Press Releases and Statements

American Jewish Committee (AJC) is calling on the Alameda County District and the Department of Justice (DOJ) to conduct criminal investigations into an anti-Jewish riot that occurred at UC Berkeley on Monday evening at an event featuring an Israeli speaker. News reports describe a siege of the building, with the mob attempting a break-in, breaking a door and window in the process. Attendees were spat at while being bombarded with antisemitic hate speech.

Professor Nasaruddin Umar, the Grand Imam of Masjid Istiqlal – Indonesia's national mosque and the largest mosque in Southeast Asia – recently completed a six-week intensive fellowship with American Jewish Committee (AJC) and the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS). The fellowship included academic study, meetings with civil society leaders and government officials, and participation in interreligious dialogues across the United States.

American Jewish Committee’s (AJC) recently released State of Antisemitism in America 2023 Report found that 4 in 10 (44%) current or recent college students were affected by antisemitism during their time on campus.

American Jewish Committee condemns in the strongest possible terms Monday night’s actions by Bears for Palestine (BfP) at UC Berkeley. What transpired meets the criteria for a riot, complete with violent incursion of some 200 protesters into the auditorium where invited Israeli speaker Ran Bar-Yoshafat was scheduled to talk. The auditorium’s doors were breached, its windows smashed, and threats of violence along with actual violence were leveled against attendees, who were forced to evacuate to safety underground.

American Jewish Committee (AJC) today congratulated Julie Katz, AJC Atlanta Associate Director, on her appointment to a special one-year role at the U.S. State Department, working under Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt in the Office of the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism (SEAS). AJC is pleased to support Katz’s tenure for the upcoming year as she takes a sabbatical from the organization, reaffirming its steadfast commitment to supporting the efforts of the United States in countering antisemitism.

The release of the data, from surveys done in the fall of 2023, comes four months after the Hamas terror attack on Israel on October 7 – the deadliest attack against Jews since the Holocaust – at a time when the global Jewish community is experiencing a dramatic surge in antisemitism.

American Jewish Committee (AJC) today welcomed a U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights (OCR) agreement made with Delaware’s Red Clay Consolidated School District in a June 2023 student-filed case detailing horrific harassment of a Jewish student.

American Jewish Committee (AJC) released new data showing that an overwhelming consensus of Americans – both Jews and the general public – support Holocaust education in public schools and measures to invest in resources to teach about the Holocaust and to assess the effectiveness of these lessons.

American Jewish Committee (AJC) today released A Law Enforcement Guide to Countering Antisemitism: Implementing the U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism in partnership with the Secure Community Network (SCN), National Sheriffs’ Association (NSA), and Major County Sheriffs of America (MCSA).

American Jewish Committee (AJC) released the following statement after University of Pennsylvania (Penn) President Liz Magill stepped down from her post.

American Jewish Committee (AJC) today thanked Stanford University and the University of Michigan for showing moral clarity and leadership in the wake of Tuesday’s congressional hearing, “Holding Campus Leaders Accountable and Confronting Antisemitism,” during which university presidents from Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and University of Pennsylvania asserted that comments calling for the genocide of the Jewish people would not necessarily violate their institutions’ codes of conduct.

American Jewish Committee (AJC) today filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court defending the right of social media companies to exclude hateful speech from their platforms. The case, Moody v. NetChoice, involves challenges to Florida and Texas statutes which limited the right of social media platforms to exclude posts that violated their rules of service. The lower federal courts are divided on the constitutionality of such statutes.

Tuesday’s congressional hearing was shocking and disappointing. After nearly six hours of testimony in which the university presidents from Harvard, MIT, and Penn made clear their schools’ commitments to free speech and academic excellence, they could not bring themselves to affirm that calling for the genocide of the Jewish people constitutes a violation of their institutions’ codes of conduct.

Amid the terrifying increase of antisemitic harassment, intimidation, and violence around the world in the wake of the October 7 terror attack against Israel, American Jewish Committee (AJC) today released updated terms to its Translate Hate glossary, a tool to help people identify, understand, and report antisemitism.

In response to the rising challenge of online antisemitism, American Jewish Committee (AJC), B’nai B’rith International, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, UNESCO, and the World Jewish Congress came together to host an action-oriented online capacity building workshop. The session united over 50 transatlantic civil society leaders, online antisemitism experts, and leading figures driving policy responses to hateful narratives as well as fostering media and information literacy, to share best practices around countering online antisemitism from across Europe and North America.

American Jewish Committee (AJC), the global advocacy organization for the Jewish people, was joined today by roughly 50 Jewish community organizations from around the world to urge tech and social media companies to take prompt and effective action to counter “the surge in online content celebrating the terrorist organization Hamas and the heinous murders and related attacks it committed against 1,400 civilians in Israel on and since October 7, 2023.”

American Jewish Committee (AJC), the global advocacy organization for the Jewish people, today welcomed a joint statement from 32 Special Envoys and Coordinators on Combating Antisemitism from Europe, Latin America, the United States, Canada, and Israel. They cite the “immense impact” the October 7 Hamas terror attack has had on Jewish communities worldwide and the need for action in the face of the dangerous antisemitism that has ensued.

American Jewish Committee today welcomed the White House’s announcement that the Biden administration will develop the first-ever U.S. National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia, fulfilling the commitment it made in December 2022 as it launched the process to create the National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism.

Today, in response to findings in the FBI’s 2022 Hate Crime Statistics Report, American Jewish Committee (AJC) expressed grave concern over the staggering number of hate crimes committed against the American Jewish community last year. Hate crimes against Jews increased by 37% in 2022, according to the data released by the FBI.

American Jewish Committee (AJC), the global advocacy organization for the Jewish people, today announced its sponsorship of an historic international conference, New Documents from the Pontificate of Pope Pius XII and Their Meaning for Jewish-Christian Relations: A Dialogue Between Historians and Theologians. AJC is the only global Jewish organization among the sponsors.