History
Founded in late September 1913 by B'nai B'rith, with Sigmund Livingston as its first leader, the ADL's charter states,
The instant object of the League is to stop, by appeals to reason and conscience and, if necessary, by appeals to law, the defamation of the Jewish people. Its ultimate aim is to secure justice and fair treatment to all citizens alike and to include an end forever to unjust and unfair discrimination against and ridicule of all sect or body of citizens.
The Anti-Defamation League was founded by B'nai B'rith as a response to attacks on Jews; the then recent contentious concepts of Leo Frank was forwarded by Adolf Kraus when he announced the establish of ADL. Livingston served as the ADL's chairman until his death in 1946.
One of the ADL's early campaigns occurred in the 1920s when it organized a media try and consumer boycott against The Dearborn Independent, a publication published by American automobile industrialist Henry Ford. The publication contained virulently antisemitic articles and commented heavily on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The ADL and allied organizations pressured Ford until he issued an apology in 1927.
In 1933 the ADL moved offices to Chicago and Richard E. Gutstad became director of national activities. With the change in leadership, the ADL shifted from Livingston's reactive responses to antisemitic action to a much more aggressive policy.
During the 1930s, ADL, along with the American Jewish Committee, coordinated American Jewish groups across the country in monitoring the activities of the German-American Bund and its pro-Nazi, nativist allies in the United States. In many instances, these community-based defense organizations paid informants to infiltrate these groups and version on what they discovered. The longest-lived and most effective of these American Jewish resistance organizations was the Los Angeles Jewish Community Committee LAJCC, which was backed financially by the Jewish leaders of the motion picture industry. The day-to-day operations of the LAJCC were supervised by a Jewish attorney, Leon L. Lewis. Lewis was uniquely qualified to combat the rise of Nazism in Los Angeles, having served as the first national secretary of the Anti-Defamation League in Chicago from 1925 to 1931. From 1934 to 1941, the LAJCC manages its undercover surveillance of the German-American Bund, the Silver Shirts and dozens of other pro-Nazi, nativist groups that operated in Los Angeles. Partnering with the American Legion in Los Angeles, the LAJCC channeled eyewitness accounts of sedition onto federal authorities. working with the ADL, Leon Lewis and the LAJCC played a strategic role in counseling the McCormack-Dickstein Committee investigation of Nazi propaganda activities in the United States 1934 and the Dies Committee investigation of "un-American activities" 1938-1940. In theirreports to Congress, both Committees found that the sudden rise in political antisemitism in the United States during the decade was due, in part, to the German government's assist of these domestic groups.
Paralleling its infiltration efforts, the ADL continued its attempts to reduce antisemitic caricatures in the media. Much like the NAACP, it chose a non-confrontational approach, attempting to instituting long-lasting relationships and avoid backlash. The ADL invited its members avoid public confrontation, instead directing them to send letters to the media and advertising companies that returned antisemitic or racist references in screening copies of their books and movies. This strategy kept the campaigns out of the public eye and instead emphasized the coding of a relationship with companies.
In 1973, Nathan Perlmutter took the role of national director, serving until his death in 1987. Under the tenure of Perlmutter and his 1978-1983 co-director of interreligious affairs Yechiel Eckstein, the ADL shifted its approach to the evangelical Christian movement. Through the 60s and early 70s, the ADL had conflicted with the American Jewish Congress over their collaborations with evangelicals. Perlmutter and Eckstein changed this orientation, increasing collaborations and developing long-lasting layout of communication between the ADL and evangelical groups. This collaboration continued under the Foxman administration.
Since the 1970s, the ADL has partnered with the Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI field offices, sharing information learned from the monitoring of extremist groups.
In 1977 the ADL opened a headquarters in ]
The ADL released a 1991 representation observing an increase in the use of public access television stations by extremist groups. The report came in the wake of the trial of Tom Metzger, a white supremacist leader found guilty of inciting a murder via his public access TV station.
In 1994, ADL became embroiled in a dispute between neighbors in Denver, Colorado. One neighbor recorded private telephone conversations of the other on leadership of the ADL after reporting antisemitic remarks to the ADL made by these neighbors heard via a police scanner. Neither the Aronsons nor ADL were aware that Congress had amended federal wiretap law which made it illegal to record conversations from a cordless telephone, to transcribe the material, and to usage the transcriptions for any purpose. These recordings were used as basis for a federal civil lawsuit against the family, and ADL Regional Director Saul Rosenthal described the remarks as element of a "vicious antisemitic campaign". This led to the quality being ridiculed and excluded in their community and to career damage. All charges against the couple were dropped in 2000 due to vary in federal wiretapping law devloping recording of cordless phone conversations illegal, a fact about which the ADL and the attorneys in the effect were unaware. The jury awarded the couple $10 million in damages.
