The Dispatch Podcast - Is Liberalism a Luxury Jews Can't Afford? | Interview: Jonathan Greenblatt

Episode Date: March 4, 2025

Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, thinks it’s time for the organization to reinvent itself. As American Jews face a historic surge in violence, Greenblatt wants the ADL to rethink its old alliances and go on offense, targeting radicals and the education system that creates them. He joins Adaam James Levin-Areddy to discuss the ADL’s newly published “campus antisemitism report card,” the organization’s historical commitment to classical liberalism and a broader civil rights coalition, the left’s betrayal of Jews, Elon Musk and the Trump administration, and the challenge of differentiating antisemitism from anti-Zionism. The Agenda: —The ADL’s history is the story of American civil rights —Playing the liberal game —The Elon Musk gesture and finding new allies —CAIR —Can the Ivy League be saved, or is it time to build something new? —Antisemitism vs. Anti-Zionism. Can Jews be antisemitic? —Blindspots Show Notes: —The ADL's Campus Antisemitism Report Card, 2025 The Dispatch Podcast is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including members-only newsletters, bonus podcast episodes, and regular livestreams—click here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. This is Adam sitting here at the headquarters of the Anti-Defamation League with the CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt. Jonathan, thank you for joining me. Thank you for coming in, Adam. I'm glad to spend the time together. So I am here. here to discuss the the latest report card that you guys will have issued by the time this episode comes out. But first, I think just level setting. I think our audience understands that there's

a growing sense of anxiety in the Jewish community, which is obviously the focus of your work about anti-Semitic rhetoric and anti-Semitic actions. But I first want to understand and explain to the audience in what you see your role. Sure. As end. Actually, let's start there. Well, look in the spirit of level setting. We'll just step back.

So ADL is the oldest anti-hate organization in America. It was founded in 1913, spurred on by the lynching of a Jewish man, Leo Frank. And ADL was created at a time when Jews in this country, you would describe them as being sort of systematically discriminated against. So Jews couldn't buy homes many parts of the United States. United States, quotas artificially kept down their numbers at universities if they were even admitted they couldn't work in many professions. Right here in New York City where we're recording this podcast, the Jews, Jewish doctors founded a hospital that we now know as Mount Sinai because the big hospital in town, what's now known as Cornell Weil, would not admit Jewish patients.

So literally a Jewish victim could bleed out on the street in front of the hospital and they wouldn't treat that person, they wouldn't let them in the door. So Mount Sinai was founded as the Jews Hospital and that situation was replicated in cities all over the country. And of course, there was rampant mischaracterization stereotyping in the media. So in that era, in that time, the ADL was founded. And interestingly, the mission statement that they wrote for the organization was that its purpose would be to, quote, stop the defamation of the Jewish people and secure justice and fair treatment to all. So ADL, since its founding, 113 years ago, has always had this view that the Jewish people will not be safe unless

everyone is safe, that we won't be free unless everyone, the Jews aren't free, then everyone isn't free. That's sort of the general idea. Can you dive into this? Because I think this goes into some of the, I don't say controversy necessarily, but some of the contentious conversations about the positions that the ADL takes and we'll get into that at some point, but can you put some more meat? Why is that the case? So look, in the 1910s and the 1920s

and the 1930s, 1980s, ADL helped to overturn those quotas that kept Jews out of universities, helped to change the laws that prevented Jews from buying homes, helped to expose the discrimination that prevented Jews from getting hired or Jewish patients were getting treated and so on and took on the stereotyping in the media and the mischaracterization that was talking about.

ADL did all that and made America safer for its Jewish community. And then in 1953, ADL filed an amicus brief in a landmark case of the Supreme Court called Brown v. Board of Education, which of course is known as the case that desegregated America's schools.

At that time, many people within ADL said, wait a second, why is ADL filing an amicus brief, a friend of the court brief, on behalf of Thurgood Marshall, who was prosecuting on behalf the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, this case, to desegregate the schools.

that's not a Jewish issue people said at that time and the leadership of ADL said no justice inferred treatment to all compels us to fight all forms of discrimination not just anti-Jewish discrimination and I think the leadership at ADL I'm not in their head but I believe at the time they felt like the Jewish community had chiefs so much in the recent decades now is a time for us to expand a bit and use this you know this sense that we had to support other communities in need. Now, what's interesting about that is, of course, in the ensuing years, we fought for immigration reform in the 1950s. We commissioned President John Kennedy to write a book in 1957 that he published in 1958 called A Nation of Immigrants. It's a very famous book.

One of only two books that Kennedy wrote. He wrote that in Profiles in Courage. He wrote a Nation of Immigrants for ADL. And I have hanging on. the wall of my office down the hall. One of the pens that LBJ, President Johnson, used to sign the 1965 Immigration Act at Liberty Island, you know, under the shadow of the Statue of Liberty, because ADL was very involved in that. And ADL fought for things like the LGBTQ community in swing years and so on. But if I flash forward to today, to right now, 2025, what is indisputable, What is unmistakable is we are dealing with the worst surge of anti-Semitism we have recorded since ADL started doing this work. So I want to ask you before we jump to the current moment because you gave us this impressive history that places American Jewry in the center of a lot of civil rights movements.

