an academic conference in Rome, then another European conference, and finally presentation of the initiative at United Nations Headquarters as a best-practices model that all UN member states could consider according to their own geopolitical circumstances and needs.

So the global ambition didn’t disappear.

The development strategy changed.

The Dubai meeting concluded with what IPCGE calls the Dubai Declaration, under which participants pledged to continue working toward the objectives they had discussed. The published agenda also reveals three specific areas of discussion: developing the joint model curriculum, establishing an academic, social and media framework to support it, and presenting the proposed curriculum as a global model.

Then the project went back to Rome.

IPCGE’s description of Stage II says meetings were scheduled for March 1 and 2, 2023. The academic component was to be hosted by the Chair of Religion and Law at the Faculty of Law at Sapienza University of Rome. The stated purpose was to examine pathways for developing the joint curriculum. Meetings with religious leaders from the Abrahamic faiths and a meeting in the Italian Senate were also part of the planned framework of support.

And now we have something outside IPCGE’s own website confirming that the curriculum project was being treated seriously enough for academic examination.

Fabio Franceschi of Sapienza University subsequently published a 2023 scholarly article titled “Pathways to Peace: Strategies for a Model Curriculum for the Culture of Peace and the Role of Law.” His abstract describes a model curriculum developed by a heterogeneous collection of institutional and non-institutional civil-society actors within the context of Abraham Accords countries, while noting that the model could potentially be extended globally.

Franceschi describes the underlying educational approach in terms of peace, human rights, intercultural law, religious and cultural diversity and conflict resolution. He emphasizes developing knowledge, attitudes and skills necessary to establish and sustain a culture of peace.

And once again, I went looking for the Noahide Code.

In the material documenting this stage of curriculum development, I do not find evidence establishing that the proposed curriculum was constructed around the traditional Seven Noahide Laws. The Dubai announcement identifies UN culture-of-peace resolutions, shared Abraham Accords values and the SDGs as its foundations. The Sapienza academic description emphasizes peace, human rights and intercultural approaches.

That matters because of where this investigation began.

We know Cohen and the Institute of Noahide Code participated in the broader global-ethics network. We know Cohen interpreted universal ethics through a Noahide framework. We know IPCGE and the Institute previously worked together. But those connections do not allow me to automatically relabel the Dubai curriculum a Noahide curriculum.

If the Seven Laws are inside it, I want to find them.

If they aren’t, I am not going to put them there.

What I can document is already significant enough. An initiative that began with international advocacy for mandatory culture-of-peace and SDG education in 2019 developed into an effort to create a model curriculum among Abraham Accords partners in 2023. The organizers envisioned education beginning in early childhood and continuing through higher education. They brought religious leaders, academics, civil-society organizations and political institutions into the process. And they explicitly envisioned the resulting model being presented at United Nations Headquarters for possible consideration by countries beyond the original participating group.

But notice another important phrase in the 2023 material.

The final outline was supposed to be available for countries to use according to their specific national and regional needs. That means the evidence still doesn’t support the idea of one international authority dictating an identical curriculum to every classroom on earth. What we have is an advocacy network attempting to create a model and persuade governments and educators to adopt or adapt it.

That distinction keeps following us throughout this investigation.

Access isn’t authority.

Proposal isn’t law.

A model isn’t a mandate.

And participation isn’t control.

But the geographical trail doesn’t end in Dubai or Rome. The organization continued carrying its educational message into political institutions.

And eventually, it reached another place that matters enormously when we are asking who gets to influence what children are taught.

The European Parliament.

Investigation 7 — Then the European Parliament

The trail doesn’t end with Rome, Dubai or the United Nations. On May 20, 2025, the Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Global Ethics took this educational discussion into another major political institution: the European Parliament in Brussels. The meeting was held in a European Parliament conference room under the title “Strategies to Combat Radicalism in the Middle East and Around the Globe through Education for Tolerance and a Culture of Peace.”

That sounds significant, and it is. But I want to establish immediately what it does and does not prove. Holding a conference inside the European Parliament is evidence of access. Having members of the European Parliament participate is evidence that political officials were engaged with the subject. It does not mean that the European Parliament adopted IPCGE’s curriculum, endorsed the Noahide Laws or passed legislation implementing what the conference participants proposed.

The published agenda identifies MEP Antonio López-Istúriz White among those giving welcoming remarks and MEP Assita Kanko among the keynote speakers. Other participants represented the United Arab Emirates, the Higher Committee of Human Fraternity, the Global Council for Tolerance and Peace, TRENDS Research and Advisory and other organizations. IPCGE director Shoshana Bekerman also participated. The meeting therefore brought political, diplomatic, civil-society and religious interests into the same room.

And look at the stated reason for bringing them together.

The organizers argued that military, legal and security responses were not sufficient to counter radicalism and violent extremism. Their published concept said sustainable peace also had to be rooted in education, cultural understanding and shared ethical values. The meeting was explicitly connected with Sustainable Development Goal 16, UN culture-of-peace resolutions and interreligious and intercultural dialogue.

That basic idea wasn’t foreign to the European Parliament. Years before IPCGE’s 2025 event, the Parliament had discussed education, intercultural dialogue and citizenship as tools for addressing intolerance, racism and radicalization. A 2015 European Parliament report, for example, discussed shaping education policy to help prevent marginalization, intolerance, racism and radicalization while promoting democratic citizenship and EU values.

So IPCGE did not bring the idea of using education against extremism into a European institution that had never considered it before.

That matters.

But the 2025 meeting also connects directly back to the trail we have been following. IPCGE’s description says this conference formed part of a broader initiative tracing itself to its 2016 high-level panel and 2018 parliamentarians’ summit at the United Nations, followed by declarations in Rome, Paris and New York. In other words, IPCGE itself presents the European Parliament meeting as another stage in the same longer campaign involving education, global ethics and political institutions.

