Lance Glinn:
Welcome in to another episode of the Inside the ICE House Podcast. Today we are joined by Jonathan Greenblatt. He is the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League. Jonathan, thank you so much for joining us inside the ICE House.
Jonathan Greenblatt:
Thank you for having me.
Lance Glinn:
So, let's start big picture with the TOV ETF. JLens and the ADL launched it back in December as the first Jewish investment fund. But I want to ask specifically about that phrase, that Jewish investment fund. What does that mean to you sort of beyond the label and how do you ensure its identity really stays grounded in values and it's not just a branding exercise of sorts?
Jonathan Greenblatt:
It's a great question. So, stepping back, so ADL is the oldest anti-hate organization in America. We were founded in 1913, around the time of the Leo Frank Trial, if your listeners are familiar with that. So, we have been focused on fighting antisemitism, extremism, and all forms of hate for over 100 years. And what we found in that time is that antisemitism that's sometimes called the oldest hatred, it is persistent, it is pernicious, and it mutates. And we find that it takes different shapes and it shows up in many different spaces. We have been increasingly concerned about how it is trying to sort of penetrate boardrooms and the capital markets broadly. Now you know there's always been antisemitic tropes and myths about Jewish greed and Jewish power. What we have found that's been pretty ugly over the last 20 years, accelerated certainly over the last five to seven years, is the BDS Movement.
So, if your listeners aren't familiar with it, that's the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. That ostensibly in its own words is a non-violent effort to change the policies of the state of Israel. But in fact, you don't have to look very hard to see. It is a very sort of one-sided effort that targets only one country on the planet and that's the Jewish state. And the goal of the BDS Movement is not to create a two-state solution or peace for both peoples, it's to destroy the Jewish state, to undermine its fundamental legitimacy. Now, we have a problem with that because not just in principle, but in practice, it ends up implicating all Jewish people. So, we see examples of anti-Jewish discrimination in the workplace. We see examples of anti-Jewish actions sort of at the consumer level as "BDS is implemented." We see Jewish investors singled out. So, this effort is really quite ugly and we are very concerned about it. The question is, again, as antisemitism evolves and mutates, how do you adapt and innovate to fight it? So, I know what we do at ADL, what we don't do.
And we don't have... Although I have experience, I've been a senior executive at two public companies, taken some businesses out on public markets at the same time. ADL doesn't have capabilities, if you will, in boardrooms. Now, JLens is run independently. It has its own board. It has its own team. And yet, as an affiliate of ADL, we can support them. So, a few years ago, JLens went out and got their RIA, their registered investment advisor license from the SEC. And then last year they launched TOV. The first ever, as you said, publicly traded Jewish investment fund. So, what does it mean to be a Jewish investment fund? Well, what TOV is basically doing, to be clear, is it is buying the top 500 or so public companies. So, it is giving an investor exposure to the S&P 500. But what's novel about it is it is evaluating these companies on the basis of Jewish values.
So, things like, are they dealing with antisemitism in-house? Are they supporting the Jewish state? Are they creating an environment that's safe for all workers? Are they dealing with issues of hate when it comes up in the context of their products or their services or their internal operations?
Lance Glinn:
TOV, a Hebrew word that I know was ingrained in my head all the way up through Hebrew school as a young kid, my so on and so forth. Of course, in the Hebrew language means good.
Jonathan Greenblatt:
Right.
Lance Glinn:
And in a financial context, good can mean ethical behavior, social impact, long-term returns. It can mean a bunch of different things.
Jonathan Greenblatt:
Yeah.
Lance Glinn:
When you think about the word good, when you think about TOV, in the context of this ETF, what does it mean to you personally?
Jonathan Greenblatt:
That's a good question. So, I think it means a few things. So, I think number one, TOV as a word has this kind of cultural and almost spiritual resonance. In Israel, you say things like boker tov like good morning. And at synagogue, we say good yontif, which is sort of a... What'd you call that? It's really saying gut yom tov like yom tov is good day. And so it means like holiday. So, I'm familiar with it in a secular context. I'm familiar with it in a spiritual context, but I think tov here is very aspirational.
