With summer break offering teachers a chance to level up their skills for the year ahead, Illinois educators will be able to spend three days in Chicago this month learning about “the dangers of the ADL’s influence in our schools” — and earn credit toward the professional development needed to renew their teaching licenses. 

In a description for the six-hour course — held over three days — titled “Why We Need to #DropTheADL From Schools,” the Anti-Defamation League is described as a “right-wing and white supremacist organization” that perpetrates “academic repression, and the punishment of educators teaching the truth about the genocide in Palestine and Lebanon.” 

Educators will leave the course “with an understanding of how to counter false accusations of antisemitism” and with “curricula and strategies to address real antisemitism in their school communities,” the description vows.

The Illinois State Board of Education mandates that all licensed educators must complete 120 hours of professional development training from state-approved providers every five years. Educators seeking professional development hours can also turn to the ADL, which offers its own courses giving professional development credit. One six-hour ADL course, offered in October, is called “Breaking Down Antisemitism.” Another is about helping teachers adopt a critical lens toward artificial intelligence so they can identify antisemitism and Holocaust inversion in AI tools. 

The anti-ADL course will be facilitated by members of Chicago Educators for Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace Chicago and the local Drop the ADL From Schools campaign. It is organized by a social justice-focused institute called Be the Change Collaborative, which is one of more than 300 organizations approved by ISBE to offer professional development credit to licensed educators in the state. 

The ADL is an approved provider, as is Echoes and Reflections, a Holocaust education initiative of the ADL, Yad Vashem and the Shoah Foundation. Other Jewish organizations — including the Simon Wiesenthal Center and Solomon Schechter Day School — are on the list, too. 

“All fair-minded teachers should reject calls to boycott educational programs that benefit Chicago’s students,” ADL’s Midwest regional director, Rebecca Weininger, told Jewish Insider. “We look forward to working with the Illinois State Board of Education to make sure that there is better oversight of approved providers to ensure that advocacy groups are not empowered to weaponize continuing education for teachers.”

The state education board did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday. 

The course pledges to “teach about antisemitism from a collective liberation lens.” The alternative antisemitism framework taught in the course, called PARCEO, was drafted by anti-Zionist activists, including former executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace, Rebecca Vilkomerson. 

Daniel Goldwin, the chief public affairs officer at Jewish United Fund, Chicago’s Jewish federation, said he did not want to weigh in on “exactly what should and shouldn’t be allowed when it comes to First Amendment issues, and state restricting speech.” But he said the program’s targeting of a major Jewish organization that does a lot of work in schools raises concerns.

“Not only do they want to teach a very particular view of antisemitism, they want to say that a leading organization that has been around for well over 100 years, that is focused on civil rights and combating antisemitism, is not welcome,” Goldwin told JI. “That to me is not what I think we’re looking for in continuing ed.” 

It is not clear how many educators signed up for the course. But it follows years of activists working to bring anti-Israel lessons to K-12 schools, a trend that followed similar efforts at universities. Organizers from the same organizations — JVP Chicago, Chicago Educators for Palestine and the Drop the ADL campaign — led a workshop for Chicago high school teachers in March.

Additional details about the course were reported by the North American Values Institute.