The Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday approved the nominated of Jewish historian Deborah Lipstadt to be the State Department’s envoy to combat and monitor antisemitism.
The vote took place after an eight month delay during which some Senate Republicans objected to her nomination, partly over a series of tweets that made disparaging accusations aimed at several GOP committee members.
Lipstadt, a well known scholar of antisemitism, was approved 13-9 in a vote closed to the public, with Republicans Mitt Romney and Marco Rubio voting in favor.
Her nomination will now proceed to a full Senate vote.
Lipstadt’s nomination to the antisemitism envoy post was initially hailed by American jewish groups as a historic appointment. The Emory University academic has studied and taught about antisemitism for over 40 years and published a wide body of work on the topic.
But her nomination became bogged down in partisanship after Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) said he would not support her due to a tweet she wrote in which she categorized his comments about the January 6. capitol riot as supporting “white supremacy/nationalism.”
“You’ve never met me. You don’t know what’s in my heart. Do you?” Johnson said during her confirmation hearing in February. He made it clear he would not vote for her.
Lipstadt subsequently apologized for how she worded the tweet – saying she had been attacking the senator’s words, not him personally – and promised not to conduct diplomacy using Twitter, according to the Religion News Service.
The Orthodox Union praised the Foreign Relations Committee’s approval of the Holocaust historian.
“We are extremely pleased the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee has approved Prof. Lipstadt for the position of special envoy to combat antisemitism as attacks and threats continue against the global Jewish community,” the Orthodox Union said in a statement.
“We are grateful for Prof. Lipstadt’s steadfast, vigilant and vocal leadership and look forward to working with her upon her confirmation. She is the right person, at a time of tremendous need, to take on this challenge; we call upon the full U.S. Senate to confirm her without delay.”
The Orthodox Union had lobbied senators for nearly a year to approve Lipstadt’s nomination through their nonpartisan Washington DC Advocacy Center.
They also joined other major Jewish organizations in sending a letter to President Biden in May 2021 urging him to fill the special envoy position in light of the surge in antisemitic attacks at that time.
In November 2021, the Orthodox Union and other Jewish organizations delivered a second letter to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, urging lawmakers to speed up the approval.
According to a report in The Hill, Republican members on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee were being accused of delaying the confirmation of Lipstadt over concerns about past tweets targeting GOP members of the committee.
In a letter delivered to the committee, the groups – including the Anti-Defamation League, Jewish Federations of North America and the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America – said that the “global Jewish community needs the United States to be a leader in the fight against antisemitism and we must not waste more time leaving our lead official in this fight off the field.”
The antisemitism envoy position was created in 2004, and as a response to the increasing threat of antisemitism Congress gave the envoy the rank of ambassador in 2021.