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Today in America, institutions, from universities to governmental agencies and to corporate workplaces, continue to embrace Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives and associated ideologies closely linked to critical race theory (CRT). In the process Jews, particularly those on college campuses, find it impossible to live securely and safely within their Jewish identities.
The asserted goals of DEI are positive: to promote the representation, participation, and fair treatment of historically marginalized groups. In practice though, DEI, which require its adherents to follow its tenets blindly without doubt or reservation, has been deployed to advance a radical agenda that undermines fundamental American values by promoting equality of outcome over equality of opportunity, collective identity (race, gender, etc.) over individual character, censorship of opposing viewpoints over freedom of speech, and a victim culture that crudely bifurcates society into oppressors and oppressed.
In particular, DEI initiatives are weaponized against Jewish students, maliciously portraying them and the Jewish State as vicious oppressors. Kamau Bobb, the head of diversity at Google, wrote that Jews have an “insatiable appetite for war” and an “insensitivity to the suffering [of] others.” Nowhere is his attitude more prevalent than in the DEI offices that now populate colleges and universities across the country.
Some compare the present cultural change in America to the 1960s, but for the Jews, that analogy is incorrect. In the 1960s, there were still strong feelings of sympathy for the Jewish people who had survived the Holocaust and other terrible acts of persecution, such as the expulsion of nearly one million Jews from Muslim countries after the independence of Israel.
These led Jews to be early and prominent leaders in the Civil Rights movement, like Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. Rabbi Heschel was a close confidant of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and marched alongside him in Selma in solidarity.
Today, Kenneth Marcus, Founder and Chairman of the Brandeis Center for the Protection of Human Rights Under Law, shares “[i]n the DEI programs, we’re seeing anti-Jewish stereotypes, biases, defamations, separation of Jews from other groups, and so-called ‘erasive antisemitism,’ which is to say denial of what it means to have a Jewish identity.”
Erasive antisemitism is destructive because it denies the ability of Jews – a people from geographic Asia, some of whom were forcibly exiled to Europe by the Roman forerunners of Western Civilization, who against all odds persistently maintained our own unique Jewish Civilization through two thousand years of statelessness – to claim and celebrate our own identity. One of the integral aspects of Jewish Civilization has always been the devout desire to restore our ancient nation in the Land of Israel.
A recent study showed that the private social media accounts of DEI officers at university campuses exhibit a remarkable level of virulence against the State of Israel, compared to generally positive feelings towards the People’s Republic of China. The authors noted that “[o]f the tweets about Israel, 96 percent were critical of the Jewish state, while 62 percent of the tweets about China were favorable. There were more tweets narrowly referencing “apartheid” in Israel than tweets indicating anything favorable about Israel whatsoever.
Regarding Israel, the word genocide was associated nine times, the term ethnic cleansing appears seven times, and the accusation that children are specifically targeted appears 27 times. Meanwhile, DEI staffers generally praised China and even wrote glowingly about Chinese efforts to reduce poverty in Tibet, where China is pursuing cultural genocide of the Tibetan people. The report determined that “DEI staff have an obsessive and irrational animus toward the Jewish state.” DEI staffers on university campuses are supposed to be advocates for students, helping them navigate issues of inclusivity and belonging. When DEI staff and administration hold clear animus and bias against the world’s only Jewish state, universities are implicitly and unfairly discriminating against Jewish students.
People are imperfect, so criticism always has a role to play. However, the irrational malice DEI staffers demonstrate against Israel is of a different order. Under the widely-adopted International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which is used by the U.S. State Department, examples of antisemitism include “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor”; “Applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation”; “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis”; and “Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.” All of these have been demonstrated by college DEI staffers – establishing college campuses as unfriendly and unwelcoming spaces for young Jews.
The average university now employs roughly 45 DEI staffers. These small armies rarely celebrate Jewish identity or work towards our inclusion; far more often, they exclude and marginalize Jews on campus and label them as white privilege, whether or not this matches their self-identity. Some states, notably Texas, are considering legislation that would ban DEI programs at public universities.
