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Senior ADL antisemitism researcher leaves to lead competing effort
(JTA) — Aryeh Tuchman, a veteran antisemitism researcher who spent nearly two decades at the Anti-Defamation League, is joining the Nexus Project, a rival watchdog, to lead a new center devoted to researching antisemitism.
The move brings a senior figure from the country’s most prominent antisemitism watchdog to an organization that has repeatedly challenged the ADL’s approach to defining and responding to antisemitism, particularly in debates over Israel, campus activism and political polarization.
The most recent example came last November, when Nexus publicly criticized the ADL for launching an initiative to “monitor” the administration of Zohran Mamdani for antisemitic bias following his election as New York City mayor. Nexus called the move “divisive, hyperbolic and aggressive,” warning that it risked deepening Jewish communal divisions and playing into far-right hands.
Nexus announced this week that Tuchman will serve as the inaugural director of its new Nexus Center for Antisemitism Research, which the organization says will focus on improving the quality, rigor and nuance of research used by policymakers, Jewish institutions and the public.
Tuchman has most recently worked as a senior leader in the ADL’s Center on Extremism, where he helped oversee research on antisemitic incidents, extremist movements and conspiracy theories. He frequently served as a key methodological authority for the ADL’s annual audit of antisemitic incidents, an influential report widely cited in the media.
For Tuchman, the move represents both continuity and change.
“I’ve spent my career trying to understand antisemitism in all its forms,” he said in an interview. “This is a chance to take everything I’ve learned and apply it in a new setting, with the hope of contributing something constructive to a very difficult moment.”
Nexus is known for challenging the ADL over how antisemitism should be defined. The group promotes the “Nexus Document,” a framework that seeks to distinguish antisemitism from most criticism of Israel while acknowledging that some anti-Israel rhetoric can target Jews as Jews. The ADL, by contrast, has strongly backed the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, which has been widely adopted by governments and institutions but criticized by some scholars and civil liberties groups for blurring the line between antisemitism and political speech.
Nexus leaders rejected the idea that Tuchman’s move represents a rebuke of the ADL.
“If we really wanted to repudiate the ADL, it would be hard to argue that the best way to do that was to hire one of their senior researchers,” said Alan Solow, the chair of the Nexus Project’s board of directors. “Our intent wasn’t to make a statement about the ADL. Our intent was to find the best person in the field to build something new.”
Founded in 2019, Nexus describes itself as an antisemitism watchdog that also seeks to defend democratic norms and free speech. The organization is fiscally sponsored by the New Israel Fund and has often been associated with liberal or progressive Jewish politics, though it does not describe itself using those labels and says its positions reflect views held by most American Jews.
The new research center will not attempt to replicate the ADL’s annual audit of antisemitic incidents or conduct real-time tracking of extremist groups, according to Nexus. Instead, it plans to focus on public opinion research, analysis of existing studies and original scholarship aimed at what its leaders see as unresolved questions in the field.
The center will also include a scholarship arm led by Eric Alterman, a historian and author who is a professor of English and journalism at Brooklyn College and has written extensively on antisemitism, media and American politics.
“The Nexus Center for Antisemitism Research will strengthen the accuracy and nuance of public and institutional conversations about antisemitism,” Solow said.
Tuchman said the opportunity to build a new research institution from the ground up was the primary reason he left the ADL, where he began working in his mid-20s after earning advanced degrees in Jewish history and receiving rabbinic ordination from Yeshiva University.
“I have great respect for the work that comes out of the ADL and the Center on Extremism,” Tuchman said. “This isn’t about repudiating anything I did there. It’s about an opportunity to ask different kinds of questions and to focus exclusively on research in a way that I hope can move the needle.”
Tuchman said one of his priorities at the new center will be disentangling the language that drives many of today’s fiercest antisemitism disputes.
“One of the challenges that we face in understanding antisemitism is the fact that people use words and terms where different people mean things that are completely different, and yet we’re all using those same words,” he said, adding that it leaves communities “talking past each other.”
Terms like “anti-Zionism” and even “antisemitism” itself, he said, are often used with radically different meanings depending on who is speaking, complicating efforts to identify the problem and decide how to respond.
As an example of the kind of research agenda he hopes to pursue, Tuchman pointed to the protest slogan “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Rather than litigate the slogan in the abstract, he said he would like to study how it is understood by the people who use it.
“I would love to do a survey of people who have participated in anti-Israel protests and used that phrase in their chants or activism,” he said. “What did you mean when you said that?”
Tuchman emphasized that the new center’s research would not be driven by Nexus’s advocacy agenda, even if its findings complicated the organization’s positions.
“I have a commitment from Nexus that if the research contradicts its assumptions, it’s the research that wins,” he said. “That independence is essential if we want this work to be taken seriously across a very polarized society.”
The launch of the research center comes amid heated debate within the Jewish community over how antisemitism should be measured and confronted.
Solow said Nexus views coalition-building with other groups targeted by discrimination — including organizations fighting racism, Islamophobia and threats to LGBTQ and immigrant rights — as central to combating antisemitism, a strategy he noted the ADL has moved away from in recent years.
