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Why Bret Stephens and the ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt See Eye-to-Eye
Anti-Defamation League (ADL) CEO Jonathan Greenblatt speaks during the organization’s “Never Is Now” summit at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in Manhattan in New York City, US, Nov. 10, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Jeenah Moon
“I was born in hiding, and I don’t want to die in hiding.”
Bret Stephens’ mother, who survived the Holocaust as a child in hiding, said that to him a year ago, after “watching footage of a Jewish student being harassed and surrounded by anti-Israel protestors at Harvard, a once great university,” said Stephens at Temple Emanu-El’s Streicker Center on Dec. 3.
“She couldn’t believe it. My mother, who came to this country at 10 and reveres America and our great institutions, she couldn’t believe that sight.” She responded by putting an Israeli flag on her door.
Stephens was in dialogue with ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, focused on the fact that the war in Gaza has been merely an excuse for the global surge in violent, normalized antisemitism.
The gorgeous sanctuary of Temple Emanu-El was packed on that cold Tuesday evening, with an additional 8,000 watching virtually. In general, the temple has leaned left, as do Reform (and most Conservative) congregations in NYC. But that night, there was no left and right in the audience. There were Jews. And many were there because they were scared.
Greenblatt talked about his first trip to Europe as ADL’s CEO, a decade ago. After seeing the high walls surrounding synagogues and Jewish day schools in Paris, he spoke with a well-armed member of the French Foreign Legion, who told him that he went from “fighting ISIS in Mali to fighting ISIS in Paris.”
“What starts in Europe ends up in America,” a friend told Greenblatt at the time.
“Objects in the mirror are closer than they may appear,” said Nicole Mutchnik, vice chair of the ADL’s Board of Directors.
A decade later, Greenblatt flew to Amsterdam to meet with Dutch leaders after the pogrom last month. “They told me they knew that this was planned long before the Israelis showed up. And yet, we were gaslit and told: The fans caused it. There are intense rivalries in soccer, but they don’t lead to a series of coordinated attacks across an entire city. Six hours of people getting chased down and assaulted with pipes and clubs and knives.”
“I’m sick and tired of being told that what’s happening on college campuses or at K-12 schools or at a soccer game is our fault. We should all be sick and tired of being told that we caused it because we didn’t cause any of it,” he said.
Greenblatt also met with leaders from the local Jewish community. “They were asking me, is it time to leave? Communities that withstood the Crusades, the Inquisitions, and the Shoah are now saying, is it time to go?”
Stephens was equally horrified by the reaction of European leaders. “Immediately, there was an effort at almost every level to explain away what had happened. What are the intellectual and cultural assumptions in which so much bigotry, which would not be permissible against any other minority, becomes permissible when it comes to Jews?”
“What do I want to see from leaders in Europe?” asked Greenblatt. “I want them to show courage. I want them to go after the radicals, whether they’re in the mosques or in the schools, or in their own political parties. And I want them to finally address the propaganda that is radicalizing these young people.”
“And this jihadi Islamism,” he added, “it’s coming here like a freight train.”
“Antisemitism,” Stephens explained, “is always going to find its roots and power not in the most bigoted and ugly expressions, but in the willing compliance of people who are prepared to go along with antisemitic explanations for the harm that’s done to Jews.”
How did we get to this place? “We have allowed anti-Zionism, this ideology of nihilism rooted in racism, to become legitimized,” Greenblatt said. “It is incredibly poisonous and problematic. We need to have the moral clarity and, frankly, the moral courage to call anti-Zionism for what it is: antisemitism. Period.”
“Viruses mutate to adapt to their host,” explained Stephens. “And the host today is uniquely susceptible to totally fallacious arguments about so-called settler colonialism. In fact, there’s one state that has this extraordinary connection to its ancestral homeland. And there’s one movement in the world that has the longest continuous anticolonial struggle in history.”
“The longest anticolonial struggle in history is Zionism,” Stephens stated. Zionism was in fact founded as a liberation movement from colonial powers.
“What is Hanukkah about? Who were we fighting? Who were we being colonized by? Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Ottomans, the British. Over that space of 2,500 years, Jews never lost sight of the fact that they would resist colonialism and establish sovereignty on their own land.”
Greenblatt then delved into the damage DEI has done. “This kind of oppressor/oppressed framework, this derivative of the DEI industrial complex, has created the view that Jews are ‘oppressors.’”