Then we reach the curriculum.

According to IPCGE’s published summary, Shoshana Bekerman proposed a model curriculum inspired by the United Arab Emirates’ tolerance-focused educational approach. The discussion emphasized tolerance, critical thinking and mutual respect as ways of countering extremist narratives. Participants also discussed making educational material broadly accessible online and reforming curricula believed to contribute to radicalization.

That gives us another important development.

Back in Rome in 2019, we were reading about the intention to devise a model curriculum. In Dubai in 2023, participants were discussing which principles and values should form the basis of a joint Abraham Accords model curriculum. By the European Parliament meeting in 2025, IPCGE’s own account says Bekerman was proposing a model curriculum inspired by an existing national example.

So the idea hadn’t disappeared.

It kept developing.

But this is exactly where the investigation has to slow down, because the words “European Parliament” can make the story sound much larger than the evidence allows. I searched for evidence that the European Parliament formally adopted IPCGE’s proposed curriculum, and I have not found such an adoption in the material examined. The source documenting this particular May 2025 meeting is IPCGE’s own event page. The official European Parliament materials I found separately establish that the Parliament has supported education, democratic citizenship, tolerance and intercultural dialogue as tools against radicalization, but that is not the same thing as formally adopting IPCGE’s specific program.

That distinction protects us from making the same mistake we have been warning about throughout this series.

A conference room isn’t legislation.

An MEP speaking isn’t a parliamentary vote.

A curriculum proposal isn’t an educational mandate.

And a European Parliament venue doesn’t transform a private organization’s recommendations into European Union policy.

But there is something else I can’t dismiss.

IPCGE successfully carried this educational initiative into rooms occupied by lawmakers and diplomats. Its own public history shows meetings at the United Nations, the Italian Senate, Dubai, Rome and eventually the European Parliament. By 2025, it was still talking about educational models as a way to shape attitudes toward tolerance, extremism, religion and peace.

And the European Parliament meeting produced proposals that went beyond simply telling children to be kind to one another. IPCGE’s published summary says participants discussed a globally accessible curriculum, an international task force for deradicalization and counter-propaganda programs. The summary also reports controversial policy suggestions concerning Palestinian educational funding and recognition of Israel. Those were proposals voiced in the conference setting, not policies adopted by the European Parliament, but they demonstrate why we need to examine the actual content rather than treating “culture of peace” as if it answers every question.

And once again, I went looking for Noahide law.

In the published agenda and summary for this European Parliament meeting, I do not find the Seven Noahide Laws presented as the proposed curriculum.

I don’t find children being instructed not to worship idols.

I don’t find Noahide blasphemy law.

I don’t find Noahide courts.

I don’t find Rabbi Cohen presented as the author of the curriculum.

What I find is language concerning tolerance, critical thinking, shared ethical values, combating radicalization, interfaith cooperation and peace education.

That doesn’t erase everything we discovered earlier. IPCGE has a documented history with the Institute of Noahide Code. Cohen participated in earlier events. Noahide principles entered the global-ethics discussion. The organizations advocated national legislation and mandatory education. Those connections remain part of the record.

But if Part 7 asks who gets to teach the children, then eventually we have to stop tracing organizations and start opening the textbook.

Because we have now followed the educational initiative from international declarations to parliamentarians, from Rome to Dubai and from Dubai into the European Parliament.

The organizers have told us repeatedly what they wanted the curriculum to accomplish.

Peace.

Tolerance.

Critical thinking.

Opposition to extremism.

Human dignity.

Interreligious understanding.

Sustainable development.

But those are descriptions of objectives.

They aren’t the curriculum itself.

And after everything we have uncovered, I don’t want another description.

I want the document.

I want the lessons.

I want the actual words that would be placed in front of children.

So Investigation 8 is where we stop asking what they said the curriculum would do.

Show me the actual curriculum.

Investigation 8 — Show Me the Actual Curriculum

This is the point where I stopped following conference announcements and started looking for the document itself. For several investigations now, I have been reading about a “model curriculum.” Rome called for one in 2019. The World Academy of Art and Science said in 2020 that it was helping compile one. Dubai launched a strategy to develop one in 2023. Rome’s Sapienza University examined the project academically. Then IPCGE carried the educational discussion into the European Parliament in 2025.

So show me the curriculum.

And this time, I found considerably more than another conference announcement.

Fabio Franceschi of Sapienza University published an academic paper in 2023 titled “Pathways to Peace: Strategies for a Model Curriculum for the Culture of Peace and the Role of Law.” The paper describes the curriculum project that emerged from this network and provides something we have been missing: proposed age groups and actual subject areas. It says the curriculum was intended primarily for Abraham Accords countries but potentially could become a model available globally.

The age range is extensive.

Franceschi describes separate educational stages for children ages five through eight, nine through eleven, twelve through fourteen and fifteen through seventeen. Higher education would receive a separate curriculum. He also says the program should enter teacher-training programs and what he calls strategic-security academic frameworks.

So this was not simply a university seminar about peace.

Children beginning around age five were contemplated within the model.

Now we can finally ask what they were supposed to learn.

The paper identifies subjects including peace and nonviolence, human rights, democracy, social justice, environmental ethics, civic responsibility, global citizenship, respect for religions and ethnic groups, international and intercultural understanding, and respect for cultural and linguistic diversity. Those are much more concrete than the phrase “global ethics.”

And this is where something important happens to our investigation.

I searched this material for the Seven Noahide Laws.

I looked for Noah.

I looked for prohibitions against idolatry.

I looked for blasphemy.

