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By Rachel Sapoznik
(July 14, 2025 / JNS) The National Education Association’s decision to sever ties with the Anti-Defamation League is a seismic moment in the American Jewish story. This is not just another news cycle. It is a moment of reckoning. One that should force every Jewish leader, every parent and every serious communal institution to ask a sobering question:
How did we get here?
For four decades, the NEA—the largest teachers’ union in America, representing more than 3 million educators—partnered with the ADL to bring Holocaust education, anti-hate resources and diversity programming into classrooms across the country. That relationship is now over. At its July national assembly, the NEA’s 7,000 delegates voted to sever ties with the ADL. The union will no longer cite the ADL’s data, promote its educational tools or partner on anti-bias training.
The reason? According to activists inside the union, the ADL is too “anti-Palestinian.” CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, praised the move. They cheered the ADL’s removal as a victory for “equity.” In other words, a Jewish organization that defends Israel, and by extension the Jewish people, is now considered too controversial to remain in America’s classrooms.
This is not a bureaucratic shuffle. It is a political purge. And it happened at a time when antisemitism in American schools is at an all-time high. Jewish students are being harassed, threatened and silenced. Holocaust education is being gutted. And instead of protecting Jewish voices, the NEA chose to side with those who want them erased.
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