America’s Largest Teachers Union Helped Perpetuate Antisemitism In Public Schools, New Filing Alleges

America’s largest teachers union fomented antisemitism in public schools across the country by subjecting Jewish members to harassment, intimidation, and exclusion, the Brandeis Center charges in a new legal filing. The complaint, filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission last week, accuses the National Education Association of violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by denying Jewish educators the benefits afforded to the union’s three million other members. It charges the union with fostering a hostile environment, blocking Jewish members from leadership opportunities through unlawful racial quotas, and ignoring repeated notices of antisemitic discrimination.The center alleges that the union’s tolerance of antisemitism has resulted in misinformation and antisemitic tropes being embedded into the public education system and driven Jewish and Israeli educators to leave the union or abandon their jobs altogether.“The NEA’s conduct is both completely illegal and morally unjustifiable. All educators, regardless of their ethnicity, deserve a safe workplace and support from the people whose job it is to protect them. In this case, the hostile, anti-Semitic environment propagated by the NEA is not confined to the union; it touches every school and every classroom in which an NEA member works,” said the chief executive of the Brandeis Center, and former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education, Kenneth L. Marcus. The National Education Association has not responded to a New York Sun request for comment. The filing details antisemitic discrimination and harassment at the union’s 2025 annual gathering, where members debated adopting an amendment to boycott the nonpartisan Jewish advocacy group the Anti-Defamation League. Members with anti-Israel views positioned themselves physically close to the union’s Jewish Affairs Caucus, shouted delegates down, and “created an atmosphere in which Jewish delegates reasonably feared retaliation and physical harm” for participating, the complaint alleges.At one point during the discussion, a Jewish member rose to express opposition to the measure, citing the rise in antisemitism across the country. The member mentioned the antisemitic attack on a peaceful demonstration for the Israeli hostages in Boulder, Colorado, in which an 82-year-old Holocaust survivor was killed by a Molotov cocktail. The remarks were greeted with “laughter and clapping by anti-Semitic participants in the assembly,” the complaint writes. At the time the Jewish Affairs Caucus said that the response “was beyond political; it was inhuman and repulsive.”The hostile environment prompted multiple Jewish delegates to relocate to other sections of the hall in order to “feel safe enough” to speak or vote during the proceedings. Several reported fearing that they could be “struck” and that “any resulting contact would be dismissed as accidental,” read the allegations. The representative assembly passed the measure, but the executive committee later struck it down, releasing a statement noting that the proposed boycott “would not further” the union’s commitment to “academic freedom, our membership, or our goals.” It emphasized that the organization “stands strongly against antisemitism.” The union also advanced the erasure of Jewish history through its official materials, the complaint alleges. An August 2025 handbook originally omitted Jews as the primary victims of the Holocaust, describing the genocide instead as a tragedy affecting 12 million people across faiths, ethnicities, races, and other categories. The language was revised after public backlash, with the president of the education group, Becky Pringle issuing a statement pledging deep commitment “to ensuring the safety and inclusion of Jewish educators and students” and the sharing of resources and educator workshops on “Holocaust education, antisemitism, and ways to promote understanding of Jewish culture, heritage and history.” “This reflects NEA’s ongoing commitment to teach about Holocaust history and to counter the antisemitism that laid the groundwork for the systematic murder of six million Jews and the persecution and murder of millions of others by the Nazi regime,” she said, noting that the handbook is not for classroom use, but a guide to materials the NEA provides.The education association maintains a robust set of resources dedicated to “countering antisemitism and Holocaust denial.” The materials, listed on the union’s website, include educational videos and presentations from Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Center, Yad Vashem. However, the union has passed measures and distributed materials presenting one-sided historical accounts and legitimizing anti-Zionism, the complaint notes, citing that the 2025 handbook directs teachers to “educate members and the general public about the history of the Nakba,” which it describes as “the forced, violent displacement and dispossession of at least 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland in 1948 during the establishment of the State of Israel” — with no mention of violence against Jews during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.The National Education Association also adopted a measure titled “Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism Information,” aimed at distinguishing anti-Zionism and antisemitism. The framing contradicts the definition of antisemitism used globally, including by the U.S. Department of Education, which recognizes anti-Zionism as a frequent proxy for antisemitism.The National Education Association also erased, literally, Israel from the map — releasing a Native Land Digital map that renamed Israel as “Palestine” and linked to materials associated with pro-Hamas organizations. Public outcry prompted the union to remove the resource, but it never advised its members to stop using the materials nor did it issue an apology to Jewish members, the complaint asserts.Those changes occurred as the union enforced racial quotas for leadership positions that made it difficult for Jewish members to join the union’s representative bodies and thus have a say in the organization’s activities, the filing claims. As the union reserves certain leadership, mentorship, and governance positions to racial minorities, Jews, which the union identifies as “white,” are often shut out.Although the Jewish Affairs Caucus has repeatedly sought to rectify the issue by proposing bylaw amendments to recognize Jewish ethnicity, their efforts have been shot down. As Jews were barred from advancement within the National Education Association, those in power ignored their complaints, the filing contends. For years, the Jewish Affairs Caucus and individual delegates have filed formal notices of antisemitic discrimination, but were met with “minimization, procedural deflection, delayed or merely cosmetic revisions, and silence,” the Brandeis Center alleges. “This is exactly the type of discrimination against which Title VII was designed to protect,” Mr. Marcus added. “And by fighting to protect our NEA members from bigotry, we’re also fighting to protect our children from an environment that allows discrimination and anti-Semitic tropes. Unions are supposed to protect their members’ rights. The NEA is actually violating them.”The filing builds on actions already taken against the union for similar allegations. In August 2025, in the wake of the union’s proposed ADL boycott and the release of its new handbook, the House Committee on Education and Workforce opened an investigation into whether the National Education Association was “contributing to antisemitism among its members and in classrooms across the United States.” The committee has not released any updates on the probe.

America’s Largest Teachers Union Helped Perpetuate Antisemitism In Public Schools, New Filing Alleges

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