The largest national teachers’ union is facing backlash after promoting resources linked to antisemitic rhetoric and organizations with ties to extremist groups — leading the union to delete the materials and cite issues with its vetting process as the reason the materials were shared out in the first place.
The resources, which appeared on the National Education Association’s official website and were reportedly promoted through internal email communications to its roughly three million members, were plugged as instructional materials “for teaching about Indigenous peoples” to “help [teachers] educate students honestly and accurately about Native history and the people whose land we occupy.”
One of the most controversial resources linked to is a map of Israel with no mention of the Jewish state.
Native Land Digital, which the teachers’ union described as “one of the more comprehensive sites to start your research on Indigenous Lands,” labels a map of Israel as “Palestine” and recognizes only Palestinians as “indigenous” to the land, reports the North American Values Institute (NAVI).
While Native Land Digital scrubbed its recommended resources on Palestine from its website yesterday, NAVI documented the troubling content that included a link to a reading list from a U.S.-designated terror entity and material from the website Palestine Remembered defending Hamas’ depraved Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel as “Palestinian resistance” “enter[ing] their stolen lands and looted homes” because “the Israeli Jews are mostly nothing but a bunch of colonial settlers squattering on Palestinian lands.”
The themes of “resistance” and “settler colonialism” have worked their way into Minnesota’s new K-12 social studies standards set to be implemented fall 2026.
For example, a new ethnic studies standard titled “Resistance” will require students to “describe how individuals and communities have fought for freedom and liberation against systemic and coordinated exercises of power locally and globally.” A geography standard will require students to “analyze the impact of colonialism, from multiple perspectives, on the emergence of independent states and the tensions that arise when the boundaries of political units do not correspond to the nationalities or ethnicities of the people living within them.” A public data request revealed the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict” was listed as examples for both of these standards before it was decided included examples would not be published.
After growing public pressure, the NEA quietly removed the materials from its site and issued a statement claiming the content had not been properly vetted before distribution.
“It has come to our attention that an external resource that was linked to on NEA’s website, which has been widely used by man [sic] news outlets and organizations for many years, falls well short of our standards,” a spokesperson for the NEA told the New York Post. “After we became aware of content on this website — particularly related to Israel and Palestine we conducted our own deeper review including links to additional third-party hosted content. Upon review, we immediately removed it from the website.”
We condemn in the strongest of terms the deeply offensive content linked on the website, and our team is working to identify a resource that meets our specific needs and standards. We have contact [sic] the host organization to flag our serious concerns and have urged them to conduct a thorough review.
Minnesota educators who are union members pay dues to the NEA. While the union opt-out window has already passed (Sept. 1-Sept. 30), continuing members can request a refund of their Political Action Committee (PAC) contribution here by Oct. 31.