And the ADL clearly historically saw it as part of its mission. It's sort of a classic liberal mission. I would say, Adam. And, you know, there's a ancient debate about why does the American Jewish community just generally lean left. My boss, Jonah Goldberg, says, you know, this is an overdetermined phenomenon. There are so many causes, but it's clear that something in the Jewish mission and the Jewish identity has been intertwined with the American form of liberalism, of pluralism, right?

and I assume that this is part of the ideas that guided the ADL in more current years to make some of its alliances with the BLM movement. We never had an alliance with the BLM movement. Expressed some sympathies and support. I think there were some statements, expressions of solidarity. When Donald Trump first came into office round one and issued the Muslim ban, you, I believe, came out with a statement saying that this Jew, will identify or register as

Muslim in solidarity, right? Because it's all about seeing those connections. And yet, now at this moment where, as you put yourself, we experience a heightened or probably the worst surge of anti-Semitism in our lifetime,

most of these groups have abandoned Jews as allies. I'd say the majority of Muslim groups care notably, but many others have... Care is never on our side. The one thing care doesn't do is care. Right. But many other Muslim groups after October 7th have turned the blame on the Jewish state. And the Jewish community. And the

Jewish community at large, and we'll get to that distinction. More recently, there was a, you know, the story of the nurse, this is not American jury, but there's the story of the, the nurse in Australia that was caught on tape saying that she would kill an Israeli patient if she had one. And she was suspended, but the majority of Muslim, the notable Muslim groups around the world rallied, her defense. It does not seem that this alliance, again, maybe not alliance, this solidarity of the, following the idea that the Jews are free only when everybody else is free is a two-way street. Okay, so there's a lot to unpack in what you said, and I think you conflated a lot of things. So let's just step back, right? Yes, please. So I do think it's like a classical sort of

liberal view that, you know, all people are created equal, right? That we all have certain inalienable rights and I do think the Jewish people perhaps arguably more so than any other community like the history of a Western civilization have been subjected to illiberalism where we have not been recognized as equal simply because of you know how we pray or where we're from or what they say our race quote unquote is. I think Jews have been serially and systematically subjected to a kind of discrimination and again the hues may change but the color is the same. same. Now, I think it is fair to say, like, again, I can't put myself in the heads of the people who came before me, but I think that our mission has always compelled this organization

to fight for justice and fair treatment to all. Not because we expected a quid pro quo, not because we thought we will scratch their back and therefore they will scratch ours. Hillel didn't say, if I'm not for myself who will be, if I am only for myself, what am I, and what am I going to get for it? You know? He didn't say that. So I think this is a very Jewish ethic, if you will, of being there for others and welcoming the stranger because we were once strangers.

So I think it is a classic Jewish idea. It's like, I mean, look, the idea of mitzvah is like deeply, you know, embedded in the sort of the DNA of Jewish civilization, I would say, lifting up the misfortune, the less fortunate. And again, I think it's a classically pletive. politically liberal idea. But that being said, it is certainly true that what we've seen in recent years here in the United States and after 10-7 have almost no historical precedent. Now let me explain what I mean by that. It is definitely true, like I just said, the Jews are serially systematically discriminated against. But in this country, where there has

been so much focus on intersectionality, and there's been so much focus on sort of shared struggle. Anti-Semitism has increased over the last decade by upwards of a thousand percent, I mean incidents, acts of harassment, vandalism, and violence targeting the Jewish people, okay? And to be even more precise, like when I took this job in 2015, there are I think 950 some odd incidents that we tracked at ADL. Last year we had nearly 9,000. There is no other community that I can tell you in the United States since we've been tracking this. that has seen such a meteoric, such a almost algorithmic, if you will, rise in incidents.

I mean, Jews are just 2% of the population. We are 10% of the overall volume of all hate crimes in the country. That's crazy. And four out of the past five years, we've hit new highs. So in a moment when the Jews are being overwhelmed by this tsunami of anti-Semitism, I have to look at my mission statement, but my mission statement,

which we've already said it here. It is informed by our purpose, and the purpose is different. The reason why ADA was created, which is said at the top, is because the Jews are being systematically discriminated against. Our core purpose, the reason why we were created was to protect the Jews,

to protect the Jewish people. Now, the mission statement is how they thought this organization would go about it. But you're saying that it is not out of a political, idea of some kind of mutual solidarity, locking hands with different groups, more like almost the privilege of a group that believes in the righteousness of its general cause and the liberal method being able to help other groups when it is enjoying success. But right now, if we are regressing, if we are regressing, does that mean regression away from the overall pluralistic

approach? Well, I wouldn't use the choice. I wouldn't use the term regression, right? I wouldn't characterize it like that. But I would say is that maybe I'll use an analogy. So this is an inferno. The neighborhood is on fire, including the homes of people in our, the whole block is on fire, including the homes of the people next to us. Some of whom I know and some of whom I don't know, right, neighbors who I see every day and neighbors who I never see at all. Before I help them put out their fire, their homes that are burning, I've got to put out my house first. I'm going to put out my house first. Where my wife lives, where my wife lives, where children live. I'm going to put out my house first. Here's what I would say to you, Adam.

Again, we have a mission statement that was written to guide an organization that was created for the purpose of protecting the Jewish people. And in a moment where we are facing unprecedented anti-Semitism, and in a moment where we do not see allies lining up to help us, I have no trouble being very clear with you or with anyone about where my priorities are and where I'm going to allocate my scarce resources. It's not protecting the Jewish people. So again, to say that isn't a regression, to say that is simply a demonstration of,

if you ask me, realism. Priorities. Yeah. So much of this is talked about in the abstract. So much of this, so many of the activists, and I use air quotes, like they live in this world of the theoretical.

You know, oh, like, yeah, solidarity is strength or, wow, these crazy slogans. Like, I don't have time for slogans. I don't have the luxury of, like, philosophizing what I deal with at this organization every, last year in 2023, we had more than 30,000 reported incidents here, more than 30,000 each one we investigate. So, like, I don't have the luxury of, like, pontificating, oh, wouldn't it be nice if I got to help people whose kids are getting bullied, who are getting fired from their jobs, or getting

harassed at their homes, college students are getting assaulted, like on the quality. so like I don't these like kind of this kind of silly talk I don't have time for it would you would you think that now looking back to some extent the idea that the the the Jewish people can only be free when everybody else is free is in itself a slogan that we don't have the luxury of at this moment well look slogans are just that their slogans and so I appreciate the ideal of it I really do and again I think it it is rooted in as we talked about this sort of can I say it this Hillelian You know, it's rooted in the teaching of the sages.

