U.S. Antisemitism envoy reflects as she gets ready to leave

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As she prepares to leave office, U.S. special antisemitism envoy Deborah Lipstadt is reflective on the accomplishments made during her three years serving as the U.S. government's point person combating anti-Jewish sentiment globally.

The renowned Holocaust historian, however, is painfully aware about how much work still needs to be done – as a Trump administration populated with figures she has personally criticized takes office.

"We haven't won the battle against antisemitism. But even before October 7, I think that would [have been] impossible," she told a roundtable of Jewish media on Tuesday. "I'm too much of a historian to think that someone can solve it."

She adds: "We've all lived for the past five, six decades in a world where you didn't have to broadcast your Judaism or you didn't have to hide your Judaism. It was just a normal kind of thing. Many people feel now they have to hide it. And whether they're feeling it legitimately so or not, the fact that they feel it is quite striking”.

Much of this sentiment, and the greater scope of her work, can be divided into a pre- and post-October 7 world.

"It brought it into sharper focus than I ever imagined," she says. "I've spent my whole professional career dealing with this issue in one form or another. When I sat in that courtroom in London 25 years ago for 12 weeks, I heard antisemitism presented with the best British accent," she says, referring to the landmark defamation case unsuccessfully brought against her by Holocaust denier David Irving.

"The freedom with which people feel free to say certain things was very striking. The silence of [the left's] allies was very striking, particularly for women. Not only, but particularly for women. The feeling that certain things that couldn't be said could now be said," she says.

"What happened to allow that?" she asks. "It's changed tremendously. The other thing that's extremely disturbing is the antisemites hiding behind the cover of 'We're not engaged in antisemitism; we're just criticizing Israel.'

"You've heard me say – and it's boring already – that criticism of Israeli and Israeli policies is not antisemitism. But they will engage in overt antisemitism and then hide behind it," she says. "It's the only prejudice where the victims have to continuously justify."

In her mind, some U.S. officials who have been outspoken critics of Israel's war in Gaza failed to see the point. "There were midlevel staff who thought the Biden-Harris policy on Israel was wrong. Among them, some failed to see that antisemitism and your stance on the State of Israel could be two separate things."

When asked if she believes the incoming administration is up for the challenge, she says she hopes so. "I don't know, but I certainly hope so."

Lipstadt says U.S. Secretary of State-nominee Marco Rubio "takes this issue very seriously. In my meetings with him when I was under confirmation ... there's no question that he sees this as serious. He gets it 100 percent, just as Secretary [of State Antony] Blinken got it. So that gives me hope on this issue."

Back to college
The notoriously outspoken professor with a once prolific Twitter account had to learn in real time that diplomats had to keep their opinions to themselves – a lesson learned the hard way after Republican senators held up her confirmation hearing for months over a tweet accusing GOP Sen. Ron Johnson of promoting "white supremacy/nationalism."

Whether or not she will dust off the megaphone when she returns to Atlanta's Emory University remains to be seen.

"I haven't fully decided yet – I may wait a while to see," she says. "If you speak out too much on everything, at some point you'll be dismissed as a partisan act. I don't see myself as that."

While her remit through the State Department was focused on international antisemitism, the incoming administration has strongly indicated its top-level focus on combating antisemitism will be directly linked to cracking down on the pro-Palestinian movement domestically.

This will likely have dramatic implications on civil liberties, while leading to an increased politicization of the fight against antisemitism – something Lipstadt has frequently warned against.

"I've talked about the dangers of weaponizing antisemitism, whether it comes from the right or the left," she says. "I see it coming in both directions. My fear is what happens is that antisemitism becomes a smoke screen for partisan divide, or can become a part of the partisan divide.

"I've seen things that have disturbed me from all political directions," she adds. "It's too serious a problem to be used as a political cudgel to beat up on your opponents. It's irresponsible."

When Lipstadt became the first-ever ambassadorial-ranked antisemitism envoy, she intentionally did not want to duplicate the work done by Jewish establishment organizations, but to see if she could use "the levers of government."

“I wasn't even clear when I first came in what they precisely were, but I knew I would have a different ability to move things inside the government," she says. Whether a tribute to her team's work or a reflection of antisemitism's international growth, her office expanded nearly eightfold over the course of her tenure.

"We have raised the profile," she says. "It's not just the tsunami of antisemitism that everyone has encountered," but an added understanding of how the animus toward one particular group can be linked into "a larger issue of an issue of foreign policy, national security, national stability, societal cohesion.

"That has happened, in part, because the problem has gotten so much worse and so much more public," she says. "But also because of the work we did."

Lipstadt says that "instead of just screaming and yelling and condemning what was going on," her office made an effort to get foreign governments to view it as a serious foreign policy issue.

"This has direct implications on your foreign policy, irrespective of whether you have a large Jewish community or not," the outgoing ambassador says, noting that antisemitism constitutes a multi-tiered threat. In her view, threats to Jewish individuals and communities translate into threats to democracy and the proliferation of conspiracy myths. In turn, Jews in foreign countries hold increased skepticism that their respective governments are willing and able to protect them.

"We saw that on American campuses as well," she says. "That students didn't feel there was anyone who was really caring about their interests, their safety, their welfare and threat to national security, national stability."

Regarding campuses, which have become the epicenter of the antisemitism debate over the past year, Lipstadt says she doesn't think anybody "anticipated the effort on the part of pro-Palestinian, pro-Hamas, whatever groups to build up support."

According to her, "We've missed certain things," noting her happiness that the Jewish establishment is reassessing its strategy and not doing the "same old, same old."

Global progress
Lipstadt believes that elevating the work of her office enabled it to promote landmark global guidelines in combating antisemitism – 38 countries and four international organizations are now signatories – as well as its participation in important international forums such as the Munich Security Conference and Bahrain's Manama Dialogue.

She was also particularly excited to utilize the Abraham Accords normalization agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and others, to address antisemitism within the Arab world.

To that end, she traveled to Saudi Arabia for her first overseas trip as envoy. "I really hoped to be able to impress upon the Gulf countries and the Abraham Accord countries that the geopolitical crises and prejudice and hatred are two separate things," she recounts. "Antisemitism had to be kept separate and apart. And we were making progress on that."

Lipstadt, who recently returned from a final trip to the Gulf and Israel, notes her relative disappointment of stalled work with these countries in the aftermath of the Gaza war. She hopes that the Trump administration and her still-unnamed replacement can move the ball forward.

While Trump has yet to name her successor, some of the names floated include highly divisive figures such as Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, Alan Dershowitz and Dov Hikind.

While she won't speculate on her replacement, she hopes it will be "someone who will be a barn-builder, not a barn-burner."