Susan Rice, the outgoing director of the White House’s Domestic Policy Council, said on Monday that the White House is “aiming to release” its national strategy on antisemitism later in May.

Rice, speaking at the Anti-Defamation League’s National Leadership Summit in Washington, D.C., said that the strategy will focus on “actions we all can take throughout society to raise awareness and prevent antisemitism, to protect Jews and to build allyship across communities.”

“The Biden-Harris administration is deeply committed to this work because we are alarmed by the rise of antisemitism in the United States and the fact that shockingly, it’s becoming normalized,” she said. “Antisemitism is an affront to our Constitution. It threatens our country’s most essential ideals, including freedom of religion. Antisemitism undermines and corrodes our democracy… and thus it threatens our very way of life.”

Emphasizing that “unity and allyship are key,” Rice said that the developing strategy will “also help us combat other pernicious forms of hate and strengthen our democracy.”

Rice has been a leader on the White House’s newly formed task force for combating antisemitism, Islamophobia and other forms of hate, but, speaking Monday, she traced her connections to the Jewish community back much further.

“Washington’s Jewish community shaped so much of my upbringing,” she said, having grown up in a mixed Black-Jewish neighborhood in Shepherd Park, in a home once owned by the Israeli Embassy that had a mezuzah on its door. 

Rice said she learned about Jewish traditions from her classmates, and first visited Israel at age 18.

Rice also said that, as an ambassador to the United Nations and a national security advisor under the Obama administration, she “was proud to defend Israel against unfair attacks on its legitimacy and security” and “embraced this role with passion.”