Product details
- ISBN 9780745351438
- Dimensions: 140 x 216mm
- Publication Date: 20 Sep 2026
- Publisher: Pluto Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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For over a century, the Anti-Defamation League has been regarded as one of the most prominent civil rights watchdogs in the United States, dedicated to fighting white supremacy, antisemitism, and extremism. Its data informs law enforcement. Its trainings shape classrooms. And its talking points influence the headlines.
But behind the ADL’s progressive image lies a very different reality. The Anti-Defimation Leage: A Critical Reader brings together a collective of scholars, organizers, and activists to expose the ADL as a deeply reactionary and conservative force in American politics. From its roots in a Cold War-era framework of Western supremacy and settler colonialism, to its modern day support for militarized policing, surveillance, and the repression of Palestinian rights, the ADL has long advanced a vision of justice rooted in empire, not liberation.
Contributors trace how the ADL has weaponized the charge of antisemitism to shield itself from criticism, silence dissent, and undermine movements for racial justice, Palestinian freedom, and collective safety. As the call to #DropTheADL grows louder, so too does the need for urgent reflection and action.
Emmaia Gelman is guest faculty in Social Sciences at Sarah Lawrence College. Her research and writing investigate the history of ideas about race, queerness, safety, and rights, and their production as political levers in the realm of hate crimes policy, surveillance, anti-terror measures, and war. She is the co-chair of the American Studies Association Caucus on Academic and Community Activism, the Founding Director of the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism, and a longtime activist in New York City on Palestine, policing, antiracism, and queer issues.
C. Heike Schotten is Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She is a member of the #DroptheADL working group, the organizing collective of tthe US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, and the founding collective of the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism. She is the author of Nietzsche’s Revolution: Décadence, Politics, and Sexuality (Palgrave, 2009) and Queer Terror: Life, Death, and Desire in the Settler Colony (Columbia University Press, 2018).