It's rooted in this classically, like politically liberal idea, not like, you know, conservative liberal, but like this liberalism. And yet in this moment, like our house is on fire, and I've got to put it out. Right. The way I've been thinking about this recently is it's almost like the Jewish community has been playing,

the American Jewish community specifically, has been playing a different game than, other groups, if the Jewish community has been playing the pluralistic liberal American game, other groups have been training the self-preservationist protectionist tribal game. And I wonder if at this moment, I mean, the Jews realize, the American Jews realize that we don't know what game we're supposed to be playing anymore. Interesting. I hadn't thought about it like that. And it's impossible to play the liberal game when you're the only one playing it.

Well, look, sort of game theory, if you will. like I have a background economics, like there's no such thing as a one-player game. Like, solitaire isn't a thing in game theory, you know? And if you're playing by one set of rules and the other guy's playing by the other, the challenge with this metaphor is that the Jewish community will never thrive if we don't have allies. As we said a few minutes ago, we're only 2% of the population. And so... Right, so there is also the political interest of solidarity, right?

Yeah, yes. And so my point would be in saying that is, we may need to look for new allies or we may need to educate the allies we currently have and we need to make the hard decision saying you're just not working with this anymore so let me just put that in stark relief we worked with a lot of American Muslim organization

but never care I would never work with care care is you know it's an outgrowth of the Muslim Brotherhood I would never do anything show up on a stage make anything do with them zero not a nothing but there are other groups with whom we have worked in the past I think about one group called Muslim advocates, which formerly was very focused on a domestic civil rights agenda. We made common cause with them on issues like zoning for religious institutions because, you know, there are certain municipalities which have passed restrictive zoning laws to prevent, for example, a mosque from being built in their town, which is a violation of religious, you know, the rules, the laws against religious discrimination.

So like we worked on issues like that before, you know, and there are a lot of opportunities for common cause, Adam. However, in recent years, and particularly since 10-7, we're not really working actively with any of them anymore. And it breaks my heart to say that. It breaks my heart to say that another group that, in theory, would have some similar considerations to the Jewish community here. They think about things like ritual slaughter. They think about things like ritual circumcision. They think about things like, again, where their religious institutions can be built. You would think we would be able to work together.

but I'm not willing to, like, do a litmus test on Palestine to work with someone. But by the same token, if you see, I have a very simple rule at, and everybody here knows it at ADL. I think it's our job to work to talk to anyone, everyone with just one rule. Like, I won't humanize people who dehumanize others. I won't humanize people who dehumanize others. So if there's an organization that dehumanizes black people, says they're subhumanizing or I won't talk to them. If there's a group that dehumanizes Zionists says they're all, whatever, I won't.

That includes me, by the way. Like, I won't talk to them. If you dehumanize other people, then I don't want to do anything to do with you. But we have a pretty wide birth within that. And I think one thing that the Jewish community has often done, particularly liberal Jewish groups, and now I mean like a little L, okay, they've been very precious about the organizations or the communities with whom they would ally. So like some groups are unwilling to work with segments of the evangelical community because there is a not because the groups are not aligned on every issue.

But you know what? Like I've worked with a lot of African American groups over the years and we're probably not aligned on every issue. So I think the Jewish community in this moment needs to try to think hard about who our allies are, try to find ways to underscore for our existing allies, you know, why we work together and what our core issues are and look for new allies who, work with us and accept us for who we are and what we believe. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the platform that helps you create a polished professional home online. Whether you're building a site for your business, your writing, or a new project, Squarespace brings everything together in one place.

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Go to Squarespace.com slash, dispatch for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code dispatch to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Let's look at those two things. So new allies, I think the most controversial moment that the ADL got itself in, at least as far as the Twitter world is concerned, is that the ADL reviewed the Elon Musk gesticulation slash Nazi salute and concluded.

that it's too, the time is too fraught, I believe was the idea conveyed and that the time is too fraught to make any judgment about this. Let's give people grace and the benefit of the doubt and basically said as probably the most prominent American voice in adjudicating anti-Semitism said that we're going to let this slide. Well, I don't think we've carried like that. I think we said we didn't think it was a Nazi salute and we think at the same time we understood why people are on edge. And yes, therefore, let's all take a deep breath and give grace and try to find ways to come together. So my question is, do you think that you would have shown Elon Musk in that moment, that kind of grace on October 6th?

I was in touch with Elon Musk on, you know, I've been in touch with him for a number of years. So I would have given him that grace on October the 6th. I would have because I don't think that's what he was doing there. Now look, on the same time, Adam as you likely tracked, like two days later, he did this horrible kind of chat GPT style, you know, wordplay joke about Nazis. And I called him out for that because I thought that was wrong. And like it was a kind of Holocaust, you know, you have a Holocaust denial and you have Holocaust distortion. It was kind of distortion. I didn't like it.

And so I said as much. And I also spoke out, I think I retweeted Danny Dianne from Yad Vashem when he spoke to the AFD meeting that weekend. So, look, I don't think along gets it right all the time. But in that moment, I thought it was important. What I missed in that moment, in all honesty, just, you know, again, being forthright. I don't think it was intended to be. On the other hand, a lot of people felt like it was and reveled in the fact that they thought it was.

And a lot of people were upset because they thought it was. So I think sometimes, Adam, there is intent and there is impact, you know? And so whereas I think we got it right on the intense side, I think, We didn't appreciate just how profound the impact would be of that because that's how people saw it. And so I think if I were to do that statement again, I probably would have worded it a little bit more carefully, but I still would have ended up in the same place, which is we all need to show each other a little bit of grace. And I think we all benefit from taking a beat before we jump to a conclusion. So thinking about the Elon Musk bigger picture, we were talking about the Trump administration,

we're talking about a new form of right-wing politics that in some ways has become an ally of at least the Israel cause, if not the greater Jewish cause. I think the Trump administration has made several declarations about looking into anti-Semitism in the federal agencies as well as in universities. Are these the new sort of allies that we are trying to cultivate, that you are trying to cultivate?

Look, we're a tax-exempt organization. and so we're nonpartisan in our sort of incorporation and irrespective of what the critics might say, like we're not political. So we will praise politicians from both sides or both major parties when they get it right and we'll call it out and we think they get it wrong. We worked with the Biden administration.

