Letter to Acting Commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard

The following letter was sent to Admiral Kevin E. Lunday, Acting Commandant, U.S. Coast Guard, from Rabbi Jonah Dov Pesner, in response to reports that the U.S. Coast Guard would no longer classify the swastika as a hate symbol.

Admiral Kevin E. Lunday
Acting Commandant
U.S. Coast Guard
November 21, 2025

Dear Acting Commandant Lundy,

On behalf of the Union for Reform Judaism, the largest denomination in American Jewish life, I write with the strongest objection to the change in U.S. Coast Guard policy that will no longer classify the swastika as a hate symbol.

Let me be clear from the start: there is no context aside from the educational or historical in which a swastika is not a hate symbol. It is the emblem under which the Nazis perpetrated the genocide of 6 million Jews and 5 million other people. It is the emblem that white supremacists have gathered under for more than eight decades. It is an emblem that has no place in the U.S. Coast Guard or anywhere else.

The policy that shifts the swastika from a hate symbol to one that may cause divisiveness is wrong. Equally wrong is the policy that shifts nooses and confederate flags into the same category. These symbols are shameful representations of ideologies that have been long discredited, and rightly so.

The values that the Coast Guard is sworn to uphold do not allow a permissive attitude toward hate symbols. 16 million U.S. military members served in World War II to uphold that principle. The decision to weaken these standards is an indelible stain on the Coast Guard and a violation of the good that our nation stands for.

I urge you in the strongest terms to immediately rescind this policy and return these symbols of hate to the forbidden category in which they belong.

Sincerely, 

Rabbi Jonah Pesner
Director, Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism