The ADL provides public schools materials to teach about the holocaust and antisemitism, but the National Education Association says it will not use them for the next forty years.
At last week's vote, one NEA delegate said allowing the ADL to determine what constitutes antisemitism would be like allowing the fossil fuel industry to determine what constitutes climate change.
ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt responded to that on Fox with little hope for viewpoint equity from the NEA.
“The reality is it's an organization that clearly has been overtaken by activists. These individuals are there to teach our children in the classroom the basics of reading and writing and arithmetic, not radicalism. But that's exactly what's happened."
Greenblatt said the U.S. has seen an explosion of antisemitism. The NEA is showing its true colors, and it’s important that Americans take a good look, he said.
"Anti-Jewish acts of harassment, vandalism, and violence have skyrocketed. Last year was the worst year we've ever tracked at ADL, and yet somehow these teachers think the answer is to isolate Jewish students, to intimidate other Jewish educators and to target the oldest organization in the country fighting antisemitism. It's bewildering, but it's bigotry, and that's what we need to see here."
He said the real motivation behind this is a radical agenda that these individuals are trying to insert into the education system and indoctrinate kids.
“The truth is that these anti-Israel activists are quite insidious, and they see that the way that they can capture the culture is by going after our children. But could you imagine telling the NAACP they're not credible on racism? Or the National Constitution Center they can't teach the constitution? ADL's materials are the gold standard. They're peer-reviewed. We've been doing it for decades, and we're teaching about the Holocaust."
ADL will continue teaching about the Holocaust undeterred, he said, taking the fight to legislatures state-by-state when necessary.
“The ADL and all of us, we're not going to allow their antisemitism to intimidate us. We're not going to be cowed from teaching about the Holocaust. We're going to fight back, and that means recognizing we've got to not just push back against the NEA here and the union more broadly … that have a big problem with this. You had union organizers on the ground at Columbia University in the tents, in the encampments."
