It may seem like good news that the odious National Education Association (NEA) teachers’ union is facing a legal complaint. When the complaint—as reported by the Washington Free Beacon—turns out to be one filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights, however, one can bet there’s probably more to the story.

It goes back to July 2025 and to the NEA’s ban on educational materials produced by the Anti-Defamation League, a story I covered for Chronicles some months ago. From the complaint, we learn more about what took place at that NEA Representative Assembly:

During the debate on NBI 39, which called for a boycott of the Anti-Defamation League . . . and during proceedings related to Jewish American Heritage Month, Jewish delegates were subjected to targeted hostility and physical intimidation. . . . Delegates aligned with anti-Israel advocacy physically positioned themselves near Jewish Affairs Caucus members, shouted down Jewish participants, and created an atmosphere in which Jewish delegates reasonably feared retaliation and physical harm for participating in governance. Delegates sat or stood so close to Jewish members that they felt unable to clap, which was required to vote, without risking physical contact and confrontation.

Yep, the intimidation part of the story, especially, sounds like the NEA. Indeed, after reading further, we learn that several Jewish delegates had to relocate “to different sections of the hall in order to feel safe. . . .”

When a Jewish member-delegate from Colorado spoke in opposition to the ban, explaining the rise in anti-Semitism by referring to the death of an “82-year-old Holocaust survivor who was burned alive in the firebombing of a peaceful march in Boulder, Colorado, held to support hostages in Gaza,” she “was met with laughter and clapping by anti-Semitic participants in the assembly.”

According to the Free Beacon, later, when members of the union’s Jewish Affairs Caucus attempted to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of their group’s formation,

members of a competing caucus, Educators for Palestine, “convened several rows behind the Jewish Affairs Caucus members” in a manner that was “coordinated and physically intimidating.” Security at the conference was eventually forced to intervene and stand “between the Jewish Affairs Caucus member-delegates and the individuals involved.”

Then, “NEA president Rebecca S. Pringle allegedly prevented the Jewish Affairs Caucus’s executive chair from speaking even though the leader had received prior authorization to do so, and instead ‘recognized representatives of Educators for Palestine. . . .’”

As any conservative who has stepped onto a college campus in the past few decades can attest, this type of bullying in academic settings sounds very familiar.

But the complaint argues that Jewish teachers’ rights were violated per Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the D.C. Human Rights Act of 1977, both of which, they say, give special protection on the basis of Jewish ancestry and religion, and Israeli national origin. It is also charged that the behavior of the NEA members violated their own bylaws and policies regarding proportional representation. In other words, Jewish members are angry that they were not recognized as a special, protected class. Imagine: They were lumped in with mere “white” people! 

Such “unlawful racial and ethnic classification and segregation” (again, as white people) limited their “opportunities,” and created a “hostile work environment.” Think about that. The objection is not that limiting opportunities or being hostile to anyone is bad; it’s that these teachers ought not to be classified along with the whites who, apparently, deserve this treatment.

In fact, there is little difference between the NEA and ADL. The ADL advances an agenda very similar to the NEA’s and also participates in thuggish tactics. Fighting genuine anti-Semitism has been far down on the list of the ADL’s priorities.

That’s not surprising, given that CEO Jonathan Greenblatt served in the Obama administration as Director of Social Innovation and Civic Participation, a project that had, among its other aims, reimagining incarceration.

In the effort to form coalitions with all groups outside the mainstream Christian majority, the ADL has cozied up to genuine anti-Semites like the riot-instigator Al Sharpton. Greenblatt appeared on the hip-hop radio show the Breakfast Club and told its host, Charlamagne tha God, about shared experiences in oppression between Jews and blacks that are about as historically accurate as the lessons in The New York Times’ infamous “1619 Project.”

Recall, too, that Charlie Kirk, a veritable Boy Scout, was placed in the ADL “Glossary of Extremism and Hate.” There Kirk stayed until he was murdered in September. When people began noticing, Greenblatt had the website purged, including the entire “Glossary of Extremism and Hate.” It was “outdated,” he explained. The expiration date just happened to coincide with the assassination of one of their targets, allegedly by the lover of a man transitioning to become a woman (transitions that the ADL, of course, supports). Suddenly, in the fall of 2025 and up against this unfavorable publicity, the ADL switched gears and began remembering real events, such as the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack.

When the ADL pivoted, conservatives, especially at outlets like the Daily Signal, which since 2023 had been speaking out against attacks on them by the ADL, suddenly ceased to treat that organization with the contempt it deserves.

Indeed, of late, the Daily Signal has also pivoted. It has been sending out its investigative reporter Tyler O’Neil to news shows and congressional hearings to attack the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has been indicted on charges of financial fraud. And that’s a legitimate story. Instead of fighting bigotry, the SPLC has allegedly been paying “far-right” agitators to incite violence, specifically at the Unite the Right rally organized to protect the Robert E. Lee statue in downtown Charlottesville in 2017.