I looked for the Noahide sexual prohibitions.

I looked for rabbinic Noahide courts.

In the curriculum material I was able to locate, I did not find those things.

That doesn’t prove no draft, lesson plan or unpublished working document ever contained them. I cannot search material that isn’t publicly available. But the most substantive public description of the curriculum I have located doesn’t present itself as Noahide education. Its categories are peace education, human rights, democracy, social justice, environmental ethics, citizenship and intercultural understanding.

And that matches what the Dubai organizers publicly said they were building. Their February 2023 announcement says the curriculum would be based on UN culture-of-peace resolutions, shared values among Abraham Accords partners and the Sustainable Development Goals. It says the purpose of the Dubai discussions was to reach agreement about the main principles and values that should be included from early education through academic education.

The Global Imams Council independently described its participation in almost identical terms. It announced that it had become a strategic partner in developing the curriculum and said the Dubai roundtable sought agreement among Abraham Accords countries over principles and values for early and academic education. That matters because it further demonstrates that Muslim representatives weren’t simply being handed a completed Noahide curriculum. They were publicly described as participants in the development process.

Now there is another detail I don’t want to miss.

The proposed curriculum wasn’t intended to be identical at every age.

Franceschi says it should take account of children’s different ages and developmental levels. Higher education would receive deeper treatment of the issues involved in creating a culture of peace. That means what a five-year-old encountered was supposed to differ from what a seventeen-year-old or university student encountered.

That sounds obvious educationally, but it matters to our original question. We aren’t looking at evidence of somebody simply printing the Seven Laws on a sheet of paper and handing the same religious code to every student.

What we have is a proposal for age-structured values education.

There is still something I cannot show you, however.

I have not located a complete public textbook or complete classroom package from this initiative containing every lesson, reading, teacher instruction, exercise and assessment for each age group. The sources I found describe a model, its proposed structure, its values and its intended audiences. IPCGE itself referred to the final model as an “outline” or best-practices model that could be adapted according to national and regional needs.

That distinction is important.

We have more than a slogan.

But we don’t have evidence of one standardized international textbook imposed unchanged on classrooms around the world.

And the available material actually argues against that interpretation. The 2023 IPCGE description says the outline would be available to parliamentarians, educators, religious leaders, media and decision-makers to use according to specific national and regional needs. The Dubai announcement likewise says the proposed model would eventually be presented for UN member states to consider according to their own circumstances.

That means countries could potentially adapt it.

And adaptation creates another question.

If one country emphasizes human rights, another emphasizes religious tolerance, another emphasizes environmental ethics and another incorporates its own religious traditions, then there may never be one single curriculum whose contents answer every question about the project.

The model is the framework.

The implementation determines what children actually receive.

And that brings us back to the Noahide question.

The documentary connection between IPCGE and the Institute of Noahide Code that we established earlier remains real. Cohen’s Noahide worldview remains real. His participation in the global-ethics network remains documented. But when I finally reach the substantive curriculum description, the evidence I have does not allow me to say, “Here it is. They put the Seven Noahide Laws into the children’s curriculum and renamed them global ethics.”

I cannot make that claim.

In fact, one of the proposed curriculum principles creates an interesting tension with that theory. Franceschi’s description specifically includes respect for all religions and cultural diversity. Traditional Noahide teaching contains a prohibition against idolatry. Those concepts might be reconciled in various theological ways by Noahide thinkers, but they are not simply identical statements.

That is exactly why reading the actual material matters.

If I start with the theory and work backward, I can make every reference to justice look like Noahide courts, every reference to animals look like the prohibition against eating flesh from a living animal, every reference to family look like Noahide sexual law and every reference to God look like the prohibition against idolatry.

But that would be me inserting the Noahide Code into the curriculum.

The evidence has to put it there.

So far, it hasn’t.

What the evidence does establish is still worth examining. An international network advocated mandatory education. It developed a model covering children from approximately age five through higher education. It identified values including peace, human rights, democracy, social justice, environmental ethics, civic responsibility, global citizenship, religious respect and cultural diversity. It sought support from international and regional institutions and envisioned governments adapting the model through their own educational and legislative systems.

And that leaves us with a much larger question than whether the curriculum is secretly Noahide.

Every school teaches values.

Even deciding that schools should teach no religion is itself a decision about the boundaries of education. Schools teach children how citizens should treat each other, what rights people possess, what behavior society accepts and rejects, and what responsibilities accompany citizenship.

The real question isn’t whether children will encounter values.

They will.

The question is who gets to define them.

And that takes us to Investigation 9.

Every school teaches values.

Investigation 9 — Every School Teaches Values

After looking for the actual curriculum, I realized there is a larger issue here that we shouldn’t avoid. It would be easy to talk about “values education” as though somebody suddenly discovered a way to put morality into schools. But schools have always taught values. They teach them through rules, history, literature, discipline, citizenship, classroom behavior and even through what teachers praise or condemn.

Tell children not to cheat, and you have taught honesty.

Tell them not to bully another student, and you have taught something about human dignity.

Teach them that everyone deserves equal treatment under the law, and you have taught a moral and civic principle.

Teach them that racism is wrong, and you have made a value judgment.

Education cannot completely escape values because the moment a society teaches children how they should treat other human beings, it has entered the territory of morality.

That is why I don’t think the important question is whether IPCGE’s proposed curriculum contains values. Of course it does. The more important question is where those values come from, who defines them, how much authority government has to require them and what happens when the values taught by the school conflict with the values taught by the child’s family.

And this isn’t a question unique to IPCGE, Chabad or the Noahide movement.

