Nathan Perlmutter was the American executive director of the Anti-Defamation League from 1979 to 1987.
23 Facts About Nathan Perlmutter
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Nathan Perlmutter became associate national director of the American Jewish Committee from 1965 to 1969.
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Nathan Perlmutter served as ADL national director until his death in 1987.
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From 1969 to 1973 Nathan Perlmutter was vice president of Brandeis University.
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Nathan Perlmutter received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Ronald Reagan.
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In 1979, Nathan Perlmutter took the role of national director, serving until his death in 1987.
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The ADL under Nathan Perlmutter began ignoring some of the more contentious policy positions on the religious right.
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Nathan Perlmutter said: "Jews can live with all the domestic priorities of the Christian Right on which liberal Jews differ so radically, because none of these concerns is as important as Israel".
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Nathan Perlmutter made direct appeals in the Jewish press, such as in the liberal monthly the Reconstructionist.
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Nathan Perlmutter was part of a Jewish community cohort that compared affirmative action to the quota system that had limited Jewish involvement in American and European higher education in the 1920s.
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In 1980, Nathan Perlmutter called on the Republican Party for a "prompt and unequivocal repudiation" of the Ku Klux Klan's endorsement of then-presidential candidate Ronald Reagan.
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Nathan Perlmutter expressed distress at "the unfortunate stalling, buck passing and refusal to comment" on the part of white house aides questioned about the matter.
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In 1980, Nathan Perlmutter said the ADL would not attend the discussions held by the National Council of Churches.
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Nathan Perlmutter said that the NCC had organized a "predetermined outcome" in favor of the Palestine Liberation Organization in a vote.
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Nathan Perlmutter announced this withdrawal with a note on his "deep regret", noting the long relationship between the ADL and NCC in collaborations "for human rights and interreligious and interracial friendship and understanding".
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In 1980, Nathan Perlmutter criticized Union of American Hebrew Congregations president Alexander Schindler alongside similar criticisms by Rabbi Abraham Hecht, president of the Rabbinical Alliance of America.
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Nathan Perlmutter criticized Schindler for "looking at the fundamentalists as a monolithic group" and argued that one should look to the Soviet Union, rather than to Christian fundamentalism, as the main spreader of antisemitism.
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In 1983, Nathan Perlmutter criticized the movie Women Under Siege, arguing that it "glorifies the PLO".
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Nathan Perlmutter later wrote the 1972 book A Bias of Reflections and co-authored the 1982 book The Real Anti-Semitism in America with his wife Ruth Ann Perlmutter.
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Nathan Perlmutter grew up in Williamsburg, a neighborhood in New York City.
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Nathan Perlmutter studied at Georgetown University School of Diplomatic and Consular Practice and Villanova College and later received a law degree from New York University Law School.
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Nathan Perlmutter's father Hyman was a tailor who worked for the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression.
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Nathan Perlmutter's brother Philip was a prominent scholar and activist in the field of inter-ethnic relations and Jewish civil rights.