I thought they did good stuff, like the national strategy to counter-anti-Semitism, really important. I think it was amazing when Joe Biden said he was a Zionist and went to Israel, like a couple weeks after 10-7. I don't know exactly, but it was that month. And at the same time, you know, we've shared criticism. We think they got it wrong, like not taking the stuff

to the university seriously enough, for example. Or like the inclusion of care as one of the reviewers or whatever it was on that, on the report. I can't remember what the exact, something crazy. I think they removed care after it. They did. Because people like us were like, you know, I would never sign out to anything they cared it.

Now, at the same time, like I think the Trump people, look, President Trump, God bless him. he said it was going to be a priority and he's made it a priority himself the executive order that he issued a week or two into office was really important you know leo terrell is running this new task force out of the doj that's taking a more aggressive approach which is really important they're talking about investigations at universities which i think is really important so um and he has been unequivocally in supporting israel vis-a-vis the war against chamas and say the house you need to come home and i think uh i don't know what steve whitcuff's title is ambassador

I'm not sure what his idol is, but Steve Whitkoff has done really important work, I think, to kind of catalyze the process and to get hostages home. So all of that being said, it's for me, I think as I think about new allies, like I don't think the ADL has done much work with the Hindu community over the years or the Jewish community broadly, at least not that I'm aware of. And I think then there are groups like evangelical community who have been there for Israel for a long time and we need to do more with them. And then there are groups like members of the LDS Church, which again, we don't do that much with it. We should do more. I think the bottom line is the Jewish community is in crisis. We need to deal with that crisis.

That requires acknowledging when we get it wrong as I'm doing, but it also requires innovation and new approaches. And I think this is fundamental to our kind of go-to-market plan at ADL. So to bring some of these things together, a lot of the, with every ally, you encounter problems, right? You mentioned the LDS Church. Wasn't it 10 years ago? They were baptizing. They baptized Anne Frank, right? I mean, they were baptizing people who were murdered in the Holocaust.

Possumously baptizing Holocaust victims. Right. So with every such L.I. you encounter problems, sometimes it's even more grotesque with the Trump administration. You have some of the performances in CPAC, Steve Bannon making the Nazi salute, more overtly. Ultimately, it does come down to. a political calculation of priorities and which battles to fight when and against whom, I believe, with whom and against whom. Look, I think, at least for me in this organization as a whole, there is always the need

to have a degree of balance where you are principled, but you are also pragmatic. Like, I'm not going to change our principles. I'm not going to change our mission. I'm not going to change our belief in these things. These are essential to who we are. And yet, I'm going to be pragmatic and say, as I was saying earlier, in this moment when the Jews are under siege, like my job is to make sure that we are safe.

Right, so this was actually my question. So putting this all into context of priorities, what are the actual priorities? What is the threat? Is it just a diffuse, multiple signals of rising violence, or can you focus where this threat is coming from? Why are we seeing this kind of surge?

Because if we are going to prioritize our allies, we need to have a sense of where it's coming from, unless it's just kind of a spiritual rise, and anti-Semitism across the board and we can't really pinpoint it. Well, no. I mean, so I think there were two things here, okay? So number one, like, why are we in this moment today?

And then I think the second question, so what are the specific threats and they're not necessarily the same? Right. So first, like, why are we in this moment today? And taking that in the context of trying to figure out what the priorities should be. And therefore how you prioritize.

Right. So let's take it's like a three-part question. So the first part is, why are we in this moment today? I think the moment we're in where antisemitism has skyrocketed where, by the way, attitudes we also so the ADL has been tracking and responding to incidents for since the 1970s

and we've been measuring and studying anti-Semitic attitudes since the 1960s and in the last five years intense anti-Semitic attitudes in the United States as a share of the general population have more than doubled from 11% to 24% which is extraordinary and by the way when we last we did a study in 2024 something we saw for the first time,

which is also now we've replicated this globally, its younger people are more likely to have anti-Semitic attitudes than older people. So there's like a demographic sort of time bomb of sorts, which is really quite terrifying. So how do you get in this position? I think there are a few things going on. So I think number one,

I really think that as we kind of alluded to earlier, anti-Semitism is almost part of the human condition, certainly in the West. we have been for thousands of years this subpopulation living on the margins of a majoritarian society speaking a different religion praying a different way eating different food etc dressing differently and we have been easy for the for the king or the caliph to you know to scapegoat and blame things on and we're living in a moment today in this world where we're seeing systems failure at scale right like distrust the edelman trust barometer shows us distrust and his

It's higher than we've seen ever, right? Distrust in judicial system, in the judiciary, in Congress or legislatures, distrust in business, distrust in media, distrust in law enforcement. Higher education. And so, number one, when systems fail, oftentimes you see populists who will blame others for the problem. And so I think what we're seeing now is kind of scapegoating as a political strategy, and the Jews always lose, always lose. What's coming to the left or the right doesn't matter.

Islamists, the Jews always lose in that kind of game. That's number one. Number two, we have seen the coarsening of the public conversation in recent years. There's just no doubt. I'm not going to tell you anything you don't know, but I think politicians on both sides of the aisle and public figures more broadly. The decorum that used to dictate sort of public behavior is kind of gone. That coursing of the conversation has allowed people to say things and do things that they just wouldn't before.

Maybe some is also the Holocaust is in recession, right? It's receding from the collective memory. And so I think that course of the conversation has also been quite toxic for us. And then thirdly, I think social media has literally like amplified everything. Social media is a stereo, as a super spreader of anti-Semitism. So I think these three things have really helped to a large degree to normalize anti-Semitism, as a political tool, as a as a, as a, as a, as a, as a, as a, as a, as a, as a, as a, as a, as a kind of like a rally, the troops strategy, all of it.

So then where are the threats today here in the United States? So look, I think number one, and you have to acknowledge that there are different fronts in this sort of war, but there's no question that the seizure of so many of the institutions of culture by what I will characterize here today as the radical left is a lot to do with this problem. You see it on the college campuses. We see it in the K through 12 schools.

