NewsThe A.D.L. of Asian America

The A.D.L. of Asian America

Earlier this year, the Asian American Foundation (TAAF), a new philanthropic nonprofit co-founded by billionaires of Asian descent, hosted an invite-only summit in Manhattan. The event was timed to coincide with Asian American heritage month, and featured celebrities such as the actors Michelle Yeoh and Steven Yeun. TAAF had launched in the spring of 2021, in response to a wave of violence directed against East and Southeast Asian Americans. The organizers hoped to defend, and be the leading voice for, a beleaguered community, with the goal of ending “discrimination, slander, and violence.”

In a number of ways, TAAF was closely tied to and modelled on the Anti-Defamation League, which, since its founding, in 1913, has pursued a twofold mission, “to stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment to all.” The A.D.L. was active in the civil-rights movement of the nineteen-sixties, and later advocated on behalf of Japanese Americans who had been held in internment camps during the Second World War. It has also been criticized for gathering information on Arab American, Black, and anti-apartheid organizations, for which it settled a civil lawsuit and denied wrongdoing. TAAF appointed the A.D.L.’s chief executive, Jonathan Greenblatt, as the only non-Asian member of its board. The foundation borrowed office space from the A.D.L., and its “anti-hate analyst” was trained and coached by a manager in the A.D.L.’s Center on Extremism, which conducts an annual audit of antisemitic incidents.

In the run-up to the summit, the relationship between TAAF and the A.D.L. had become a focus of controversy. More than seventy Asian Pacific American and allied groups called on TAAF to “drop the A.D.L.” based on Greenblatt’s public criticism of some pro-Palestine activists and his support for Israel, whose military, using American bombs, has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians since the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023. When, at the A.D.L.’s own summit, in March, the organization honored Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, TAAF pulled its anti-hate analyst from the program. At the TAAF event, invitees were given only the barest outline of an agenda. “They didn’t even share their programming,” an employee of one grantee group told me. “I was, like, I don’t understand what’s going on.” Some in attendance said that this was an attempt to prevent demonstrations, though protesters carrying an “Asians for a Liberated Palestine” banner showed up outside the venue anyway. (TAAF disputes that it withheld the agenda for that reason.)

On the first day of the summit, a panel titled “State of Hate: How Do We Fight Extremism Right Now?” aimed to call attention to prejudice not just against Asian Americans but against all minorities. The speakers included Remaya Campbell, the A.D.L. manager who mentored the TAAF analyst. When the panellists took their seats onstage, there was a ripple of confusion: Campbell,

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