One might not equate the tough work of fighting anti-Semitism and discrimination of disenfranchised groups everywhere with a sense of humor, but that’s how Morris Casuto, executive director of the San Diego branch of the Anti-Defamation League, has approached his position for the last 33 years.
“Just when you think he’s being so serious, and he has that look, he just breaks the silence with his humor,” says Estella de los Rios, head of the Center for Social Advocacy. “You never know what to expect from Morris.”
ADL assistant director Monica Bauer shares the same sentiment.
“Our job is very stressful, and we deal with very serious things, but he’s very smart and works to keep things on the lighter side,” Bauer says.
Casuto, who is retiring from the ADL in October, grew up in New York. In 1974, as a recent college graduate, he took his very first real job with the ADL as a community consultant in Columbus, Ohio. Though he began never having heard of the organization, he quickly found his place there. Overseeing the Ohio and Kentucky areas, he focused on the area of Soviet Jewry, working closely with local police agencies.
Later, he was transferred to Indiana, where a substantial Klan presence had forced the opening of an ADL office in the heavily rural area he was stationed.
“I had never really been to any small towns [like the ones I served in Indiana] before,” Casuto says, “but when I moved to Indiana, we developed an ongoing relationship with many of the religious communities [there] and worked with law enforcement to curtail extremist activity and emphasize education as a means to stop the growth of the Klan and other groups like them.”
In 1978, Casuto opened the San Diego offices with the help of a local couple who had been active in supporting the ADL for years. He continued to focus on education as the key to curtailing extremist groups.
“There were enormous challenges to be met,” Casuto says of opening a brand new office.
With no board of directors and an ADL council linked to B’nai Brith, Casuto had his work cut out for him. Very few people knew much about the ADL when he arrived, but almost everyone in San Diego knows about Morris Casuto now.
“He’s been in the community for so many years that he knows everybody, and he knows a lot about the topics we deal with,” Bauer says.
While the ADL is primarily a Jewish agency, Casuto says that the work the organization does to ensure fair treatment for all is what makes it unique.
“Everything we do is looked at from the perspective of Jewish security, but at the same time we realize that you can’t protect yourself if you’re unprepared to protect others,” he says.
To that end, Casuto says he has focused on education and publicizing the work of extremist groups to curtail their actions in the community — a plan that has worked for him throughout his career.
“The most important way to counteract the hate message is by appropriate education and an understanding of the power of language,” he says.
One of the ways the ADL works to educate others is through the No Place for Hate Initiative, which started under Casuto’s directorship and is continually well-received by teachers and its school-aged participants.
“We began a program where we brought well over 1,500 students and teachers to a conference on racism and anti-Semitism, and it developed into other programs we continue today,” Casuto says.
When reflecting on his career, a few stories resonate — namely the times where white supremacist groups created work for the ADL and its community partners.
“We worked with educators, religious figures and law enforcement to combat their message,” he says. “I remember they had public meetings and rallies. There was one in Oceanside, and they came to the meeting place [ready for] war — wielding shields, helmets, baseball bats, dogs and boots. There were counter demonstrators, and violence broke out into a riot that moved up one street, but this is an illustration of how these groups draw violence to themselves even if they don’t start it.”
Casuto says the ADL’s productive and mutually beneficial relationship with law enforcement took time to develop, but now police agencies recognize the value of working together as partners.
“We began a program where we were able to speak to police cadets about the issues of security within the Jewish community,” he says, “and we were one of the first organizations to recognize that police required training in the newly identified form of criminal activity.”
Sheriff Bill Gore was a member of the FBI when he first met Casuto and began partnering with the ADL in San Diego. The two worked together on local hate crimes issues, often combating the same group with multiple targets.
“Before Sept.11, we were looking at white supremacist groups and their targeting of Jews, but after, Morris and I were making sure that the Middle Eastern community in San Diego was not retaliated against by the same group for the acts of a few,” Gore says.
Before Gore’s arrival in San Diego, Casuto worked closely with the FBI to bring a traveling exhibition from one of the country’s Holocaust museums to San Diego, and to make the FBI and its new training class a part of the program.
“My predecessor felt it important that every new FBI agent go through the Holocaust museum to see what happens when policing breaks down in a society,” Gore says, “and Morris was instrumental in working with the new agents and exposing them to the exhibit.”
Casuto’s commitment to training law enforcement has manifested itself in other ways, too. He accompanied some of San Diego’s police department personnel to Israel to meet with people in military and law enforcement there, making the police here more adept at planning for terrorism and catastrophic emergencies.
Between 1990 and 2000, Casuto says San Diego became America’s racist and anti-Semitic leafleting capital. During that time, the ADL received three phone calls a week form communities targeted by racist groups.
Gore and Casuto worked closely to curtail the acts of these groups, but it did not stop Casuto from eventually becoming a target.
“[The racist groups] did not like the ADL and in particular, did not like me,” Casuto recalls.
The groups left leaflets and bomb threats at his front door. Later, the ADL’s office suite inside a larger office building had to be evacuated by the bomb squad.
“ADL offices across the country used to leave their doors wide open, but that is not the case anymore,” Casuto says, referring to the keypad entry and double-door that mark the ADL offices at their location in Mission Valley. There is also a security camera watching the front door to curtail any would-be troublemakers.
Today, the focus remains working closely with different communities to ensure a hate-free San Diego.
One of these endeavors involves the South Bay’s Center for Social Advocacy, run by Estella de los Rios. While de los Rios has worked with the ADL over the years on projects like the United for a Hate-Free San Diego Initiative, she recently sought out their help after her office windows were broken and a computer stolen.
“Morris immediately responded and was a very good comfort in the sense that I felt violated, and he helped me understand the importance of just being a victim and helped me know that I was going to be okay,” de los Rios says. “He went above and beyond and gave me some advice on precautions I could take and made it an issue for all the collaborators in the region, who were [at the office] within an hour of [the attack].”
She says working not only as a collaborator with the ADL but being on the other end of the message really solidified her respect for a man who has made this his life’s work.
“I had already had respect for him before, but seeing how he extended his compassion in my time of need was priceless,” she says.
It is this hands-on approach that has earned Casuto his reputation in the field and why he will be so deeply missed when he steps down as the executive director.
“Morris has brought a passion to what he does and has done more in the community than any other professional I’ve interacted with,” says Lorne Polger, ADL regional board chair. “He is a reasoned but forceful and passionate voice for the Jewish community in San Diego. He has had a tremendous and direct impact on issues of civil rights and safety and security for the Jewish community.”
Having worked side by side with Casuto, Polger says it is his passion that the community has felt most strongly.
“Whether through adopting a safety and security manual for synagogues or religious schools, outreach programs, education programs or other civil rights programs, virtually no institution has gone untouched by Morris and the League at some point along the way,” Polger says.
But for Casuto, the work of the ADL and other groups like it is never finished.
“There is no such thing as just doing the right thing, or an antidote to anti-Semitism,” Casuto says. “These types of issues are not solved — they are addressed. If we believe all we have to do is educate one generation, we are being Pollyannas.”
The ADL will hold a community dinner in Casuto’s honor at the Hilton Torrey Pines next month, which will no doubt be packed with community members whose lives have been touched by his work with the ADL over the last three decades.
“Early on it became obvious, to me at least, that I had found a home at the ADL,” he says. “But when you begin doing something you knew nothing about and arrive at the conclusion that this is who you are, I realize I was lucky at a very early stage in my career to find [this place],” Casuto says.
And if the community response to his retirement means anything, the ADL was lucky to have found him, too. For information about the ADL, visit www.adl.org/san-diego.