We see it in certain elements of the workplace. We see it in large swaths of what we consider maybe like the mainstream media. And I think the seizure of institutions with a sort of woke ideology that reduces people, if you will, to like identity and that's it. When we play the oppression Olympics, Adam, the Jews always lose. What are the threats? Number one, that is a threat. We need to push back on this ideology and this sort of DEI industrial complex, which has really

like supported it. Second threat, I think there's absolutely an Islamist threat. So we track anti-Semitism. We have seen, the largest state sponsor of anti-Semitism I've said for many years is Iran, the Islamic Republic of Iran, because it is. And we see their language and their propaganda showing up on college campuses. And we see it all over social media. And we see it seeping into other spaces.

I still believe that. I also increasingly believe that Qatar has a lot to do with the quandary we're in. and that actually, although we haven't done the analytics on this, and so I'm low to speculate about something that I can't substantiate with data, but Al Jazeera, I think, and we see this in our attitude numbers, because we look at attitudes globally, Al Jazeera has had a corrosive impact on public opinion vis-a-be Jews, not Israel, Jews, okay?

And I think that is a big part of the problem as well, and I think the third part of the problem of the United States is also an extreme right problem. It's safe to say that the blood tribe doesn't have chapters on college campuses like SJP. But that doesn't mean that the blood tribe isn't a problem or the Goyam Defense League or any of these horrible or the Patriot Front or any of these really horrible groups that are pushing out like when you see these anti-Semitic flyers on people's yards or in public places or the sticering, a lot of the vandalism. Very often these are these right-wing groups and the kind of lone wolves that they radical. The threats, as I'm explaining to you, I think, come from different directions, and they are particularly different fronts.

So what's our strategy to deal with it? At the highest level, it's innovation and partnerships. But my strategy is, number one, disrupt the extremists. So we are focused on disrupting the radical left, the Islamists, the far right. So we're doing things today, again, in the realm of innovation of partnerships, like, for example, we launched something after 10-7 called the Campus Anti-Semitism Legal Line. know if you know about this, but we saw these kids who didn't know how to file Title VI cases. So we partnered with the Brandeis Center and Hillel International, and we brought in some other

groups like Stand with us. And, you know, as I was explaining to you, we respond to incidents. People call, email, text, when they fill an online forum when they experience anti-Semitism. So we used that same tech. We created a system to handle incoming complaints about Title VI violations. Didn't exist before. And in the last, whatever, 15 months, we've handled over 800 Title VI complaints. When I say we've handled them, we also partnered with a bunch of very big, prominent national law firms like Gibson Dunn, Aiken, Latham & Watkins, Covington and Burling, and we trained hundreds of lawyers on Title VI. So now when a complaint comes in, it gets farmed out to an associate to review. If they think it's valid, it goes for a secondary review.

if they still think it's valid, then it comes back in and we decide what to do with it. I can tell you, Brandeis has filed a ton of cases. We filed a ton of cases. ADL has filed more lawsuits in the last 12 months than in our previous 110 years. So we're suing not just colleges and universities. We're suing K through 12 school districts for Title VI violations. So we're doing a lot now in ways we never did before. I'll give you a second example.

We've amped up the work we do tracking the bad guys. So you're here at our investigative research lab where we're taping this. I mean, again, last year alone, ADL gave over 2,700 assists to law enforcement. We identified, again, threats against Jewish communities or Jewish people. So I'm talking about, again, an Islamist posting on social media like that nurse in Australia. I will kill an Israeli patient. She's been arrested, by the way. We're watching, monitoring, not doing anything illegal, but when we see a threat to our community,

we're calling it out for law enforcement. It sounds like the approach is offense. It's definitely offense. And I'll share you enough. So one thing is disrupting the extremists. Second thing for us is shifting from advocacy to activism. So one of the ways we did that was with our, I would say, with the new product that we just launched.

So ADL launched on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday, February the 27th, the first ever exchange traded, Jewish exchange traded funder in ET. It's like a bundle of stocks where you buy, like the S&P, for example, you buy a set of stocks in an area like tech or CPG or retail. So I've been worried about the BDS movement. We saw 71 BDS campaigns and academic, sorry, 80 BDS campaigns in the academic here, 23, 24. We've seen companies like Google, Amazon, Starbucks, which is even in Israel, Caterpillar, Boeing,

targeted by anti-Israel activists. And we're seeing these, I shouldn't even call them activists, antagonists or anarchists or some other word. Really, they're hooligans, BDS, Uligans. And we've seen Jewish employees marginalized and threatened inside some of these companies. So we launched an ETF. We've already raised over $100 million.

You can see it on the NYAC under the ticker symbol, Tov, TOV, and so we're buying the S&P to support companies that are, the right thing on anti-Semitism that are doing the right thing vis-a-vis Israel. Now, what's materially about that is... Is it a system to support them, or is it a direct investment tool? Is it like the ADLs ESG? You could think about it like that, but I'll tell you why it's important

because what I most... Look, our investment strategy is passive, but we are passionate about our advocacy. So what do I mean by that? Again, it's a passive tool. It's an ETF. We're not activist investors, but what we are going to do is unlock the ability of people who buy shares in Tov to do shareholder advocacy. So when the BDS hooligan show up at the public, at the shareholders meeting for Google,

we will be there. When they propose an anti-Israel resolution at Amazon shareholder meeting, we will counter it. We will work out in front and behind the scenes because now we have a seat at the table and we will use it. So that's a good example of unlocking. So there is a component of corporate governance that ADL is approaching. 100%. The third thing is changing the narrative.

How do we change where we even talk about these issues? And that leads me to their campus report card. Let's talk about it. I think the headline was that you've seen improvements. I need that unpacked. We have 100. The first time we did this in 2024, we looked at 80 universities, colleges and universities on 21, it's very ADL, we're very data driven.

So we looked at them against 21 different metrics, okay? And so what I say, we looked at them. We reached out to all the schools in advance. Some responded to us, most didn't in fairness. What we wanted to do was create an empirical evaluation, objective. Can you give me an example of some of those parameters? So there are three different categories, one of which is Jewish life on campus, which is pretty straightforward.

