The Anti-Defamation League’s regional director says he is encouraged that the nation’s largest teachers union ultimately decided not to cut ties with the ADL, particularly amid the tense debates over curbing antisemitism in California schools.
Delegates of the National Education Association (NEA), a union with about 3 million members, passed a resolution in early July to disengage with the ADL amid intense criticism by pro-Palestinian activists over ADL’s support for Israel. On July 18, however, union leaders rejected that resolution.
The reversal came as the California branch of the National Education Association, known as the California Teachers Association (CTA), remains in conflict with mainstream Jewish organizations over its opposition of a state bill designed to address antisemitism in public schools. The bill, AB 715, is currently under consideration in Sacramento. A July 18 email from ADL’s Central Pacific office also mentioned the possibility that delegates of the California teachers union “may follow suit” and try to cut ties with the ADL.
The CTA did not respond to J.’s request for comment.
The national resolution, spearheaded by the NEA’s Educators for Palestine Caucus, would have barred the union from using, endorsing, or publicizing any ADL materials or data. The ADL’s work in schools includes the anti-bullying program No Place for Hate and the Holocaust education program Echoes & Reflections.
“This rejection of the resolution by the [NEA’s] executive board was a win for the entire Jewish community,” said Marc Levine, director of the ADL’s Central Pacific region office in San Francisco. “The resolution that was advanced to the NEA executive board was very clearly an antisemitic action. The ADL was singled out primarily because of our work in Jewish advocacy.”
Several Jewish delegates who are part of the NEA’s Jewish Affairs Caucus spoke out against the resolution prior to the delegates’ vote in early July.
Karen Bloom, a math teacher at Piedmont Middle School in Piedmont, was one of them.
Beyond her concern about the detrimental effects of the resolution on Jewish students, Bloom said she also took issue with its advocates’ lack of understanding of the full scope of the ADL’s work. Around six years ago, for example, Bloom introduced No Place For Hate to her school. She has witnessed its impact and success.
“The students are thinking and talking about how to make sure our school is welcoming to all,” Bloom told J. “I think it’s a great addition to our school.”
Because teachers unions typically do not have direct control over public school curricula, it’s unclear how much influence the ban would have had on schools if the NEA had chosen to implement it.
Some Jewish union members support cutting ties with the ADL, including a local teacher who helped bring the boycott resolution to a vote.
Judy Greenspan, a substitute middle school teacher at United for Success Academy in Oakland and a member of NEA’s Educators for Palestine Caucus, introduced the resolution to NEA delegates in early July.
In December 2023, Greenspan and other members of the Oakland teachers union organized an unauthorized teach-in on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict following the Oakland Unified School District superintendent’s failed effort to prevent it.
Greenspan did not respond to J.’s request for comment.
The ADL credited a national email campaign for the NEA leaders’ decision against shunning the ADL.
More than 400 Jewish organizations joined the campaign, according to Levine, who told J. that “hundreds of thousands” of individuals and groups additionally sent messages directly to the NEA’s leaders demanding that they abandon the resolution.
Although neither the NEA nor its state and local affiliate unions have formal partnerships with the ADL, the CTA has in the past cited the ADL directly as a source of information for teachers. In the June-July 2021 issue of its magazine California Educator, for example, the CTA referenced the ADL as a source for lesson plans on LGBTQ+ history and activism.
Despite the NEA leaders’ veto of the ADL resolution, its Educators for Palestine Caucus celebrated the NEA delegates’ vote as a symbol of support for a wider #DropTheADLFromSchools campaign. Opponents of the ADL claim it uses a distorted definition of antisemitism to punish criticism of Israel and Zionism.
Seth Brysk, the American Jewish Committee’s director for Northern California who has led trainings about antisemitism in schools, said the NEA resolution was the latest iteration of a type of extremism he has witnessed firsthand.
“The teachers unions are not simply targeting Jewish pro-Israel organizations,” he said. “They are targeting basic aspects of Jewish identity: who we are, our rights to self-determination, our rights to define our own identity and our right to be able to explain to others the hate that may be targeting us.”