Daily Kickoff
👋 Good Wednesday morning!
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we interview Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren and look at a new congressional push for increased funding to the Nonprofit Security Grant Program. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff, Rep. Kathy Manning, Michael Masters and Jeff Zucker.
The Biden administration received praise this week from a broad swath of Jewish communal leaders for setting up an interagency group focused on combating antisemitism, which White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre announced on Monday.
But some critics of the administration, such as former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, questioned why the group will also focus on “Islamophobia and related forms of bias and discrimination” rather than just antisemitism.
“The first order of business is focusing on implementing a national strategy on antisemitism, and this is given the alarming things that we’ve seen recently. But the mandate is to address antisemitism, it’s to address Islamophobia, it’s to address other related forms of discrimination and also bias,” a White House official told Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch on Tuesday night. “After the strategy on countering antisemitism has been released, we’ll share more on the next steps for the IPC [interagency policy committee].” The group will be helmed by White House Homeland Security Advisor Liz Sherwood-Randall and Director of the Domestic Policy Council Susan Rice.
Several attendees at last week’s White Housemeeting on antisemitism, convened by Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, said they urged the Biden administration to create an antisemitism-focused working group. Individuals with knowledge of the White House decision-making process say it would have been a difficult move politically to create a group focused only on antisemitism, while not doing the same for other forms of hate.
Rep. Kathy Manning (D-NC), a co-chair of the House Bipartisan Task Force for Combating Antisemitism, told JI’s Marc Rod yesterday, “I am concerned about all hate crimes. And I think we should be doing everything we can to address all hate crimes.”
“But I do believe there’s something unique about antisemitism,” Manning added. “And I think sometimes the impact of antisemitism gets lost when you lump it into everything else.”
Rabbi Levi Shemtov, executive vice president of American Friends of Lubavitch (Chabad), told JI that he hopes the focus on antisemitism will also inform the White House approach to other forms of hate. “I’m not opposed to the protection of Muslims and other minorities. I just think that this initial phase of the task force seems, from the administration’s words and things that they’ve sent and contact that they’ve made through other senior officials, to be initially focused significantly, if not exclusively, on antisemitism,” said Shemtov, who attended last week’s White House meeting. “I would be delighted if they learn from this how to be effective across the board in combating hate.”
hoops honcho
Kevin Warren’s big tent

Last March, Kevin Warren, the powerful commissioner of the Big Ten Conference, took a moment from his demanding schedule to congratulate Yeshiva University’s men’s basketball team after the end of a historic season. The small but mighty Maccabees had drawn national headlines for racking up a stunning 50-game winning streak and bagging a conference title while en route to a highly anticipated Division III tournament game that would ultimately end in defeat. To Warren, the achievements of the regular season were an inspiring testament to “the wonderful influence the Maccabees have had on our nation and the Jewish community,” he wrote in a heartfelt letter to Elliot Steinmetz, the head coach. “As your team uniquely appreciates,” he went on, “so much of life is bashert — predestined and connected through God.” The Yiddish term, as it happens, is particularly resonant for Warren, who holds a personal connection with the Jewish experience that extends back to his childhood and now animates a professional dedication to promoting social justice initiatives. “I heard the word bashert years ago, and it was so apropos for so many periods of my life,” he explained in a series of interviews with Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel this fall. “It has great meaning to me.”
New frontiers: As the first Black commissioner of a Power Five conference, Warren, 59, has received plaudits for his business acumen since he assumed leadership of the Big Ten in 2019, after years with the NFL. His most high-profile feat came this past August, when the former lawyer negotiated a TV deal worth more than $7 billion over seven years that divided football games among three leading broadcast networks, setting a record for college athletics while shattering the record set by the league’s previous agreement. But the groundbreaking sports executive, who is based in Chicago, has also leveraged his position to promote diversity, equality and inclusion while raising awareness of antisemitism, racism and other forms of bigotry on college campuses and beyond. Last year, for instance, he helped form an ongoing partnership with the Anti-Defamation League to launch a multi-part training and education commission addressing bias and hate amid an uptick in anti-Jewish incidents.
Team trip: In 2019, shortly before he moved on to the Big Ten, Warren was among a group of Minnesota Vikings staff members who participated in what he described as an “emotional” visit to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., with Mark Wilf, the team’s president and co-owner, and a former chair of the Jewish Federations of North America. “He was very much always counseling us to share our stories,” Wilf said of his former charge, recalling that Warren had encouraged him to speak openly with players and employees about Wilf’s relationship to the Holocaust as the Jewish son of survivors. “He’s promoted so much in the areas of diversity and tolerance,” Wilf told JI. “He’s been a leader on all of those fronts.”
History lesson: The horrors of the Holocaust have also loomed large throughout Warren’s life. Growing up in Phoenix, he said, his late father, a veteran of World War II, would often recount his experiences witnessing firsthand the concentration camps in Germany and Poland. “He had pictures from Auschwitz and Buchenwald, and he would show us those pictures,” Warren told JI. “They just forever resonated in my mind and my heart and soul.” Years later, he said, the lessons his father sought to impart have continued to guide him. “He spent a lot of time talking to me and my siblings about the Holocaust and for us to make sure we do our part in the world to never let these types of just horrific events ever happen again,” Warren said. “Whether it’s slavery, whether it’s the Holocaust, whether it’s the mistreatment of certain classes of people — just to stand up and protect those who need protecting, and to amplify not only our voice but our actions.”
Taking care of teammates: On an interpersonal level, Warren is both “fearlessly” and “fiercely inclusive,” said Adam Neuman, the chief of staff, strategy and operations and the deputy general counsel for the Big Ten. Neuman, who is an Orthodox Jew, said the commissioner has always demonstrated an unusual level of sensitivity to his observance of Shabbat as well as kosher dietary laws, among other things. He even keeps the Jewish holidays on his calendar. “We’ve had meaningful dialogue on Judaism and Jewish principles,” Neuman said. “For him to go out of his way to be so inclusive to others, I think, creates an incredible work life for employees,” he told JI. “I think that’s why you’ve seen so much business success.”