“That’s a point of departure between us and ADL,” he said.
“It is important for us to be open-minded and think about whether or not there are alternative approaches that would be more successful,” Solow added. “What we’ve been doing for the past several years collectively as the Jewish community have not been as successful as we like them to be.”
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Hamas-Linked Nonprofit Launches Wikipedia Training Program to Smear Israel
Avishek Das / SOPA Images via Reuters Connect
A human rights organization with alleged links to Hamas has launched a new initiative to train Palestinians to edit Wikipedia pages about Israel and the war in Gaza, fueling ongoing concerns that the popular online encyclopedia promotes anti-Israel propaganda and antisemitic narratives.
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, a Switzerland-registered nonprofit founded in 2011, announced last week the third round of its “WikiRights” project in the Gaza Strip. According to the group’s official press release, the program will train 12 young Palestinians in human rights documentation and professional Wikipedia editing in both Arabic and English, with a focus on what it calls documenting “genocide in Gaza.”
The organization says participants will conduct field interviews with victims and witnesses and produce what it describes as “documentation-based articles” to be uploaded or incorporated into Wikipedia. The aim, according to the group, is to fill what it characterizes as “knowledge gaps” and to counter narratives it believes marginalize Palestinian accounts.
“Training young people to edit Wikipedia content seeks to transform victims of genocide in Gaza from mere statistics into storytellers, especially given the recent failures of some platforms or their complicity in not conveying the scale of genocide,” said Euro-Med Monitor’s Chief Operations Officer Anas Jerjawi.
But the initiative is drawing scrutiny in Israel and among watchdog groups who argue it represents an organized effort to shape one of the world’s most influential information platforms during an ongoing war.
NGO Monitor — an independent Jerusalem-based research institute that tracks anti-Israel bias among nongovernmental organizations — published a profile on Tuesday raising concerns about Euro-Med Monitor’s leadership and transparency. The watchdog notes that founder and chairman Ramy Abdu and former chair Mazen Kahel were listed by Israeli authorities in 2013 among individuals and entities allegedly associated with Hamas operatives in Europe. Abdu was later sanctioned by Israel under its counter-terrorism regulations.
Euro-Med Monitor has presented itself as an independent human rights body and states that it does not receive government or factional funding. However, NGO Monitor says the group does not publicly disclose detailed financial documentation, raising questions about funding transparency.
Israeli officials have long argued that Hamas and affiliated networks operate not only militarily but also through political, legal, and media channels to influence international opinion.
The WikiRights program focuses on training participants to create and edit entries related to the Israel-Hamas war, including content framed around allegations of genocide and systemic human rights violations.
Wikipedia, one of the most widely accessed reference websites globally, claims it operates under strict neutrality and verifiability policies. However, conflict-related pages, particularly those involving Israel and the Palestinians, have frequently been the subject of intense “edit wars,” coordinated campaigns, and administrative interventions.
Investigations by websites such as Pirate Wires have exposed intricate efforts by ideologically motivated Wikipedia editors to insert explosive language in reference to Israel with the implied goal of weaponizing the website’s reputation as a neutral source of information to launder biased viewpoints about the Jewish state. For instance, Wikipedia asserts that the war in Gaza is a so-called “genocide.” Editors have also softened language regarding Hamas and its Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, seemingly to depict the terrorist group in a more positive light.
Euro-Med Monitor’s press release states that the latest round of the program emphasizes “live field documentation,” encouraging trainees to interview people and incorporate firsthand accounts into articles. The organization says the goal is to transform victims “from mere statistics into storytellers.”
Critics argue that such framing signals a predetermined narrative rather than a neutral research effort.
Euro-Med Monitor’s announcement comes six months after the US House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform opened an investigation into the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that operates the Wikipedia website, demanding answers over concerns that hostile foreign actors are exploiting the online encyclopedia to insert anti-Israel or antisemitic framing designed to sway audiences.
Earlier last year, the US Justice Department warned the Wikimedia Foundation that its nonprofit status could be jeopardized for possibly violating its “legal obligations and fiduciary responsibilities” under US law. Specifically, the department expressed concern about accusations that the online encyclopedia has spread “propaganda” and allowed “foreign actors to manipulate information” while maintaining a systemic bias against Israel.
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Nearly Half of Jewish Students Report Experiencing Antisemitism on US College Campuses, Survey Finds
A student puts on their anti-Israel graduation cap reading “From the river to the sea” at the People’s Graduation, hosted for Mahmoud Khalil and other students from New York University. Photo: Angelina Katsanis via Reuters Connect
The campus antisemitism crisis has changed the college experience for American Jewish students, affecting how they live, socialize, and perceive themselves as Jews, according to new survey results released by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) in partnership with Hillel International.
A striking 42 percent of Jewish students reported experiencing antisemitism during their time on campus, and of that group, 55 percent said they felt that being Jewish at a campus event threatened their safety.
The survey also found that 34 percent of Jewish students avoid being detected as Jews, hiding their Jewish identity due to fear of antisemitism.
