Leo Terrell, senior counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights, said he is intent on eliminating what he called “the Jewish tax” in an address on Sunday to hundreds of Jewish college students gathered for the Israel on Campus Coalition’s three-day annual leadership summit held in Washington.

“For those who don’t know what the Jewish tax is — for you to have this convention, for you to walk your child to a synagogue down the street — you have to pay for extra security,” said Terrell, who heads the Department of Justice’s antisemitism task force. “It makes no sense. It’s unfair. It’s wrong. I find it offensive that it’s being allowed throughout this country. I’m doing everything I can to eliminate it.” 

Terrell’s comments came as the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced last month that it had awarded $94.4 million in security grant funding to a total of 512 Jewish organizations nationwide. 

Terrell, who wore a baseball cap embroidered with the name “Hadar Goldin,” an IDF soldier abducted and killed by Hamas in 2014 whose body remains held by the terrorist group, shared that he has faced “fights and arguments” with some colleagues over how to strategically address antisemitism. He said that some colleagues have called to “cut a deal, to move on,” an apparent reference to the Trump administration’s recent settlement with Columbia University following a monthslong battle over the Ivy League university’s record dealing with antisemitism. 

“I will not compromise,” Terrell said. “No, how can you ask a group [to] compromise freedom? There is no compromise on your equality, your freedom, you have the right to go to schools, to walk down the streets and not be worried and not be afraid.” 

Terrell, a former civil rights attorney and a conservative media personality, told the crowd that eradicating antisemitism is a “full-time commitment,” one that he’s decided to take on in part due to Jewish involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. 

“I’m not a Jewish American. I’m a Black American. I also understand the history of this great country. Before becoming a lawyer, I was a school teacher. I grew up in the ‘60s,” Terrell said. “I remember Jewish Americans walking hand in hand with Black Americans making sure they got their civil rights.” 

“It’s not the firebombs and hunting of Jewish people in the streets of America right now, it’s the appalling silence of people that know better and won’t say better,” CNN commentator Van Jones told some 600 attendees of the Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation’s (AJCF) 25th anniversary gala dinner on Wednesday at Pier 60 in Manhattan. 

Jones was honored at the gala for his work promoting Black-Jewish relations, which includes launching the Exodus Leadership Forum, a group that aims to renew the Civil Rights Movement-era alliance between the Black and Jewish communities. In January, he led an AJCF-Exodus Delegation to Poland, commemorating the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. 

“It was a small number of Black folks who held on to the cultural DNA of ‘justice for all.’ It was a small number of Jews who held on to the cultural DNA of ‘repair the world,’” Jones said, reflecting on the Civil Rights Movement, in which American Jews played a meaningful role. “When you put those two bits of cultural DNA together, you get a double helix of hope for humanity.”

Jones called on Black people and Jews to partner together again amid a different kind of crisis. 

“We have to do it again,” he said. Following the recent shooting in Washington in which two Israeli Embassy employees were killed and a firebombing attack in Boulder, Colo., targeting advocates calling for the release of hostages in Gaza, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security warned last week that American Jews face an “elevated threat.”  

Wednesday’s event was held in support of AJCF’s anti-hate educational center based in Oswiecim, Poland. In attendance — in full uniform — were several alumni of the American Service Academies Program, a 16-day educational initiative in Poland run by AJCF for a select group of cadets and midshipmen from the academies for the U.S. Military, Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard. Most of the participants are not Jewish and come from rural towns. 

At the dinner, AJCF announced plans to partner with Historically Black Colleges and Universities to bring Black and Jewish leaders on the program to learn about shared history. The group also announced the recent purchase of a new facility, which will be located across the street from the current one and will focus on genocide prevention education. 

“Be proud of who you are, what you have persevered through and the example that you have set for the world,” Jones told the crowd, which also included several Holocaust survivors. 

“Just an inch out of the horrors of the Holocaust, [Jews in the Civil Rights Movement] came and helped us,” Jones reflected. “Can you imagine that? Being an inch out of the horrors of the Holocaust and then seeing your children get in buses and go down south to help somebody. What a people.”