An Open Letter to University Presidents
7 min read
DEI distorts classical liberal values that form the bedrock of western democracies. It also vilifies Jews.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives claim to promote tolerance, acceptance, and more recently, social justice. But in practice, DEI missions at colleges and universities across the United States almost universally exclude Jewish students from their seemingly large umbrellas.
Institutions of higher learning generally boast that they embrace students from diverse backgrounds and identities across a range of categories, including race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability, and more. However, most DEI programming ignores Jewish students, disregarding the fact that Jews are a minority among minorities. Jews constitute less than 2% of the total population of the United States, and yet, as British author David Baddiel explained in his 2021 book, Jews Don’t Count.
While Jews don’t count, antisemitic incidents in classrooms, dorm rooms, and on quads around the country sure add up. This was true well-before the Oct. 7th massacre in Israel. In September of this year, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reported that antisemitic incidents had doubled since the 2021-2022 school year. And that was prior to the recent surge in such incidents, increasingly violent and threatening, that has occurred in the wake of the barbaric attacks by Palestinian terrorists and during the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas.
Jewish students across the nation report steep upticks in all sorts of Jew-hatred.
During the weeks between Oct. 7th and November 7th, 832 antisemitic incidents of assault, harassment, and vandalism have been documented by the ADL's Center on Extremism. This marks an increase of 316% for the same period. Moreover, the ADL reported that "124 of the incidents took place on college campuses since Oct. 7, compared to only 12 incidents over the same period last year."
These include disturbing accounts shared widely on social media, such as Jewish students taking cover behind locked doors in the library from threatening Pro-Palestinian marchers at Cooper Union College in New York City and Jewish students being told to shelter in place in the kosher dining hall and in their dorms at Cornell University because of threats of violence by a Cornell student.
The staggering increase in antisemitism isn’t limited to these isolated events. Jewish students across the nation report steep upticks in all sorts of Jew-hatred, including supposedly pro-Palestinian marches that seem to focus solely on chanting “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free,” which is a blatant call for the extermination of the almost 7 million Jews who live in Israel. Jewish students have been targeted by professors in classrooms (Stanford and Harvard), assaulted (Columbia, Tulane, Ohio State University, UMASS, Pomona), subject to threats of violence (Cornell, U. of Georgia, Rutgers, Cooper Union), and prevented from attending classes (MIT). And these are just the incidents highlighted in the news.
Moreover, Jewish students are demonized as “genocidal settler colonists” for expressing any support for Israel. And let’s not forget about all the posters of hostages torn down repeatedly on campuses, regardless of whether these display Jewish babies, Jewish boys and girls, or Thai workers. All are seemingly guilty by association, and none deserve compassion.
In the United States, DEI offices emerged in the aftermath of the civil rights era as a way to create more equitable and diverse environments across a variety of settings, including institutions of higher learning and ultimately k-12 schools and workplaces as well. A primary goal of these initiatives is to address and challenge institutional racism, meaning structural barriers that render settings unsafe for individuals of different backgrounds and identities and that also limit opportunities to those individuals. DEI staff and programs also are meant to support the safety and well-being of students, particularly students from marginalized groups.
The vast majority of colleges and universities where Jewish students study have a DEI office, and most exclude Jewish students from inclusion in their “inclusive” initiatives. They’ve done this as antisemitism has soared on these very same college campuses. Even those institutions that don’t outright exclude Jews from their DEI missions often fail miserably to protect Jewish students and seem willfully disinterested in creating environments where Jews feel safe.
Not only are Israelis falsely accused of being oppressors but so are any Jews who support Israel in any way, using virulent anti-Zionism to mask flagrant antisemitism.
According to a 2022 ADL report, “Discrimination targeting Jewish students for their religious identity or for their support of the Jewish State of Israel is not taken as seriously as discriminatory acts against other marginalized groups. As America continues to contend with racial reckoning, many, if not all, schools have created a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) department to promote anti-racist positions and effect positive social change. But all too often, Jews, who are grossly mislabeled as a ‘white, model-minority,’ are excluded from the DEI discussion. DEI departments have not made fighting antisemitism a priority and few adopted or are even willing to consider the IHRA working definition of antisemitism when dealing with antisemitism on campus.”
Moreover, according to DEI principles, people are either oppressed or oppressors, and Jews are, oddly, included wholesale in the latter group even though we are a miniscule portion of the population and are victims of the oldest form of racism. More damaging yet is the way in which this exceedingly simplistic framework has been hijacked to use as a lens through which to view any conflict, whether in this country or elsewhere. Concerns Jewish students express about their safety are dismissed as inherently invalid, as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been perverted to fit into this false construct. Hence, Israelis are the oppressors, and the Palestinians are oppressed. And while it’s true the Palestinians have been oppressed, this conveniently leaves out that it is Hamas that has been oppressing Gazans since 2007. It also ignores the fact that many Israelis are people of color, descended from Jews of Middle Eastern and/or North African ancestry.
Not only are Israelis falsely accused of being oppressors but so are any Jews who support Israel in any way, using virulent anti-Zionism to mask flagrant antisemitism. However, progressives insisted one could hate on Israel and Israelis with abandon while somehow “holding their Jewish friends close.”
Well, we can now see what they meant by that. Jews of all stripes have been universally demonized, and Zionist Jews have been intentionally and formally excluded from numerous university settings, and this was before the often violent or threatening climate these social justice warriors are helping to create on campuses around the country today.
