It Could Happen Here

Why America Is Tipping from Hate to the Unthinkable—and How We Can Stop It

Part of JTS’s Opening Season

Monday, April 25, 2022, 8:00-9:00 p.m. ET
Online

As CEO of ADL, Jonathan Greenblatt has made it his personal mission to demonstrate how antisemitism, racism, and other insidious forms of intolerance can destroy a society, taking root as quiet prejudices but mutating over time into horrific acts of brutality. 

Join us for this urgent conversation with Greenblatt, who will speak to Dr. Shuly Rubin Schwartz, chancellor of The Jewish Theological Seminary and a Jewish historian who has studied and taught both antisemitism’s long history and Jewish responses to it. Greenblatt, drawing on ADL’s decades of experience in fighting hate through investigative research, education programs, and legislative victories as well as his own personal story and his background in business and government, will offer strategies on how we as individuals, as organizations, and as a society can strike back against hate. 

Speakers

Jonathan Greenblatt is the CEO of ADL (Anti-Defamation League) and its sixth national director. As chief executive of ADL, Jonathan leads all aspects of the world’s leading anti-hate organization. He is an accomplished entrepreneur and innovative leader with deep experience in the private, public and nonprofit sectors.

Since becoming CEO in July 2015, Greenblatt has modernized ADL while refocusing it on the mission it has had since its founding in 1913: to fight the defamation of the Jewish people and secure justice and fair treatment to all.

Under Greenblatt, ADL has modernized its operations, innovated its approaches to counter antisemitism from all sides and enhanced its efforts to combat extremism in all forms. During his tenure ADL rebooted its Center on Extremism that analyzes and monitors extremists and hate groups; launched “Never Is Now” the largest annual convening in the world focused on antisemitism and hate; created the Center for Technology and Society in Silicon Valley to fight the rising tide of online hate and harassment; partnered with the Aspen Institute to launch the Civil Society Fellowship, an innovative program that builds cohorts of emerging leaders across a continuum of ideology and identity; developed the Sports Leadership Council to engage athletes, teams, and leagues to confront bigotry and discrimination more effectively; and executed Stop Hate for Profit, the successful campaign that organized businesses, celebrities, nonprofits, and policy makers to fight the rampant racism, antisemitism, and extremism on Facebook.

In 2022, Greenblatt released It Could Happen Here, a book that sounds an alarm, warning that hate and systemic violence is gathering momentum in the United States–-and that violence on a more catastrophic scale could be just around the corner.

Shuly Rubin Schwartz, Irving Lehrman Research Professor of American Jewish History, a groundbreaking scholar of American Jewish history, and a visionary institutional leader, is the eighth chancellor of The Jewish Theological Seminary. She is the first woman to serve in this role since JTS was founded in 1886.

Co-sponsored by JTS, ADL, FJMC, Women’s League for Conservative Judaism, and USCJ.

View All JTS’s Opening Season Events

ABOUT OPENING SEASON

Join us this spring to experience the very best of JTS. We’re celebrating our new campus with a season of events exploring the intellectual, artistic, and religious breadth of Jewish life. We’re looking to the future, with bold conversations that bring Jewish thought into dialogue with the issues challenging our world.

Add To Calendar