We’ve all seen the headlines when it comes to faculty unions.
“Faculty demand divestment.” “Graduate workers call for a boycott of Israel.” “University union condemns Israel.”
It sounds pretty definitive. An entire academic workforce has apparently assembled, debated the Middle East and reached a collective foreign-policy position. Except sometimes “the faculty” turns out to be a surprisingly small group of people who showed up to a union meeting.
A new report from the Anti-Defamation League and Academic Engagement Network argues that this is becoming a serious problem inside higher-education unions: highly organized activists can use low-participation governance to push political positions that are then presented under the name of thousands of faculty members or graduate workers. And the report has receipts.
21 People, 250 Members, One “Faculty Union” Position
One faculty member interviewed for the report described what happened at their union local in May 2024. The local had roughly 250 members. Only 35 were present for the meeting. And just 21 people voted to endorse a statement supporting student protesters, including demands to cut ties with Israeli institutions.
Twenty-one people. That’s 8.4% of the entire local deciding what would be presented as the union’s position. Apparently democracy gets much more efficient when 90% of the constituency isn’t in the room. That example is anonymous, but the same basic representation problem has surfaced publicly at one of the country’s largest academic unions.
CUNY’s Faculty Union Learned This the Hard Way
In 2021, the Professional Staff Congress, which represents CUNY faculty and staff, adopted a “Resolution in Support of the Palestinian People.” But the entire membership didn’t vote on it. The resolution passed through the union’s Delegate Assembly, 84-34, with another 43 delegates not voting. Afterwards, the union itself acknowledged that hundreds of members contacted leadership about the resolution and that the “vast majority” of those responses were critical.
Dozens resigned. Even PSC’s principal officers said afterward that controversial positions on Israel and Palestine should have been preceded by discussions with members in individual chapters. Which seems like the sort of thing you might want to establish before announcing a political position on behalf of everyone.
One CUNY professor summed up the problem in the union’s own publication: he objected to being effectively presented as supportive of a position adopted by a tiny fraction of the wider membership. That’s the part that tends to disappear once the resolution becomes a headline. It isn’t “84 delegates voted for this.” It’s “CUNY faculty union says…” Much tidier.
MIT Shows Another Side of the Problem
MIT’s Graduate Student Union offers a slightly different example. In April 2024, its members approved a resolution calling for a permanent ceasefire and for MIT to cut research and financial ties with the Israeli military. Unlike the anonymous 21-person vote or PSC’s Delegate Assembly decision, this one actually went to a membership-wide online referendum: 664 voted yes, 278 voted no and 38 abstained. So the issue there wasn’t that members had no opportunity to vote. It was what happened when a union created to represent graduate workers became increasingly consumed by the Israel-Hamas war.
A subsequent open letter from MIT graduate students argued that union leadership was devoting too much attention and resources to the conflict and alienating members in the process. A later congressional report said the letter had attracted 170 union-member signatures.
Which raises another fairly obvious question: At what point did negotiating graduate-worker conditions require running a Middle East foreign-policy desk?
And Somehow, Israel Keeps Making the Agenda
The AEN-ADL report cites a 2026 study finding that 76% of graduate student unions affiliated with teachers’ unions that publicly post information had taken positions critical of Israel and/or supportive of Palestinians. Their commentary on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or the Iranian regime’s treatment of protesters was considerably less enthusiastic.
There’s a difference between an activist having an opinion and an activist using a union’s name, membership and institutional credibility to make that opinion look like a collective consensus. And when members who disagree stop participating because they feel unwelcome, the problem can feed itself.
The report includes accounts from Jewish and Zionist members who say they were called “Zionists” as an insult, pushed out of leadership positions or eventually left their unions altogether.
Fewer dissenting members participate. The activist faction becomes even more dominant. Another resolution passes. And once again we’re told: “Faculty have spoken.”
Maybe. But before accepting that headline, there’s a much simpler question worth asking: how many faculty actually spoke?