Meanwhile, 38 percent of Jewish students said they decline to utter pro-Israel viewpoints on campus, including in class, for fear of being targeted by anti-Zionists. The rate of self-censorship is significantly higher for Jewish students who have already been subjected to antisemitism, registering at 68 percent.
“No Jewish student should have to hide their identity out of fear of antisemitism, yet that’s the reality for too many students today,” Hillel International chief executive officer Adam Lehman said in a statement on Tuesday. “Our work on the ground every day is focused on changing that reality by creating environments where all Jewish students can find welcoming communities and can fully and proudly express their Jewish identities without fear or concern.”
The survey, included in AJC’s new “The State of Antisemitism in America” report, added that 32 percent of Jewish students feel that campus groups promote antisemitism or a learning environment that is hostile to Jews, while 25 percent said that antisemitism was the basis of their being “excluded from a group or an event on campus.”
Jewish students endure these indignities while preserving their overwhelming support for Israel. Sixty-nine percent of those surveyed identified caring about Israel as a central component of Jewish identity and 76 percent agreed that calling for its destruction or describing it as an illegitimate state is antisemitic.
“While we welcome the fact that the vast majority of campuses have not been disrupted by uncontrolled protests in the past year, the data make clear that Jewish students are still experiencing antisemitism on their campuses,” Laura Shaw Frank, the AJC’s vice president of its Center for Education Advocacy, said in a statement. “This survey gives us a critical look into the less visible, but no less important problems, that Jews face on campus.”
She continued, “Understanding the ways in which Jews are being excluded and changing their behavior out of fear of antisemitism is vitally important as we work with institutions of higher education to create truly inclusive campus communities.”
The AJC and Hillel’s survey results are consistent with others in which Jewish students have participated in recent months.
According, to a recent survey of Jewish undergraduates of the University of Pennsylvania (Penn), a significant portion of Jewish students still find the climate on campus to be hostile and feel the need to hide their identity over two years after the campus saw an explosion of extreme anti-Zionist activity and Nazi graffiti.
The survey, conducted by Penn’s local Hillel International chapter, found that 40 percent of respondents said it is difficult to be Jewish at Penn and 45 percent said they “feel uncomfortable or intimidated because of their Jewish identity or relationship with Israel.”
Meanwhile, the results showed a staggering 85 percent of survey participants reported hearing about, witnessing, or experiencing “something antisemitic,” as reported by Franklin’s Forum, an alumni-led online outlet which posts newsletters regarding developments at the university. Another 31 percent of Jewish Penn students said they feel the need to hide their Jewishness to avoid discrimination, which is sometimes present in the classroom, as 26 percent of respondents said they have “experienced antisemitic or anti-Israel comments from professors.”
Overall, 80 percent of Jewish students hold that anti-Israel activity is “often” antisemitic and that Israel’s conduct in war is “held to an unfair standard compared to other nations.”
College faculty play an outsized role in promoting antisemitism on the campus, according to a new study by AMCHA Initiative which focused on the University of California system. The study, titled “When Faculty Take Sides: How Academic Infrastructure Drives Antisemitism at the University of California,” exposed Oct 7 denialism; faculty calling for driving Jewish institutions off campus; the founding of pro-Hamas, Faculty for Justice in Palestine groups; and hundreds of endorsers of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
The University of California system is a microcosm of faculty antisemitism across the US, the AMCHA Initiative explained in the exhaustive 158-page report, which focused on the Los Angeles, Berkeley, and Santa Cruz campuses.
“The report documents how concentrated networks of faculty activists on each campus, often operating through academic units and faculty-led advocacy formations, convert institutional platforms into vehicles for organized anti-Zionist advocacy and mobilization,” the report stated. “It shows how those pathways are associated with recurring student harms and broader campus disruption. It then outlines concrete steps the UC Regents can take to restore institutional neutrality in academic units and set enforceable boundaries so UC resources and authority are not used to advance activist agendas inside the university’s core educational functions.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Forverts podcast, episode 6: At-risk languages
דער פֿאָרווערטס האָט שוין אַרויסגעלאָזט דעם זעקסטן קאַפּיטל פֿונעם ייִדישן פּאָדקאַסט, Yiddish With Rukhl. דאָס מאָל איז די טעמע „שפּראַכן אין אַ סכּנה“. אין דעם קאַפּיטל לייענט שׂרה־רחל שעכטער פֿאָר אַן אַרטיקל פֿונעם ייִדיש־אַקטיוויסט דזשייק שנײַדער, „וואָס אַקטיוויסטן פֿאַר שפּראַכן אין אַ סכּנה קענען זיך אָפּלערנען איינער פֿונעם אַנדערן.“
צו הערן דעם פּאָדקאַסט, גיט אַ קוועטש דאָ.
אויב איר ווילט אויך לייענען דעם געדרוקטן טעקסט פֿונעם אַרטיקל, גיט אַ קוועטש דאָ און קוקט אונטן בײַם סוף פֿון דער זײַט.
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