UNESCO openly describes education in similar terms. Its current global-citizenship program says education provides learners not merely with knowledge but with values, attitudes and skills intended to cultivate tolerance, respect, human rights and peace. UNESCO’s 2023 Recommendation on Education for Peace, Human Rights and Sustainable Development goes even further, identifying guiding principles and learning outcomes involving knowledge, skills, values, attitudes and behaviors.

So when the curriculum we examined in Investigation 8 includes peace, human rights, democracy, social justice, environmental ethics, civic responsibility, global citizenship and respect for religions and cultures, it isn’t operating in some completely separate educational universe. Those subjects substantially overlap with an international educational movement that predates this particular model curriculum.

SDG Target 4.7 makes that especially clear. It calls for learners to acquire knowledge and skills connected with sustainable development, human rights, gender equality, a culture of peace and nonviolence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity. UNESCO describes this target as touching directly upon the social, humanistic and moral purposes of education.

That word matters.

Moral.

Because now we can stop pretending this is only about mathematics and reading.

International organizations are openly talking about education as something that shapes how children understand themselves, other people and the world. UNESCO says education can develop values and attitudes and describes education as transformative. Its 2023 Recommendation provides guidance extending from laws and public policy into curriculum development, teaching practices, learning environments and assessment.

None of that proves a Noahide agenda.

In fact, it helps explain why we must be careful about making that claim.

If a curriculum teaches human rights, peace, environmental responsibility or respect for other people, I cannot identify those principles as Noahide merely because Noahide advocates also embrace them. Christians teach many of those values. Muslims teach many of them. Jews teach many of them. Secular human-rights organizations teach many of them. International institutions teach many of them.

Shared morality doesn’t establish common religious authority.

That was one of the most important lessons from Part 6, and it becomes even more important when children enter the picture.

Suppose Cohen says respect for human life ultimately comes from God’s command to Noah. A Christian teacher might say human beings possess dignity because they were created in the image of God. A secular human-rights educator might ground the same principle in inherent human dignity. All three might arrive at the conclusion that murder and violence are wrong while disagreeing profoundly about why.

The classroom lesson might therefore contain the shared conclusion without containing any of the competing theological foundations.

That appears much closer to the curriculum material we have actually found.

But there is still a serious question hiding underneath that arrangement.

Who decides which shared conclusions qualify as universal?

Peace sounds easy until people disagree about what justice requires.

Tolerance sounds easy until somebody holds a belief another person considers intolerant.

Religious freedom sounds easy until one religion teaches that another religion is false.

Global citizenship sounds positive to one family and potentially conflicting with national identity to another.

Environmental responsibility can mean teaching children not to pollute, or it can extend into complicated political questions about economics, energy and government regulation.

The word “values” doesn’t resolve those disagreements.

It contains them.

And this is where the Rebbe’s Moment of Silence becomes an interesting comparison. Whatever we think about his theological motivation, the structure he proposed placed the religious content primarily with the family. The school supplied the silence. The parent supplied the meaning. The teacher wasn’t supposed to tell the child which God to contemplate or which theology to accept.

The international model we are investigating works differently.

Here, institutions and curriculum developers identify certain values as suitable for formal education. Religious leaders, academics, civil-society organizations and political figures participate in developing or supporting the framework. Governments are then encouraged to incorporate appropriate principles into national educational systems.

That doesn’t automatically make the second approach wrong.

But it does shift authority.

And once education becomes compulsory, that authority deserves examination.

There is another distinction we need to preserve. UNESCO’s Recommendation is a standard-setting instrument and policy framework; describing what UNESCO recommends is not the same thing as saying every recommendation is automatically binding domestic law. Likewise, IPCGE advocating mandatory education doesn’t mean every country has enacted its proposed curriculum. We have to keep separating international recommendations, political advocacy, model curricula and actual enforceable national law.

That same discipline applies to the Noahide question.

We found a Noahide organization participating in this broader network.

We found Cohen explicitly connecting Noahide principles with universal ethics.

We found cooperation between the Institute of Noahide Code and IPCGE.

We found advocacy for legislation.

We found advocacy for mandatory education.

We found a model curriculum being developed from early childhood through higher education.

But when we finally examined the substantive curriculum description, we did not find evidence that children were being instructed in the complete Seven Noahide Laws.

That finding has to count.

If this investigation is going to mean anything, evidence against the theory has to matter just as much as evidence supporting parts of it.

And perhaps the more important issue isn’t whether every value in this curriculum secretly came from Noahide law. The deeper issue is something every parent eventually confronts regardless of religion or politics.

Someone is going to teach children what society considers right and wrong.

Parents will do it.

Churches, synagogues and mosques will do it.

Teachers will do it.

Governments will do it through laws and curricula.

Culture will do it through television, entertainment and the internet.

International organizations will advocate their own frameworks.

There is no completely value-free childhood.

So the question isn’t whether children will be taught values.

The question is who gets to define those values, who gets to challenge them, how transparent their origins are and how much room remains for parents and families who disagree.

That brings us to the final investigation of Part 7.

Who gets to define what children are taught?

Investigation 10 — Who Gets to Define What Children Are Taught?

After following this trail from the Rebbe’s Moment of Silence to Rome, the United Nations, Dubai and the European Parliament, I think we have finally reached the question underneath all the other questions. It isn’t simply whether somebody wants children taught peace, tolerance or global citizenship. Every education system teaches values in some form. The harder question is who receives the authority to decide which values become part of compulsory education.

And the answer isn’t one organization.

There isn’t a single room somewhere where Chabad, IPCGE, UNESCO or the United Nations writes a curriculum and then orders the world’s schools to teach it. The evidence we have examined doesn’t support that picture. What we found instead is a chain of influence involving religious organizations, advocacy groups, academics, international organizations, parliamentarians, governments, education ministries, local authorities, teachers and parents.

