The Anti-Defamation League and the Racial State: A Book Talk with Emmaia Gelman

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) once sought to portray itself as a defender of civil rights aligned with racial justice movements in the United States. In a groundbreaking study that Publishers Weekly describes as a "gutsy, razor-sharp demystification of a powerful organization," Emmaia Gelman exposes the ADL’s alliance with American white supremacy and western empire and its historic investment in Cold War anticommunism. Her definitive account shows how the ADL as a Zionist organization has advanced and supported pro-state policing, a hate-crimes framework that obscures racialized structures of power, and a “War on Terror” that has stoked anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia.

Author Bio: Emmaia Gelman is the founding Director of the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism. She has taught social and cultural analysis at NYU and social sciences at Sarah Lawrence College. Her writing appears in Jewish Currents, Boston Review, The Forward, and elsewhere.

Cosponsored by the Center for Racial Justice (CRJ), Resource Center for Nonviolence, Jewish Voice for Peace–South Bay, Santa Cruz Jews for a Free Palestine, Students for Justice in Palestine Santa Cruz, Faculty for Justice in Palestine at UC Santa Cruz, UC Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, the Ethnic Studies Council at the University of California, and the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism, this event, which is part of a California tour, is free and open to the public. Registration is encouraged but not required.

Register here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf81QAbBRsNlTUSWPoxNxQgNCFRwx2I03cm7Rtj_OLes8VEug/viewform