The following piece is an opinion and does not reflect the views of The Eagle and its staff. All opinions are edited for grammar, style and argument structure and fact-checked, but the opinions are the writer’s own.
American University should end its relationship with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) — an anti-Palestinian organization that has failed to challenge rising right-wing antisemitism.
The University’s leadership was, once again, woefully out of touch with reality when they bragged in their March 11 AU Now email about their “A” grade in the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) campus report card.
The ADL is not an ally in combating antisemitism. Most recently, they removed research on right-wing supremacist groups. Ironically enough, they even provided cover for Elon Musk’s Heil Hitler at President Donald Trump’s celebratory event.
A recent audit of the ADL’s highly cited antisemitism tracker found that almost 50 percent of reported instances were acts of protected speech related to Palestinian rights advocacy or criticism of Zionism. This brings into question the authenticity of the ADL’s grading criteria and what an “A” truly represents. Therefore, we should take the ADL’s “A” grade with a grain of salt, and consider what the ADL might actually be assessing.
The ADL explicitly listed the suspension of the University’s SJP chapter as aiding the “A” grade, framing the University’s punishment of protected student speech as a positive step taken by the University.
The University’s chapter of AAUP views this as an attack on free speech and blatant viewpoint discrimination. The ADL, however, saw this as befitting one of the “highest-rated institutions” among 150 colleges and universities.
The ADL has a long history of racism and undermining social justice movements. It is an organization that has demonstrated concern about the state of Israel before actual support of Jewish people and human rights.
Through police exchanges between the United States and Israel, the worst practices of surveillance, profiling and human rights abuses are shared and promoted. These exchanges send U.S. police officers, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and campus security to train in Israel and share tactics with Israeli military, police and intelligence officers.
This includes surveillance technology that the Israeli state has developed and tested on Palestinians. The technology is then brought back to the United States and weaponized against Black and Brown people.
In response, there has been a large movement to remove ADL training and curriculum from schools through the Drop the ADL from Schools campaign, including the National Education Association.
In March 2025, the University arrested its own graduate student, Elaf Hasan, for unfurling a Palestinian flag as an act of silent protest during former President Alger’s inauguration. Charges were pressed against Hasan in Washington, D.C., but the courts dropped the charges, two of three with prejudice, stating that the University violated her First Amendment rights. The University violated its own Freedom of Expression policy with her removal and arrest at the event.
The case is evidence that the University’s partnership with the ADL has violent and material consequences for our community’s most vulnerable students, faculty and staff.
The weaponization of antisemitism has become a core strategy of defending genocide in U.S. politics, academia, and, as a result, at American University. The ADL must be exposed for what it is — a right-wing, Zionist and white supremacist organization that has failed to defend civil rights and combat discrimination.
The University claims to be committed to inclusive excellence, but being lauded by an organization that promotes right-wing extremism and threatens the rights of Black, immigrant, queer, Muslim, Arab, anti-Zionist Jewish and other marginalized communities tells a different story. The University is headed in an increasingly exclusionary direction, one that parallels that of the United States enforced by the federal government.
Surveys of United States college and university students show increasing sympathy with and support for Palestinians and their struggle for basic human rights, alongside declining support for the Israeli state and its actions. Is the University’s leadership so short-sighted that they cannot fathom losing students, amid a serious enrollment and retention decline, as a result of these ADL accolades and this attention?
During the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people, cutting the University’s ties with the ADL is one step in bending the moral arc of our university towards justice. The ADL targets and smears Black, Arab and Muslim community organizers as antisemites and claims the organizers’ ties to anti-racist and decolonial movements are proof of antisemitic hate. The ADL has targeted our own students using this exact playbook, and yet the University continues to collaborate with them.
American University must join the call to #DropTheADL and end our relationship. Today.
This article was edited by Ava DiGiacomo, Harry Walton and Gabrielle McNamee. Copy editing by Avery Grossman, Jaden Maitland Anderson and Ryan Sieve.
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