Two main Jewish civil rights teams stepped up after Jewish lecturers reported antisemitic harassment final 12 months on the Nationwide Schooling Affiliation’s annual conference, solely to devolve into disagreement forward of this 12 months’s conference.
The bizarre public dispute between the Jewish Council of Public Affairs and the Anti-Defamation League delivered to the fore a simmering rigidity over tips on how to struggle antisemitism inside colleges and unions. Ought to Jewish teams promote collaboration with the establishments on options — or prioritize confronting them over their failings?
Two days earlier than the meeting, the JCPA and the NEA’s Jewish Affairs Caucus heralded new guidelines and insurance policies it had developed in collaboration union leaders to “guarantee the security of Jewish members and educators on the [Representative Assembly] with out undermining the union’s very important dedication to free speech and democracy.”
A day earlier than the meeting, the ADL, which had labored with caucus members over the previous 12 months, advised Jewish Insider in an uncommon line of assault that it was “extraordinarily pissed off a couple of so-called ‘settlement’ with JCPA that was reached with out all NEA JAC management and delegates on the desk.”
It additionally took goal at union leaders: “NEA’s inconsistent enforcement of its personal protections has despatched an unmistakable message: Jewish educators aren’t a precedence. That should change now.”
Amy Spitalnick, the CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, responded to the ADL’s criticism in an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Company.
“When you’ll be able to’t criticize substance, you discover causes to criticize course of,” Spitalnick mentioned in an interview. “On this case, we’re each very happy with the substance and the method, and the outcomes underscore that.”
JCPA has emphasised working immediately with faculty leaders and public officers to fight antisemitism, and opposed the Trump administration’s crackdown on campus pro-Palestinian protests.
“It’s each doable and essential to struggle antisemitism — on campus, in our communities, and throughout the nation — with out abandoning the democratic values which have allowed Jews, and so many different susceptible minorities, to thrive,” the group wrote in an April 2025 joint assertion with the Union for Reform Judaism and a number of different denominational teams condemning the crackdown.
That letter spurred behind the scenes pushback from one other legacy group, the Jewish Federations of North America.
The ADL, in the meantime, has taken on a extra confrontational method to universities, assigning them “report playing cards” for campus antisemitism and in addition empowering Jewish educators to advocate for themselves.
Notably, progressive-leaning teams just like the JCPA and centrist teams just like the ADL and the JFNA flip methods in relation to addressing Trump administration insurance policies that undercut Jewish civil rights advocacy. The centrist teams have at instances retreated from confrontation with the federal government, whereas the JCPA has been extra immediately crucial. In a single occasion, the JCPA was extra outspoken a couple of Trump administration assault on the ADL than the ADL was.
“There are completely these on the best who assume that we must always simply be burning all of it down, and that’s not an method that’s going to make Jews safer or democracy safer,” Spitalnick mentioned. “We imagine deeply that the one path ahead is one which confronts antisemitism wherever it exists, and does so in a means that acknowledges our security as Jews is tied to our democratic establishments, which incorporates unions and public schooling.”
Jewish Council for Public Affairs CEO Amy Spitalnick (C), speaks at an occasion held by Jewish and Muslim leaders on Capitol Hill on December 16, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Pictures)
The ADL and the JCPA discovered widespread trigger final 12 months after the NEA delegates narrowly handed a measure barring the union from utilizing, endorsing or publicizing any supplies from the ADL, which boasts a complete library of anti-bias schooling supplies. (The measure was finally rejected by the NEA’s board of administrators.)
The JCPA at the moment signed onto a letter led by the ADL describing “deep issues in regards to the rising degree of antisemitic exercise inside lecturers’ unions,” together with stories that Jewish lecturers have been verbally accosted through the proceedings.
The harassment, together with a reported case of NEA members showing to cheer at a point out of the 2025 assault on a march for Israeli hostages in Boulder, Colorado, through the conference final 12 months, final month sparked a brand new antisemitism investigation into NEA by the Trump administration.
Shira Goodman, the ADL’s vice chairman of advocacy, mentioned in an interview the group “instantly needed to take an adversarial advocacy place to deal with” final 12 months’s convention.
The ADL centered its method on partaking with Jewish lecturers who had sought their assist, together with the incoming president of the Jewish Affairs Caucus. Goodman mentioned that whereas the ADL had “some ongoing conversations with leaders on the NEA,” the majority of its advocacy had been to “help lecturers who’re doing their very own advocacy.”
“Working simply with management wasn’t going to do it, however we additionally needed to be there to help grassroots of us who felt like they needed to be and stay inside their union,” Goodman mentioned.
Goodman added that she didn’t really feel that JCPA and the ADL have been working “in tandem.”
“JCPA has mentioned publicly that they’ve relationships with AFT, with NEA. Completely different organizations within the Jewish neighborhood have totally different lanes and do various things,” Goodman mentioned. “I simply need to guarantee that the lecturers are represented, and that if any individual is talking for the lecturers, that the lecturers have been a part of that.”
ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt speaks onstage ADL’s By no means Is Now at Javits Heart on March 03, 2025 in New York Metropolis. (Bryan Bedder/Getty Pictures for Anti-Defamation League)
Spitalnick mentioned JCPA had engaged with JAC management and different Jewish organizations, together with the ADL, all through the negotiations with NEA. Final and this 12 months, JCPA additionally led a workshop at NEA’s annual conference about antisemitism.
“All I might communicate to is our method, which has been to — as an alternative of hammering the union with fixed critique and framing a kind of zero sum dynamic wherein it’s the union versus the Jewish neighborhood — making clear that the union’s success and Jewish security, inclusion, are one in the identical, and that has led to the partnership we now have with NEA,” Spitalnick mentioned.
The ADL and different legacy teams have prior to now expressed certified help for Trump administration disciplinary actions focusing on instructional establishments. Spitalnick was adamant that was the flawed course, together with in the newest authorities investigation into the NEA.
“The query that everybody needs to be asking is what’s motivating this, and at a time after we’re seeing – whether or not it’s Republicans in Congress or others — use our actual fears of antisemitism to essentially attempt to kill the unions by going after their constitution and their basic existence, I might ask actual questions in regards to the motivation for this investigation,” Spitalnick mentioned.
The ADL, in the meantime, wrote in a put up on X that the federal authorities’s investigation “underscores what many Jewish educators have been saying for the final two years: no union member needs to be made to really feel excluded, focused, or unwelcome due to a core a part of their identification.”
Alyson Brauning, the outgoing chair of the Jewish Affairs Caucus, who had collaborated with JCPA forward of the conference, mentioned the distinction between this 12 months’s convention earlier this month and final was “night time and day.”
“I truly received to get pleasure from components of the [Representative Assembly],” Brauning mentioned. “Our desk didn’t expertise any harassment or intimidation within the corridor in any respect. It was truly pleasing and enjoyable, and we received to do the enterprise of the RA on the ground.”
Naomi Rodriguez, the incoming chair of the Jewish Affairs Caucus who had participated within the ADL’s “Hazak” program, mentioned she “wasn’t conscious” of all of the work that JCPA had accomplished behind the scenes forward of the meeting.
“Possibly Alyson was, and she or he is the chair of the caucus,” she added. “Because the incoming chair, I’ll be extra on prime of these issues.”
Rodriquez, who’s at present taking part in a JCPA cohort to help lecturers, mentioned that because the incoming chair she would “settle for help from anyone who needs to help us.”
‘This problem with antisemitism is a big downside, and it’s solely getting worse, and I actually assume all of us must work collectively, and collaborate and coordinate to make sure that we’re as efficient as doable in combating it,” Rodriguez mentioned.
Nationwide Schooling Affiliation President Rebecca Pringle speaks through the Get Out the Vote Rally in Detroit in 2022. (Dominick Sokotoff/SOPA Pictures/LightRocket through Getty Pictures)
In a press release to JTA, an NEA spokesperson mentioned that the union had “enhanced our work to counter antisemitism and guarantee all of our members are revered and supported.”
“That effort included in depth session with the Jewish Affairs Caucus, Jewish NEA members, and companions within the Jewish neighborhood, together with the JCPA,” the spokesperson mentioned.
Following the meeting, which befell in Denver from July 3 by way of 6, the ADL in addition to a number of different distinguished Jewish teams that had additionally lent help to the Jewish Affairs Caucus revealed a press release saying that the outcomes of the meeting “offers purpose for optimism.”
“We commend the vital steps the NEA took to foster a extra inclusive Consultant Meeting this 12 months,” the teams wrote.
They added a caveat: “But that have doesn’t but mirror the fact going through many Jewish educators in their very own communities. We proceed to listen to from educators throughout the nation who report marginalization inside their unions, hostile rhetoric, intimidation, and exclusion…That actuality requires continued consideration and motion at each degree.”
The Convention of Presidents of Main American Jewish Organizations additionally joined the ADL’s assertion, which didn’t embrace JCPA.
The JCPA “selected to have their very own press launch to start with,” mentioned Stephanie Hausner, the Convention of Presidents’ chief working officer. The JCPA, just like the ADL, is a constituent member of the convention.
Hausner mentioned she felt the variations between the organizations forward of the convention “took away from the true problem at hand, which is how will we help Jewish lecturers.”
“For the final 12 months I’ve been working with all of the organizations on this work, and I actually thought we have been in that place, and I hope that tomorrow we are able to get again to that place the place everybody’s working collectively as a result of I do assume that it’s higher for the Jewish neighborhood,” Hausner mentioned.
The ADL and JCPA “generally attain out to totally different audiences,” she mentioned, however “in a really perfect world, all of us communicate from the identical notes and have the ability to to maneuver collectively and work collectively frequently, and we wouldn’t have a few of this happening, a few of this forwards and backwards.”
“There are not any two organizations that function on this area and do issues precisely the identical,” Hausner added. “Hopefully, a few of their efforts can complement one another shifting ahead.”
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