The State of Play on Campus: A Disturbing Rise in Antisemitism that Demands a Full Scale Response
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The Jewish community faced unthinkable tragedy on October 7th, when the terrorist group Hamas committed mass atrocities against thousands of Israelis, including murder, torture, dismemberment and rape. As the global Jewish community mourns our collective trauma, one could imagine a world in which Jewish students were comforted on campus with supportive words, candlelight vigils, and an understanding community mobilizing to support their needs. Instead, increasing numbers of Jewish students…
Moroccan Textbooks Teach Appreciation of Jewish Life and Tolerance in the Kingdom
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By Carole Nuriel and Aykan Erdemir
An examination of textbooks used in the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades of Moroccan state schools during the 2021-2022 school year indicate that tolerance and diversity are core to the curriculum promoted across Moroccan society. The excerpts on Judaism and Jews that Morocco’s Ministry of National Education and Vocational Training provided to ADL (the Anti-Defamation League) show that the country’s elementary school textbooks depict Jews as an…
Meyers Leonard fined and suspended for antisemitic slur; Israeli society increasingly divided; LGBTQ protections stripped from hate crimes bill
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March 12, 2021 THE WEEK’S BIG 3
Miami Heat center Meyers Leonard was fined $50,000, suspended from the team's facilities and banned from team activities after he uttered an antisemitic slur while playing video games. Israeli society is increasingly divided, with 81 percent of Israelis stating that they believe that their society is increasingly divided, a 12 percent increase since 2017, according to a new ADL. survey. A panel of South Carolina lawmakers stripped explicit protections…
Antisemitism and Anti-LGBTQ Rhetoric Mar Poland’s Presidential Election
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July 20, 2020 Incumbent President Andrzej Duda defeated Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, 51%-49%, for a second five-year term. While the presidency is supposed to be non-partisan, the contest clearly pitted the nationalist populist Law and Justice party, which supported Duda, against the pro-European liberal supporters of Trzaskowski. Duda was the early favorite, but the race tightened as election day neared. In response, Duda’s campaign turned negative, including the…
Civil Rights Campaign Targets Facebook Ads; SCOTUS Upholds Federal Law Protecting LGBTQ Workers; Hezbollah School Textbooks Promote Antisemitism and Terrorism
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June 19, 2020 THE WEEK’S BIG 3
ADL convened a coalition of civil rights groups encouraging corporate advertisers to pull spending from Facebook during the month of July to protest the company’s failure to make its platform a less-hostile place. The Supreme Court ruled that federal civil rights law protects gay, lesbian and transgender workers from discrimination. School textbooks used in institutions controlled by the terror group Hezbollah are teaching children “egregious…
Small Group of Neo-Nazis Protest Michigan Pride Festival with Homophobic, Anti-Semitic Slurs
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June 11, 2019 On Saturday, June 8, ten neo-Nazis associated with the National Socialist Movement protested Detroit’s Motor City Pride Festival, carrying guns and shouting homophobic and anti-Semitic slurs.
NSM leader Burt Colucci and Aric Lemieux, NSM’s South Michigan chapter leader, headed up the protest, which included participants from Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, Massachusetts and Michigan. Lemieux expressed his intention to protest the festival months ago, and other group…
DoED Decision Will Require Taxpayers to Fund Discrimination
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March 20, 2019 The U.S. Department of Education (DoED) recently announced that it will ignore a longstanding requirement of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) limiting federally funded contracts, which provide schools with services such as special education or instruction, to secular vendors. As a result, religious organizations, including houses of worship, are now eligible to be such contractors. This decision is not legally required, will compel taxpayers to fund…
March 13, 2019 When the U.S. Supreme Court last summer ruled in favor of a Colorado baker who refused to sell a wedding cake to a same-sex couple based on religious beliefs, its decision was a wake-up call – and underlined the need for further legislative action by elected officials and communities. While disappointing, the Court’s narrow decision reaffirmed the right of LGBTQ individuals to be free from discrimination, and left in place statewide nondiscrimination protections…
It's Not OK for Businesses to Discriminate in the Name of Religion
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December 01, 2017 By David Barkey, Religious Freedom Counsel & Southeastern Area Counsel
The U.S. Supreme Court soon will hear oral arguments in a case called Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. Cakeshop’s owner is asking the Court do something unprecedented – allow him based on religious objections to refuse service to customers for who they are.
ADL recently joined an amicus brief to the Court filed by a coalition of civil rights and religious…
Kentucky Appeals Court Issues Convoluted Decision in Pride Festival T-Shirt Case
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May 16, 2017 Last week, the Kentucky Court of Appeals issued a convoluted decision upholding a lower court decision in a case involving LGBT Pride Festival t-shirts. The Court’s ruling overturned a local human rights commission’s determination that a business violated a county anti-discrimination ordinance when it refused to take an order from an LGBT rights organization for the t-shirts.
The Lexington, KY-based Gay and Lesbian Services Organization (“GLSO…
ADL Summit Inspires Young Leaders to Take #ActionToImpact
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May 10, 2017 More than 500 ADL leaders and Jewish activists from across the country gathered for ADL’s annual Shana Amy Glass National Leadership Summit in Washington, D.C., where government officials, policy experts, journalists, opinion makers and other public figures addressed the participants on some of the most critical issues on the League’s agenda.
ADL CEO's Opening Remarks: Action to Impact
To kick off the Summit, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt gave a rousing…
What the Women’s March Teaches Us about Intersectionality
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January 24, 2017
On Saturday, January 21, 2017, the day after the inauguration of President Donald Trump, 500,000 people gathered in Washington, DC for the Women’s March–to express their unity for women’s issues and to speak out against the demonizing and hateful rhetoric that pervaded the past election cycle. An additional 400,000 marched in New York City , 250,000 in Chicago and according to Women’s March organizers, there were 673 “sister marches&rdquo…
Turning Current Events Instruction Into Social Justice Teaching
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by: David Robbins March 11, 2016 Jinnie Spiegler
Director of Curriculum, Anti-Defamation League
This blog originally appeared on Edutopia
Marriage equality, refugees seeking safety in Europe, the Confederate flag, police shootings of black and Latino men, the presidential election, Caitlyn Jenner, ISIS, and immigration are just a few of the news stories that inhabited the headlines this year on our phones, laptops, and newspapers. Unlike 20 years ago when…
Bring Malala, Ferguson, Unaccompanied Minors and Ebola into the Classroom
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by: Oren Segal December 17, 2014 Malala. Ferguson. Immigration. Ebola. Voter ID Laws. Climate Change. These are just a few of the topics teachers are regularly and actively bringing into their classrooms.
Whether they teach English, Social Studies, Advisory or another subject and whether they have five minutes or decide to do a week- long study, teachers know that topics in the news will engage and interest students in a deep and meaningful way. Research…
Beyond Ferguson and Staten Island: Where Do We Go From Here?
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by: Oren Segal December 05, 2014 In the wake of two grand jury decisions—in Ferguson, MO and Staten Island, NY—not to indict the police officers who were involved in the killing of black men, the time has come to ask ourselves: Where do we go from here? There are a myriad of ideas and legislation on the table--diversity training for the police, funding to provide body cameras for police officers and legislation to tighten standards on military-style equipment for local police…
‘That’s So Gay’: Language That Hurts, and How to Stop It
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January 21, 2014
The phrase "that’s so gay" has persisted as a way for students to describe things they do not like, find annoying or generally want to put down, while it is promising that fewer students are hearing homophobic slurs than in previous years.
The phrase is used so commonly that many students no longer recognize it as homophobic because it is “what everyone says.” When educators and other adults intervene, common student responses include “I was just…