And so, if you're a Jewish person or not a Jewish person, you see that word, you can imbue it with the meaning that you have for it. I think for me, it means doing the best we can with the tools that we have. And you know what? ADL, our tagline, as you might know, Lance, is fighting hate for good. Fighting hate for good. And in that sense, we're saying fighting hate for good because it's the right thing to do. Fighting hate for good like we're going to get it done like it'll be over. So, I feel like tov has multiple levels of meaning depending on what you bring to it.
Lance Glinn:
What opportunities that maybe weren't there before now became possible when ADL was able to bring JLens in?
Jonathan Greenblatt:
ADL has a great deal of reach. We have 24 offices across America, six additional satellite offices that are actually doing the work every day in these communities. I mean, ADL as an entity has sort of three lines of business. We protect, we advocate and we educate. So, under protect, we track and respond to antisemitism, tens of thousands of reports every year unfortunately. We monitor and disrupt extremists watching offline activity, online activity, and trying to work with law enforcement to avert crimes before they happen. And we train. We're the largest trainer of law enforcement in the United States on extremism and hate. So, there's a lot of engagement we're doing every single day to keep communities safe.
And then of course, on the education side, we're deeply involved. We're one of the largest providers in America of anti-hate content in school, but it's the advocacy that's really quite interesting. So, we've always done political advocacy, lobbying in Congress or at state houses for laws that protect Jews and other minorities. And of course, we're also focused on legal advocacy, trying to change laws through the courts or litigating, again, to protect Jews and other religious and ethnic minorities, but now shareholder advocacy is a brand new field of opportunity for us.
So, I think by giving JLens as a unit, a degree of exposure through these platforms, it's a very exciting place for us to be. Now, again, they have a lot of independence, and so we don't control the day-to-day, but they have the capacity and the potential to really be game-changing. And I think you'll see some exciting things coming out of JLens in the years ahead.
Lance Glinn:
So, I want to flip the conversation now, pivot to a little bit of your background. And you have, or you had one of the most eclectic careers of really any non-profit leader. You've been an entrepreneur, you've worked for Fortune 500 companies, spent time in government, now lead one of the most recognized anti-hate organizations in the world. When you just reflect on where you've been, where you are now, what's sort of the thread that kind of ties all these different chapters together for you?
Jonathan Greenblatt:
Well, I think, Lance, for me, I mean, when I graduated college, I went to Tufts University. When I was graduating in 1992, so I'm sort of showing my age, I really wanted to change the world.
Lance Glinn:
Yeah.
Jonathan Greenblatt:
So, a lot of my classmates, my fraternity brothers, my friends, they were going to Wall Street or they were going to management consulting. Some were going off to grad school, like to get their law, pursue a law to JD or whatever. I wanted to change the world. I really had this heady idea that I could be part of something bigger than myself. And so, I was a work study student, and this guy was running for president in 1992, my senior year, named Bill Clinton. And what he was focused on, among other things, was helping students pay their loans by working their communities after school. That became AmeriCorps, programs like Teach for America, which are very well-known at this point. Then they were brand new. And I thought, "Wow, that's a much better way to pay off my debt than what I was doing."
Lance Glinn:
Sure.
Jonathan Greenblatt:
So I moved to Arkansas after I graduated and went to work for Governor Clinton. And I didn't necessarily know that he would win, but I wanted to fight the good fight. I wanted to change the world. Turns out he did. And that for me was very catalytic and it unlocks something, which was my sense that I could be part of a movement. Now, I mean, let's be very candid here. I had very little to do with Bill Clinton winning the election. I think I could say, I had almost nothing to do with-
Lance Glinn:
Although if you asked him, I'm sure he would say everyone played a small part.