“What worries me is this idea of privilege,” said Stephens. “We used to speak in America about success and the proper emotion when it comes to the success of others is admiration. When you talk not about success, but about privilege, the suggestion is that it is unearned. Unearned success doesn’t beget admiration, it begets envy. And envy is the most toxic political emotion in the world.”
European Jews “always suffered because there was a profound streak of envy that ran through a lot of European culture, and America was free of that,” said Stephens. “I’m not so sure we’re free of it now, which is what makes me so alarmed that we are on the cusp of replicating some of the patterns we see in Europe.”
“And let’s be honest about what’s happening at Columbia,” Stephens continued. “It isn’t just a bunch of idealistic students upset about what they’re seeing in Gaza, but not in Syria, Sudan, Burma, Russia, or anywhere else, because that double standard is plain, clear antisemitism. When it comes to Israel, there’s zero nuance, zero history, zero context, zero curiosity about how this came about. It’s an abomination, not simply when it comes to the Jews. It’s an abomination when it comes to pedagogy.”
“How did our elite universities get taken over by this utterly unthinking ideology that asks its students to do nothing but mouth stupid slogans that happen to rhyme?,” Stephens asked.
“We cannot expect the cavalry to come,” Greenblatt warned. “You are the cavalry,” he told the audience. “You are the ones who are going to ensure that Bret’s mom doesn’t die in hiding. Anyone who thinks that all of this is a function of some natural law, that it could never happen here, you’re kidding yourselves. America is an experiment in democracy bound together by invisible values and morals that tie us together and root us. And it’s up to us to hold onto those.”
The attendees (myself included) left that evening still feeling scared, but, perhaps, a little less alone.
“All of us are aching,” Greenblatt said, “and all of us are heartbroken.” But here were two strong Jewish leaders who were not afraid to ask and answer the tough questions. And perhaps most important: both want to finally ditch the toxic partisanship that has only made everything a thousand times worse.
Karen Lehrman Bloch is editor in chief of White Rose Magazine. A different version of this article appeared in the Jewish Journal.
The post Why Bret Stephens and the ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt See Eye-to-Eye first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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University of California Rejects Ethnic Studies Admissions Requirement in Faculty Assembly Vote
Demonstrators holding a “Stand Up for Internationals” rally on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, in Berkeley, California, US, April 17, 2025. Photo: Carlos Barria via Reuters Connect.
The University of California (UC) Faculty Assembly has rejected a proposal to establish passing ethnic studies in high school as a requirement for admission to its 10 taxpayer-funded schools for undergraduates.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the campaign for the measure — defeated overwhelmingly 29-12 with 12 abstaining — was spearheaded by Christine Hong, chair of the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies department at UC Santa Cruz. Hong believes that Zionism is a “colonial racial project” and that Israel is a “settler colonial state.” Moreover, she holds that anti-Zionism is “part and parcel” of the ethnic studies discipline.
Ethnic studies activists like Hong throughout the University of California system coveted the admissions requirement because it would have facilitated their aligning ethnic studies curricula at the K-12 level with “liberated ethnic studies,” an extreme revolutionary project that was rejected by California Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2023. Had the proposal been successful, school officials of both public and private schools would have been forced to comply with their standard of what constitutes ethnic studies to qualify their students for admission to UC.
Being indoctrinated into anti-Zionism and “hating Jews” would essentially have become a prerequisite for becoming a UC student had the Faculty Assembly approved the measure, Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, executive director of antisemitism watchdog AMCHA Initiative, told The Algemeiner on Friday. AMCHA Initiative first raised the alarm about the proposal in 2023, calling it “a deeply frightening prospect.”
“Ethnic studies never intended to be like any other discipline or subject. It was always intended to be a political project for fomenting revolution according to the dictates of however the activists behind the subject defined it,” Rossman-Benjamin explained. “And anti-Zionism has been at the core of the field, and this became especially clear after Oct. 7. Most of the anti-Zionist mania on campuses that day — the support for the encampments, the Faculty for Justice in Palestine chapters — it was a project of Ethnic Studies. At UC Santa Cruz, 60 percent of Faculty for Justice in Palestine members were pulled from the ethnic studies department.”
Founded in the 1960s to provide an alternative curriculum for beneficiaries of racial preferences whose retention rates lagged behind traditional college students, ethnic studies is based on anti-capitalist, anti-liberal, and anti-Western ideologies found in the writings of, among others, Franz Fanon, Huey Newton, Simone de Beauvoir, and Karl Marx. Its principal ideological target in the 20th century was the remains of European imperialism in Africa and the Middle East, but overtime it identified new “systems of oppression,” most notably the emergent superpower that was the US after World War II and the nation that became its closest ally in the Middle East: Israel.
