The National Education Association, America’s largest teachers union, has voted to cut ties with the Anti-Defamation League. The ADL has played a significant role in public education over the years because of the growth of Holocaust studies, becoming a trusted partner of the unions in the process. That relationship might soon be over.
The reason the NEA is seeking to sever ties with the ADL is because the unions are more broadly expanding their dissemination of baldly anti-Semitic “classroom materials” and don’t want the ADL—or anyone—standing in their way. Which means the rationale behind the decision is potentially even more transformative than the decision itself.
If there is a silver lining here, it is this: The NEA vote exposes the public education establishment as having lied through its teeth regarding its post-Oct. 7 mission of bringing the Gaza war to the classroom.
Let’s use as an example the Massachusetts Teachers Association, a crucial affiliate of the NEA and an industry leader in providing educators with anti-Semitic classroom materials.
At a state legislature hearing on anti-Semitism in February, MTA boss Max Page was shown various such materials that had been provided to teachers. They included a dollar bill in the shape of a Star of David to represent U.S. aid to Israel, a keffiyeh-clad gunman instructing students that “What was taken by force can only be returned by force,” a propaganda poster for a designated terrorist organization, a poster depicting Jews as a forked-tongue snake, and plenty more.
Here is how Page responded when asked about the use of such images: “These are resources provided to our members to think about and learn about as educators and as citizens, and they were done thoughtfully and professionally. That does not mean one agrees with each one.” Instead, Page said, they were to help teachers consider “how you would use [these] items to actually engage in a debate over some very difficult issues.”
Asked again later in the hearing about the materials, Page said: “They are resources that one uses to look at an issue and look at what’s out there and our educators are capable enough to be able to evaluate.”
So here’s what we’ve got: You can provide to public elementary-school teachers literal propaganda sheets from designated terrorist organizations, and you can offer teachers the opportunity to present clear incitement to violence against Jews, because teachers are smart enough to know how to use them in the classroom. Trust the teachers.
And here’s a line from the NEA resolution passed this week: “NEA will not use, endorse, or publicize any materials from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), such as its curricular materials or its statistics.” In addition, “NEA will not participate in ADL programs or publicize ADL professional development offerings.”
Here’s a question: Could anything in the ADL classroom materials even come close to the type of violence-promotion that was highlighted in the Massachusetts hearing? Of course not. In fact, the question itself is ridiculous. The ADL has, especially in the past decade, bent over backwards to accommodate the sensibilities of the progressive left.
Post-Oct. 7, the ADL has worked harder to defend American Jews from the anti-Semitism raging around them and has de-prioritized the precious feelings of terrorists and their supporters. The only value that progressive institutions see in the ADL is in its propensity to criticize Jews. Once the ADL refocused its energy even modestly away from Jewish infighting, the left had no use for it.
The fact that these are public unions at government schools would be treated as scandalous if we were talking about any other country on earth. With any distance, we could easily see this for what it is: government-sanctioned and taxpayer-funded anti-Semitic indoctrination.
In January 2024, the Chicago Teachers Union publicly backed a City Council resolution that favored Hamas’s interests in the war. The next day, coincidentally, their students walked out of Chicago high schools holding signs that said “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Walkout organizers used that genocidal slogan when promoting the demonstration beforehand as well.
In voting to dump the ADL, the teachers union is telling on itself. Aren’t these educators supposedly wise enough to know how to present the materials they use in class, and to understand the value of challenging students to debate materials they might not agree with and might even find offensive?
The answer, at least as far as the NEA is concerned, is no. The unions do not consider their teachers to be discerning educators, nor do they trust their members to even come in contact with information with which they might not agree. Otherwise, dumping the ADL would be pointless and foolish.
And if the NEA doesn’t trust its union leaders and educators, perhaps the rest of us should follow suit.
