Second gentleman Douglas Emhoff will travel to Colorado this month to attend the Aspen Ideas Festival, the White House announced Wednesday. 

Emhoff, the first Jewish spouse of an American president or vice president, will participate in the festival’s panel discussion on combating antisemitism on June 26. He will be joined by panelists Dr. Liz Sherwood-Randall, White House homeland security advisor, and Eric Ward, executive vice president of Race Forward. Journalist Katie Couric will moderate. 

Emhoff and Sherwood-Randall will also participate in a roundtable discussion at the festival to talk about the U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, released last month. 

The first-of-its-kind strategy outlines over 100 steps federal agencies committed to implementing to combat antisemitism, and calls for specific action from Congress, state and local governments, faith leaders, businesses and individuals. The strategy aims to increase awareness and understanding of antisemitism and Jewish American heritage, improve safety and security for Jewish communities, reverse the normalization of antisemitism, and build cross-community coalitions to counter hate. 

“I will not stand idly by and allow antisemitism to poison our society,” Emhoff said during the launch of the strategy on May 25. “… It is on all of us to put an end to the visceral hate that we are seeing across our nation. We cannot normalize this.”

This comes as antisemitic incidents in the U.S. rose 36% in 2022 – marking the third time in five years that incidents of harassment, vandalism and assault targeting Jewish people and communities were the highest ever recorded, according to an audit by the Anti-Defamation League.

Jewish people make up only 2.4% of the U.S. population but are the victims of 63% of reported religiously motivated hate crimes, NPR reported. 

Since becoming second gentleman, Emhoff has hosted and attended events around the world aimed at fighting antisemitism. He hosts the White House’s Passover celebration each year, hung a Mezuzah on the front door of the Vice President’s Residence for the first time, and convened a roundtable of Jewish leaders at the White House to discuss the rise in hate in December. 

This will be the second time Emhoff has visited Colorado this year, the first being in March when he toured the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden to highlight the Biden/Harris administration’s commitment to advancing clean energy and women in science, technology, engineering and math. 

The Aspen Ideas Festival is an annual week-long event hosted by the Aspen Institute, bringing together hundreds of speakers from various fields to discuss current ideas and issues in the U.S. and worldwide. This year’s three-part festival will be held from June 21 through June 30.