That distinction may be the most important finding in Part 7.

Look at the United States as an example. The U.S. Department of Education explicitly says that education is primarily a state and local responsibility. Federal law prevents the Department from exercising general control over school curricula, programs of instruction, textbooks and instructional materials. States establish standards, while states and local educational agencies develop curricula.

So if an international organization creates a model curriculum, that organization doesn’t suddenly acquire the legal authority to walk into an American classroom and require it.

Something else has to happen.

The ideas have to travel through institutions that actually possess educational authority.

That is exactly why the language we encountered earlier about parliamentarians matters. IPCGE wasn’t merely interested in persuading individual teachers. Its strategy involved political leaders because political systems determine whether an educational proposal remains voluntary, becomes part of government policy or eventually enters legislation.

International organizations can influence that conversation without possessing the final authority themselves.

UNESCO provides a perfect example. In 2023, all 194 UNESCO member states adopted its Recommendation on Education for Peace, Human Rights and Sustainable Development. UNESCO describes the Recommendation as covering everything from laws and policies to curriculum development, teaching practices, learning environments and assessment. It explicitly seeks to cultivate knowledge, skills, values, attitudes and behaviors.

That sounds powerful because it is influential.

But UNESCO also explicitly calls the Recommendation non-binding guidance.

Those two facts have to remain together.

It can influence national policy.

It doesn’t automatically become national law.

And this helps us understand what we have been seeing throughout this investigation. International organizations and advocacy networks can develop frameworks. Academics can provide research. Religious leaders can contribute ethical ideas. Parliamentarians can promote them. Governments can adopt portions of them. Education ministries can translate policies into standards. School systems can choose materials. Teachers can turn those materials into actual classroom instruction.

Influence moves through layers.

That is very different from control.

And parents occupy another layer entirely.

Parents teach children before governments ever reach them. They transmit religion, morality, culture, language and family traditions. But once children enter compulsory education, parents no longer possess exclusive control over what their children encounter. Schools necessarily introduce information and values beyond the home.

That creates an unavoidable tension in a pluralistic society.

One family may believe morality comes from God.

Another may believe morality can be grounded in human reason.

One family may believe particular sexual behavior is sinful.

Another may reject that teaching.

One family may understand humanity primarily through religious identity.

Another may emphasize national citizenship.

Another may emphasize global citizenship.

A public education system containing children from all of those families has to decide what it will teach without pretending those disagreements don’t exist.

That is why transparency matters more to this investigation than frightening terminology.

If somebody proposes “global ethics,” show me what that means.

If somebody proposes “mandatory education,” show me what is mandatory.

If somebody proposes “shared values,” tell me who selected them.

If religious organizations helped develop those values, identify them.

If governments intend to require the curriculum, show me the legislation.

And if someone claims the curriculum is secretly the Seven Noahide Laws, show me those laws inside the curriculum.

That last test is where our investigation produced an important result.

We found a documented Noahide connection to this network. We found Rabbi Yakov David Cohen and the Institute of Noahide Code. We found Cohen discussing the Noahide Laws at the United Nations. We found Noahide principles being connected with universal ethics. We found cooperation with IPCGE. We found IPCGE advocating national legislation and eventually mandatory culture-of-peace and SDG education.

But when we followed the trail into the curriculum itself, we didn’t find evidence establishing that children were being taught the complete traditional Noahide Code.

That evidence against the theory counts.

It doesn’t erase the connections we documented.

It tells us where those connections stop.

There is another reason this distinction matters. UNESCO itself openly advocates incorporating universal values, peace, democratic participation, diverse perspectives and global citizenship into education. Its International Bureau of Education describes curriculum as an important instrument for peacebuilding and social cohesion. None of that requires a hidden Noahide explanation because the international educational institutions publicly state what they are trying to accomplish.

That doesn’t mean everyone has to agree with those educational goals.

Parents and citizens can debate them.

They can ask whether “global citizenship” belongs in compulsory education. They can debate environmental education, religion, human rights, sexuality, nationalism, tolerance, social justice and dozens of other subjects. Those are legitimate questions precisely because education shapes children.

But disagreement with those values isn’t evidence that Chabad controls the curriculum.

And agreement with those values isn’t evidence that someone follows Noahide law.

That is the line I think we have to hold.

Part 7 began with the Rebbe’s Moment of Silence, and there is something fascinating about ending here. His proposed model was remarkably limited in terms of classroom content. The school provided silence, while the family was supposed to provide much of its meaning. Whatever theological motivation stood behind his advocacy, the teacher wasn’t supposed to prescribe a particular religion during that moment.

Decades later, the international initiatives we followed were more ambitious. They discussed model curricula, universal values, international cooperation, parliamentarians, legislation and mandatory education. That represents a much larger role for institutions in defining what children should learn about society and morality.

But even there, I don’t find one hand controlling everything.

I find networks.

I find advocacy.

I find access.

I find overlapping interests.

I find religious people trying to influence secular institutions.

I find secular institutions trying to define universal values.

I find politicians participating.

I find academics developing frameworks.

I find international organizations encouraging governments to adopt educational principles.

And I find national governments ultimately retaining enormous power over what actually becomes compulsory inside their own systems.

That is a much messier picture than “someone runs the schools.”

But it is also more defensible from the evidence.

And now Part 7 leaves us with something we haven’t done yet.

Throughout this investigation, we have heard the phrase “Seven Noahide Laws” repeatedly. We have watched those laws described as universal ethics. We have watched Noahide advocates enter political and international spaces. We have examined legislation, global ethics and education.

But we still haven’t stopped and opened the complete traditional code itself.

Because seven short headings can sound remarkably harmless.

Don’t murder.

Don’t steal.

Establish justice.

