H eadlines
Eradicate Hate Summit Ends, Work Just Starting
NATIONAL TOBY TABACHNICK AND
ADAM REINHERZ | JE FEATURE
THE ERADICATE HATE
Global Summit, which brought
more than 100 experts from an
array of disciplines to Pittsburgh
to discuss the proliferation
of hate, ended Oct. 20, but
according to summit organizers,
the work of those committed to
change has just begun.

Now those experts will
form working groups and, over
the next year, try to develop
feasible and effective solutions
to combat hate. They will then
present their solutions at a
summit next year.

The Eradicate Hate Global
Summit, which took place Oct.

18-20 at the David L. Lawrence
Convention Center, was
conceived by attorney Laura
Ellsworth in the wake of the
2018 antisemitic attack at the
Tree of Life building. Ellsworth
co-chaired the event with Mark
Nordenberg, University of
Pittsburgh chancellor emeritus.

In her concluding remarks
to a crowd of 500 in-person
attendees, and another 1,000
people watching online,
Ellsworth pledged to “be here
next year, on our feet, account-
able to all of you for following
through on our commitment
to take what happened here
in this city of Pittsburgh, and
to transform that pain into
hope, into progress, into actual
change in the field of hate and
the fight against hate.”
Having experts from various
fields coming together to share
their knowledge and ideas was
“extraordinary,” said Meryl
Ainsman, immediate past
chair of the Jewish Federation
of Greater Pittsburgh and a
member of the summit’s
steering committee.

“The interdisciplinary
approach to one particular
subject, which is fighting and
combating hate, has been fasci-
nating,” she said.

Experts in various fields are
often siloed, she said, but “this
was an unbelievable opportu-
nity for people to interact and
learn from each other.”
Ainsman is confident the
world will see positive results
stemming from the collabo-
rations formed this week in
Pittsburgh. “I have a firm belief, a 100%
belief, that deliverables will
come out of this,” she said,
“and by this time next year, the
world may look like a little bit
of a different place.”
Summit panels cast a wide
net in their definition of “eradi-
cating hate,” but largely seemed
to focus on identifying how
hate speech and violent actions
have metastasized in the social
media era.

Some were focused on
security. A panel on crypto-
currency on the second day of
the summit discussed how bad
actors have employed largely
untraceable online payments
to fund terror operations.

Others focused on legis-
lation. Several
speakers discussed the need for better
regulation of social media
to prevent the spread of hate
speech online. (Section 230 of
the Federal Communications
Decency Act, which effectively
immunizes internet publishers
from legal responsibility for
the content users publish on
their site, was a hot topic; many
conservative lawmakers have
been seeking in recent months
to overturn or reform the law,
saying that it provides a shield
for partisan attacks.)
Attendees of the Eradicate Hate Global Summit 2021 chat at the end
of the day’s sessions on Oct. 18 at the David L. Lawrence Convention
Center in downtown Pittsburgh.
Photo by Lindsay Dill
Day three of the summit
pivoted once again to discuss
victim responses. Other panels
ran the gamut from covering
domestic terrorism laws to the
link between online speech and
real-world violence in Myanmar.

A panel led by Maggie Feinstein,
director of the 10/27 Healing
Partnership, discussed
trauma-informed care for the
survivors of extremism.

Fareed Zakaria, a host at
CNN and a columnist for The
Washington Post, in a virtual
keynote address, painted a
grim picture of the current
“culture of intolerance”
worldwide, along with the rise
of right-wing extremism.

He cautioned that we are
“heading toward a world of
political violence.”
“We all have to recognize that
we are heading down a path
where, far from eradicating hate,
we are encouraging, we are facil-
itating hate,” he said. “And in a
sense, we are almost approving
of it if we don’t stop right now.”
Still, attendees
were optimistic about the prospect
of changing the paradigm.

Jeff Finkelstein, president and
CEO of the Jewish Federation
of Greater Pittsburgh, called
the summit a “beginning” and
said he was encouraged by the
collaborations between panel-
ists and participants.

“I’m hopeful,” Tree of Life’s
Rabbi Hazzan Jeffrey Myers
said, “because we’re all in it
together.” It’s especially important
that this summit occurred in
Pittsburgh, because of the attack
at the Tree of Life building,
said Wasi Mohamed, a summit
steering committee member
and senior policy officer at
The Pittsburgh Foundation.

Pittsburgh is “a community
that’s especially committed to
this fight,” he said.

It is vital for people to
know that Pittsburgh wasn’t
See Summit, Page 23
10 OCTOBER 28, 2021
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