Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt called on President-elect Donald Trump to work to further combat antisemitism following the release of a study finding labor discrimination against Israeli and Jewish Americans.
In an appearance on Fox Business on Tuesday, Greenblatt outlined the study that found Jewish American job candidates have almost a 25% more difficult chance of receiving positive first responses from prospective employers than Americans with Western European backgrounds. Israeli Americans were at an even bigger disadvantage, needing to send 39% more applications to receive the same number of positive responses as their Western European counterparts.
The field experiment, sponsored by the ADL, studied 3,000 inquiries into administrative assistant job openings across the country differing based on the name used, either sounding Jewish, Israeli, or Western European as well as changing the resume to reflect a Jewish, Israeli, or Western European background.
“This data is significant because we’re on the cusp of a new political administration in Washington, and we’re seeing the results of unaddressed antisemitism,” Greenblatt said. “We hope that the Trump administration, specifically the Trump labor department, will take action to stop this once and for all.”
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Trump’s pick for labor secretary, U.S. Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, R-Ore., has a record of supporting bipartisan bills to address antisemitism, including introducing a bill to protect Jewish students on college campuses in the wake of protests to the Israel-Hamas war.
Harassment, violence and derogatory rhetoric targeting Jewish people have risen in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel and the war since.
A staunch supporter of Israel during his first term as president, in 2019, he signed an executive order that encouraged the application of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to antisemitic activity. In 2020, Trump’s administration brokered the Abraham Accords, normalizing relations in the Middle East between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. This year, he campaigned on his continued allyship with Israel despite criticism of the nation’s attacks in Gaza.
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But Trump’s record of supporting the long-time allied nation does not come without conflicting commentary and associations related to Jewish people.
An October campaign rally at Madison Square Garden, where a slew of controversial speakers and comedians took the stage, received massive backlash after marginalized groups, including the Jewish community, were targeted with antisemitic remarks in the name of jest. Just one month before, Trump said during an antisemitism event that Jewish Americans who vote Democratic in the coming election should “have their head examined.”
Just weeks before the presidential election, Trump’s former chief of staff, John Kelly, told The New York Times Trump said that “Hitler did some good things” and showed admiration for the German dictator who was responsible for the systematic killing of 6 million Jewish people and millions of others.
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Greenblatt said he was “optimistic” that Trump would “step up in his new second term and take additional steps and demonstrate that antisemitism is un-American.”
Trump-Vance transition spokesman Kush Desai wrote in a statement that the president-elect is committed to fighting discrimination.
“President Trump has repeatedly and unequivocally condemned antisemitism in all forms, both on the campaign trail and during his first administration,” Desai said. “He will continue to take a stand against antisemitism and other forms of bigotry to be the president of ALL Americans and unify the country through success.”
‘Jews are still not being included’
To combat the discrimination found in the ADL study, vice president of the ADL’s Center of Antisemitism Research Matt Williams told USA TODAY that violations of workplace practice laws need to be enforced.
“It’s going to be about incentivizing following existing rules,” he said. “There are a lot of things on the books already that are not being enforced when it comes to issues like national origin discrimination.”
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But discrimination against the Jewish community goes beyond religion, Williams said, with many people facing prejudice over their ethnic and cultural practices as well.
Encouraging the Labor Department under Trump to incentivize industries and corporations to teach about the Jewish experience as a whole in the workplace, he said, could be a valuable tool in combating prejudice.
As for what a new administration can do to combat antisemitism, not all are optimistic.
“It feels like in the (Biden administration), no matter how much they’ve done to encourage (diversity, equity and inclusion work), Jews are still not being included in that by workplaces,” said Steven Phillips, co-founder of Jewish ERGs, a group partnered with The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership that’s supportive of corporations having employee resource groups for Jewish people.
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Trump has been clear about the future of DEI in his second administration: it’s unwanted.
Initiatives focused on fostering diversity and inclusivity in the workplace have received major backlash from conservatives in recent years as being divisive and discriminatory because they support workers who are LGBTQ+ and people of color.
Spokesman and incoming head of communications Steven Cheung told USA TODAY last month that “President Trump has been very clear about ending the woke DEI garbage infecting this country.”
Former Amazon employee Phillips started the company’s first Jewish employee resource group to build community within the workplace and said the ADL study just confirmed what he already thought: Antisemitism is pervasive across the labor market, even before you get the job.
Phillips said he’s unsure if halting DEI efforts would have a negative impact on Jewish workers “when we’re so inconsistently included already.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Jews, Israeli Americans have harder time getting hired, study says