Brown University plans to bring Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt to campus to speak on February 22nd as part of its programming intended to enhance "dialogue" and the community's ability to have "difficult conversations." This event presents a serious risk of increasing hate on campus.

Jonathan Greenblatt has made Islamophobic, and anti-Palestinian remarks beginning in October, including disseminating false claims that Palestinians were engaging in terrorism. Greenblatt claimed, among other things, the following: there was a “global day of Jihad'' being planned, that Palestinians had beheaded Israeli babies, that bombing Gaza actually helps Palestinian people living there, and that “anti-zionism is genocide.” This is a continuation of the ADL and Greenblatt's pro-police stance, accusations of antisemitism against, and disavowal of the Black Lives Matter Movement in 2016.

Greenblatt himself is not a proponent of free speech on college campuses. As recently as February 14th Greenblatt took to X (formerly Twitter) to applaud MIT for suspending its student group Coalition Against Apartheid. The ADL released an open letter in December calling on university leaders to investigate pro-Palestinian student groups. The ADL open letter falsely and dangerously claims that these students’ speech constitutes “material support of terrorism.” The ACLU

has pushed back against the ADL campaign as a threat to students' First Amendment Rights.

Platforming Greenblatt as a resource on anti-semitism and anti-racism is thus antithetical to the goals of dialogue which Brown seeks to promote with this speaker series. Further, it endangers all student activists, as well as Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students generally.

Tell Brown this event is dangerously framed and woefully misguided!