Hillel, Shabbat on campus, kosher dining, Jewish fraternities, and so on and so forth. Second one is a number of incidents. Is it the number of existing chapters or whether they are allowed to persist without interruption? So first thing, do you even have a Hillel, for example? And then the second set criteria are incidents, anti-Semitic or anti-Israel demonstrations, speakers, crimes, arrests, things like that. Again, things that we can entirely track. And then the third thing are policies and procedures.

Like, for example, if you do mandatory, whatever, sensitivity training, do you include anti-Semitism? Do you have a policy against BDS? Again, everything was public. We didn't hide the ball. You could see all of the different criteria and the waiting. And we evaluate 80 schools and a large number of very prominent schools got absent. By the way, we didn't grade on a curve, I should say, is really important.

Like, the goal wasn't to fail anybody. I wanted everyone to get an A. I wanted to create a race to the top. And I thought that by doing this an objective manner and very transparent, schools would see what they had to do. Now, when we undertook this, Adam, I was told, or we were told, this was a very bad idea, that schools would not work with us if we embarrassed them. And in fact, we reached out to Hillel directors to get their input.

None of them worked with us the first time. When I say none of them, I mean zero. At the 80 schools we reached out to, they didn't want to work with us because they didn't like this idea. Interesting. What was the language? because we were talking about schools at the height of DEI and the logic of intersectionality. What was their rejection?

I think they were afraid that we were going to be, I don't know, like maybe not objective or that we would use subjective measures. I really, again, it's hard for me to tell you what they thought, but let me tell you the postscript. So we released it. And in the ensuing year, 70% of the schools that we graded worked with us.

to improve their grades. How do we do an anti-Semitism training? How do we do an anti-VDS policy? How do we handle incidents when they happen and so on and so forth? 70%. We decided we would do this on an annual basis. This time, we went from 21 measures to 30 measures,

from 80 schools to 135 schools. I told you before zero Hillel directors worked with us the first time. This time, between Hillel and Khabaran camp over a hundred worked with us. And the good news is a number of schools did better. Overall, of the schools we originally graded, somewhere in the ballpark of 50% improved,

I think a little north of 50%, 10% went up two grades, and 40-some-odd percent went up one grade. What I'm trying to understand is when these schools are working with you to look at some of these criteria, can you give me an example of where you saw the improvement? Because from my perspective, some of the problems are not just, you know, cosmetic or they're not, they're not accidental. There are the result of a pedagogy that exists in those schools.

What you were mentioning, the combination, the two first threats, one being the radical left, I think you called it, and the other one being Islamism. To some, in Qatari money and Iranian funding, a lot of this comes together in the pedagogical. of American elite education, especially in some corners of the humanities and social sciences. These things are not, you know, the random disruptor. Those things come from a very profound baseline

of intellectual beliefs in theories that conclude that Jews are oppressors without even bringing in Israelis, that Jews, by their success in the Western meritocracy, are the perpetuated, of white supremacy, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, I mean, look, I think,

although it's certainly true that some quarters of the academy have been seized, as I'm saying, by this ideology, I don't think it's endemic to the entire institution per se. But I think the one thing that's very real is a lot of these university presidents,

and this was on full display through these congressional hearings. I mean, think about Dwight Eisenhower was once the president of, I think Columbia, Larry Summers was the president of Harvard. Like now we have like middling middle managers at these institutions.

So there's not a lot of moral courage on the front lines, you know? And so that lack of moral courage when you have bureaucrats and leadership roles combined with, again, some radicals who've sort of captured the conversation is a very sort of like toxic equation. I agree. It's grim. But in lieu of moral courage and real intellectual leadership, who do you turn to to turn the tide?

Well, I think what's happened is. You've seen donors and alumni, like, literally see this as a call to arms. They've mobilized in ways we've never seen before. The Mothers Against Campus Anti-Semitism and Facebook group has over 60,000 members. And it came together in a manner of speaking overnight. And you've seen people like Bill Ackman, Len Blavatnik, Mark Rowan, Dan Loeb, many other very prominent alum of Ivy League institutions who've used their reputation. and their muscle to mobilize other alums. And on top of that, look like credit where credit is due.

Again, although there's a lot of reason to criticize Congress generally, specifically, what the House Education Workforce Committee did in the last session was remarkable. Congresswoman Stefonic did in her grilling of the presidents of Penn, MIT, and Harvard, was remarkable. And I think it literally changed the course of this issue. So now what I'm seeing is universities like at Barnard. We had an issue at Barnard where these students flired, right, a Middle East Studies class at the beginning of the year.

You probably saw that. They've been expelled. Like, imagine if that had happened when this started, when this started to manifest on October the 8th, 9th, and 10th. And maybe it's happening because of the pressure from Washington and the federal government. God bless. But you see, my thinking here is if I'm correct and it is endemic,

then a lot of these changes are, And, you know, I think there's a lot of motivation among American Jews who, you know, really believe in the meritocracy and want to send their kids to the best schools to rehabilitate these institutions, which makes an assumption that they can be rehabilitated, right? Like my dream at the, when some of the madness on campus started was to see a version of the new school. The new school was originally formed by ex-Colombia professors who rebelled against those campus. I wanted to see Exodus University. I wanted to see all that money turning to build something

new that says we put those Jewish values. That what ADL spoke about. Like when Jews succeed, everybody succeeds. They're like paraphrasing and taking that we are going to create a new model form of retocracy that is led by this mission rather than rehabilitate these institutions that have abandoned us. Well, you did see, look, you've seen things like the University of Texas at Austin and you've seeing you at the high school level, classic schools start to appear that are explicitly focused on teaching the Western canon, in the great books, which I think is terrific. I mean, on the one hand, I also sort of, I sympathize with this idea of Exodus University. At the same time, I'm not willing to cede, I'm not willing to give up the Ivy League to the

lunatics. So I do think the idea of reforming them, if you will, the idea of fixing them, I think it's a noble pursuit. Now, not everything can be fixed. We're having the reform versus abolished debate here. Right. You know, my friend Daniel Labetsky of Kind, you know, the founder of Kind bars, he talks about this Builders movement. Like, I believe we need to be builders.