Most people would hear those and wonder what anyone could possibly object to.

But the historical Noahide legal tradition contains considerably more interpretation beneath those seven headings than the headings themselves reveal.

And before we can answer whether adopting the full Noahide Code would threaten anyone’s religious freedom, we need to know exactly what the complete code says.

That is where Part 8 begins.

Ending — We Still Haven’t Opened the Complete Code

We started Part 7 with a simple question: who gets to teach the children? After following the evidence, the answer is much more complicated than the theory that brought us here. I don’t see evidence that Chabad controls the world’s classrooms. I don’t see evidence that the United Nations secretly ordered schools to teach the Seven Noahide Laws. And I haven’t found evidence that the model curriculum we examined is simply the Noahide Code with the name removed.

What I found was a network of influence rather than a chain of command. Religious leaders, advocacy organizations, academics, parliamentarians, diplomats and international institutions have all participated in conversations about morality, peace, tolerance, global citizenship and education. Some of the organizations we followed have genuine connections to Noahide advocacy. Others clearly come from completely different religious, political and academic traditions.

That distinction has followed us throughout this series.

Connection isn’t control.

Access isn’t authority.

Advocacy isn’t legislation.

A model curriculum isn’t a government mandate.

And similar values don’t prove that two systems are secretly the same system.

But neither should we pretend nothing happened.

The Institute of Noahide Code openly promoted the Seven Laws as universal principles. Rabbi Yakov David Cohen participated in international discussions connecting Noahide ideas with global ethics. IPCGE worked within overlapping networks involving parliamentarians, religious leaders and international institutions. Those networks advocated legislation concerning a culture of peace and the Sustainable Development Goals, and eventually they explicitly discussed mandatory education beginning with young children.

That is documented.

We followed that educational project from Rome to the United Nations, from Dubai back to Rome and eventually into a conference held at the European Parliament. We found a proposed model curriculum covering children from approximately age five through higher education. We found subjects including peace, human rights, democracy, social justice, environmental ethics, global citizenship, religious respect and cultural diversity.

But when I finally said, “Show me the curriculum,” something important happened.

The complete Seven Noahide Laws weren’t there.

At least not in the substantive public curriculum material we were able to examine.

That finding has to matter just as much as every connection we uncovered before it. Otherwise this isn’t an investigation. It is simply an attempt to prove what we decided before opening the evidence.

But there is still a problem.

We have spent seven parts talking about the Noahide Laws without really opening the legal tradition behind them.

Most people encounter the Seven Laws as seven short statements: don’t worship idols, don’t curse God, don’t murder, don’t commit prohibited sexual acts, don’t steal, don’t eat flesh taken from a living animal, and establish courts of justice. Presented that way, much of it can sound like a basic moral code.

But those seven headings aren’t the entire legal tradition.

Behind them stands centuries of rabbinic interpretation concerning what the commandments mean, who is subject to them, how violations are determined, what courts are supposed to do and what penalties classical sources associate with violations. That is a very different investigation from asking whether somebody supports peace, opposes murder or believes governments should administer justice.

And that distinction may explain some of the confusion surrounding this entire subject.

When a Noahide advocate says “universal ethics,” what exactly does he mean?

Does he mean the broad principles?

Does he mean modern moral concepts inspired by those principles?

Or does he mean the complete traditional legal framework developed around them?

Those aren’t necessarily the same thing.

If someone says the Noahide prohibition against murder corresponds with the universal value of respecting human life, there may be enormous agreement across religions and cultures.

But what happens when we move to idolatry?

What happens with blasphemy?

What does traditional Noahide jurisprudence classify under prohibited sexual relationships?

What does establishing courts actually require?

And perhaps most importantly for our investigation, what penalties appear in the classical legal tradition?

Those questions matter because Part 8 isn’t going to ask whether Noahide advocates are nice people, whether Chabad performs charitable work or whether modern Noahide organizations say they support religious freedom.

We’re going to examine the code.

And we need to apply exactly the same standard we have used throughout this investigation.

If an alarming claim isn’t supported by the source, we don’t repeat it as fact.

If a traditional text says something uncomfortable, we don’t hide it.

If modern Chabad or Noahide authorities interpret the tradition differently, we document that too.

If American law protects conduct that traditional Noahide jurisprudence prohibits, we identify the conflict.

And if modern Noahide advocates explicitly reject imposing those traditional religious penalties through government, that evidence counts too.

Because only then can we answer the question Part 8 is actually asking.

Would the full Noahide Code threaten religious freedom?

Not seven slogans on a website.

Not somebody’s interpretation on social media.

Not a conspiracy theory.

The complete traditional code.

We have followed the people.

We have followed the organizations.

We have followed the money.

We have followed Congress.

We have followed the United Nations.

We have followed the legislation.

And now we have followed the trail all the way into education.

But there is one thing we still haven’t done.

We haven’t opened the complete code.

That’s next.

