The Anti-Defamation League released a damning report in August, prior to the start of the new school year, on antisemitism in teachers’ unions. It alleges that “across union locals, state affiliates and national organizations, Jewish members report encountering anti-Jewish rhetoric and conduct.”
Jewish teachers talk about intense demonization of Israel bleeding over into harassment of Jews. Union leadership refuses to enforce existing rules to stop the abuse. It’s a bombshell report.
Because the ADL has a recent history of being little more than an enforcement mechanism for the progressive left, one might be grateful that they took on the subject of teachers’ unions at all. But its failure lies in what the report doesn’t do: suggest a strong, confident, effective strategy for mistreated teachers to fight back.
When the ADL was founded in 1913, it was conceived of as an organization specifically dedicated to fighting antisemitism. When the organized Jewish community established the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in the 1950s, the ADL was a founding member, serving as the official community voice against antisemitism.
Until the ADL hired its current CEO in 2015, the organization was a trusted institution in the Jewish community. To the extent that American Jews agreed on anything, most of us agreed that it was primarily interested in protecting Jews.
But in the past two decades—as Donald Trump was first elected, the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020 sparked a moral panic about racism, and the COVID pandemic shut down the country and the world—the ADL adapted to the changing times.
The ADL revised—and then re-revised—its website’s definition of racism. It opposed the U.S. Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh (the first time the organization had done such a thing), putting out a statement the night that he was nominated that failed to mention antisemitism or Jews, though it did mention abortion. It used Holocaust survivors to criticize the Trump administration’s immigration policy after decades of criticizing anyone who used Holocaust imagery or appropriation in American politics. It focused on forms of hatred well outside the scope of their original mission.
In other words, it turned into a partisan leftist organization.
Then came Oct. 7, 2023.
In the immediate aftermath of Hamas’s murderous attacks on Israeli civilians, the ADL rose to the occasion, affirming Israel’s right to self-defense and laying the moral responsibility for all that would happen in Gaza where it belonged: on Hamas. Some of their worst staffers abandoned ship. Those of us who understood that the American Jewish community needed a strong, laser-focused ADL were heartened.
But teachers’ unions are a pillar of the Democratic Party. And while the body of the ADL report doesn’t pull any punches, its conclusion does.
It urges Jewish union members to appeal to leaders who have neglected antisemitism within their ranks for years to enforce existing rules against harassment and incivility, as well as to implement new ones. It advocates for antisemitism education and discourages resolutions related to foreign conflicts. The language used includes “urge,” “strongly condemn” and “call on,” while simultaneously acknowledging that nearly 70% of Jewish union members are “not at all satisfied” with union leadership’s response to their concerns.
In other words, the ADL thinks that Jewish teachers should go back and ask again. That is an Oct. 6 response to an Oct. 7 problem.
Most importantly, the behavior described in the report is not just deplorable but outright illegal. Each example constitutes a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Jewish teachers don’t and shouldn’t have to go hat in hand to the very bigots allowing criminal antisemitic conduct to thrive. It appears more often than not these days that the ADL is placing the well-being and the political strength of unions ahead of the rights of American Jews.
Jewish teachers: The rabid antisemites among you aren’t going to be cowed into silence by rules they’ve already been ignoring; feckless union leaders aren’t going to stand up to the mob—many are already part of it—and rank-and-file members are not going to make targets of themselves.
You must do it yourselves. The law is on your side. Use it.
