The House Committee on Education and Workforce has launched an antisemitism probe into the National Education Association (NEA), questioning whether the country’s largest teachers’ union is spreading anti-Israel extremism in classrooms. Chairman Tim Walberg (R-MI) said he is “gravely concerned about antisemitic content in the NEA’s 2025 handbook and the NEA Representative Assembly’s vote in July 2025 to ban materials by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).”
In July, NEA delegates voted to boycott the ADL’s Holocaust education curriculum, arguing that the ADL’s definition of antisemitism was too strong. Union leadership reversed the decision after widespread backlash, but lawmakers remain focused on the NEA’s official handbook. The 2025 edition downplayed Jewish suffering in the Holocaust while highlighting the “Palestinian Nakba,” which it described as the “forced, violent displacement and dispossession of at least 750,000 Palestinians … during the establishment of Israel.”
The handbook also pledged to “educate members about the difference between anti-Zionism and antisemitism” and to support “free speech in defense of Palestine at K-12 schools, colleges, and universities.” Walberg has demanded all NEA documents and communications mentioning “antisemitism,” “Israel,” or “Palestinian” since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist massacre in Israel.
The ADL blasted the NEA’s actions, calling it “profoundly disturbing that a group of NEA activists would brazenly attempt to further isolate their Jewish colleagues and push a radical, antisemitic agenda on students.” Walberg warned, “the July 8 measure [against the ADL] and the plans set forth in NEA’s handbook raise serious concerns that antisemitism has infected the nation’s largest teachers’ union.”
