The National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers’ union, has endorsed a proposal to cut ties with the Anti-Defamation League, a civil rights group focused on combatting antisemitism, according to an NEA spokesperson.
The proposal, titled New Business Item 39, was preliminarily adopted by union delegates at the 2025 Representative Assembly, which took place in Portland, Oregon, on July 5.
“In a narrow vote of over 6,000 NEA members at the 2025 NEA Representative Assembly, delegates voted to forward to the NEA Executive Committee a recommendation that the National Education Association not use, endorse, or publicize materials from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) or participate in ADL programs,” an NEA spokesperson said Wednesday.
The proposal has not been officially adopted and has been referred to the NEA’s Executive Committee for consideration. The committee will then send its recommendation to the union’s Board of Directors, according to an NEA spokesperson.
No board meeting on the proposal has yet been scheduled, the spokesperson told CNN.
For years, the ADL has provided educational resources about antisemitism and the Holocaust in American schools.
In an official response, the Anti-Defamation League called the NEA’s endorsement “profoundly disturbing.”
“We will not be cowed for supporting Israel, and we will not be deterred from our work reaching millions of students with educational programs every year,” an ADL spokesperson said in a statement Wednesday. “It is our understanding there’s an internal NEA process that deals with issues like this and it is far from a completed process.”
The NEA represents approximately three million educators across the United States and has affiliate organizations in every state and in more than 14,000 communities nationwide.
“As educators, we are committed to ensuring students of every race, religion or national origin have safe and welcoming spaces to learn and grow,” an NEA spokesperson said in a statement Wednesday.
“The National Education Association and its members are unequivocally committed to the cause of educating, organizing against and combating all forms of hate and discrimination, including antisemitism and anti-Palestinian bigotry,” the statement added. “This is a fundamental principle we will never walk away from.”
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