Jonathan Greenblatt:
Yes, I'm sure President Clinton would say that. And he's so extraordinary. He would probably remember me and say, "Oh, yeah, I remember Jonathan was doing this in Arkansas." But the reality is that I know I was in the most insignificant of cogs in a wheel of that engine of that locomotive train. Nonetheless, it was very clarifying for me. And so, everything I've done since, whether it was then going to DC and working in the White House, then after grad school, going to be part of the internet revolution, launching with my roommate from business school, Ethos Water, going to run this small fledgling, unprofitable media company, GOOD, incubating adventure inside Google after that, that organized the world's volunteer opportunities or then joining the Obama White House with this. The thread has always been changing the world and taking on huge issues like the world water crisis or the lack of volunteer opportunities or international economic policy or fighting antisemitism and hate and trying in my own way to make an impact, to make a debt in the universe to kind of paraphrase Steve Jobs.
Lance Glinn:
We talked about it earlier when we talked about the word, tov, meaning good and how it really became ingrained in my head throughout my Hebrew school days and so on and so forth. I grew up and I have lived experiences of growing up as a Jewish person and seeing and experiencing sort of this rise of antisemitism. I remember I was born in 1996, again, not trying to age you. I was born in 1996.
Jonathan Greenblatt:
You're aging me, but that's fine.
Lance Glinn:
And I remember going through, I don't remember, but going through preschool at my local JCC to then going to my first couple of years at Solomon Schechter Day School and then going to public school through the rest of elementary, middle and high school and then so on and so forth in college, I experienced some of that antisemitism and I'd be lying if I said I didn't. But to the point of these lived experience, because it's one thing to have numbers, it's one thing to have statistics of all these different things happening, which again, there are far too many, but it's one thing or another thing to really hear these lived experiences from people that maybe you talk to on a pretty regular basis. So, when you think about those lived experiences that you're hearing from communities all over the country, maybe even all over the world, what do you think makes this moment of antisemitism different than maybe potentially other previous sort of waves and increases that we may have experienced?
Jonathan Greenblatt:
It's a really, really kind of thoughtful and in some ways complicated question. So, first, I'm going to address your point about the lived experiences, right? So, again, I think for a long time, antisemitism was sort of in recession. Our country with a kind of a liberal orientation, I don't mean that politically, I mean a liberalizing orientation has been accepting of people of all different ethnicities and faiths and nationalities and sexual orientations, whatnot. And so, whereas antisemitism is persistent, I had experiences maybe like you, I remember having pennies thrown at me in public school, having comments made to me. But you know what? All things considered as the grandson of a Holocaust survivor, things were really good.
But I will tell you that I started to see things change, probably bring it back to 2016 to that presidential race where you saw, for example, the Jewish star became a meme going after Hillary Clinton and you saw white supremacist media showing up at campaign events. And then we saw Charlottesville, what happened in 2017 when white supremacists out in the open were saying, "Jews will not replace us." Whereas I think much of the country saw that and was repulsed. There's a segment of extremists in this country who saw, yeah, finally people are saying what's on their mind.
Lance Glinn:
Do you think they saw it as opportunity?
Jonathan Greenblatt:
Oh, yeah. Oh, and it was a triggering event for them. And it was a catalyzing event is what I mean. They saw, "Aha, we can show up proudly now."
Lance Glinn:
Sure.
Jonathan Greenblatt:
That happened. And so the lived experience I've heard about are things like Jewish... And by the way, I should just say, so 2017 was Charlottesville, 2018 was Pittsburgh. And since 2018, the [inaudible 00:13:37] of life, you've seen a massive investment, literally hundreds of millions of dollars invested in security, JCC synagogues, day schools like Solomon Schechters. I mean, I can tell you it's quite stunning. You can do this one weekend, go to a synagogue on a Saturday and look at the security guards, the bulletproof glass.
Lance Glinn:
What I'll say to that is, sorry to interrupt. What I'll say to that is, as I told you before we started, my dad is the CEO of JCC in New Jersey, and I hear firsthand from him the amount of money that has been put into security measures from the front doors to even inside the building, security guards, like you said.
