Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt, the State Department’s special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, said Wednesday she was “deeply disturbed” by a decision made by Wikipedia editors to ban the Anti-Defamation League as a source on antisemitism issues.

Lipstadt, speaking with reporters, also addressed Iranian influence in Gaza war protests in the U.S., the possibility of a Jewish first gentleman, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s views on Holocaust education and new global guidelines on antisemitism released last month.

Regarding the ADL and Wikipedia, she said she was reluctant to comment on any individual organization but she was “deeply disturbed that Wikipedia should decide that one of the main organizations that tracks and evaluates antisemitism should be totally disbarred from commenting on certain things.”

“It struck me as very strange and it struck me as not as thoughtful, as judicious as it should be.”

Lipstadt, a Holocaust scholar, was pressed about an argument made by Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, in his master’s thesis focused on Holocaust and genocide education. Walz argued in the thesis that Holocaust should be taught not as a historical anomaly but in a “greater context of human rights abuses.”

Lipstadt said she “land[s] as a historian in the middle of that” debate. “If you say something is uniquely unique, you can’t compare — it stands by itself, it’s very hard to learn from it. But to say ‘all the same’ is to ignore the historical individualities.”

The U.S. envoy praised Walz for reportedly stepping in at his school to stop lessons where students were asked to role play as Nazis and Jews during the Holocaust. “He shut it down and I thought it was good educating.”

The antisemitism envoy said she was involved in discussions with the intelligence community about a report Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines released revealing Iranian influence and funding in some of the anti-Israel protests in the United States.

“There are foreign actors that are involved in this, there is no question about that,” Lipstadt said. “And certainly Iran has been identified as one of them. The intelligence community … felt that it was important that Americans know that what’s been going on on the campus has been amplified — not created … by foreign influence.”

“Making it clear that this was foreign disinformation — not misinformation, but disinformation and manipulation — was something that we strongly supported,” she added, of her office.

Asked what the impact might be of having a Jewish first gentleman, Doug Emhoff, in the White House, Lipstadt praised Emhoff. She said that he had asked to meet with her shortly after she was confirmed, and that they quickly began working together. She said Emhoff’s work has “elevated the attention to the issue.”

“He didn’t have to do all that,” Lipstadt said. “He began to get all these reports of antisemitism, and I give him great credit. He was anxious to learn — he calls me his mentor. Hardly. But he took a very public position on it.”

She said that Vice President Kamala Harris has also been supportive of Emhoff’s work, recounting a call from the VP while she and Emhoff were shopping together at a duty free store in an Irish airport when they were returning from a trip to Poland and Germany.

“I said to her, ‘he did a good job,’” Lipstadt said. “‘And she said ‘I’m very proud.’ And there was no press around. There were the two of us, and her on the phone.”

Lipstadt offered more details on how a U.S.-led set of global guidelines on combating antisemitism came together. The guidelines now have 40 international signatories, mostly in the Americas and Europe. She said they grew out of a conversation with the attorney general of Australia, who asked for advice as he considered appointing an antisemitism envoy.

She said she began to have conversations with counterparts from other countries about best practices, and began to put together the document, with the goal of helping guide nations, but also leaders at all levels.

Lipstadt said that she brought in envoys from the European Union and Organization for American States, held meetings and began to circulate the document to a small group of countries that steadily expanded. Some partner countries took their own initiative to reach out to third countries with weaker relationships with the U.S. to sign as well.

One of the final signatories was Ukraine, Lipstadt said, which she approached at the urging of under secretary of State for management John Bass, who felt it should be included. She said she wasn’t expecting an answer on short notice, but was pleasantly surprised. 

“Do I think this is going to solve antisemitism? No, I’m not so naive,” Lipstadt said. “But this is a landmark. It’s a milestone.”

One of the guidelines endorses the International Holocaust Remembrance’s working definition of antisemitism, which the State Department already uses. But the administration declined to endorse the IHRA definition alone in its national strategy, instead praising it while noting other definitions and providing its own definition of antisemitism.

Lipstadt expressed contempt for the Jerusalem Declaration, an antisemitism definition favored by some progressives, which explicitly rejects the IHRA definition as a failure. She also said the definition was signed by “some renowned antisemites … so I don’t know that I’d want to go with the definition of antisemitism” they favor.

Some House progressives have urged the State Department to consider the Jerusalem Declaration and other definitions.

She described another prominent alternative, the Nexus Definition, as specific to the context of U.S. politics and unknown to colleagues in other countries.

“This goes way beyond definitions,” she said. “There’s a lot of energy that’s been expended on definitions … [the other two] are not really applicable to an international document.”

She also highlighted a symposium hosted with leaders from social media companies and top administration officials, which she said aimed to “get them to listen to what some of the issues are, to listen to some of the researchers” and hopefully appoint company officials to monitor and address the issue.

Lipstadt further said she’s warned Israeli politicians, who have in some cases dismissed and attacked any criticism of Israel as ipso-facto antisemitic, that “I don’t think it’s efficacious, I don’t think it works” and “it’s not wise” because, “when [the sky] really is falling, nobody pays attention.”

But she emphasized that “I’ve never seen Jews, in many places, including this country, but certainly in foreign countries … living on the edge the way they are.” She said that this fear is forcing some Jews to hide their identities, which “is never healthy.”

She said she couldn’t comment on the allegations that antisemitism helped sink Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s bid for the vice presidency.