YIR: Lipstadt Nomination Hailed Locally
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YIR: Lipstadt Nomination Hailed Locally

August 2021: The Emory professor is acclaimed professionally and by those whose relationship is personal.

By Dave Schechter December 22, 2021, 2:05 pm Edit

Dave Schechter is a veteran journalist whose career includes writing and producing reports from Israel and elsewhere in the Middle East.

Rabbi Adam Starr and Deborah Lipstadt at a January 2020 march against anti-Semitism in New York.
Rabbi Adam Starr and Deborah Lipstadt at a January 2020 march against anti-Semitism in New York.

As of the second week of December, the nomination of Emory University professor Deborah Lipstadt to be the U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism remained stalled in the U.S. Senate.

Lipstadt, who is renowned for her work on Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism, was nominated July 30 by President Joe Biden. Five months later, she had yet to receive a confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where Republicans had voiced objections to her social media postings, including one critical of a committee member.

Deborah Lipstadt has been nominated to be the U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism.

In a Nov. 4 letter to the committee’s Democratic and Republican leaders, the Anti-Defamation League, Jewish Federations for North America, and Union of Orthodox Jewish North America Congregations of America, said: “The global Jewish community needs the United States to be a leader in the fight against antisemitism and we must not waste more time leaving our lead official in this fight off the field.”

That portfolio takes in anti-Semitism anywhere in the world, except by statute, in the United States.

If confirmed, the 74-year-old Lipstadt will take a leave of absence from Emory, where she has been on faculty since 1993. “Should I be confirmed by the Senate and have the opportunity to accept this position and take on this awesome responsibility, I will miss one thing: Being in the classroom with my Emory students,” she said in a release published by the university.

Lipstadt is a member of Congregation Ohr HaTorah, where “There is a real sense of excitement and pride within our congregation that Dr. Lipstadt was chosen for this role,” Rabbi Adam Starr said. “She is an expert communicator both in the spoken word and in her writings. Dr. Lipstadt is so well versed in Jewish tradition and practice, which is unique for a person in a position of such public prominence in secular society. She and her work are a Kiddush Hashem [sanctification of God’s name].”

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