In a sign of the political times, the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values rebranded under a new name on Monday — dropping both “Jewish” and “liberal” from its title. The group also said it will shift its mission to focus full-time on countering “radical ideology” and antisemitism in K-12 education, Jewish Insider has learned. 

“People didn’t always understand that we meant liberal in the classical sense — free exchange of ideas and the like,” David Bernstein, founder of the group, now called North American Values Institute (NAVI), told JI. “We’ve been struggling with the name ‘Liberal Values’ from the organization’s inception.” The new name, Bernstein said, allows the group “to say what we support, and not just what we oppose.” Those values include “equality, individualism and pluralism.” 

The group’s distancing itself from the political left also comes amid what Bernstein called “a shift in society at the highest levels.” 

“We’ve passed ‘peak woke,’” he noted.

JILV was founded in 2021 to “counter the imposition of radical social justice ideology inside and outside the Jewish community and to combat the antisemitism it fueled,” according to its website. 

Amid a rise of antisemitism in K-12 schools, particularly since the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks in Israel, Bernstein noted there is “a tremendous danger.” 

“Not every kid majors in the humanities at Brown,” he said. “Just about every kid goes through a K-12 education and is going to be exposed to this radical ideology if we don’t turn the tide on it.” 

NAVI — which has a $2.5 million budget this year — also appears to be detaching from its Jewish roots. But Bernstein said that expanding to partner with other ethnic communities will in fact help fight antisemitism in a way that the group previously couldn’t. 

“There are Chinese Americans, Indian Americans and Black Americans who don’t want [their children taught] that the [school] system is rigged against them. Those are our coalition partners,” he said, noting that “it’s a very different coalition than the Jewish community is used to.”

“Our observation is that the best way to fight antisemitism is to strengthen American, Western, [and] liberal values in society and that antisemitism is largely an outgrowth of the deterioration of those values,” he said. 

Although the organization is no longer explicitly Jewish, Bernstein pointed out that the word NAVI is Hebrew for “prophet.” “That signifies that we’re going to sound the alarm on what’s going on in schools and be very engaged in the Jewish conversation even as our mission expands beyond the Jewish community,” he said. 

Since Oct. 7, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has opened at least 49 Title VI investigations into K-12 school districts accused of antisemitism. Several of these complaints have been brought forth by major Jewish groups, including the Anti-Defamation League. 

Still, Bernstein said that mainstream Jewish organizations aren’t meeting the moment. 

“We believe that antisemitism in K-12 has to be fought at the ideological level,” he said. For example, “if a curriculum promotes the idea of settler-colonialism — even if it doesn’t mention Israel — it will end up fostering hostility towards the Jewish state. If you see radical [diversity, equity, inclusion] ideology in schools, eventually it will create an atmosphere that’s hostile to Jewish kids.”

“The Jewish community has been reluctant to fight at the ideological level, but that’s where we come in,” Bernstein said.  

In recent weeks, college campuses nationwide — last year viewed as hot spots for anti-Israel hostility — have started to initiate more responsive crackdowns to antisemitic incidents, including settling Title VI cases, amid threats from President Donald Trump that U.S. universities that fail to address antisemitism could lose accreditation and federal support. The Department of Education also launched its own antisemitism investigation into several universities on Monday. 

In K-12 education, however, Bernstein warned that the opposite is true — “we’re seeing a doubling down of this ideology.” 

“Some of the activists behind this movement know that the clock is ticking and they’re trying to do everything that they can to institutionalize this radical — often antisemitic — ideology into the school systems,” he said. “So we’re seeing more cases of this than ever before in forms that are more radical than we’ve ever seen.”