Jonathan Greenblatt:
The cameras, license plate readers, contrast that to the YMCA. Contrast what you see at a synagogue to really any other house of worship. I mean, it's quite extraordinary, but then if you look at the data, you see that synagogues are far and away the most targeted sort of religious institution for extremist-based violence. You see here in New York, I mean, we're taping this in New York City. Last year alone, there were 576 hate crimes recorded by the NYPD. Almost 60% of them were committed against Jewish people. In a city of 25 million people, the idea that Jews are far and away the most targeted minority is really remarkable. So, lived experiences, I hear about Jewish people telling me their synagogues are like Fort Knox. I hear about Jewish people telling me that they have taken the Mezuzot or identifying symbols or markers off of their doors or off of their homes.
Right around the turn of the year, we had a Jewish home outside of LA that was shot up. It had Hanukkah decorations on it. The people who drove by and shot at it was recorded on the ring camera, screamed out anti-Jewish like slurs, and then they riddled the house with bullets. I've heard about Jewish people changing their names in their Uber apps or their DoorDash apps, so the drivers don't know that they're Jewish. Lots of stories about Jewish people being harassed, being kicked out of rides, not being able to get rides or get food deliveries. I've heard stories about Jewish people being yelled at in public places because again, maybe they're wearing a Chai or Jewish star. How many college students have I talked to-
Lance Glinn:
I'm sure.
Jonathan Greenblatt:
... who've been spit on, sworn at? We had a situation on multiple campuses where all students were not allowed to pass unless they said to the people blocking the path if they were Zionist or not. Now look, Zionist is not just a political symbol. It really is a bit of a euphemism for a Jew. So, we've seen lots of, I've heard lots of experiences about college kids, middle school students, elderly people, again, people using their iPhone apps, being targeted, being singled out, being victimized. I don't think I ever would've imagined those things. Whereas it started, I would say in 2016, 2017, 2018 really shifting. After October 7th, 2023 went into overdrive.
Lance Glinn:
Yeah.
Jonathan Greenblatt:
So, we are dealing now at ADL, one of the unique things that we do, we track and respond to incidents. So, when I started in the job, 2015, we recorded roughly 942 acts of harassment or vandalism or violence against Jewish people.
Lance Glinn:
Over the course of the year?
Jonathan Greenblatt:
Over the course of the year 2015. We're still finalizing the 2025 number, but in 2024, that number was 9,452, I think. So, literally it was up 1,000% in less than a decade. That's crazy. That is not normal. And we've never seen growth like that. And again, we've been systematically tracking this information since the late 1970s. I mean, we have better data than any other institution in the United States, because we've been doing it for longer. So in a world where the felt experience of Jews is changing dramatically, and in a world where our unique kind of lens into the data shows us that empirically something has changed, we really have to redouble our efforts.
Lance Glinn:
So, you see these numbers, we talk about these lived experiences. And for someone like me who's proud to be Jewish, they resonate. For someone like you, proud to be Jewish, they resonate. But I guess my question to you now is for those of our listeners, for those who come about this podcast that aren't Jewish, why should they care?
Jonathan Greenblatt:
Well, that's a good question. I would say that again, America, which has been so great as I said to its Jewish people and to all people, is such a unique experiment in the history of humanity. And I think one of its defining features that makes it so different than other countries in the annals of history is how it has embraced its Jewish community. We live as equals just like everybody else. We can pray and work and socialize and shop just like everybody else. And yet when you start to infringe upon those basic civil liberties, I think it's not just anti-Jewish, it's anti-American. And I think a lot of the forces, the extremists who seek to marginalize Jews, whether they do it under the guise of anti-Judaism, they don't like our faith or kind of classic antisemitism. They say we're racially inferior or anti-Zionism. They say that the Jewish state needs to be singularly called out.
These are all manifestations of sort of an illiberalism, an extremism, which isn't just bad for the Jews, it's bad for all of America. And I think these forces seek to arrest democracy. I think they threaten Western values. I mean, for your listeners, again, if I come back to the BDS Movement where we started, we've done the analysis and we've seen that if the college endowments, which are frequently targeted by the activists, were to pull back on investing from companies with business in Israel, it would hurt their bottom line. Quantitatively, it would lead to lower returns, which leads to less value in the institutions themselves. That is antithetical to capitalism. But so many of these people who oppose the Jewish people, these activists who spread antisemitism, they're anti-capitalist, they're anti-Western, they're illiberal to their core.