UC Santa Cruz’s Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (CRES) department is a case study in how the ideology leads inexorably to anti-Zionist antisemitism, AMCHA Initiative argued in a 2024 study.
Following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, CRES issued a statement rationalizing the terrorist group’s atrocities as political resistance. Additionally, the department days later participated in a “Call for a Global General Strike,” refusing to work because Israel mounted a military response to Hamas’s atrocities — an action CRES called “Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza.” Later, the department held an event titled, “The Genocide in Gaza in our [sic] Classrooms: A Teaching Palestine Workshop,” in which professors and teaching assistants were trained in how to persuade students that Zionism is a racist and genocidal endeavor.
Imposing such noxious views on all California students would have been catastrophic, Rossman-Benjamin told The Algemeiner.
“The goal of admissions requirements is to make sure that students are adequately prepared for college,” she noted. “Their goal was to use their power to force students to take the kind of Critical Ethnic Studies that is taught at the university, with the goal of revolutionizing society. The idea should have been dead on arrival, being rejected on the grounds that there is no evidence that it is a worthwhile subject that should be required for admission to the University of California.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post University of California Rejects Ethnic Studies Admissions Requirement in Faculty Assembly Vote first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israeli FM Praises Paraguay Decision to Label Iran’s IRGC, Proxies Hamas and Hezbollah as Terrorist Organizations
Paraguayan President Santiago Peña praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem on Dec. 12, 2024. Photo: The Western Wall Heritage Foundation
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar praised Paraguay’s decision to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization, and to broaden the country’s previous designation to include all factions of Hamas and Hezbollah.
The top Israeli diplomat congratulated the South American country and described President Santiago Peña’s decision as a “landmark move” in addressing security challenges and fostering international peace.
“Iran is the world’s leading exporter of terrorism and extremism, and together with its terror proxies, it threatens regional stability and global peace,” Sa’ar wrote in a post on X. “More countries should follow suit and join the fight against Iranian aggression and terrorism.”
I commend Paraguay and @SantiPenap for the landmark decision to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hamas, and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations.
Iran is the world’s leading exporter of terrorism and extremism, and together with its terror proxies, it threatens… https://t.co/OzWACbWcno— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) April 24, 2025
On Thursday, Peña issued an executive order designating the IRGC as a terrorist organization “for its systematic violations of peace, human rights, and the security of the international community.”
The executive order also expanded Paraguay’s 2019 proscription of the armed wings of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, the al-Qassam Brigades, and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed terrorist group in Lebanon, to encompass the entirety of both organizations, including their political wings.
“With this decision, Paraguay reaffirms its unwavering commitment to peace, international security, and the unconditional respect for human rights, solidifying its position within the international community as a country firmly opposed to all forms of terrorism and strengthening its relations with allied nations in this fight,” Peña wrote in a post on X, emphasizing the country’s strategic relationship with the United States and Israel.
Iran is the chief international backer of Hamas and Hezbollah, providing the Islamist terror groups with weapons, funding, and training. According to media reports based on documents seized by the Israeli military in Gaza last year, Iran had been informed about Hamas’s plan to launch the Oct. 7 attack months in advance.
Last year, Peña reopened Paraguay’s embassy in Jerusalem, making it the sixth nation — after the US, Guatemala, Honduras, Kosovo, and Papua New Guinea — to establish its embassy in the Israeli capital. During the same visit, he condemned the Hamas-led massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, calling the perpetrators “criminals” in a speech at the Knesset, the Israeli parliament.
The Trump administration also praised Paraguay’s decision to officially label the IRGC as a terrorist organization, describing it as a major blow to Iran’s terror network in the Western Hemisphere.
“Iran remains the leading state sponsor of terrorism in the world and has financed and directed numerous terrorist attacks and activities globally, through its IRGC-Qods Force and proxies such as Hezbollah and Hamas,” US State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a statement.
The US official said Paraguay’s action will help disrupt Iran’s ability to finance terrorism and operate in Latin America — particularly in the Tri-Border Area, where Paraguay borders Argentina and Brazil, a region long regarded as a financial hub for Hezbollah-linked operatives.
