Two leading Jewish conservatives ignited a firestorm Thursday when they announced, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, that the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City had told them they could not hold an event there if Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was invited.
The op-ed was titled “Persona Non Grata at a Holocaust Memorial” and was authored by Elliot Abrams and Eric Cohen, the chairman and CEO of the Tikvah Fund, a think thank that is an engine of Jewish conservatism.
Tikvah had hosted many events at the Holocaust memorial museum, they wrote, but the leadership conference set for June 12 hit a wrinkle — one that Abrams and Cohen said pointed to growing intolerance of conservative ideas.
“Out of the blue, we were told by the museum staff that Mr. DeSantis didn’t ‘align with the museum’s values and its message of inclusivity,’” the op-ed said. “Either we disinvite the governor, they said, or our event was unwelcome.”
Critics of the museum have noted that Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spoke at an arts event there in 2018, when she was a congressional candidate. The museum’s leadership has changed since then, and the country has grown more politically polarized.
In the op-ed, Abrams — a former Trump administration official — and Cohen said the museum’s decision reflected dangerous currents in contemporary society.
“The new thought police don’t see themselves as acting solely or primarily out of fear. They believe they are defending the good: inclusion against hate, equality against discrimination, victimized minorities against white privilege,” they wrote. “Yet the pseudo-gospel of inclusion breaks down quickly. In the name of inclusivity, a Jewish museum sent us a clear message: Some people are to be excluded.”
They added, “In the name of fighting hate, the museum decided that the millions of Floridians who support Gov. DeSantis — including many Jews — are so hateful that they don’t even merit a voice in the great American conversation. A museum of tolerance has become intolerant.”
The museum called the piece “factually inaccurate” and said it had not been contacted for comment. The Wall Street Journal did not return a request for comment.
The Coalition for Jewish Values, a group of right-wing rabbis that formed in the wake of Trump’s election to advance conservative political ideas, issued a statement “castigating” the museum.
“It is hard to see this decision as anything but politically motivated, and directly contrary to Jewish interests as well,” Rabbi Moshe Parnes said in the statement. “As a Floridian and a rabbi, I can say that one would be hard-pressed to find an elected official more attentive to the Jewish community than Ron DeSantis.”
The letter compared barring DeSantis from the museum to Nazis censoring freedom of speech in the 1930s.
“In modern day America, we have seen attempts to cancel political speech, in a way that is reminiscent of Nazi and Soviet Era censorship,” the letter said.
The episode comes as DeSantis makes news for his stances on abortion — Florida would ban abortion after 15 weeks if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, as it is expected to do shortly — and LGBTQ inclusion. He is a champion of Florida’s new “Parental Rights Education” legislation – dubbed by critics as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill – prohibiting schools from discussing gender and sexuality with students in kindergarten through third grade.
For now, Tikvah is planning to stage its conference as planned on June 12 at Chelsea Piers’ Pier Sixty, a private event space. Confirmed speakers include Trump’s secretary of state, Mike Pompeo; Bari Weiss, the writer who quit the New York Times over what she said was antisemitism there and has since built an anti-“cancel culture” brand on Substack; and Ruth Wisse, the Harvard professor and Tikvah mainstay.
Meanwhile, the museum is gearing up to open a major revision of its main exhibition June 30 — and it says DeSantis is invited.
In a statement, it said, “We welcome Governor DeSantis and elected officials from across the spectrum to visit the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust for a tour of our new exhibition, The Holocaust: What Hate Can Do, when it opens this summer.”
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