The true dangers of DEI, however, go further. As Jews who both support Israel and work in academia (and in activist circles more generally) can tell you, the binary spelled out above, that people either belong to groups with power or without, leaves so much out and makes it so easy to vilify those considered (rightly or wrongly) powerful. It also distorts classical liberal values that all of us, whether Liberal or Conservative, should share as citizens of western democracies, such as a dedication to the rule of law, civil liberties, equality of opportunity, and limited government. It should go without saying that how we understand those terms has much to do with which side of the political spectrum we inhabit but also that the extent to which those values are shared across that divide has much to do with our ability to sustain democracy.
To this point, Bari Weiss is on to something when she writes (as she did recently in her article, “End DEI,” in Tablet magazine), “In theory, all three of these words [diversity, equity, and inclusion] represent noble causes. They are in fact all causes to which American Jews in particular have long been devoted, both individually and collectively. But in reality, these words are now metaphors for an ideological movement bent on recategorizing every American [and others] not as an individual, but as an avatar of an identity group, his or her behavior prejudged accordingly, setting all of us up in a kind of zero-sum game.”
We don’t have to be political theorists, or even beleaguered Jews, to understand that we are somehow very off course.
Read more about if Jewish Lives Matter.
The very notion of "DEI" is permeated with the same sort of egregious intellectual dishonesty that informs (and I employ the latter term with more than a modicum of irony) such rancid constructs as "affirmative action," "BDS" and "CRT." What each of these far-left, anti-American heaps of garbage has in common is the desire to exalt the lowest common denominator while castigating and pillorying the best and brightest our society has to offer. Unsurprisingly, Jews are cast as villains.
Very clear, well-written, and sad analysis. As Shriberg so clearly stated, the words in DEI imply a noble cause and a benefit to society. However, because DEI has been hijacked by extremists, it has become a toxic threat to civil society and democracy.
This is analogous to what has occurred with Black Lives Matter - another movement where the words imply a noble cause but the hatred toward Jews espoused by many (including the leadership) makes it another toxic sect.
I don’t think DEI is to blame for discrimination against Jews. I work for an academic university hospital that DEI and we have inclusive bathrooms and Sabbath elevators. I don’t think one is exclusive of the other. Our university bans antisemitism.
I think this thought applies universally; Jews / Israelis have to take back control of their narrative; of what the lay non Jewish public reads. There are scathing reports Amnesty International / human rights watch and other groups labeling Israel as oppressors, apartheid, and occupiers. Where do you think the public gets their views and terminology such as “ open air prisons.”
We the Jews and the non Jews that love Jews have to take back control of what is taught and reported about the Jewish Nation at every level.
Excellent analysis. DEI values sounds nice in principle but when these values are seen solely through the lens of 'identity', the values 'fail' and become a filter to segregate or discriminate against certain 'identities'.
I am an Orthodox Jewish woman and an anti-racist Democrat. I’m discouraged by the stereotyping that goes on in some explanations of DEI. I will stand up for anyone’s legal rights (I am an attorney) even if I disagree with their opinion. But terrorism by any group, whether a state or a group of individuals, is always wrong. The targeting of any child is immoral, although in war, things can go wrong and innocents can be harmed. But there’s a world of difference. For example, in most US states, police officers pursuing a suspect are not criminally liable if they accidentally hit a pedestrian. If they intentionally hit a pedestrian, that may be prosecuted.
I have been a DEI professional for over 30 years and have to confess that I was with you until you got something horribly wrong. DEI is NOT about dividing people into 2 categories: the powerful and the powerless. This is a gross misunderstanding of the work many of us thoughtfully, methodically, systematically ... and yes ... empathetically undertake every day (including this political theorist). I suggest you learn more about the discipline you criticize before taking aim. Sadly, you make a great point but go on to diminish it with your misunderstanding.
Even if you're right on that point, how do you explain the main issue -- that the so-called inclusion does NOT include Jews, at least, not Jews who identify as such?
(This is unfortunately a verifiable fact throughout US campuses.)
Exactly. Inclusion only includes blacks and Muslims according to many of virtue signaling liberal universities. They want you to be a helpless victim forever. Jews have been oppressed all through history, of course the ignorant college students have no idea about it.Sorry, we wont play the role of the victims forever.
What misunderstanding? We KNOW that the Jews have been pushed aside repeatedly.
Though you've been a DEI professional - and are very defensive about it. Something to be aware of is - often those associated with any kind of cause etc.. They become - and are BLINDLY holding to the noble ideas of the cause - whilst ignoring its often obvious faults - and are guilty of deluding themselves - with a false - protective sense of security. WHY? Maybe - it's because - they chose not to point out the faults - in order to maintain - their coveted acceptance and association with their contemporaries - and not become the object of their cause/groups derision/rejection. As I'm understanding your response to the article. This may apply here. WHY? There is FAR TOO MUCH ACTIVE ANTISEMITISM - against JEWS - for too long - despite the noble cause DEI espouses.
I was very glad to read this well written article. Alas, DEI is not a new concept. As Jews we have ALWAYS been excluded, despite the fact that we marched with Martin Luther King. As a child and adolescent I felt pushed aside and marginalized. My parents were terrified of anti Semitism and did not provide an adequate religious education for their three children. My nephews are marrying out of the faith. Hopefully my son will not take the same action. Kol tuv.
I think Judaism has already enough to offer to improve one's life. Changes exist too.
The point is the will to choose.
It is a pity to see all those potentials wasted: maybe honesty is what the young need most to prevent those wastes.
Sadly the benighted college students will
be our leaders in 20 or so years. 🙁🙁