The Teachers Union Has Apparently Opened a State Department

AFT’s proposed convention book includes multiple resolutions on Iran and Lebanon, military action abroad, Venezuela, Gaza, Israel, the Pentagon budget, and the direction of American foreign policy. Proposed Resolution 42 alone calls for an end to military force against Iran, addresses blockades and nuclear guarantees, demands an end to Israel’s actions in Lebanon, invokes the War Powers Act, and recommends how federal war funding should be redirected.

That is an ambitious portfolio for a teachers union.

American parents might have assumed AFT’s international strategy focused on helping students read a world map. Instead, the union is drafting terms for a negotiated cessation of hostilities.

The problem is not that union members have opinions about war. The problem is institutional mission creep. Every hour and dollar spent turning a teachers union into a miniature State Department is an hour and dollar not spent addressing classroom safety, chronic absenteeism, teacher quality, literacy, math performance, or learning loss.

AFT’s leadership often insists that every political issue is an education issue. That slogan is convenient because it makes the union’s jurisdiction limitless. War is education. Immigration is education. Healthcare finance is education. D.C. statehood is education. Impeachment is education. Eventually, education itself becomes just one item among dozens.

There is also no reason to believe a labor union’s internal convention process is especially qualified to settle complex questions involving nuclear proliferation, military deterrence, sectarian conflict, maritime blockades, and constitutional war powers.

AFT members are educators, nurses, public employees, and healthcare professionals. They are not a substitute for Congress, the State Department, or the voters.

AFT should spend less time negotiating imaginary peace agreements and more time confronting the very real academic crisis in American classrooms. The country already has a foreign policy establishment. What it needs is a teachers union interested in teaching.