The following letter was submitted to The New York Times in response to "If We Silence Hate Speech, Will We Silence Resistance?" (Aug. 9) To the Editor:
The first flaw in Erik Nielson’s argument is his failure to define hate speech, which clearly means different things to different people. Speech that harasses, threatens or incites violence - whether it emanates from the left or the right – contributes nothing to the marketplace of ideas, and…
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August 15, 2018 Sparsely attended and heavily protested, Unite the Right 2 reflected the challenges facing the alt right and the larger white supremacist movement.
As he made his way towards D.C.’s Lafayette Park, rally organizer Jason Kessler was accompanied by about 30 right wing speakers and activists and a police escort. A massive police presence kept throngs of counter-protesters at a distance from Kessler and his group. There were no major incidents of violence, though some…
August 14, 2018 By Elissa Buxbaum, Director, Campus Affairs
Sarah Kenny was Student Council president at the University of Virginia when the alt-right rallied at her school’s Charlottesville campus last year. She hadn’t yet returned to campus when a tiki-torch-wielding crowd of neo-Nazis and white supremacists marched through the white columns of the UVA Rotunda, spouting anti-Semitic and racist vitriol.
“I had seen something on Twitter the night before, and…
August 10, 2018 This week is the anniversary of the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which attracted hundreds of bigots from around the country. We remember the TIKI torches, the chants “Jews will not replace us!” from angry white men, and the bias-motivated murder of counterprotester Heather Heyer.
On this anniversary, as groups in many cities are rededicating themselves to …
The following letter was submitted to The New York Times in response to "Free Speech Experts Argue Against Infowars Founder" (Aug. 8) To the Editor:
The debate over whether Alex Jones should have been removed from Facebook, Apple and other platforms seems almost quaint and academic when one looks closely at his long history of spreading outright lies and appeals to bigotry.
After the violent alt-right protest in Charlottesville, Va., a year ago, Mr. Jones announced that he…
August 07, 2018 The Unite the Right anniversary rally will take place at 4:30pm on Sunday, August 12 in Lafayette Park in Washington, D.C. Organizer Jason Kessler is promoting the event as a way to protest the “human rights abuses” he claims took place at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Despite his assurances that no “extreme elements” will be involved in the 2018 rally, Kessler has invited leaders from the alt right, as well as other…
Next Year May We All Be Free April 10, 2019 As Jews celebrate freedom, let’s reflect on 10 modern plagues that still oppress so many—and identify actions we can take to help.
Anti-Semitism
For many in the American Jewish community, anti-Semitism feels closer, more pervasive and more threatening than ever. In October 2018, in the deadliest attack in history on the Jewish community in the U.S., a white supremacist gunman entered the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh and…
June 19, 2018 The Council of Conservative Citizens, a once-prominent white supremacist group that has been dormant for several years, reemerged to hold the “Nationalist Solutions” conference June 15-17 in Burns, Tennessee. The event was a joint effort with the California-based white supremacist group American Freedom Party (AFP).
The conference, which took place in Montgomery Bell State Park, attracted roughly 70 attendees and speakers. The two-day event featured a…
June 14, 2018 It takes big ideas to combat a beast as big as hate. Tasked with the mission to implement a big idea that will confront and respond to the growing campus presence of hate groups and hate speech, students from across the country competed in ADL’s inaugural Innovate Against Hate Competition.
Designed to empower young people affected most by hateful content on social media, Innovate Against Hate incubated a student-led wave of creative messaging and innovation in…
June 08, 2018 When Patrick Little’s anti-Semitic campaign run for Dianne Feinstein’s U.S. Senate seat ended in a crushing defeat, he cried foul, while some among his white supremacist supporters have responded with talk of revolution, violence, and the need for white supremacist candidates to focus on areas of the country with a white majority. Little won about 1.4 percent of the vote, or roughly 61,000 votes, according to initial counts.
In a post-election livestream,…
Table Talk: Family Conversations about Current Events For Parents, Families, and Caregivers Topic SummaryIt seems like we are seeing more and more news and social media stories about people experiencing bias as they go about their daily lives—riding the subway, shopping in a store, dining in a restaurant and hanging out with friends. Indeed, the surge of such stories makes it seem like racism, sexism, antisemitism and other forms of bias and discrimination are becoming more pervasive…
June 01, 2018 In his first major public speaking appearance since February 2018, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan delivered a nearly three-hour sermon filled with attacks on Jews and Judaism from his pulpit at Mosque Maryam in Chicago on Sunday, May 27.
Warning his audience about “Satanic Jews who have infected the whole world with poison and deceit,” Farrakhan distorted passages from ancient Jewish religious texts in order to justify his conspiratorial and vile rhetoric…
Table Talk: Family Conversations about Current Events For Parents, Families, and Caregivers Topic SummaryIn 1983, a social scientist named David Chambers published a research study on children’s drawings. The study gathered information from the late 1960s and 1970s in which teachers asked 5,000 children (in three different countries) to “draw a scientist.” One pattern appeared strongly: almost all of the scientist drawings depicted men. Through the study, Chambers was able to…
by: Lorraine Array April 09, 2018
Holocaust Remembrance Day is commemorated each year a week after the end of the Passover holiday, a day when the world pauses to remember the Holocaust, the millions who died and those who lived on, many to tell their stories to a generation born more than half a century later. To the younger among us, the Holocaust can feel like ancient history. Why is it important that we remember? And why do we continue to utter the mandate of Never…
For Educators When teaching about historical atrocities, educators seek to build empathy through interactive lessons. What seems like a false solution is turning to simulation activities. These exercises frequently backfire, causing real harm to students, families and school communities. The Problem:News stories regularly surface about classroom simulations gone wrong: students assigned roles as "persecuted" or "privileged" to understand the Holocaust, or asked to experience what it "felt like…
March 12, 2018 Since the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas HS in Parkland, Florida, students have been engaging in a variety of actions to force change on gun control, including preparations for nationwide student walkouts on March 14 and April 20.
Teachable Moments
Whether you personally support these walkouts or not, as a teacher or school administrator they are an opportunity to elevate student voice and action as powerful teachable moments. These can include conversations…
February 28, 2018 This post originally appeared on the Leadership 360 blog in Education Week on February 22, 2018.
Last week at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, seventeen students and adults were murdered in a mass shooting. What happened next was unusual. Instead of waiting for adults to act, students took the lead.
They are giving fiery speeches, demanding their turn to enact change. Emma Gonzalez, a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School,…
January 25, 2018 In July 2017, after seven days of statements and testimony from more than 150 sexual abuse survivors, Larry Nassar, the former team doctor for the U.S. gymnastics team, was sentenced to 40 to 175 years in prison. From the women's testimony, here's what we learned: Many of the accusers were minors, as young as six years old, at the time of the assaults. Most of the women were gymnasts but they also included dancers, rowers and runners. Some of those who shared their experiences…
January 17, 2018 Updated: July 16, 2019 It has become commonplace to witness a public display of bigoted and offensive language. In a tweet, President Trump remarked that four U.S. Congresswomen of color (Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, Pressley and Tlaib) should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” The language of "go back to where you came from" is widely recognized as a racist slur, and in particular this one is also…
December 07, 2017 Updated: December 18, 2017 Editor's Note: Christian Picciolini and ADL's work battling extremism was featured on Sunday, Dec. 17 on 60 Minutes on CBS. As the one-time leader of one of the most infamous white supremacist groups in America, Christian Picciolini was once so immersed in the hate movement that his name appeared prominently in an ADL report on neo-Nazi activity in Illinois. Picciolini had swastika and racist tattoos on his arms and led a small empire…