Like I am an institutionalist. I run the ADL for goodness sakes. We're an institution. But I also believe I'm a former entrepreneur and I believe in the value of building. I don't think it's either or I think it can be both and. It's very possible that some schools cannot be saved. It's very possible that some will just fail the test. You know, if you go back to the inception of the modern university,

I think it's Humboldt University in Germany, which is considered the first, like the original research university, in what we now consider the classic mold. Humboldt University isn't even on the radar today. What was the pinnacle of world learning 150 years ago is I think it's still there, but I don't think it's the best university in Germany, let alone in the world. It's very possible in 50 years, the Harvard's and the pens and the MIT's

won't be what they are now and that we'll see a new crop of schools you're already seeing in some ways look at Vanderbilt look at Washu those are two examples of schools which have always been good schools but have done incredibly well

in recent years because I think they're getting refugees who might have otherwise gone a few excuse a term to the Ivy League and by the way you're also seeing places like I'm hearing these stories anecdotally I don't know if it's true or not

and I haven't seen the data to back it up but southern state schools like Alabama Tennessee, who have seen a massive, a Georgia, massive spike in enrollment and like applications, I should say. So there may be the need to build some new institutions. There may be the need to reform other institutions. And maybe the need to revitalize others that have potential and promise. How do we, how do you think we should be having the anti-Zionism versus anti-Semitism debate?

and I just want to give it some more context. Like you, obviously, you've supported the definition of anti-Zionism as a form of anti-Semitism. As differentiated from just criticism of Israel, anti-Zionism as a movement assumes that the Jewish people have no right for self-determination. The reason it gets difficult is because a lot of the opposition to the idea that anti-Zionism should be included in the mission of fighting anti-Semitism comes from the Jewish community. In fact, I believe that several members of the ADL have quit in protest of the ADL's position on anti-Zionism. How do we have this conversation when there was a disagreement in the Jewish community about this point? Look, Jews have disagreed about, look, Cain and Abel disagreed, right? Adam and Eve disagreed.

Technically, they weren't Jews yet. Fair, fair. When Moses led them out of Egypt, like the Jewish people disagreed, you know? like disagreement, debate, like dispute, like this is central to our tradition. So I think we need to recognize that. But to your point, or as you led into this, you said about the debate about anti-Zionin versus

and Simpson, there is no debate. There just isn't a debate. Like so if you are rooted in fact, it isn't a debate. Anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. Again, if you believe in these classic, I suppose it's fair. If you don't believe in any notions of nationalists,

Like it's fair. If you are a college student studying 19th century theories of the nation state or whatever, I think it's fair that you could define yourself as, well, I don't believe in any nation state. I don't believe in Zionism. Okay. I think it's fair. Again, it's some abstract sort of manner. By the way, one of the things that the Jewish anti-Zionists left to cite is, oh, there was debate about forming the state of Israel in the United States. Like, I think the reform movement may have been against it, like some very prominent Jewish rabbis. The American Jewish Committee wasn't for it, you know. But it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's an, in an unfair. In America, generally, it was the goyem that were more in support of the Zionist project than many in the Jewish community. Well, I don't know. Okay. So, it's according to, uh, what I would simply say is that, um, I think not only is that comparison unfair, uh, not as a fair, I think it's obscene. It's obscene in 2025. So flash forward to today, as I was alluding to at the beginning of the beginning, this conversation. Anti-Zionism is this persistent form of bigotry and it's complex. It's different than different forms of hate. Again, there was a time when the hate against Jews was because ostensibly their religion was different and they didn't accept Jesus. They didn't accept Muhammad as the prophets. And so it was like a religious-based hate. And then after the age of enlightenment, the scientific revolution was upon us and such. Then it became a science-based anti-Semitism. Well, oh, eugenics.

where a different Hitler's famous quote was the Jews are definitely a race, just not a human one. And then after in the wake of the show, the eugenics was exposed as a fraud and racialized hate was revealed for its end point, then it became, again, if you will, like a political kind of anti-Semitism. Well, we don't hate the Jews for their religion.

We don't hate the Jews because they're a different race. We hate the Jews for their state. But these are all manifestations of the same pernicious, ugly antipathy toward Jews. So you, not unlike me, see this as part of the same genealogy shape-shifting creature that is anti-Semitism

or Jewish hate. All the historians who study this will tell you the same. Except that as we know, if you go out to the Upper West Side pick a random member of the tribe and ask them about it, they're more likely to disagree.

And increasingly we see that younger Jews see this as a deeper fault line than before. And I'm not even bringing groups like Jewish Voices for Peace who often make a mockery of Jewish tradition itself. I'm talking about people who value their

diasporic identity deeply. The diasporic identity that we enjoy is a privilege because of the state of Israel. It's a fair argument, but they see Israel as a blight and also as the cause of their trouble. They see the rise in local antisemitism as a response to Israeli militism.

Like if we'll just convert, maybe King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella will leave us alone, right? If we'll just, you know, be patriotic Germans, maybe the Third Reich will leave us alone. You know, maybe the Stalin will leave us alone. If we just swear our allegiance to the Communist Party, like Jews have so often, it's interesting, we were alluding to this before, Jews have always pursued their golden calf that they think will save them. And whether it's communism or whether it's a kind of fascism or whether it's a false religion or whether now indeed it's this, it's this illusion that their anti-Zionism will save them. it's unfortunate again i think it's a historical condition of our community that we look for this

golden calf but as that golden calf was a fake idol like so is this this this pursuit of anti-zionism but different kind of idolatry and i think it's incredibly not just wrongheaded it's unhealthy for us look zionism i would say to you and i would say to that you in the upper west side or to that young person. Zionism didn't start in 1948, and it didn't start with Theodore Herzl in 1897 with the Unstan, right? Zionism started 3,000 years ago. You can't open up a Sador or a Jewish prayer book in any synagogue anywhere on the planet Earth. Flip a page, every page you have references to Zion and to Yerushalayim and to Erits Israel and so on and so forth. There's a reason why every synagogue on the planet Earth, the altar, if you will, the Bima, you know, is facing

