NEA Votes to Break with ADL Zionist Witch-Hunters,
But Union Tops Capitulate

Teachers Unions Must Fight 
Neo-McCarthyite Censorship

September 2, 2025 

In Portland, Oregon, on July 5 the Representative Assembly of the National Education Association (NEA) voted to cut ties with the vicious Zionist witch-hunters of the Anti-Defamation League, which is avidly fingering teachers and students while seeking to suppress criticism and protest of Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people. With almost 3 million members, the NEA is the largest union in the United States, representing public school teachers and staff, as well as faculty and staff at many colleges and universities. At its convention, New Business Item 39 stated:

“NEA will not use, endorse, or publicize any materials from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), such as its curricular materials or its statistics. NEA will not participate in ADL programs or publicize ADL professional development offerings.”

In response to the ADL’s attacks on teachers and students, and on academic freedom in general, many NEA teachers and caucuses had joined the “#droptheADL” campaign which seeks to break partnerships between the ADL and schools and various social organizations. The NEA resolution stated that: “Despite its reputation as a civil rights organization, the ADL is not the social justice educational partner it claims to be.” In fact, while once supporting civil rights struggles, since the 1970s it has been acting as a hit squad to squelch protest against Israeli crimes, labeling anti-Zionism “the new antisemitism.”

Following the vote by the Representative Assembly, the ADL and the heads of the American Jewish Committee and the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations issued a statement denouncing the resolution. It ranted: “This resolution was not just an attack on the ADL, but a larger attack against Jewish educators, students, and families.” Right-wing Republicans in Congress introduced a proposal to revoke the federal charter of the NEA. (Unique among labor unions, the NEA is a federally chartered corporation to “advance the interests of the profession of teaching.”)

In response to criticisms, former Massachusetts Teacher Association (MTA) president Merrie Najimy wrote: “The ADL consistently commits acts of anti-Palestinian racism by falsely conflating the criticism of Zionism and Israel with antisemitism, dehumanizing the Palestinian people, pushing to erase and censor Palestinian narratives in schools and targeting educators who speak up for Palestinian rights.” But on July 18, the NEA board of directors capitulated, overriding the Representative Assembly and declaring that it would not “boycott” the ADL. NEA president Becky Pringle issued a lame statement appealing to the ADL to support free speech and stop attacking teachers and students. Fat chance!

Despite this betrayal by the union tops, NEA affiliates should carry out the resolution and break all ties with the ADL! Capitulation to this Zionist, neo-McCarthyite intimidation and censorship will not protect the union and will only lead to more victimization of teachers.

For many decades the ADL has had a “ubiquitous presence in public schools around the country” supplying curricula and teacher training materials (Forward, 10 July). It has also acted as a propaganda arm of the Israeli state, such as defending the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon leading to the slaughter of thousands of Palestinians and Shia Muslims in the infamous Sabra and Shatila massacre. Lately, the ADL is pushing hard for repression of anti-Zionist viewpoints, denouncing anti-Zionist teachers as “Hamas supporters” and supposed apologists for “terrorism.” The ADL’s embrace of the Trump administration (and alliance with antisemitic Christian Zionists) led its president Jonathan Greenblatt to grotesquely excuse Elon Musk’s Nazi salutes at Trump’s inaugural celebration in January.

Meanwhile, the ADL tracks protests by thousands of Jewish activists in the anti-Zionist Jewish Voice for Peace, labeling them “antisemitic.” Now the ADL is promoting the “STOP HATE Act, a bipartisan bill in Congress that would order social media companies to censor posts criticizing Israel, such as videos showing the starvation of children and other war crimes in Gaza. The ADL lobbies for the continuation of U.S. arms shipments to Israel, without which the Gaza genocide would not be possible,[1] as well as for U.S. cops to be sent to Israel for “training” (in how to control and terrorize oppressed populations).

