Heritage Foundation Adds Israeli-American Conservative Yoram Hazony to Board in Reboot Following Tucker Carlson Imbroglio

The Heritage Foundation has named Israeli-American philosopher Yoram Hazony as one of four new members of its board of trustees, months after its president’s unequivocal defense of podcaster Tucker Carlson over an interview with avowed antisemite Nick Fuentes resulted in mass departures of staffers and trustees from the conservative think tank. In a statement on Wednesday, the Heritage Foundation described the addition of Mr. Hazony, who was born in Rehovot and serves as the president of the Herzl Institute in Jerusalem, as one that “strengthens Heritage’s intellectual leadership on national sovereignty.”Also named to the Heritage Foundation’s board were The Federalist editor-in-chief Mollie Hemingway, the former chief executive Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Lawrence Blanford, and entrepreneur and National Heritage Academies founder J.C. Huizenga. Heritage Foundation president and trustee Kevin Roberts said in a statement that the four new board members “bring the intellectual seriousness and leadership necessary to help Heritage deliver on our mission and meet this moment.”Last year, Mr. Roberts’s decision to post a video of him defending Mr. Carlson’s congenial interview with white nationalist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes — and then later refusing to issue a full retraction —prompted the exodus of several prominent trustees like Princeton professor Robert P. George and philanthropist Abby Spencer Moffat. In his October 30 video, Mr. Roberts lashed out at Mr. Carlson’s critics, referring to them as “the globalist class” and “venomous coalition.” Mr. Roberts said he was reading from a script written by an aide who had later resigned following the controversy. Mr. Roberts would also tell employees during a staff meeting that he “didn’t know much about this Fuentes guy.”He added, “I still don’t, which underscores the mistake.” More than 60 senior staff, fellows, and trustees resigned from the Heritage Foundation, which the think tank framed as part of a broader internal “realignment.”Mr. Roberts’s handling of the fallout caused many prominent conservative Jewish groups, including the Jewish Leadership Project, to resign from the Heritage Foundation’s National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, which was formed in the aftermath of the terror attacks by Hamas in southern Israel on October 7th, 2023. In November, the task force, also known as Project Esther, announced it would leave the foundation.“Who could believe that the head of a think tank doesn’t think?” the president of the Jewish Leadership Project, Charles Jacobs, told the New York Times at the time.Mr. Hazony, however, was one of the rare few who had jumped to Mr. Roberts’s immediate defense, calling his conservative critics “jackals” who were “sniveling for blood.” He suggested that conservative Jews and Christian Zionists were creating antisemites by pointing out antisemitism.That depiction drew criticism from author James Kirchik, who writing in Commentary magazine, called Mr. Hazony’s efforts “at playing a moderating force within the movement” an attempt to cover “his own tracks, desperately attempting to retain his influence by whitewashing the egregious behavior of his allies and the logical outcomes of his own philosophy.”

Heritage Foundation Adds Israeli-American Conservative Yoram Hazony to Board in Reboot Following Tucker Carlson Imbroglio

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