east towards Jerusalem. Like, it is intrinsic to our tradition and to try to suggest that, oh, I don't hate Jews, I just hate Zionism. I mean, you can, one can certainly say that. One can certainly make that assertion, but it's like saying, I don't hate humans, I just hate people. I mean, it's illogical. And whether or not it is, so here's the. important thing, Adam. And this is what's coming upon us as the ADL, Jewish leadership, the state of Israel. Like anyone, people with common sense, there needs to be much better education. Because again, remember you asked me about Elon Musk? Your intent as an anti, so-called anti-Zionist might not be to be anti-Semitic. Maybe you somehow think this is a legitimate school of thought. But I am telling

you the impact is anti-Semitism. I am telling you that's what it is. And we know this at ADL because we study it and we track it and we see it every day. So I guess one could say in some degree it's a come upon, you know, look, I don't run Hebrew schools, you know, and I don't run the education system, but we need to do a better job of educating young people about what these issues are so they understand that the issue, there is no debate about anti-Zionism. Anti-Semitism anti-Semitism is a 21st century form of anti-Semitism and we need to treat it as such. This is the education to the Jews. What do you do as the ADL when you're presented with this debate and then you're put against

a Jew telling you, well, I think anti-Semitism, they're not to say. But the difficulty, the difficulty for me here is as an organization that wants to make an offensive defense and some of these threats are being protected by other Jews. How do you navigate?

Look, like, it's a fair question and it's definitely a challenge but your identity doesn't exempt you from intolerance. Like, you could be black and say racist things. And you could be gay and say homophobic things, and you can be Jewish and say anti-Semitic things. So you would tell a Jew making this argument, you are giving soccer to anti-Semitism.

You are promulgating. I have told Jewish people that because it's the fact. And again, whether they, so again, back to the U.S. Elon Musk, intent and impact, they're certainly not always the same, but we need to recognize the importance of both. So whether that Jewish person intends to be doing self-harm, whether that person intends to be promulgating anti-Semitism. I don't know, but that doesn't mean that that's not exactly what's happening.

Yeah, I want to give you the chance to talk about any other project that we should have our attention drawn to. We haven't talked about K through 12 schools. You know, you asked me at the top of this conversation about civil rights, I now think we're moving to the field of education policy. So issues like curricular review, 10-year reform, university governance, funding, you know, academic funding. These are all things that we need to now be looking at and we're beginning to look at them in a very serious way. So I mean, those frothing lunatics who are assaulting Jewish kids on the

college campuses, they're not going to Goldman Sachs. They're not going to Google. They're going to grad school. And a number of them are in what we might call the social sciences. And we're seeing a lot of their ideas, if not the people themselves, seep into the curricula of these different school systems. And so we're certainly seeing things like ethnic studies and other sort of curricular interventions that politicize classrooms in ways that I think are incredibly unhelpful and flat out wrong and actually lay the path for the kind of problems we're talking about on the college campus. And I think classrooms should be places that are not poisoned by the politics of a particular individual. Kids should be able to learn.

all points of view. Kids should be able to not feel impinged upon because of their identity, but that's what's happening in places. We've got to tackle it. So it sounds like even now

you're still prioritizing promoting the pluralist mission, protecting the Jewish identity through the pluralistic ideal. Again, we have a core purpose here which is to protect the Jewish people and the mission, the way we go about it is what I said at the top.

That isn't changing. Again, in this moment we're prioritizing appropriately in light of the problem that we face. This is a question that I borrow from my other podcast, but I'm interested in your thoughts on this. What do you see as the blind spots as far as your field is concerned on the left and the

blind spots on the right? I think the left, again, even in their intersectional frameworks, fail to grasp anti-Semitism as the multifacet problem that it is. You know, it's sort of a round peg in the square hole of American concept of race, right? Americans identify race by how you look, essentially, right? How you present. But you're speaking about these Jews in the Upper West. side, if you will. There are Jewish people who daven multiple times a day, right, who are visibly

Jewish, and there are Jews who say, I'm an atheist. So I'm an atheist, but I'm Jewish. So you're not religious. I'm a cultural Jew. Well, what does that mean? Because, like, my wife is Iranian. Her culture is very different than a Jew from Argentina, very different than a Jew from, you know, Belgium. So what does that mean? Well, I'm ethnically Jewish. Well, what does that mean? So, like, I think Jews manifest and show up in all these different ways. And so it's complicated for someone who has a very one-dimensional notion of kind of race and identity,

even though they say it's intersectional to handle a Jewish person who shows up and is dark-skinned. Like it doesn't comport with the way we think about it. So I think the left has failed to grasp the nuances of the Jewish community like Jews of color or, you know, Mizrahi Jews.

And I think the left has also failed to understand the relationship that Jews have to Israel, so often fails to grasp why anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. They don't see that. And if you're not acculturated and maybe I can kind of give them a little bit of latitude, if you don't understand this deep abiding relationship. So I think that they need education there. What's the, what's the blind spots on the right? Look, if, I mean, if you think pardoning, if anyone thinks pardoning oathkeepers and proud boys and three percenters who participated in the criminal act on January the six is a good thing like I don't know where you I don't know what your parents taught you or where you went to

school you know people who violently assaulted police officers I understand that right now some may see them in the service of some higher purpose but I worry extremism of any kind is is dangerous it's combustible and it can turn on you like that and so I worry a great deal about a world in which we have kind of validated armed militias. I'm not talking about people who believe in the Second Amendment. I mean violent armed militia members who've demonstrated propensity to commit acts of violence or white supremacists, you know. The guy who was wearing the Camp Auschwitz sweatshirt, like, again, I don't care how you vote.

That was on January 6th. Yes, I'm sorry. Yeah, and went to the Capitol. Like, I don't care how you vote. I care what you value. and I think people who sort of soft pedal that or discount that, I think they do so at their own peril. Jonathan Greenblatt, thank you so much.

Thank you, Adon. Nice to talk to you. You know,