In the meantime, a generation of college students is being governed by an ideology hostile to Jews that is inculcating ideas about our community that are very different from the principles that our faith embodies, and the United States purports to champion. If American institutions continue to adopt and reflect extreme DEI ideologies, Jews will stuffer. For as George Orwell presciently wrote, “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”
Adam Milstein is an Israeli-American philanthropist, chairman of the Israeli-American Council, real estate entrepreneur and president of the Adam and Gila Milstein Family Foundation. He can be reached at adam@milsteinff.org, on Twitter, and on Facebook.
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.
Maybe DEI should be called DIE when it comes to antiSermitism.
“ Kamau Bobb, the head of diversity at Google, wrote that Jews have an “insatiable appetite for war”
Was his statement fact checked?
During the 1960s, Jews were disproportionately represented in the anti-war movement and were often criticized for this. So I guess they can have “an insatiable appetite for war” and be anti-war at the same time.
The one good thing about the attitudes of the DEI movement is that it may wake up a few Jewish students (and their parents) about the value of the DEI ideology. However, this ideology has been a part of college campus life for many decades and, for the most part, it has not stopped Jewish students from embracing it.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57342967
DEI is profoundly anti Semitic as an ideology snd in practice
It is anti-Semitic and it is terribly regressive since it seeks to replace the value of merit with that of ethnic/racial identity, the effect of which will lower the quality of life for everyone in this country. However, I cannot understand why the popularity of such policies and the support it receives from university administrations and faculty have not stopped Jewish students from applying to and attending these schools and Jewish alumni from contributing money to these institutions on an annual basis.
In American Universities it’s almost like 1920s Germany.
The Progressive Left has always been the source of Jew Hatred and Israel hatred, most significantly since the Six Day War. They always couch it in anti-Zionism. Like Germany in the 1920s today’s American anti-Semitism finds fertile ground in academia. Read Richard Cravatts, Ph.D.’s https://dhfcblog.files.wordpress.com/2022/02/cravattsjewhatred.pdf for an excellent overview on the situation on today’s college campuses.
These woke Ivy League law schools are breeding a generation of Jew Hating lawyers who will end up in government. I can only imagine the anti-semitic policies that will be developed and enacted by future Democrat admins when these little Hitlers are running things.For now the Jew hating Ivy League legal activists don’t have the guts to pull the trigger. But wait a few years.
Cattle cars and barbed wire anyone?
Look at the commencement speech by the detestable Fatima Mohamud at CUNY Law School (one of the worst law schools in the USA). She devoted 13 minutes to attacking Zionism, the police, the military and capitalism. She was born in YEMEN and is an ingrate as well as a LEECH of the United States and its institutions. The students and professors at CUNY Law applauded wildly for the little Islamist miscreant.
I think the best definition of anti-Semitism (and since 1948, anti-Israelism) is that when the world is really civilized, i.e. at peace with the God of Israel, the land of Israel, the Torah of Israel and the people of Israel, there will be no anti-Semitism.
Our history and the beginning of all history starts with the creation of the world by God. It’s the first sentence in our Torah.
Would it help bring peace if all the world knew this?
As an aside, I think the etymological source for the word God is the hebrew “Gad(ol)”, meaning “Great”. God is the Great One.
We didn’t start our mission in the world as “Jews”.
Would it help if all the world knew that Avram (later Abraham) was an “Ivri” Hebrew, meaning “one who crossed”?
Would it help if all the world knew that his grandson Jacob was also named “Israel“, and we were, are, and forever will be, the children of “Israel”, no matter where we may reside in the world?
Would it help to know that, after knowing this, that the people/children of Israel and the land of Israel are synonymous, one and the same? And its borders, as defined by God in the Torah, are our eternal inheritance?
Would it help to know that’s why an “Arab Israeli“ is oxymoronic and a Jewish Israeli is redundant?
Would it help to know that the current word for Jews comes from one of Jacob/Israel’s sons, Judah?
King David was descended from this family line. And his descendants are among our people today, as well as the descendants of Benjamin and Levi, two other sons of Jacob/Israel.