Bibliography

• Chabad-Lubavitch. “A Moment of Silence.” Chabad.org. Accessed September 2026.
• Franceschi, Fabio. “Pathways to Peace: Strategies for a Model Curriculum for the Culture of Peace and the Role of Law.” Diritto e Religioni, no. 2 (2023): 367–397. Sapienza University of Rome.
• Global Imams Council. “GIC Partners with the Inter-Parliamentary Coalition to Develop Peace Curriculum.” February 2023.
• Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Global Ethics. “History.” IPCGE. Accessed September 2026.
• Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Global Ethics. “Rome Agreement on Education for the Culture of Peace and Sustainable Development Goals.” Rome, March 2019.
• Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Global Ethics. “Promoting National Legislation on Mandatory Education for the Culture of Peace and Sustainable Development Goals.” United Nations Headquarters, New York, May 2019.
• Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Global Ethics. “Culture of Peace through Legislation for Mandatory Education from Kindergarten through Academic Studies.” United Nations Headquarters, New York, September 2019.
• Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Global Ethics. “Strategy for Joint Abraham Accords Model Curriculum for the Culture of Peace and SDG’s.” Dubai, February 12–13, 2023.
• Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Global Ethics. “Pathways for Joint Abraham Accords Model Curriculum for the Culture of Peace and SDG’s.” Rome and United Nations initiative, 2023.
• Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Global Ethics. “Strategies to Combat Radicalism in the Middle East and Around the Globe through Education for Tolerance and a Culture of Peace.” European Parliament, Brussels, May 20, 2025.
• Institute of Noahide Code. “Education.” Noahide.org. Accessed September 2026.
• Institute of Noahide Code. “Mobilizing Cultural and Religious Ethics to Promote the U.N. Post-2015 Development Goals.” Noahide.org. Accessed September 2026.
• Institute of Noahide Code. “Sustaining Peace and Conflict Prevention Through Multi Track Education and Initiatives for the Culture of Peace and SDG’s.” United Nations Headquarters, May 30, 2018.
• Schneerson, Menachem M. Addresses and public statements concerning a Moment of Silence in public schools, 1983. Chabad.org.
• UNESCO. Recommendation on Education for Peace and Human Rights, International Understanding, Cooperation, Fundamental Freedoms, Global Citizenship and Sustainable Development. Paris: UNESCO, 2023.
• UNESCO. “What You Need to Know about UNESCO’s Recommendation on Education for Peace, Human Rights and Sustainable Development.” November 24, 2023, updated May 15, 2026. The UNESCO explanation specifically identifies the Recommendation as non-binding guidance and notes its adoption by all 194 UNESCO member states.
• UNESCO. Recommendation on Education for Peace, Human Rights and Sustainable Development: An Implementation Guide. Paris: UNESCO, 2025.
• UNESCO. “International Legal Instruments for the Right to Education.” UNESCO, 2025. This source identifies the Education 2030 framework as a non-legally-binding political agenda while explaining its relationship to national legislative and policy measures.
• United Nations. Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. A/RES/70/1. New York: United Nations, 2015.
• United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. “Institute of Noahide Code.” Civil Society Participation database. United Nations.
• World Academy of Art and Science. “Rome Conference on Education for the Culture of Peace and Sustainable Development Goals.” WAAS Newsletter, 2019.
• World Academy of Art and Science. “Model Curriculum for the Culture of Peace and Sustainable Development Goals.” WAAS Newsletter, April 2020.