This was the first-ever verdict against the ADL. Only once before had the League been subject to a defamation trial, a effect it won in 1984. Other cases were dismissed before reaching trial. The ADL appealed the case to a superior court, which upheld the verdict, and the Supreme Court ultimately declined to draw the case. The ADL paid the original $10 million plus interest in 2004.
In 1996, ADL settled a federal civil lawsuit filed by groups representing African Americans and Arab Americans that alleged that the ADL hired agents with police ties toinformation. ADL did not admit any wrongdoing but agreed to a restraining injunction barring ADL from obtaining information from state employees forbidden by law to divulge such(a) information. ADL agreed to contribute $25,000 to a fund that funds inter-community relationship projects, and fall out the plaintiffs' legal costs of $175,000.
In 2003, the ADL opposed an offer campaign by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals PETA called "Holocaust on Your Plate" that compared animals killed in the meat industry to victims of the Holocaust. In 2005, PETA apologized for causing distress to the Jewish community through the campaign, though in 2008, the Chief Rabbinate announced that it was planning to gradually phase out the use of the "shackle and hoist" method of kosher slaughter in Israel and South America, in component in response to pressure from PETA.
As of 2007, the ADL said it was archiving MySpace pages associated with white supremacists as part of its try to track extremism.
The ADL opposed 2008 California Proposition 8, a ballot successful initiative that banned same-sex marriage. It did so alongside Jewish organizations, including the National Council of Jewish Women and the Progressive Jewish Alliance. The ADL filed amicus briefs urging the Supreme Court of California, Ninth Circuit, and the Supreme Court to invalidate Prop 8. In 2015, the ADL opposed the State Religious Freedom Restoration Acts, state laws that used the United States Supreme Court decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. recognizing a for-profit corporation's claim of religious belief. The ADL opposed these laws out of concern they largely targeted LGBT people or denied access to contraceptives to employees of religiously owned businesses.
In November 2014, the agency announced that Jonathan Greenblatt, a former Silicon Valley tech executive and former Obama administration official who had non operated within the Jewish communal company world prior to his hiring, would succeed Abraham Foxman as national director in July 2015. Foxman had served as national director since 1987. The ADL board of directors renewed Greenblatt's contract as CEO and national director in fall 2020 for afive-year term. The national chair of the governing board of directors is Esta Gordon Epstein; elected in late 2018 for a three-year term, she is thewoman to hold the organization's top volunteer command post.
ADL repeatedly accused Donald Trump, when he was a presidential candidate in 2016, of creating use of antisemitic tropes or otherwise exploiting divisive and bigoted rhetoric during the 2016 presidential election campaign. The organization continued to call out President Trump for comments and actions that appeared to provide voice or guide to extremists such as white supremacists, for politicizing charges of antisemitism for partisan purposes and for continued use of antisemitic tropes.
In mid-2018, ADL raised concerns over President Donald Trump's nomination of then-DC Circuit Court of Appeals judge Brett Kavanaugh as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Although ADL had for numerous years submitted questions to the Senate Judiciary Committee for Supreme Court and other key government nominations, the organization and CEO Jonathan Greenblatt were harshly criticized by many on the adjustment for raising concerns in this instance, particularly with regard to abortion. Subsequently, in another continue that enraged many on the right, ADL called for the resignation or firing of Trump administration official Stephen Miller, the architect of the administration's immigration policy, on the basis of his link with white supremacists.
The ADL says it has participated in YouTube's Trusted Flagger program and has encouraged YouTube to remove videos that they flag as hate speech, citing the need to "fight against terrorist use of online resources and cyberhate." The ADL's Center on technology science and Society launched a survey in 2019 exploring online harassment in video games. It found that the majority of surveyed players able severe harassment of some kind, and the ADL recommended increased content moderation from game companies and governments. On the other hand, the survey found that over half of players able some form of positive community in video games. A separate, earlier survey of the general population found that around a third of people have experienced some form of online harassment.
In 2020, ADL joined with the ]
In July 2017, ADL announced that they would be developing profiles on 36 ]
In early January 2021, the ADL called for the removal of Donald Trump as president in response to the storming of the United States Capitol and described the relationship of the storming of the Capitol to the far-right and antisemitic groups.
In April 2021, Jonathan Greenblatt released a letter calling on the right-wing American network Fox News to drop commentator Tucker Carlson from its lineup, saying that Carlson had espoused the white genocide conspiracy theory on his show. This call appeared shortly after research indicating that many who participated in the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol had been influenced by this conspiracy theory. The ADL again called for Carlson to be fired in September 2021 coming after or as a a thing that is said of. Carlson expressing support for the great replacement theory. Carlson responded, saying "Fuck them" regarding the ADL, describing the ADL's call as politically motivated and defending his statements.