Yet I couldn’t help but notice: As I read O’Neil’s planned remarks for the May 20 House Judiciary GOP hearing on the SPLC, “Manufacturing Hate,” it occurred to me that every accusation made against the SPLC also could be made against the ADL. Both engage in partisan targeting, smearing, mapping, and the production of far-left educational materials. As I also noted in an earlier Chronicles article, the ADL had been sending out notices about the Charlottesville protest in the days leading up to it. Like the SPLC, they “promoted” the event. Charlottesville police, who had been provided with an “event assessment” by the ADL, maneuvered opposing sides into close proximity and then stood back as Antifa attacked.

Greenblatt blamed Charlottesville on President Trump’s “failure to denounce the alt-right” and, in the days following the Jan. 6, 2021 protest at the Capitol, called for the immediate removal of Trump from office. Nevertheless, even though Greenblatt, in his 2025 audit on anti-Semitic incidents, was careful to attribute the decline in campus anti-Semitism to the ADL’s “Campus Antisemitism Report Card,” he did acknowledge in an appearance on CNN that pressure from the Trump administration was one of many factors in producing this result.

In short, if the ADL is successful in its lawsuit against the NEA, based in part on the exclusion of ADL educational materials from the NEA’s recommendations, it would serve to legitimize an organization whose aims align with those of the NEA. Moreover, the NEA still promotes the SPLC’s educational materials, which amount to more of the same kind of propaganda the ADL promotes on the same themes, such as transgenderism and Black Lives Matter.

All along, the ADL had been encouraging law enforcement (through training and collaboration in pursuing hate crimes) to scrutinize “dissenters against transgender ideology.” They denied that transgenderism had anything to do with the 2023 Nashville school shooter, Audrey Hale. ADL reports on “hate” received praise from gay advocacy groups, like GLAAD. They placed Libs of TikTok founder Chaya Raichik, an orthodox Jew, in the Glossary of Extremism for posting about a children’s hospital’s “gender-affirming” care.

ADL produces educational materials that promote acceptance of gay marriage and transgenderism. One group has called out the ADL for violating Judaic principles, specifically the commandment to honor one’s father and mother. ADL called a Jewish father who organized “Florida Fathers for Freedom” a “right-wing extremist” and told students to use their friends’ preferred pronouns but to keep that information from their parents. (That page has been scrubbed.)

The NEA, similarly, at their training session in December, offered a workshop on “Advancing LGBTQ+ Justice,” which included instructions on pronoun usage, identifying “transphobic tropes,” and fighting parent groups.

The NEA training session also featured “Advancing Racial Justice,” with tips on “talking explicitly about white supremacy” and “dismantling systems of privilege and oppression.” This followed their statement about the death of George Floyd and their announcement about “Justice Served” in the conviction of Officer Derek Chauvin. The NEA continuously promotes programs like “Black Lives Matter at School,” “Culturally Responsive and Racially Inclusive Public Education,” and “Ethnic Studies.”

Similarly, during the summer of 2020, the ADL released statement after statement expressing “solidarity with the Black community” and support for Black Lives Matter. They described how George Floyd’s life had “inspired” them. They “mourned” his death, as well as the death of Ahmaud Arbery. They celebrated the arrests and convictions of Greg and Travis McMichael after Travis had shot Arbery in self-defense and of Chauvin, who was restraining the drug-crazed George Floyd.

Time and again, we see that the NEA and ADL share an agenda.

The only point of contention between them is ADL’s unquestioning support of Israel and its focus on the Holocaust. Greenblatt has declared repeatedly that “anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.” A charge against the NEA in the complaint concerns the teacher organization’s failure to recognize Jews as the “primary and uniquely targeted victims of the Holocaust.” The NEA had expanded the recognition to 12 million victims, including Jews, but also mentioning those of “other faiths, ethnicities, races, political beliefs, genders and gender identification, abilities/disabilities, and other targeted characteristics.” In this, the NEA has a point. The Nazis began experimenting with euthanasia techniques on disabled children, most of them Christians. But the ADL has fought to represent Jews as the sole victims of that genocide. Greenblatt’s predecessor, Abe Foxman, opposed recognition of the Armenian genocide and the Holodomor in Ukraine.

The difference between the ADL and the NEA (and, for that matter, the SPLC) is their insistence that Jews hold a privileged place in the victim hierarchy. Establishment Republicans probably fear going after an organization that purportedly fights anti-Semitism.

No doubt, Greenblatt would see the administration’s defense of Jewish teachers who defend ADL materials as another win, as the ADL pivots to avoid the same fate as their ideological sister organization, the SPLC.