So, I think we need to understand that, again, many listeners don't even know Jewish people. Our own research reveals that something like 40% of Americans have never met a Jewish person. 40%-
Lance Glinn:
I wouldn't think it's that much. In today's world, I wouldn't think it's anywhere near that.
Jonathan Greenblatt:
Look, I think Jews benefit, again, in an open society and a liberal democracy with a free press and a very widespread culture, we have a lot of exposure through film and through art broadly and through commerce and through politics. But the truth is that we're seven million people in a country of 340 million, we're concentrated in large urban areas like New York or LA or Miami or some other big cities, Chicago, Washington, DC. So, the truth is that the American population's fairly distributed. And so a lot of people have never actually shaken hands with a Jewish person, at least not knowingly. So, I think people need to understand, yes, for your listeners, your audience, there's an economic cost to these policies vis-a-vis like the BDS Movement. There is a political cost to these policies or to this illiberal philosophy which seeks to divide rather than unite.
And then ultimately I think there's a moral cost. There's a moral cost that corrodes the very soul of our nation that we should all be united against, whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, Jewish or not Jewish, religious or secular individual, all of us should see that targeting and singling out a slice of America simply because of their point of difference, like how they pray or where they're from is as anti-American as you get.
Lance Glinn:
So, you talked about sort of corporate America, both in that answer as well as previously, and I think you and I'd agree that corporate America has the power, I think, to become a real frontline in the fight against antisemitism. But how could, for someone who's worked in corporate America, how could these big businesses, these big brands really become such players? What could big business do to become critical in the fight to combat?
Jonathan Greenblatt:
Well, so look, I think business has a very interesting place in society today. Edelman worldwide, the PR firm just released their latest version of the trust barometer, this annual survey that they do to evaluate public sentiment. And long story short, business is the most trusted sector of society today in ways that you would almost would find hard to believe, right? More trusted than the media, more trusted than Congress and our political leaders, more trusted than law enforcement. It's big business. So, whether it's good or bad in our capitalist society, business really sets the pace in many ways. And so, business demonstrating that, for example, it is accepting of all people, again, regardless of their difference is really important. We are very data-driven and research-oriented. Our research has found that we looked at the issue of employment discrimination. We found that Jewish American job candidates needed to apply 24% more applications or file 20% more applications to receive the same number of responses from prospective employers as Americans with, let's say, Western European backgrounds or non-Jewish sounding names.
Lance Glinn:
So, that's not even just to get the job, that's just to get response.
Jonathan Greenblatt:
Get a call back. To get an email or a call back. They had 24% more. By the way, individuals with Israeli sounding names, nearly 40% more. So, employers, big business has a role to play just making sure their hiring practices aren't intentionally or unintentionally poisoned by prejudice. That's number one. Number two, creating inclusive workplaces means recognizing, and diversity is a strength, not a weakness. Diversity shouldn't distract from your success. It should contribute to it. Now that doesn't mean that diversity means to be the number one thing that a company does.
As I said earlier, the role of the company, it's kind of a Milton Friedman type view that I have, which is to drive value for shareholders, to generate outsized returns for investors to ensure that there's profit maximization in a way which again, doesn't bespoil the environment, in a way which doesn't harm a particular group of people because when I think about shareholder value, stakeholder value has something to do with it. But to bring it back here in this moment, I think we need to recognize that when done right, diversity can strengthen. And I think my businesses have been successful, not because I had the best algorithms or the best water, I had the best people.
Lance Glinn:
Yep.
Jonathan Greenblatt:
And diverse teams help drive better decisions. So, I think big business has a role to play in the way that they hire, in the way that they employ, if you will, and then in the products and services that they offer to the public. And I think about what does that mean? It means, for example, not letting outside activists like BDS extremists direct where you sell your products, direct to whom you deliver your services. I don't think that that, again, drives value to the bottom line.
