On July 6th, the National Education Association (NEA), the largest labor union in the United States, voted to cut all ties with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).
The NEA represents public school teachers and higher education staffers across the country. The decision, taken by the union’s 7,000-member Representative Assembly, deepens the NEA’s growing commitment to anti-racism and international solidarity. It also continues the union’s principled opposition to Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, as the NEA was among the first U.S. unions to call for a ceasefire.
The ADL, originally founded in 1913 to protect Jews from antisemitic persecution, once played a vital role in American life. From the 1920s through the ’40s, it was a strong voice against antisemitism and U.S. Nazism. In the McCarthyite 1950s, the ADL condemned the antisemitic overtones of the Red Scare, which often targeted Jewish Americans under the guise of fighting “Judeo-Bolshevism.”
But in recent decades, the ADL has veered away from that legacy. Its central mission today is not the protection of Jews, but the defense of the policies of the Israeli state at all costs, often through the weaponization of the charge of antisemitism.
Rather than combat actual antisemitism, the ADL has increasingly used its historical reputation to spread hasbara—pro-Israel propaganda—and to defame critics of Israeli policy. Over the last two years of Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza, the ADL has gone into overdrive, branding all protests—Jewish-led or otherwise—as antisemitic.
Jewish organizations like Jewish Voice for Peace, IfNotNow, and Neturei Karta have all been smeared by the ADL simply for standing in solidarity with Palestinians. Their Jewishness, apparently, does not exempt them from the label of “Jew-hating antisemite” when they challenge Israeli apartheid.
Nowhere has the ADL’s influence been more insidious than in the education sector. For 40 years, the ADL has been a ubiquitous presence in U.S. schools—pushing curriculum, programming, and teacher trainings under the banner of “anti-bias” education. But that influence has often come at the expense of Palestinian voices and broader anti-racist organizing.
In one recent example, the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA) began internally developing educational resources on the history of Palestine. The ADL seized on these materials, cherry-picked parts of them in order to misrepresent them, and accused the union of “glorifying terrorists” and “promoting antisemitism.” These attacks resulted in dangerous backlash against the MTA, including doxxing, death threats, and anti-labor attacks.
The ADL’s smear campaign didn’t stop at the MTA. The organization has attacked independent schools for inviting human rights speakers like Suzanne Barakat and Ruha Benjamin. It has published so-called “report cards” on universities based on their willingness to repress pro-Palestinian protests. And it has pressured administrations into implementing punitive measures that equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism—all while claiming to be a partner in civil rights education.
The ADL’s mislabeling of antisemitism has had the effect of trivializing real antisemitic threats. By crying “antisemite” at every critic of Israel, the ADL has played the role of the proverbial boy who cried wolf. When white nationalists and neo-Nazis actually do target Jews—as they did in Charlottesville and Pittsburgh—the word “antisemitism” now too often lands on deaf ears. In attempting to shield Israel from scrutiny, the ADL has made Jews less safe, not more.
The NEA’s vote marks a break from this dangerous dynamic. It’s a worker-led movement, standing up to the pro-war narrative that comes down from the ruling class.
The resolution approved by the union’s Representative Assembly declared that its members “will not use, endorse, or publicize materials” issued by the ADL, like curricular materials or statistics. It declared, “Despite its reputation as a civil rights organization, the ADL is not the social justice partner it claims to be.”
NEA delegate speaking in support of the resolution ahead of the final vote criticized ADL’s abuse of antisemitism charges against critics of Israeli policy and said it uses hyperinflated hate crime statistics to inflame and inflate fears around Jewish safety. Specifically, they called out the ADL’s false characterization of any and all expressions of solidarity with Palestinians as “antisemitic hate speech.”
One delegate, Stephen Siegel, said, “Allowing the ADL to determine what constitutes antisemitism would be like allowing the fossil fuel industry to determine what constitutes climate change.”
Though the delegates passed the measure the fight isn’t over, however. NEA lawyers have designated the approved resolution a “boycott,” a categorization that automatically sends the measure to the union’s Executive Committee before it can be implemented.
The ADL and its allies have already launched retaliatory campaigns against the teachers and their organization. Predictably, the ADL has declared that the NEA’s vote itself as antisemitic by falsely claiming Jewish teachers were “jeered” and “mocked” during the debate.
A group allied to the ADL, the North American Values Institute (formerly known as the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values) mixed accusations of antisemitism on the part of the union with right-wing messaging attacking the NEA for standing up to Trump’s assaults on DEI, calling teachers “lemmings” for disagreeing with the president.
But union educators have made their position clear: The ADL is not a partner in justice. It is a reactionary institution whose primary function today is to police speech, protect Israeli impunity, and punish solidarity.
The NEA’s decision weakens the ADL’s grip on education policy and begins to restore the meaning of antisemitism by refusing to let it be wielded as a weapon against human rights advocacy. In doing so, it strengthens the fight for both Palestinian liberation and Jewish safety.
As with all news-analysis and op-ed articles published by People’s World, the views reflected here are those of the author.
We hope you appreciated this article. At People’s World, we believe news and information should be free and accessible to all, but we need your help. Our journalism is free of corporate influence and paywalls because we are totally reader-supported. Only you, our readers and supporters, make this possible. If you enjoy reading People’s World and the stories we bring you, please support our work by donating or becoming a monthly sustainer today. Thank you!
CONTRIBUTOR
