He is a founding member of the Jewish Forum for Justice and Human Rights, and a former editor of Patterns of Prejudice, a quarterly academic journal focusing on the sociology of race and ethnicity.
While Lerman accepts that exposing alleged Jewish antisemitism is "legitimate in principle", he added that the growing literature in this field "exceeds all reason"; the attacks are often vitriolic, and encompass views that are not inherently anti-Zionist.
Abby Wisse Schachter, a commentator at the New York Post, wrote that Yale "almost certainly" terminated the program because it "refused to ignore the most virulent, genocidal and common form of Jew-hatred today: Muslim anti-Semitism.
"[6] Lerman believes claims that London is the "hub of international efforts to delegitimise Israel and that British Jews are subject to a constant barrage of media-driven anti-Zionist propaganda that borders on, or overlaps with, antisemitism" are grossly exaggerated.
[8] On gauging the threat of antisemitism, Lerman quoted Rabbi David Goldberg: "at the present time, it is far easier and safer to be a Jew than a Muslim, a black person or an east European asylum seeker.
He contends that self-identifying Zionists in the diaspora are complicit in supporting an unjust occupation, and argues Israel must abrogate the Law of Return, change its Jewish character, and become a binational state for Jews and Palestinians.
[3] In an op-ed for The New York Times after the 2014 Gaza Strip war, Lerman concluded that, “The only Zionism of any consequence today is xenophobic and exclusionary, a Jewish ethno-nationalism inspired by religious messianism.