Lance Glinn:
So, we talk about big business. I want to focus as our conversation sort of nears its end on a few other pinpoints of antisemitism. Universities have been one of the most visible flashpoints for antisemitism, whether it's working with administrators, supporting Jewish students, working with the Chabads or the Hillels on these campuses, advising even on campus policy perhaps. What is ADL doing specifically on campuses to combat these wrongdoings and combat these unfortunate events that we see throughout the country?
Jonathan Greenblatt:
I think you're right. The premise of your question I strongly agree with, which is college campus has been a flash point. So, I just need to acknowledge for your listeners, for many years ADL was not on the college campuses. There are so many groups there, Hillel International, Chabad on Campus, Students Supporting Israel. There were APAC chapters. There are J Street chapters. They StandWithUs. There's so many groups. I always felt like it's a crowded market. Our focus is on fighting antisemitism. We don't need to get into the college life business.
After October the 7th, when you saw almost inexplicably... Well, we thought inexplicably, it's actually, there's a real explanation for it. These college campuses actually hold demonstrations in favor of Hamas on the day of October the 7th and October the 8th and whatnot, we were stunned and we realized we needed to, again, acknowledge where we missed and change our approach. So, I can tell you what we've done. We have not opened up chapters on campus, but again, we're a data-driven, research-oriented organization and we thought, "How can we apply those capabilities to this particular problem set?" So, we developed something called the campus Report Card where we literally assessed in our first year, we said, "We are going to assess the top 80-plus institutions," turned out to be 85, and how they're handling antisemitism. And a very ADL-esque approach, we identified three clear kind of categories, Jewish life on campus, administrative policies, and activities and incidents on campus.
And then we surveyed the schools and said, "Help us understand how you're doing," and did our own research to evaluate how they were doing. And what we thought was we'll grade them because we know that professors in schools know how to give out grades. Let's grade them and we'll hold them accountable and we'll do it in a totally transparent way so they can see. And we won't grade them on a curve, [inaudible 00:27:54] everyone to get A's. So, we'll create a standard set of measures. So, whether you're a small private liberal arts college or a large public research university, we can do apples to apples comparison.
Interestingly, when we embarked upon this idea, many people thought it was not a good idea. I was told by some of staff and supporters that if you give a bad grade to a particular donor's alma mater or to particularly important publicly known institution, they'll never work with you again. They will hold a grudge. And I thought that, "Well, there's risk, but it's a risk worth taking," because we needed to find a new way to address this issue and to make clear that there was a problem and yet there are opportunities to fix it. So, we launched Report Card in the spring of 2024. We evaluated 85 institutions on 21 different metrics, and a number of very prominent schools got Fs. I'm a graduate of Tufts University and Northwestern University, F and F. Harvard got an F, Stanford got an F and so on.
And then an interesting thing happened over the course of the next year, more than 70% of the schools that we graded, rather than running away from us, they ran to us and they attended a webinar or they reached out directly and said, "How can we do better?" And they said, "Show us, help us understand how we can improve our policies or our practices." So, we do what we did without favor, without kind of preference. We worked with everyone. We made all of our resources available and year one to year two of those 85 institutions, more than 50% got better grades, not because we changed our standards. In fact, we created more stringent standards. We went from 21 metrics to 30 in year two, and yet they performed better because they adopted and implemented new approaches.
So, I was very pleased with that ROI. And we'll do the third version of the Report Card in March of 2026 this year, and we're going from 85, I think we'll have 150 institutions. And again, strict standards, but I think you're going to see a bunch of better grades because the schools are working at it now. So, one way that ADL showed up, number one, was to create a new model, the Report Card, take a data-driven approach that helped everyone actually do better. Second thing we did, a lot of students who were being discriminated against didn't know what to do with that. Now, if you're an institution getting federal funding, it's a violation of the law of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to discriminate based on someone's religion. Or it's actually, it's Title VI is considered color, race, or nationality, national origin.
