The House Committee on Education and the Workforce revealed that it is investigating the nation’s largest teachers union on Thursday over whether it discriminates against Jews.
Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.), the committee chairman, wrote to the National Education Association’s president to demand that the union hand over documents related to alleged antisemitic content in the group’s handbook and its decision to sever ties with the Anti-Defamation League.
“The NEA’s 2025 handbook, which outlines the union’s goals and priorities for the upcoming year, contains passages and priorities that are hostile towards the Jewish people,” Walberg wrote. “For example, the handbook states that the union will celebrate International Holocaust Remembrance Day by ‘recognizing more than 12 million victims of the Holocaust from different faiths, ethnicities, races, political beliefs, genders and gender identification, abilities/disabilities and other targeted characteristics.’”
“This obscures the fact that Jews were the primary target of the Holocaust, with 6 million Jews having been murdered at the hands of the Nazis,” the lawmaker wrote.
The handbook also outlines plans to teach the public about the Palestinian nakba—the “catastrophe” or “disaster” of the establishment of modern-day Israel—and to “educate members about the difference between anti-Zionism and antisemitism.”
The NEA is the largest labor union in the United States, representing 3.2 million teachers, school staffers and higher-education faculty and staff.
The union told JNS that they are reviewing Walberg’s letter and will respond to its request for documents.
“The National Education Association stands firmly for every student and educator, of every race, religion, and ethnicity, and we unequivocally reject antisemitism,” the group told JNS. “We have fought against all kinds of hate, including antisemitism, throughout our history and remain focused on ensuring the safety of Jewish students and educators.”
At the NEA’s annual meeting on July 8, union members passed a resolution to sever ties with the Anti-Defamation League over the Jewish group’s support for Israel.
An open letter supporting the resolution accused the ADL of being a “divisive political interest group” that “attacks schools, educators and students with bad-faith accusations of antisemitism in order to silence and punish constitutionally-protected criticism of Israel and the political ideology of Zionism,” and that it “pushes local, state and federal educational policy that defends Israel at the expense of the rights of Palestinians, other people of color and Jews who reject ethnonationalism.”
Walberg quoted one Jewish NEA member who said in response to the resolution that it “sends a troubling message of exclusion.”
“Unfortunately, the July 8 measure and the plans set forth in NEA’s handbook raise serious concerns that antisemitism has infected the nation’s largest teachers’ union,” Walberg wrote.
The letter demands that the NEA hand over relevant documents to the education committee by Sept. 4.
