REPORT: The Radicalism of Graduate Student Unions Affiliated with the Teacher Unions

Introduction

Radical political activism fueled by foreign governments and international movements was largely driven out of organized labor by the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act. That act required private sector unions to certify that the leaders of “any national or international labor organization of which it is an affiliate or constituent unit” were not members of the Communist Party if they wished to bring issues before the National Labor Relations Board. This empowered the anti-communist factions that had been struggling against external communist efforts to control their unions to purge the communists from leadership. The triumph of the anti-communists in private sector unions produced a political change that spilled over to public sector unions as well. As a result, unions in both sectors were able to focus on pay, benefits, and working conditions for their members rather than be hijacked to pursue the extraneous political agendas of foreign radicals.

But the removal of radical foreign influence from organized labor has not endured. To illustrate the increasing political extremism of organized labor, this report presents an analysis of graduate student unions organized by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) or the National Education Association (NEA). This analysis shows that the higher education affiliates organized by teacher unions obsessively pursue political activism that is tightly connected to the agendas of foreign governments and movements. America is entering a new kind of cold war, but this time it has allowed organized labor to be used as a fifth column for foreign interests. It should come as no surprise that the rising anti-Americanism in the teacher unions is connected with an alarming increase in antisemitism.