Higher ed unions marginalize Jewish faculty, grad students, need stronger university response, report finds

Antisemitism runs rampant through campus labor unions, trapping Jews in exploitative relationships with union bosses who spend dues on activities promoting hatred of Israel.

By Dion J. Pierre, The Algemeiner

New research published on Wednesday by the Academic Engagement Network and the Anti-Defamation League found that Jewish graduate students and faculty continue to face severe incidents of campus antisemitism in their labor unions even as conditions for Jews improve elsewhere across higher education.

Packaged in a new comprehensive report titled “A Crisis of Representation: Antisemitism and Inclusion in Higher Education Unions,” the findings show that higher education unions have come under the influence of anti-Zionist extremists who foster exclusion, distrust, and persistent distractions from their organizations’ mission to achieve what AEN and the ADL described as “core labor priorities.”

Universities are failing to rein in the unions, according to the report, which noted that obvious incidents of antisemitism warrant responses consistent with their legal obligations under federal civil rights law, their commitments to students, and higher education’s mission to chisel away prejudice with education, criticism, and truth.

“Unions are strongest when all of their members believe they are represented fairly and can participate meaningfully,” AEN executive director Miriam Elman said in a statement accompanying the report.

“When Jewish faculty and graduate students feel they must remain silent, disengage, or conceal aspects of their identity in order to participate, unions risk undermining the solidarity and equal representation at the heart of their mission. This report offers a path toward stronger, more inclusive, and accountable unions.”

The Algemeiner has previously reported that antisemitism runs rampant through campus labor unions in the US, trapping Jews in exploitative and nonconsensual relationships with union bosses who spend their compulsory membership dues on political activities which promote hatred of their identity and the destruction of the Jewish homeland.

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the National Right to Work Foundation said in August 2025, “officers” for the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers (UE) union aided a riotous mob which illegally occupied a section of campus with a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” participating in the demonstration and even denying access to campus buildings.

That same year, UE members at Stanford University, allegedly denied religious accommodations to Jewish students who requested exemption from union dues over that branch’s supporting the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.

And Cornell University UE has been accused of denying religious exemptions in several cases and probing Jewish students for “legally-irrelevant information.”

“Antisemitism does not become acceptable simply because it is dressed up as ani-Zionism,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said on Wednesday.

“When Jewish faculty and graduate students are subjected to slurs, hostility, or exclusion because of their connection to Israel and their belief in the right to self-determination and statehood for the Jewish people, union leaders have an obligation to confront it — not excuse it, ignore it, or allow it to become normalized. Academic unions should be places where antisemitism is challenged unequivocally, not given institutional cover.”

The report was released after Columbia University’s graduate-student labor negotiations suffered a major defeat last month when the union withdrew a proposal aimed at forcing the school to divest from companies linked to Israel.

The proposal would have required Columbia to divest and refrain from contracting with entities deemed complicit in violations of international law — a provision the university described as mandatory support for the BDS movement.

Its withdrawal has not necessarily eliminated every anti-Israel demand advanced by the union, however. Columbia previously said Student Workers of Columbia-United Auto Workers Local 2710 separately sought to prevent the university from opening its Global Center in Tel Aviv.

Neither the university nor the union said Tuesday that proposal had also been withdrawn.

Anti-Zionist union activists are making gains elsewhere in organized labor.

Delegates at the United Auto Workers’ constitutional convention in Detroit voted 321-287 in June to divest the union from all Israel bonds, ending a decades-old investment that once symbolized organized labor’s support for the Jewish state.

The union reportedly holds approximately $400,000 in the bonds.

Meanwhile, the US Department of Education is investigating the New York City public-school system over allegations involving NYC Educators for Palestine, a group of teachers that organized seminars on “Palestine, Zionism, and Resistance.”

Federal officials said complaints alleged that educators taught children that Zionists are “genocidal white supremacists” and promoted support for Hamas terrorists as “martyrs.”

The investigation concerns the city Education Department’s potential failure to prevent a hostile environment for Jewish students; it is not formally an investigation of the United Federation of Teachers.