So, the courts have found that that encompasses Jewish people because we are both a faith and an ethnicity. So, what's important about that? If a student or staff member or a professor was discriminated against based on their Jewish identity, they didn't know what to do. Now, the truth is you could go to the US Department of Education and file a claim, difficult to do. So, as I mentioned before, we get reports about incidents. We've been doing that for almost 50 years. We took that same tech and said, "Let's apply this to reports about Title VI claims." So, we worked with Hillel and with other groups on campus to say, "We're going to offer this for free. Share this with your students." So, if they experience antisemitism or hate, they can report it easily, simply without a lot of trouble. And then we'll have our team and our lawyers evaluate to see if there's a real case there.
In the two years since we've done that, more than 1,000 Title VI claims have been reported through us. So, it went from zero to over 1,000. And many of those have been evaluated by our attorneys or the firms that we work with, and they've led to real cases. They've led to actions, they've led to settlements, they've led to decisions favorable to these Jewish kids or professors or staff members who've been discriminated against. And we didn't just do it alone. We partnered with other groups. There's a group called the Brandeis Center, another group called StandWithUs. We work with all of them. So, we've innovated on allowing more Title VI claims to be filed, and we've used partners to broaden our reach. So, that's the second thing that we did that I think was pretty novel and different.
Finally, a third thing, you can look at helping students who suffer from discrimination, helping grade the institutions overall. But I think we've identified another real vector are the faculty. Students change every few... Every year you get a new class coming in. And the truth is that the administrators at these schools change with some regularity, but you know what doesn't change? Faculty members. So, they get tenure that offers them protection. And oftentimes you can see like on October the 7th and the days after where different departments that have no expertise on the Middle East were making wild statements.
So, we did what we do at ADL. Our researchers decided to evaluate how are these faculty groups doing? And we released a study last year that evaluated 20 different academic associations to assess on how they handle issues of antisemitism. We called it the Academic Association Integrity Index. Again, very ADL, deep dive, deeply analytic, transparently conducted, all grounded in evidence. And we found major issues with places like the American Anthropological Association, the Association of Chicano Studies, the Women's Studies Association. I mean, again, these are groups that have no subject matter expertise, no domain knowledge on the Middle East. And so, what we do is not only do we do the study, again, with lots and lots of research, we released it to Congress. And I think it's already been announced there's going to be hearings evaluating different academic associations on this very specific issue. So, we try to bring our unique capabilities, again, grounded in research, using innovation, building partnerships, and whether it's facilitating litigation, evaluating the institutions, working with elected officials, trying to use sunlight as our best disinfectant to expose and hopefully stop antisemitism and hate in its tracks.
Lance Glinn:
Yeah. And to me, that answer really pointed to two things, right? Accountability and accessibility. Accountability with the Report Card, accountability with the index, and then the accessibility part, like you said, giving students an easier way to report these claims. And 1,000 is a big number. And it's sort of like a double-edged sword. It's great that students now have this accessibility, but also on the other end, a real shame that there's now 1,000 reports. You'd obviously want that number to be zero and hope one day to get it to zero and legitimately have it be zero. Not zero because none have been reported, but zero because the reporting is there, but there are none to report. There's also sort of this digital battlefield as so much antisemitism. And I've seen this as I've grown up, since I've grown up really in this age of social media and digital media, so much antisemitism spreads online.
Jonathan Greenblatt:
Yeah.
Lance Glinn:
How is ADL working with, I don't know, tech platforms, social networks, you be it to act against online antisemitism?
Jonathan Greenblatt:
So, if we were try to... It's a good question. And you're right, it's one of the things that's changed as you've grown up, as all of us have grown up. I mean, 30 years ago, the internet was not what it is today. Now our world is being shaped literally in real time by large language models in ways almost invisible to us. So, ADL launched back in 2017 our Center for Technology and Society, because we recognized at that time that Facebook was the frontline in fighting hate. And I do think social media has been the single most significant sort of super-spreader of antisemitism we've ever seen.
Lance Glinn:
Yep.
