Yet the ADL’s school curricula and readings on race and racism are littered with identarian tracts like How To Be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi, a fan of a number of brazen antisemites, and White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo. How can the ADL claim to fight against the defamation of the Jewish people and recommend authors who insinuate, or worse, that Jews represent a disproportionate amount of power in the United States — one of the most enduring tropes of antisemitism? The ADL also recommends the pseudohistorical 1619 Project and the podcast “The Urgency of Intersectionality” by Kimberle Crenshaw, a leading “scholar of critical race theory,” the teachings of which are also inherently anti-Jewish.

I’m not saying that many, maybe most, American Jews don’t agree with the ideological outlook of the ADL. But many do not. Nothing in Judaism teaches that our immutable appearances predetermine our societal role, actions, or worth. Why is a group claiming to fight Jewish defamation spreading trendy ideological puffery? Because it is not what it says it is.

Now, the ADL, self-anointed arbiter of antisemitism, is certainly useful in providing lazy journalists with quotes confirming preexisting notions about antisemitism being largely a right-wing phenomenon. And risk-averse corporations might use them for guidance. But it has no moral standing to dictate appropriate speech. Certainly not in the name of Jews.