Endnotes

1. Menachem M. Schneerson repeatedly advocated a daily Moment of Silence in American public schools during the 1980s, arguing that schools should provide the time while parents, rather than teachers, should principally determine its religious or moral content. Chabad-Lubavitch, “A Moment of Silence,” Chabad.org, accessed September 2026.
2. The distinction between a school providing a neutral period of silence and the state prescribing religious activity became constitutionally important in the United States. In Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38 (1985), the Supreme Court invalidated an Alabama moment-of-silence provision after finding that the legislative record demonstrated a religious purpose behind the addition of “voluntary prayer.”
3. The Institute of Noahide Code’s United Nations civil-society materials describe education and dissemination as part of its mission and connect that mission to promoting the Laws of Noah as universal ethical principles. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Civil Society Participation, “Institute of Noahide Code,” organizational profile.
4. The Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Global Ethics developed an international strategy involving parliamentarians, religious leaders, academics and other civil-society actors. Its published history records conferences and meetings at the United Nations, in Rome and in other international political settings as part of its culture-of-peace and Sustainable Development Goals initiatives. Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Global Ethics, “History,” accessed September 2026.
5. On May 30, 2018, IPCGE held a Multi Track Council Forum at United Nations Headquarters under the title “Sustaining Peace and Conflict Prevention Through Multi Track Education and Initiatives for the Culture of Peace and SDG’s.” The program incorporated educational, diplomatic, religious, social-justice and cultural approaches and identified Rabbi Yakov David Cohen as founder of the Institute of Noahide Code. Institute of Noahide Code, “Sustaining Peace and Conflict Prevention Through Multi Track Education and Initiatives for the Culture of Peace and SDG’s,” May 30, 2018.
6. The March 2019 Rome Agreement called for development of a model curriculum covering all age levels and envisioned making that framework available to parliamentarians, educators, media representatives, religious leaders and other decision-makers. It also advocated national legislation supporting mandatory education concerning a culture of peace and the Sustainable Development Goals. Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Global Ethics, “Rome Agreement on Education for the Culture of Peace and Sustainable Development Goals,” Rome, March 2019.
7. The fact that the Rome conference occurred in the Italian Senate should not be confused with enactment by the Italian Parliament. The event and agreement demonstrate political access and advocacy, while the documentary record examined for Part 7 did not establish that Italy enacted the proposed model curriculum as national law.
8. IPCGE continued the legislative-education campaign at United Nations Headquarters in May and September 2019. Its published materials described efforts to promote national legislation for mandatory culture-of-peace and SDG education extending from kindergarten through academic studies. These were advocacy initiatives rather than evidence of a United Nations mandate binding member states.
9. The World Academy of Art and Science subsequently reported that it and the World University Consortium were assisting IPCGE with compilation of a model curriculum proposal for the culture of peace and Sustainable Development Goals. The proposal was intended to become available to parliamentarians, government officials, educators and others rather than function as a single automatically binding international curriculum.
10. On February 12–13, 2023, IPCGE and partner organizations convened the Dubai roundtable, “Strategy for Joint Abraham Accords Model Curriculum for the Culture of Peace and SDG’s.” The stated objective was to reach agreement about principles and values for a model curriculum extending from early education through academic education. IPCGE identified UN culture-of-peace resolutions, shared values among Abraham Accords participants and the Sustainable Development Goals as foundations for the initiative.
11. Muslim participation in the curriculum-development effort was independently acknowledged by the Global Imams Council, which announced its strategic partnership in the project following the Dubai roundtable. This evidence weighs against portraying the publicly documented development process simply as Chabad creating a curriculum and presenting it to other religions after the fact.
12. Fabio Franceschi of Sapienza University of Rome provided one of the most substantive academic examinations of the project in “Pathways to Peace: Strategies for a Model Curriculum for the Culture of Peace and the Role of Law,” published in Diritto e Religioni in 2023. Franceschi describes a curriculum developed by a heterogeneous collection of institutional and non-institutional civil-society actors associated with Abraham Accords countries, while noting its potential extension as a global model.
13. Franceschi’s study emphasizes peace education, human rights, intercultural law, cultural and religious diversity, conflict resolution and the development of knowledge, attitudes and skills necessary for sustaining a culture of peace. The academic description therefore provides evidence of substantive curriculum development but does not, in the material examined, establish that the curriculum consisted of the traditional Seven Noahide Laws.
14. The investigation therefore distinguishes between the documented Noahide connections surrounding earlier portions of the network and the contents of the curriculum itself. Rabbi Yakov David Cohen and the Institute of Noahide Code participated in the broader global-ethics movement, but organizational proximity alone is insufficient evidence that every later curriculum produced by participating organizations should be classified as Noahide education.
15. On May 20, 2025, IPCGE hosted a conference at the European Parliament in Brussels titled “Strategies to Combat Radicalism in the Middle East and Around the Globe Through Education for Tolerance and a Culture of Peace.” IPCGE’s own account describes policymakers, educators and religious leaders discussing values-based education and educational models intended to combat radicalization. The event demonstrates access to a European political institution but does not by itself demonstrate formal adoption of IPCGE’s proposals by the European Parliament.
16. The distinction between international educational advocacy and binding law is also important when examining UNESCO. UNESCO’s 2023 Recommendation on Education for Peace, Human Rights and Sustainable Development was adopted by all 194 UNESCO member states, but UNESCO expressly identifies the Recommendation as a non-binding guidance document.
17. UNESCO describes the Recommendation as addressing fourteen guiding principles and twelve learning outcomes involving knowledge, skills, values, attitudes and behaviors. Its areas of implementation extend from laws and policies to curriculum development, teaching practices, learning environments and assessment, demonstrating that international institutions openly view education as a means of transmitting values as well as factual knowledge.
18. UNESCO further describes the Recommendation as an advocacy and benchmarking instrument capable of influencing policy formulation and educational change. That potential influence should nevertheless remain analytically separate from governmental authority: influence over policy is not equivalent to possessing the legal authority to impose national curricula.
19. The same distinction applies to the wider Education 2030 framework. UNESCO describes the SDG 4 Education 2030 agenda as a universal political commitment rather than a legally binding obligation, although it calls upon states to consider legislative and policy measures in pursuing its educational objectives.
20. UNESCO’s 2025 implementation guide continues to encourage education professionals to apply the 2023 Recommendation in practice. Its existence demonstrates an ongoing effort to translate international educational principles into practical implementation tools, but it does not change the Recommendation’s underlying non-binding status.
21. The documentary evidence examined for Part 7 did not establish that the publicly described IPCGE model curriculum required children to accept the complete traditional Seven Noahide Laws, Noahide prohibitions concerning idolatry or blasphemy, Noahide courts or the classical penalties associated with Noahide jurisprudence. That is a finding about the public materials located in this investigation, not proof that no unpublished draft or separate educational material could exist.
22. The evidence instead supports a narrower conclusion: Noahide advocates participated in a larger international network concerned with global ethics, legislation and education, while the curriculum material located for Part 7 was publicly framed around peace, human rights, tolerance, cultural and religious understanding, civic responsibility, sustainable development and related values. Franceschi’s academic description independently supports the existence and international aspirations of that broader model-curriculum project.
23. For that reason, Part 7 distinguishes repeatedly among presence, relationships, access, advocacy, measurable influence, policy adoption and control. Conferences in government buildings establish access; declarations establish advocacy; curriculum proposals establish organized efforts to influence education. None of those facts alone establishes command over a government, school system or international institution.
24. Part 7 therefore ends without resolving the separate legal and religious question presented by the traditional Noahide Code itself. Determining whether implementation of the complete traditional code could conflict with modern protections for religious freedom requires examination of the primary rabbinic legal sources, their historical interpretations, modern Chabad and Noahide interpretations, and the difference between theological obligations and enforceable civil or criminal law. That examination belongs to Part 8 rather than being inferred from the educational material examined here.

#Chabad #NoahideLaws #NoahideCode #SevenNoahideLaws #InstituteOfNoahideCode #IPCGE #GlobalEthics #MandatoryEducation #ModelCurriculum #Education #CultureOfPeace #UnitedNations #EuropeanParliament #AbrahamAccords #Agenda2030 #SDGs #ReligiousFreedom #GlobalCitizenship #CauseBeforeSymptom #WhoReallyRunsTheWorld

Chabad, NoahideLaws, NoahideCode, SevenNoahideLaws, InstituteOfNoahideCode, IPCGE, GlobalEthics, MandatoryEducation, ModelCurriculum, Education, CultureOfPeace, UnitedNations, EuropeanParliament, AbrahamAccords, Agenda2030, SDGs, ReligiousFreedom, GlobalCitizenship, CauseBeforeSymptom, WhoReallyRunsTheWorld