“The important steps Paraguay has taken will help cut off the ability of the Iranian regime and its proxies to plot terrorist attacks and raise money for its malignant and destabilizing activity,” the statement read.
“The United States will continue to work with partners such as Paraguay to confront global security threats,” Bruce added. “We call on all countries to hold the Iranian regime accountable and prevent its operatives, recruiters, financiers, and proxies from operating in their territories.”
During his first administration, Trump designated the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO), citing the Iranian regime’s use of the IRGC to “engage in terrorist activities since its inception 40 years ago.”
At the time, Trump said this designation “recognizes the reality that Iran is not only a state sponsor of terrorism, but that the IRGC actively participates in, finances, and promotes terrorism as a tool of statecraft.”
“The IRGC is the Iranian government’s primary means of directing and implementing its global terrorist campaign,” he continued.
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Yale’s Silence Is Allowing Blatant Campus Antisemitism — and Betraying the Promise of ‘Never Again’
Yale University students at the corner of Grove and College Streets in New Haven, Connecticut, U.S., April 22, 2024. Photo: Melanie Stengel via Reuters Connect.
As darkness fell over Yale University on Wednesday evening, Jewish students faced intimidation that echoed history’s darkest chapters. The following day, as the sun rose on Holocaust Remembrance Day, the world solemnly reflected on the devastating consequences of unchecked hatred.
Yet, disturbingly, at Yale, the shadows of that same hatred linger once again.
For several nights now, radical anti-Israel activists, primarily organized by “Yalies for Palestine,” an anti-Israel hate group, have targeted Jewish students at Yale — in many cases, based solely on their outwardly Jewish appearance.
On Wednesday, protestors blocked walkways, physically intimidated Jewish students, and hurled bottles and sprayed liquids at them — all while campus police stood by and did nothing.
One Jewish student described her chilling encounter with the protesters the night before, on Tuesday: “When I tried to get through, they blocked me, ignored my requests to pass, and handed out masks to those obstructing me. Yale security told me they couldn’t help.”
The immediate trigger for this harassment is the invitation extended by Shabtai, a Yale Jewish society, to Itamar Ben-Gvir, an Israeli government minister. Whether one supports or opposes Ben-Gvir’s politics is beside the point. Notably, Naftali Bennett, a former Israeli prime minister, was also protested and disrupted during a separate campus event in February, underscoring a broader trend of hostility toward Israeli speakers regardless of their political affiliation.
These events signal more than isolated protests; they constitute a redux of hatred that historically escalates when met with institutional silence or indifference.
Yale’s administration, under President Maurie McInnis and Dean Pericles Lewis, has failed to adequately respond. Though Yale revoked official recognition from Yalies for Palestine, its tepid actions have not halted the dangerous slide toward overt hostility. The silence — from both the university and the Slifka Center, Yale’s center for Jewish life — is deafening.
This isn’t the first troubling instance at Yale. A year ago, similar demonstrators disrupted campus life with vitriolic anti-Israel rhetoric, silencing dialogue and fostering an atmosphere hostile to Jewish students.
Earlier this year, CAMERA on Campus documented Yale’s Slifka Center pressuring students to erase evidence of anti-Jewish harassment during a pro-Israel event, effectively whitewashing antisemitism and emboldening extremists.
As CAMERA’s Ricki Hollander has powerfully documented, the rhetoric of anti-Zionism today often revives the antisemitic patterns of the past, particularly those propagated by the Nazi regime in the 1930s. These tactics, she explains, echo Nazi-era propaganda that portrayed Jews as subhuman, sinister, and uniquely malevolent — a narrative used to justify marginalization and, ultimately, genocide.
These dynamics — scapegoating, dehumanizing, and ostracizing Jews under the guise of “anti-Zionism” — are not relics of history. They are alive and active across elite American campuses. And now, unmistakably, they have taken root at Yale.
McInnis must break the silence and condemn the open harassment and assault of Jewish students. She must also hold the perpetrators of the heinous actions and those responsible for the safety of students accountable for their inaction.
This week has revealed a grave failure of moral and institutional duty on many fronts. When law enforcement stands by as Jewish students face intimidation and assault, it sends a chilling message: their safety matters less.
We must demand a full investigation and real accountability. Condemnations of antisemitism are not enough. Policies must be changed to ensure Jewish students and organizations can freely exercise their right to free expression without being subject to harassment and assault. Anything less would betray Yale’s stated values — and the promise of “never again.”
Douglas Sandoval is the Managing Director for CAMERA on Campus.
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