K-12 Union Antisemitism Is Politicizing Classrooms, New Report Says

Public sector education unions have turned K-12 classrooms into theaters of anti-Zionist agitation, thereby alienating Jewish teachers and students, according to a new report by the Defense of Freedom Institute (DFI).

Titled, “Breaking Solidarity: How Antisemitic Activists Turned Teacher Unions Against Israel”, the report examines several major teachers unions and their escalation of anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish activity following the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel — a series of actions which included attempting to sever ties with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), staging protests in which teachers led chants of “Death to Israel,” and teaching students that Israel constitutes an “settler-colonial” state which perpetrates ethnic cleansing against Palestinians.

In New York City, report author Paul Zimmerman writes, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) has advanced from fostering popular support for anti-Zionism among students to seeking cover from government by placing one or more of its fellow travelers in high office. The UFT endorsed the New York City mayoral candidacy of Zohran Mamdani in July, calling the avowed socialist and Hamas sympathizer a potential “partner.”

“The historical record shows that, whatever their shortcomings, previous generations of teacher-union leaders stood up to antisemitism in K-12 schools on behalf of their Jewish members and promoted strong US support for Israel in the face of existential attacks on that country,” the report states. “Now, antisemitic activists grossly dishonor that legacy by weaponizing teacher unions to spread antisemitism, intimidate Jewish teachers, and recast the classroom as a battlefield against the West.”

Zimmerman outlines three concepts for reforming union conduct, reserving a significant role for the US Congress, which holds the power to investigate the union bosses and subpoena them before its relevant committees. He also calls on teachers to register their opposition by withholding compulsory union dues which ply union leadership with both resources and legitimacy.

“In the end, however, the millions of teachers who want no part in indoctrinating their students in anti-Western ideology — including antisemitism — or supporting unions that care more for supporting radical candidates and causes than making schools safe for Jewish educators and students must vote with their feet,” he concludes. “These teachers. who simply wish to help their students learn about the world and lead productive and meaningful lives, should consider abandoning their unions and cutting off the dues that subsidize this ugly agenda.”

Union antisemitism is receiving increased national attention, as previously reported by The Algemeiner.

On Monday, Jewish students employed as graduate workers by Columbia University filed a federal complaint against their campus labor union — Student Workers of Columbia, an affiliate of United Auto Workers (UAW) — alleging that its bosses devote more energy and resources to pursuing “radical policy proposals” than improving occupational conditions.

The National Right to Work Foundation (NRTW), a nonprofit organization which fights for worker mobility and freedom of representation that is providing the students legal counsel free of charge, said in a release shared with The Algemeiner that the students, who have formed the advocacy group Graduate Researchers Against Discrimination and Suppression (GRADS), are subjected to abuses which magnify problems inherent in compulsory union membership — chiefly that they may be forced to accept as representatives of their interests union bosses who act in “bad faith” and hold offensive beliefs.

NRTW pointed to another similar example in August, writing in a letter to the US Congress’s House Committee on Education and the Workforce that higher-education-based unions controlled by United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (UE) are rife with antisemitism and anti-Zionist discrimination.

“Tracing its roots to communism in the 1930s, the UE is a radical, pro-Hamas labor union that has a long history of antisemitism,” the NRTW, one of the US’s leading labor reform groups, wrote on July 30 in a message obtained by The Algemeiner. “The UE openly supports the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, which is designed to cripple and destroy Israel economically. Today, the UE furthers its antisemitic agenda by unionizing graduate students on college campuses and using its exclusive representation powers to create a hostile environment for Jewish students. The hostile environment includes demanding compulsory dues to fund the UE’s abhorrent activities.”

In July, the National Education Association (NEA) teachers union’s Representative Assembly to ban the ADL, a measure that would have proscribed the union’s sharing ADL literature which explains the history of antisemitism and the Holocaust. In the lead up to the vote, a website promoting the policy, titled #DroptheADLFromSchools, attacked the ADL’s reputation as a civil rights advocate and knowledgeable source of information about antisemitism, the very issue the group was founded to fight.

The ban garnered the support of extreme far-left groups — such as Black Lives Matter, Faculty for Justice in Palestine, and Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) — and others which have praised the use of terrorism against Israel and the broader Western world to advance a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict which necessitates destroying the Jewish state. Its approval by the Representative Assembly prompted the ADL to say that the activists behind it were attempting to “isolate their Jewish colleagues and push a radical antisemitic agenda on students.”

Ultimately, the NEA Executive Committee refused to enact the ban, drawing praise from the ADL for having moved “reject this misguided resolution that is rooted in exclusion and othering.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.