Clark University - Clark News summer 2004
The power of words (summer 2004)
Abraham H. Foxman, who visited Clark this spring, discusses his life’s work of fighting prejudice
By Angela Bazydlo
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Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League
Photos by Tammy Woodard M.A. '98 |
Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), is a soft-spoken man, but he is one of many words. He shared some of those words at Clark’s Strassler Family Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies on April 21 in a lecture titled "The New Face of the Old Demon: The Role of Anti-Semitism in Contemporary Events and Politics." Foxman, who celebrates 39 years with the ADL this summer, believes education and the act of speaking out are the best defenses against anti-Semitism and bigotry.
"People are not born bigoted, they are not born with hate, it’s an acquired evil." According to Foxman, people learn bigotry at home as early as their toddler years. "The good news is that it can be unlearned."
Like Clark’s Strassler Center, a large part of the ADL’s work is educational. The ADL’s A World of Difference Institute provides diversity and antibias training and resources to schools, communities and workplaces. It teaches prejudice reduction to law- enforcement officials, members of the FBI, CIA and state and local police. It also helps teachers, peer groups, student leaders, managers and company administrators learn about diversity and how to be respectful of cultural differences.
Under Foxman’s leadership, the ADL also developed an Early Childhood Center. Through a partnership with Sesame Street, characters like Elmo now teach youngsters about tolerance. A successful ADL partnership with Barnes & Noble bookstores, titled "Close the Book on Hate," brings parents and their children into bookstores to explore books about tolerance and diversity.
For Foxman, the lessons taught through these initiatives are simple. "If somebody is being persecuted or ostracized, then you stand up to protect them," he says.
"The greatest failure of society’s ability to stand up against hate was during the Holocaust," Foxman adds. "Even though we knew what mankind was capable of, we underestimated the tolerance for it."
Speaking out against prejudice
The ADL uses education as a long-term tactic to fight prejudice, Foxman says, but the short-term solution is for individuals to speak out against anti-Semitism, prejudice or bigotry, wherever and whenever they surface.
"It’s important to get individuals in positions of power and influence—the moral, the political, the spiritual leadership—to speak out, to set a model," Foxman says. For example, ADL developed a campaign with sports figures from diverse ethnic backgrounds who appeared on posters that read "Prejudice is Foul Play." Some of the athletes included Grant Hill, Oscar de la Hoya, Nancy Lopez, Steve Young, Michael Chang and Kerri Strug. Foxman says the ADL is currently working with clothing designer Tommy Hilfiger to organize a group of fashion designers to launch its "Prejudice is Never in Style" campaign.
"In the same way you sell Wheaties, you also try to sell standards, moral behavior, respect for others."
It all begins with words
Foxman wishes he could distill the DNA that prompted Oskar Schindler or Raoul Wallenberg to rescue Jews from the Holocaust. He wishes he could make a vaccine for intolerance from whatever made his own Christian nursemaid rescue him from the Holocaust by raising him as her own child when he was one year old, after his parents were captured by the Nazis. Short of a vaccine against hatred, Foxman says, the best antidote for prejudice is people who say "not acceptable," "not in our community," "not in our society."
"The gas chambers in Auschwitz did not begin with bricks, they began with words—ugly words, hurtful words, evil words. They were met with silence," he says. "If there were other words that stopped them, you wouldn’t have had the building blocks, which eventually wound up in crematoria."
Foxman hopes Clark’s Strassler Family Center and the research of its faculty and graduate students will uncover what led up to the Holocaust and why people tolerated such hatred.
"If we can understand that a little better, then we have a better chance of making sure it doesn’t happen again," says Foxman.
Continuing the debate
Foxman tried to exchange words with Mel Gibson about his film "The Passion of the Christ" before it was released. "I wasn’t going to tell him what to do or not to do. I wanted him to understand that for almost 2,000 years in Western Civilization four words legitimized anti-Semitism and exterminations: The Jews killed Christ."
Gibson dodged Foxman’s requests for dialogue and ignored suggestions from Foxman to record a message at the end of the film, taking the focus off the Jews for the killing of Christ. However, Foxman believes his efforts were worth it. His comments made the national papers. The controversy was in the public eye for months.
"It forced a debate in this country," he says. "It was an important debate that put the issue in perspective."
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