A new report from the Anti-Defamation League exposes a climate of fear inside institutions that claim to champion inclusion, dignity and worker protection.
The following is an editorial by Armstrong Williams.
A new report from the Anti-Defamation League exposes a climate of fear inside institutions that claim to champion inclusion, dignity and worker protection. According to the report, Jewish educators increasingly feel that their own teachers’ unions have become places where they must conceal their convictions, suppress their concerns and tolerate hostility that would never be accepted against another minority.
The ADL surveyed 307 Jewish members of teachers’ unions across 24 states and conducted focus groups to examine their experiences. The sample was not necessarily representative of every Jewish union member nationwide, and the findings should be understood within that limitation. But the numbers and the testimony behind them are far too serious to dismiss.
Seventy percent of respondents said that raising concerns about the treatment of Jews in union spaces could damage them professionally or reputationally. Nearly three-quarters said they felt compelled to censor themselves. Almost half reported withdrawing from certain union activities because of rhetoric or conduct targeting Jews, Zionists or Israel.
Consider what those findings mean. Teachers’ unions exist because individual educators can be vulnerable when confronting powerful institutions. Their central promise is that no teacher should have to stand alone. Yet many Jewish teachers apparently believe that speaking honestly inside their unions could make them targets. The institution created to protect their voices has instead taught them the professional value of silence.
The reported hostility goes well beyond disagreement over Israeli government policy. Americans have every right to criticize Israel, its leaders, its military operations or any particular decision made during the war in Gaza. Such criticism is not inherently antisemitic, and attempts to label every objection to Israeli policy as hatred of Jews would undermine legitimate debate.
But denying or minimizing the atrocities of Oct. 7, using “Zionist” as a blanket slur, intimidating Jewish members, equating Jews with Nazis or justifying violence against Jewish people is not policy criticism. Nor is distributing propaganda that glorifies the murderers who slaughtered civilians.
One respondent alleged that union leaders actively worked against Jewish and Zionist members and described events at which flyers praised Hamas’ Oct. 7 operation and glorified its perpetrators. That is one participant’s account, not proof that every teachers’ union or even most unions endorses terrorism. But any union confronted with such an allegation has a duty to investigate it immediately and transparently.
Oct. 7 was not an abstraction or a debating point. Hamas terrorists murdered approximately 1,200 people and abducted roughly 250 others. Civilians were hunted in their homes and young people were massacred at a music festival. To celebrate that savagery in an organization representing American educators would be an unconscionable betrayal of both Jewish members and the moral responsibilities of teaching.
The broader findings reveal a disturbing double standard. More than half of those surveyed said anti-harassment standards were enforced inconsistently when Jews or Zionists were targeted. Nearly 52% reported encountering minimization or denial of the Oct. 7 atrocities during the previous year. Almost 49% had heard “Zionist” used pejoratively, while approximately 44% reported seeing speakers who justified violence against Jews or Israel given platforms at union events.
Most damning is the response or lack of response from leadership. Among members who brought concerns to union officials, 69.1% said they were not at all satisfied with the outcome. Not one respondent described being extremely satisfied.
This is how institutional prejudice takes root. It does not always begin with an official declaration of hatred. It grows through selective enforcement, ideological intimidation and leaders who decide that acknowledging one group’s pain would be politically inconvenient. The message soon becomes unmistakable: everyone is protected, but some people are protected less than others.
Teachers’ unions also possess influence far beyond workplace negotiations. They help shape political endorsements, educational priorities, professional training and, in some places, discussions over classroom materials. If ideological hostility is being normalized in union meetings, members and parents are entitled to ask whether it is also influencing what educators are encouraged to teach children.
The answer is not to abolish unions or suppress debate about the Middle East. The answer is to restore unions to their legitimate purpose and require them to apply their professed values consistently. Union leaders should condemn threats and harassment against Jews, establish clear safeguards against identity-based intimidation, provide balanced and evidence-based antisemitism education and stop allowing foreign-policy activism to eclipse their responsibility to represent every member.
Jewish teachers should not be required to denounce Israel, abandon Zionism or remain silent about antisemitism as the price of professional acceptance. No employee should have to conceal a central part of his or her identity to participate in an organization funded by mandatory or expected dues.
Solidarity that excludes Jews is not solidarity. Inclusion that disappears when Jewish educators speak is not inclusion. And a union that cannot protect its Jewish members from intimidation has forfeited its claim to moral leadership.
The educators described in this report are not asking for immunity from disagreement. They are asking for equal dignity, honest debate and the same institutional protection their unions promise everyone else. That should not be controversial. It should be the minimum.
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Mr. Williams is Manager/Sole Owner of Howard Stirk Holdings I & II Broadcast Television Stations and the 2016 Multicultural Media Broadcast Owner of the year.
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Editor's Note: Sinclair Broadcast Group has a business relationship with Armstrong Williams, who is a political commentator and the owner of Howard Stirk Holdings.
