Universities’ last-minute promises to uphold free speech aren’t enough
The nation’s largest association of observant Jews, the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, held its first-ever attorneys’ conference in February. The focus, unsurprisingly, was antisemitism — the worst of which has ravaged American campuses since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023.
Though the Orthodox Union (OU) is best known for its educational and kosher-certification arms, it serves Orthodox Jews by channeling and representing their interests in other ways, too. Its public policy office in Washington, D.C., has been led, relatively quietly but successfully, for more than 25 years by Nathan Diament, a Harvard Law graduate. Things have been less quiet for the past year and a half for Diament, who has kicked his advocacy for Orthodox Jews into overdrive on the pressing issues that unite the OU’s constituency, chief among them supporting Israel and fighting terrorism and threats to synagogues. As he noted at its outset, Diament organized the attorneys’ conference out of a sense of dire need.
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Tal Fortgang is an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He was a 2023 Sapir Fellow. Matthew H. Solomson is a judge serving on the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.
Photo by BOB REIJNDERS/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images
