CJFS Denounces ADL President’s Reckless and Dehumanizing Statements about Peaceful Student Protesters
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CJFS Joins Inter-Faith Community and Civil Rights Groups in Denouncing ADL President’s Reckless and Dehumanizing Statements about Peaceful Student Protesters
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Wednesday, June 11, 2025
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“Under Greenblatt’s leadership, the ADL has become a clear and present danger to every norm, freedom, and right that keeps Jewish communities safe in the United States.”
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BOSTON – Concerned Jewish Faculty and Staff (CJFS), comprising ~150 Jewish academics and staff members from Boston-area universities, joins interfaith and civil rights organizations in publicly denouncing Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), who continues to endanger our communities by defaming and dehumanizing peaceful protesters who criticize Israel.
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On June 6, 2025, the Forward reported that Greenblatt “repeatedly compared pro-Palestinian student protesters to Islamist terrorists in comments to Republican Attorneys General and said the left harbored the ‘real deal threat’ to Jews.” Audio recordings reveal that Greenblatt compared student protesters to “ISIS” and “al-Qaeda” and described the “real deal threat” as “this convergence of what I call the radical left and, like, Islamist groups here in the U.S.”
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Greenblatt’s statements before the Republican Attorneys General appear plucked straight from Project Esther, the Heritage Foundation’s Christian nationalist playbook for crushing civil society, and echo too with his past racist and Islamophobic statements on record.
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Greenblatt’s statements are unconscionably reckless, but they are not out of character. He has spent years defaming Jewish and other organizations that advocate for Palestinian human rights and criticize Israel as “hate groups” and the “photo inverse of the extreme right.” Under Greenblatt’s leadership, the ADL has become a clear and present danger to every norm, freedom, and right that keeps Jewish communities safe in the United States.
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We join organizations across the country in demanding that Greenblatt apologize for his reckless smears, which endanger our students and communities.
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We renew our call, signed by ~3,500 Jewish higher ed workers and students, for university leaders to “[t]erminate all collaboration with organizations, such as the Anti-Defamation League, that smear our students and now applaud the lawless targeting of political opponents.”
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We renew our call for the Massachusetts Special Commission on Combatting Antisemitism to cease relying on ADL data and to engage real scholars of antisemitism, the Holocaust, and civil rights.
Read CJFS’s April Letter denouncing ADL’s “Antisemitism Audit”
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