Jonathan Greenblatt:
Now it's interesting because extremists typically have a hard time getting access to sort of mainstream media. So, they innovate. We saw this Father Coughlin in the 30s was a very well-known rabid antisemite who used radio to get his word out there. White supremacists were an early adopter of cable access channels, like those public access, like poorly made programs you used to see. We all saw extremists, like [inaudible 00:36:40] extremists adopt bulletin board services like BBS when the internet was first and AOL and those first taking shape. Now today, as our media landscape has fragmented, like social media is mainstream media. Although I couldn't tell you the data off the top of my head, my guess is that YouTube on a daily basis has infinitely more viewers than sort of... I bet you if you looked at the YouTube figures on who watched the Indiana Miami National Championship game, they're far higher vis-a-vis YouTube than they were on broadcast networks.
Lance Glinn:
Oh, I'm sure. Yeah, for sure.
Jonathan Greenblatt:
Totally. So, that's mainstream media today. YouTube and TikTok, Instagram Reels, that's mainstream media. So we got to go to where the fight is.
Lance Glinn:
So, Jonathan, over the course of our conversation, we've talked about all the different things ADL is doing to command antisemitism. We talked at the beginning about the TOV ETF and have hit on a number of categories from that to now where we are right now. The Anti-Defamation League is over a century old, but today antisemitism, as we've been discussing, is coming in many different forms. So, when you envision the organization's next decade, and don't even have to go a decade, five, 10 years, whatever it may be, what do you see? How will it continue to evolve to ultimately support its greater mission?
Jonathan Greenblatt:
That's a good question. I mean, I think one of the things that your question touches on is I think evolution and innovation are essential, essential. So, stasis is just not an acceptable sort of approach. In a world that is rapidly being reconfigured, again, by forces like globalization and technology, let alone a policy environment that's more volatile than we've ever seen. We have no choice but to adjust on a continuous basis and really adopt a posture of being a learning organization. So, we are not just trying to assess the dynamics around us, we're processing in real time and then internalizing those learnings so we can operate more effectively.
I mean, look, last year, the JLens, which wasn't part of ADL a decade ago, they had the most successful shareholder resolution at Meta. Now it didn't succeed, but had nearly 47% support from independent shareholders. It was a top ranking human rights proposal in 2025 proxy season, according to the SEC. We weren't even in that world a few years ago. So, that's a good example of where we went from a standing start. We were at zero to the point where we had the most successful resolution on human rights basis, 2025. That's remarkable. So I think that demonstrates how we have to innovate and try new stuff. I think in the next 10 years, you'll see ADL continue to be more tech-centric, continue to be adapting our strategies for a AGI world. That is just a necessity if you watch where the world is going.
I think secondly, we're going to continue to monitor developments in the governmental side. I mean, I think the rise of authoritarianism and some of the dynamics coming out of places like Asia and the Middle East or [inaudible 00:40:06], I think we need to be very mindful of that. And then thirdly, I think something remarkable has happened, particularly since October the 7th, which is you've seen this extraordinary activation of ordinary people. So, it's true the country's more divided than ever, and we're a 501(c)(3). We don't get involved in partisan politics. We don't engage electoral. It's our job to call balls and strikes, no matter who's standing at the plate. But I see people on the right who want to call out and fight antisemitism on the right. I see people on the political left who want to call out and fight the antisemitism on the left.
I see people using tools now that they never had at their disposal. Again, just WhatsApp alone has unlocked so much capability. So, I can envision in the next 10 years, yes, we'll continue to be innovative. Yes, we'll continue to lean on partnerships. Yes, we'll continue to be a learning organization, but I think you'll see us move increasingly from top-down advocacy to bottom-up activism, following the lead of our supporters and the public at large, which is super empowered by these tools and unlocking that latent resource for really exciting kind of kinetic opportunities, whether it's at the political level, the shareholder level, or in other spaces, I think that will be a big part of our future.
Lance Glinn:
Well, Jonathan, I appreciate the conversation. I appreciate all that ADL is doing to fight antisemitism. Thank you so much for joining us inside the ICE House.
Jonathan Greenblatt:
Thank you for having me.