One 45-minute lesson on contemporary antisemitism can meaningfully cut teenagers’ belief in antisemitic conspiracy theories, according to a new study by the Anti-Defamation League. 

The study evaluated 372 middle and high school students across nine schools in a North Carolina school district between September and November 2025, finding that students who received the lesson, titled “What Is Antisemitism and What Are Features of Antisemitism?” were 14% more likely than a control group to reject the claim that Jews have too much power in the United States. 

The lesson also drove a 16-point drop in students’ endorsement of the trope that Jews are more loyal to Israel than to the U.S., and they were also less likely to believe in other tropes involving Jewish control and media influence. They were also 14% less likely to minimize antisemitism as a problem.

In a separate online study of 5,005 U.S. high school students conducted by the ADL, a single lesson was found to cut down stereotype agreement. This drop reportedly happened even in students who usually hold firm views. 

Teachers without prior training taught the lesson designed by the multimedia curriculum program Echoes & Reflections. The lesson explores what antisemitism means, how it has appeared in the past and today, how stereotypes and conspiracy beliefs are cyclical and how they harm both Jewish communities and society as a whole.

The study comes amid reports of political activists increasingly seeking to push antisemitic content and extremist perspectives in K-12 classrooms across the country. 

“This research is significant in that it features evidence from real classrooms,” said Matt Williams, vice president of the ADL Center for Antisemitism Research. “We now have data showing that a single, well-designed lesson, taught by educators with no special training, can measurably shift how teens think about antisemitism. That’s a solvable problem for schools. Based on our research, districts don’t need a semester-long unit or a major new investment to make progress, they need the right 45 minutes, and now we’re closer to knowing what that looks like.”