In recent months the ADL has veered even more sharply to the right, vociferously defending the genocidal “war” aimed at wiping out the Palestinian people in Gaza after the 7 October 2023 breakout from the giant prison that is Gaza and its indiscriminate attack on Israeli communities by Hamas. The ADL supported the Trump administration’s withholding of $400 million in federal grants to Columbia University for supposedly tolerating pro-Palestinian activism on campus. In March, ADL leader Greenblatt obscenely hailed the kidnapping by federal agents of Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil, a campus protest leader. 

The ADL has acted as informants for the FBI on Arab and pro-Palestinian campus groups since the 1950s. It used to ostensibly combat anti-black racism, anti-gay bigotry, and even Islamophobia, but now references to “racial justice” have mostly been dropped. Even in the 1980s, the ADL was exposed for its spying and infiltration activities against left-wing groups, including passing information on anti-apartheid activists to the white-supremacist regime in South Africa.

The ADL is currently blanketing schools with its “No Place for Hate” campaign. This “anti-bias training” explicitly equates criticism of Israel with antisemitism and promotes “standing with Israel.” It calls on students and teachers to report anti-Israel “bias incidents” to the ADL and other authorities. This has led to the ADL filing Title VI “civil rights” complaints against several schools and universities for supposedly creating a “hostile environment” for Jewish students and teachers. Failure to comply with a White House diktat will lead to withholding of federal funds.

Last year, an ADL “civil rights” complaint against Philadelphia’s school system demanded “suspension and expulsion” of students and “suspension or termination” of teachers for anti-Israel protests or simply statements. In Massachusetts, a 2023 MTA resolution calling to halt military support for “the Netanyahu government’s genocidal war on the Palestinian people in Gaza,” and another for the union to prepare curriculum resources on the history and current events in Israel and Occupied Palestine” set off a firestorm. The ADL launched a smear campaign against the MTA in the media and in state legislative hearings, giving rise to death threats to MTA officials and staffers. On August 7, a new ADL civil right complaint was announced against the Baltimore, Maryland school district.

On July 14, the Professional Staff 
Congress, an affiliate of the American
Federation of Teachers representing 
faculty and staff at the City University 
of New York (CUNY), held a protest
outside the Federal Building in NYC 
to denounce Congressional witch-
hunt hearings targeting CUNY and 
other universities in what the union 
rightly called the new McCarthyism.

The other national teachers union, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), with 1.7 million members, is led by supposed “progressive Zionist” Randi Weingarten. At the July 2024 AFT convention, members and locals put forward resolutions calling for divestment from Israel (an illusory liberal program seeking to pressure U.S. imperialism and corporations), for defense of pro-Palestinian students and faculty from repression, and for ending U.S. military aid to Israel. These resolutions were not even brought to a vote, as the AFT bureaucracy would only back a resolution for a “ceasefire” (under the Zionist jackboot) in Gaza and a “two-state” solution, i.e., a Palestinian mini-state subject to the Israeli stranglehold. And after endorsing “Genocide Joe” Biden for president in 2023, when he dropped out, Weingarten switched to Democrat Kamala Harris with lightning speed. The NEA similarly endorsed first Biden, and then Harris.

As Class Struggle Education Workers stated on the eve of the 2024 election, whether it’s over gag orders about genocide in Gaza or attacks on pro-Palestinian demonstrators, opposing deportations, defending transgender rights or defeating a racist crusade to erase black history from school libraries and classrooms, we need “a fighting workers party prepared to lead hard class struggle to defeat the bipartisan capitalist war on public education.” As the witch-hunters in Congress target colleges and universities as well as K-12 schools, teachers unions must take a strong stand in defense of the Palestinians and against the new McCarthyism seeking to regiment education in the service of imperialist and Zionist war. n​

[1] See “Gaza Genocide Made in USA,” in The Internationalist No. 73, June-August 2024. 

Class Struggle Education Workers is an organization, fraternally linked to the Internationalist Group, of union and non-unionized activists in all aspects of education fighting for a revitalization and transformation of the labor movement into an instrument for the emancipation of the working class and the oppressed.  See the CSEW program here. The struggle for students’ and educators’ rights, and mobilization against the genocidal war on the Palestinians continues. If you are interested in joining these efforts, contact the CSEW at cs_edworkers@hotmail.com.  ■