The National Education Association Turns Against the Jews
By Mitch Siegler, Founder

Teachers’ unions, which were created for the noble purpose of improving wages and working conditions for their members, have abandoned that mission in favor of political activism. The National Education Association (NEA), the largest teachers’ union in the United States, has become a vehicle for a radical ideology that divides the world into oppressors and oppressed and filters every issue through the lens of race and power.

Among other noxious features, this ideology is hostile toward minorities that don’t fit neatly into its arbitrary boxes, including Jews and East Asians.

That hostility was made abundantly clear last week, when the NEA voted to cut ties with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a 112-year-old civil rights organization whose mission is to fight antisemitism. The approved measure read, “NEA will not use, endorse, or publicize materials from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), such as its curricular materials or statistics.”

In response, more than 375 Jewish organizations and synagogues signed an open letter addressed to Becky Pringle, the NEA's president, to “express…deep concerns about the growing level of antisemitic activity within teachers’ unions.”

But why did the NEA take such an extreme step?

Teachers have relied on ADL materials for decades when teaching Jewish identity, antisemitism, and the Holocaust, and the ADL remains the foremost authority on tracking antisemitic incidents in America. They reported that there were 9,354 such incidents in the U.S. in 2024, representing a 3.5x increase over the last five years and a 9x increase over the past decade.

This is important and alarming information. Why does the NEA want to hide it from students? Why the vote for a dramatic break with a highly reputable institution and fixture in American Jewish life?

In a word: antizionism.

The ongoing antisemitism crisis is driven by the demonization of Israel and, by extension, the Jewish people. Many NEA members have participated in this demonization, convinced that Israel is an illegitimate “settler colonial” country engaged in an ongoing, racialized genocide against indigenous Palestinians. And while they’re certainly entitled to voice their personal beliefs – however reprehensible – they’ve taken their anti-Israel convictions into the classroom.

NEA leaders believe not only that education is inherently political, but that it should be so. As a result, K-12 students have increasingly come under the sway of a toxic worldview under the guise of “social justice,” making them all too comfortable scapegoating Jews for Israel’s perceived evil.

Parents want teachers in the classroom, not activists. According to our survey, just 31% believe it’s acceptable for teachers to share their political views at school, and only 30% trust teachers’ unions.

After watching the NEA’s extremism, we expect those numbers to fall even further.