ADL “Audit of Antisemitic Incidents 2024” is Misleading and Dangerous
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April 24, 2025
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On April 22, 2025, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) released an “audit” of antisemitic incidents in the United States in 2024, claiming the “Data Breaks All Previous Annual Records.” As Jewish faculty and staff deeply concerned about antisemitic acts, and about the cynical use of “antisemitism” to smear and unlawfully crack down on students and universities across the country, we reject the ADL’s report as misleading and dangerous—dangerous to Jewish people everywhere, to higher education, and to American democracy.
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ADL’s recent report appears to employ the same flawed methodology exposed by Jewish Currents in a line-by-line audit of ADL’s 2023 report: inconsistent application of ADL’s own definitions, a conflation of criticism of Israel with hate speech, and a persistent focus on minor and isolated acts of anti-Zionism, such as graffiti, while downplaying white supremacist activities more directly linked to violence. By the ADL’s own admission, nearly 60% of documented instances of “antisemitism” in 2024 consisted of criticism of Israel or Zionism, generally in the context of protests denouncing the Israeli army’s attacks on Gaza.
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In Somerville, MA, for example, the ADL records 5 acts of “antisemitic” “hate” in 2024. Their records reveal that none involved active hate or antagonism directed toward Jewish people, but rather signs or slogans at political protests referring to Palestinian resistance, liberation, or criticism of Zionism in the context of mounting deaths in Gaza.
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The problem could not be more stark. Somerville is the same city where masked federal agents shackled and detained Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk on the street outside her home for writing an op-ed critical of Israel. Rather than correct the record, the ADL doubles down on the very conflation of legitimate political speech with antisemitism that provides the pretext for Öztürk’s ongoing detention. Stoking panic about protest signs and slogans that criticize Israel or call for Palestinian equality further normalizes the fraught narratives that the Trump administration now wields against our communities. It also minimizes the alarming incidents of real harassment and violence against Jews that the ADL elsewhere records.
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Peddling these false “data” nominally in the name of Jewish safety endangers us all. As a joint statement from the leaders of three of four of America’s mainstream Jewish religious denominations recently observed, “At this moment, Jews are being targeted and held collectively responsible for the actions of a foreign government.” The ADL’s conflation of Jewishness with pro-Israel beliefs only gives oxygen to such bigotry.
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We therefore call on Jewish people of conscience everywhere, and on our university leaders and elected officials, to join us in rejecting the ADL’s “Audit of Antisemitic Incidents 2024” and in demanding an honest accounting of antisemitism—one that refuses to criminalize legitimate political dissent and recognizes that criticism of Israel is not, in itself, antisemitic.