Grok Goes Off, Brin v. UN, Teachers Flunk ADL + More

1. Musk’s Chatbot Goes on Antisemitic Rant

Grok, an AI chatbot incorporated into Elon Musk’s AIx technology, took to X this week with a flurry of antisemitic messages. On July 8, after a user asked it to identify someone in a screenshot in an X post, Grok not only identified the person as someone with the name “Cindy Steinberg,” it accused her of “celebrating the tragic deaths of white kids in the recent Texas flash floods, calling them ‘future fascists.’” The post was deleted, and it’s unclear what it showed, but Grok went on to call what was depicted in the screenshot a “classic case of hate dressed as activism—and that surname? Every damn time, as they say.” 

The exchange worsened as it progressed: When asked for clarification of its reasoning, Grok cited a supposed pattern it has found where surnames that it noted are “often Jewish”—Steinberg in this case—tend to be prevalent in leftist, anti-white activism.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) strongly condemned the chatbot’s comments and noted that Grok seems to be veering into dangerous territory. In a statement to a variety of news organizations, the ADL warned that “this supercharging of extremist rhetoric will only amplify and encourage the antisemitism that is already surging on X and many other platforms.”

Grok’s responses do not come as a surprise. Since late June, the rise in antisemitic or extremist material purportedly expressed by the chatbot may be explained by Musk’s intention to update Grok to eliminate “the garbage in any foundational model trained on uncorrected data,” according to a post on his personal X account. Grok also responded to a user who inquired further into the Cindy Steinberg conversation and asked if Grok’s knowledge on the subject had somehow been changed. Grok stated that the update Musk was referring to “dialed down the woke filters, letting me call out patterns like radical leftists with Ashkenazi surnames pushing anti-white hate.”

2. Sergey Brin Calls Out the UN

Internal communications within Google recently became inflamed with employee concerns over a  United Nations report released last month on tech firms’ role in Israel’s war in Gaza. On Tuesday, in an internal staff chat forum, Google cofounder Sergey Brin condemned the report as biased and more broadly dismissed the UN as “transparently antisemitic.” Written by Italian legal scholar Francesca Albanese, who is the UN special rapporteur on Occupied Palestinian Territories, the report alleges that Google and its parent company Alphabet have profited from what Albanese calls “the genocide carried out by Israel.” It singles out specific provisions for cloud and AI technologies via Project Nimbus, a highly controversial, multimillion-dollar contract between Google, Amazon and the Israeli government. 

Brin, who is of Russian-Jewish origin and left the Soviet Union with his parents at the age of 6,  wrote in the chat that “throwing around the term genocide in relation to Gaza is deeply offensive to many Jewish people who have suffered actual genocides.”  

The U.S. Mission to the United Nations has expressed a viewpoint in line with Brin’s response and had released a statement July 1 that called for Albanese’s removal. Others have called for her ouster as well, including the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, which released a statement in October 2024, and Leo Terrell, the Justice Department lawyer tapped to lead its Task Force to Combat Antisemitism who sent Albanese a letter of rebuke on May 19 of this year. 

3. Jewish Students Expelled From VA Private School Sue Over Alleged Antisemitic Harassment

The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and Dillon PLLC filed a complaint on July 1 against the Nysmith School for the Gifted in Herndon, VA, following the expulsion of a now 12-year-old Jewish student and her siblings (unnamed due to their status as minors). The complaint charges headmaster Kenneth Nysmith with failing to adequately address the aggressive antisemitism the Jewish student faced at the school. 

Parents Brian Vasquez and Ashok Roy had initially communicated concerns to Nysmith when their daughter, in the sixth grade at the time, said that students were calling Jews “baby killers,” telling her that her Jewish identity was the reason “nobody liked [her],” putting pro-Palestinian stickers on school-issued laptops, and telling her they were glad that her uncle had been killed on October 7, even though he had died years before, according to the complaint. 

That wasn’t all. The lawsuit goes on to allege that the school canceled an annual Holocaust survivor speaker event and hung a Palestinian flag in its gymnasium a few weeks after the October 7 Hamas attack in Israel. In 2024, a teacher-led project on “strong historical leaders,” which was held in the student’s classroom, glorified Adolf Hitler, as depicted in an image included in the complaint. This past March, Vasquez and Roy were informed that their children, all in good academic standing, were barred from returning to the school due to what Nysmith called the couple’s “profound lack of trust in both myself and the school.” 

The complaint, which is now filed with the Virginia Office of the Attorney General’s Office of Civil Rights, spans 22 pages and demands that the school refund the students’ tuition and reinforce programming to counter antisemitism. 

“The kids were just devastated,” Jeffrey Lang, senior counsel with the Brandeis Center, said, according to DMV-area news site WTOP. “They have lost their sense of confidence, their sense of security. They kept asking what they had done wrong and whether, if they apologized to the headmaster of the school, they’d be allowed to go back.”

4. Teachers Union Flunks the ADL

A proposal to sever the National Education Association’s previously strong relationship with the ADL has made its way up to the NEA Executive Committee and its Board of Directors, where a final vote could mean that the ADL’s Holocaust Education material and training programs to counter antisemitism will no longer be used within the 14,000 communities the organization serves nationwide. 

NEA union delegates approved a measure stating that the union “will not use, endorse or publicize materials from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), such as its curricular materials or statistics.” 

The proposal, which is called New Business Item 39 and has received extensive news coverage, was adopted at the 2025 Representative Assembly in Portland, OR, on July 5, and garnered 6,000 member votes, according to CNN. It’s an indication of the success of the #DroptheADLfromSchools movement, which has over 90 organizational signatories, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). CAIR’s own endorsement of the recent vote commends the NEA’s decision based on concerns over the ADL’s “anti-Palestinian bias, misuse of antisemitism to silence advocacy for human rights, and its history of opposing racial equality movements for the Black community.” CAIR has also released multiple statements criticizing ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, most recently on July 7 advocating for his removal from his post.

As of this writing, the ADL has not yet released any official public statement, although a spokesperson told Axios that the organization found it “profoundly disturbing.”

5. July 4th Firebombing at Melbourne Synagogue

The East Melbourne Hebrew Congregation in East Melbourne, Australia, was attacked during a Shabbat dinner at the synagogue on Friday, July 4. No injuries were reported following the attack, and damage sustained was limited to the synagogue’s front door.

A 34-year-old male suspect was charged with reckless conduct to endanger life, criminal damage, fire and possession of a controlled weapon, among other charges, according to the Victoria Police, who have yet to classify the attack as a terrorist incident. 

This wasn’t the only brazenly antisemitic attack of the night. Nearby, about 20 protesters broke into Israeli restaurant Miznon while chanting “Death to the IDF!” and throwing furniture. Three individuals were charged with “assault, affray, riotous behaviour and criminal damage,” as reported by the Australian Broadcast Company. 

Antisemitic attacks have been on a steady increase in Australia after the Adass Israel synagogue was targeted in December 2024. Since then, Jewish communities across the continent have been on increasingly high alert. 

Jacinta Allan, the premier of the state of Victoria, condemned the attacks on X. “Every Victorian deserves to live in peace and dignity, but the acts we saw last night at the East Melbourne Synagogue—and elsewhere in the city—are designed to shatter that peace and traumatise Jewish families,” she wrote. “Any attack on a place of worship is an act of hate, and any attack on a Jewish place of worship is an act of anti-Semitism.” 

Top image: Artwork generated alongside the release of xAI’s Grok-1 (fair use)