He is a visiting scholar at NYU’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and co-director of the Religious Leadership and Civic Engagement initiative.
[7] He has specifically led national initiatives to encourage the United States government to take firm stands against Iran acquiring nuclear weapons,[8] to end the genocide in Darfur,[9] to maintain and enhance anti-poverty programs,[10] and to create a sustainable environment within American and Jewish life.
Under Rabbi Gutow's leadership, the JCPA was a stalwart advocate for a strong U.S.-Israel relationship with a focus on preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, an action that brought him to numerous small communal White House meetings with the president.
This campaign sought to increase the involvement of the American Jewish community in the nation’s climate change and energy debates.
He organized a letter-writing campaign from 23 national Jewish organizations urging the U.S. Senate to pass gun control legislation that would limit access to high capacity ammunition magazines, waiting periods, and background checks, tracking firearms, as well as provide mental health care and services and examining the role of violence in the media.
[33] He also served as chair from 2008 to 2009 and later as an executive committee member of the Save Darfur Coalition,[34] a U.S.-based advocacy group calling for international intervention in Sudan, to try and stop the genocidal conflict there.
In March 2012, Rabbi Gutow was arrested with actor George Clooney, NAACP President Ben Jealous, Representatives Jim McGovern (MA) and Jim Moran (VA), comedian and human rights activist Dick Gregory, and others at a protest outside the Sudanese Embassy in Washington, DC, calling on the U.S. to ensure delivery of humanitarian aid to the Blue Nile and Nuba Mountain regions.
[39][40] In appointing Rabbi Gutow to the President's Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, President Obama brought together leaders and experts in fields related to the work of faith-based and neighborhood organizations in order to make recommendations to his administration on how to improve the partnerships it formed to serve people in need.
The council was charged with identifying best practices and successful modes of delivering social services, evaluating the need for improvements in the implementation and coordination of public policies relating to faith-based and neighborhood organizations, and making recommendations to the president and the administration on changes in policies, programs, and practices.
The charge for the council focused on steps the government should take to reduce poverty and inequality and create opportunity for all, including changes in policies, programs, and practices that affected the delivery of services by faith-based and community organizations and the needs of low-income and other underserved persons.