PRESS RELEASE: DFI Report: Teacher Unions Fuel Anti-Semitism and Anti-Israel Indoctrination in America’s Schools

Washington, D.C. – The Defense of Freedom Institute (DFI) today released a powerful new report exposing how America’s teacher unions have abandoned Jewish students and teachers while weaponizing K–12 classroom lessons with anti-Israel propaganda.

Breaking Solidarity: How Anti-Semitic Activists Turned Teacher Unions Against Israel explains how the extreme Left has co-opted the leadership of teacher unions that once strongly supported their Jewish members against anti-Semitic harassment and viewed Israeli institutions and labor organizations as staunch allies. In the wake of the horrific October 7 attacks in Israel, it has become clear that radical activists now wield the resources and power of national teacher unions and their state and local affiliates in an effort to  demonize Israel, diminish anti-Semitic threats, intimidation, and harassment against students and teachers, and inject into K–12 classrooms materials that deemphasize Holocaust education in favor of warped portraits of Jewish people as white “bullies” and “settler-colonialists.”

Evidence from the report includes:

• National Education Association (NEA) – At its 2025 Representative Assembly, the NEA approved a resolution to sever ties with the Anti-Defamation League, which would have cut off its support for K–12 programs on the Holocaust and anti-Semitism such as Echoes and Reflections and No Place for Hate. Its 2025 handbook removed any reference to Jews as primary victims of the Holocaust, while highlighting “Nakba education” that portrays Israel’s founding as a catastrophe. Jewish delegates at the annual meeting reported being harassed and threatened, mocked for referring to the murder of a Holocaust survivor, and labeled “white supremacists” for opposing anti-Israel curricula.
   
• United Federation of Teachers (New York City) – In Brooklyn, high school students stormed hallways chanting “Death to Israel!” and “Kill the Jews!” At another school, a teacher posted a map erasing Israel and replacing it with “Palestine.” And in Queens, a teacher supportive of Israel had to barricade herself in her office while students chanted outside “Free Palestine” and threatened her safety. Instead of defending Jewish educators, the UFT endorsed New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist who responded to the October 7 attacks by criticizing Israeli “apartheid” and “genocide.”
   
• Portland Association of Teachers (PAT) – PAT has promoted a “Teach Palestine!” curriculum for children as young as four. Materials include a workbook where a fictional child explains that “Zionists stole our land by force and hurt many people,” and lessons encouraging students to take “collective action” by making protest signs that read “FREE PALESTINE” and “LET GAZA LIVE.” The union even published a legal guide advising teachers how to inject anti-Israel messages into lessons while skirting district standards. PAT co-organized an anti-Israel student walkout and rally in 2024, and a lawsuit filed by a Jewish educator in Portland accuses union representatives of anti-Semitic harassment.
   
• United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) – UTLA leaders have been at the center of pushing the radical “Liberated Ethnic Studies” curriculum, which labels Zionism as a “settler-colonial ideology” and accuses Israel of “ethnic cleansing.” Union officials have used professional development sessions to train teachers on how to “always be confronting Zionism” in classrooms. In 2025, the UTLA House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to demand Los Angeles schools reject Holocaust materials from the ADL, dismissing them as “propagandistic.”

“The historical record shows that, whatever their shortcomings, previous generations of teacher-union leaders stood up to anti-Semitism in K–12 schools on behalf of their Jewish members and promoted strong U.S. support for Israel in the face of existential attacks on that country,” said the report’s author, Paul Zimmerman. “Now, anti-Semitic activists grossly dishonor that legacy by weaponizing teacher unions to spread anti-Semitism, intimidate Jewish teachers, and recast the classroom as a battlefield against the West.”

To confront this threat, the report urges policymakers to act:

• Reform union governance: Congress should use the National Education Association’s federal charter as a tool to impose accountability and address anti-Semitism within its ranks.
   
• Investigate union conduct: The House Committee on Education and Workforce and the Senate HELP Committee must wield their investigative authority, hold hearings, and compel unions to explain their failure—or refusal—to protect teachers and students from anti-Semitic harassment and indoctrination.
   
• Defund radical agendas: Teachers who want no part in subsidizing indoctrination should “vote with their feet,” cutting off dues that bankroll anti-Western campaigns and radical political candidates.

DFI has long exposed how teacher unions abuse their political influence at the expense of students and families. DFI will continue leading the charge to protect America’s teachers, students, and families from radical union agendas.