Victoria Coates, a vice president of the Heritage Foundation, said that her organization would continue to combat Jew-hatred after an antisemitism task force cut ties with the conservative think tank amid ongoing fallout from the foundation’s defenses of Tucker Carlson.

In response to a question from JNS at a Vandenberg Coalition panel on the Middle East on Friday, Coates said that she would address “the elephant in the room” about antisemitism in the conservative movement.

“Having lived through the last 10 days at the Heritage Foundation, one thing we can say from that experience, for us, is that no one can deny the scope of this problem at this point,” Coates said. “That it is a real problem on the right, that we have to recognize this, and we have to look for the root causes of why it is burgeoning up.”

“What we can’t do is yell at American citizens who have questions about our national security policy and tell them that they’re bigots for even wondering what’s going on,” she added.

The Heritage Foundation has been mired in controversy and an internal staff revolt after its president, Kevin Roberts, published a video defending Tucker Carlson after the former Fox News host interviewed Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes, which one Heritage staffer critical of Roberts likened to “flirting.”

On Thursday, the National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, which was organized by and operated under the auspices of the Heritage Foundation, announced that it was severing ties from the think tank and would work “outside the Heritage Foundation for a season” after the resignation of some task force members.

Coates, who remains a co-chair of the task force, told JNS that Heritage would also continue to fight Jew-hatred.

“Antisemitism is a malignant cancer on societies,” she said. “It takes once-great societies and breaks them up.”

“We’ve taken it on board at Heritage that that has to be a major focus for us,” Coates said. “We have to do this work to figure out where it’s coming from, how it’s being supported, how it’s being financed, how it’s being spread.”

A source at the Heritage Foundation told JNS that Heritage and Roberts continue to have “a huge antisemitism problem” and that Coates is “trying to paper over that for public consumption.”

“She is going into contortions trying to defend Roberts to keep her job at Heritage and to remain a co-chair of the task force,” the source said. “The bottom line is that Victoria Coates and the Heritage board have failed in their legal fiduciary obligation to protect the staff and institution from harm by sticking with Kevin Roberts.”

The source pointed to a confrontation between Coates and an adviser to Roberts, Evan Myers, at a Heritage all-staff meeting on Wednesday.

JNS obtained a recording of the meeting, during which Myers objected to potentially attending Shabbat dinners as a form of Christian-Jewish outreach, because “Friday is a special day of prayer and abstinence to commemorate the death of Christ” and concern that they would serve as a “litmus test” for staff.

Coates rebuked Myers, saying that the dinners were merely a recommendation and that Myers’ description of them as a “demand” was a “gross mischaracterization.” She added that she took “some offense” at the description.

“She can’t have it both ways,” the Heritage source told JNS. “The solution is for the Heritage Foundation board of trustees to dismiss Kevin Roberts and those who make excuses for his indefensible behavior.”

“Or they should all resign themselves,” the source added.

Coates, who previously served as a deputy national security advisor in the first Trump administration, also told JNS that it’s important to disaggregate domestic antisemitism from legitimate questions about the relationship between the United States and Israel.

“It’s beholden on us, who support the U.S.-Israel alliance, and aren’t very fond of the antisemites, that we need to be able to answer that, but it is a domestic issue,” she said.

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