Or would it help bring peace if, rather than try to explain all this to our enemies, we try to reach out to all Jews/Children of Israel; to not wait futilely for the redemption of anti-Semites and finally return home to the land of Israel, flowing with milk and honey?
Very well stated and expressed, thank you.
Nice sentiments but simply a dream, a wish that will never materialize. When will the world be at peace with “the God of Israel”? Let’s see: the world Jewish population is some 15 million (i.e. a medium sized Chinese city!) That leaves approximately 7,985,000,000 people who are not Jewish. I suggest that the world being at peace with the God of Israel is as likely as the US eliminating it’s deficit, which is never.
You don’t have to be so skeptical.
You don’t have to be Jewish to be at peace with the God of Israel.
And you know that when it comes to the miraculous survival of Israel, numbers are irrelevant.
When the world finally rejects evil and wants to be blessed, it will 100% unequivocally support and bless Israel.
The US has never done that. They should give it a try. It might get rid of the deficit.
DEI isn’t antisemitic. It’s anti-white. DEI hurts white people which includes white-Jews, Catholics, Irish, Italians, etc, etc.
DEI is a creature of the Left and the Left is anti-Semitic. ALSO, DEI posits that Jews are white and, along with other white or “white adjacent” (see, “successful”) groups, are privileged white oppressors. Two things can be true at once.
You can say the Left is anti-Semitic but you cannot deny that there has been an attraction Jews have for the Left that is completely bewildering. If you mention conservatives, conservative values, the Republican party or the right wing, more Jews will cringe than will identify with those values even though Jews, as a group, benefit from them. Jewish politicians for the most part are Democrats, and they embrace the Leftist policies and the existence of DEI groups, yet little if any criticism of these politicians or policies come from Jews or Jewish organizations. It seems to me that identification with “liberals” or leftists or the “woke” movement is far more important to most Jews, especially Jews in academia, than is their Jewish identity. So what’s the problem?
It is bewildering, indeed. I cannot explain it except that the Left poses as being tolerant and welcoming and Jews fall for it. When push comes to shove, though, from the Doctors’ Plot to the current Left identity agenda, Jews become victims of the Left.
DEI is anti white. The fact that they lump us in with white people is a bit confusing though, as many Jews are not white. Then again, we shouldn’t expect them to think logically, as there is nothing logical about the DEI idiocy.
DEI is a cover-up word for destroying all civilized nations from within and replacing it with third world criminal and terrorist mentality.
I agree with you that DEI is a cover-up for destroying Western civilization from within. However the criminality and terrorism is not so much coming from the Third World as it is from China and the Globalists (most of whom are American and European). The “Great Reset” talked about by Klaus Schwab and his insistence that “You will own nothing and be happy,” and “You will eat the bugs,” along with Yuval Harari’s “Humans are hackable animals” did not originate in the Third World. The oppressive rules imposed by the EU were not the brainchildren of a Third World despot. The vax mandates, the mask mandates, and the lockdowns were imposed by the First World countries along with their attempt at vaccine passports and chips inserted into everyone.. The hordes of people entering through our Southern border consist of Third World people and others as well such as Chinese. However, this is the agenda of our own government whose criminal past and acts of terrorism over the past many decades is coming to light more and more.
All cultures are not equal. The incredible overrepresentation of Jewish people amongst Nobel Prize winners speaks volumes, all positive, about Jewish culture. It is only a matter of time before the numbskulls who turn people such as Michael Brown into martyrs get around to spouting “check you Jewish privilege.”
The threat to Jewish students on campus comes from amounts of money far in excess of what’s needed to educate students combined with a come one, come all immigration free for all. DEI is a commissariat by another name and there’s a big budget for it.. A weak leadership strata that wont fight the far left dominance of the Democratic party ensures that we’ll get more of the same. Cut the education budget, lend students less money, throttle the immigration pipeline and the problem will go away.
Instead of trying to convince themselves that they will be safe by fleeing whiteness, Jews need to defend whites from persecution as they did Blacks in the 1960s…because all racial discrimination is morally wrong, no matter the color of the victim. All lives matter.