Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Result in Anti-Semitism By Eileen F. Toplansky
G. Tod Slone has written that “as a political ideology, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), has proven time and again to be against freedom, reason, and truth. Proponents of the ideology tend to be hypocrites and anti-white racists [.]”
In fact, DEI is also a pathway to anti-Semitism. In a recent Heritage Foundation Report titled “Inclusion Delusion: The Anti-Semitism of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Staff at Universities” the reader learns that
university DEI staff are better understood as political activists with a narrow and often radical political agenda rather than promoters of welcoming and inclusive environments. Many DEI staff are particularly unwelcoming toward Jewish students who, like the vast majority of Jews worldwide, feel a strong connection to the state of Israel. The political activism of DEI staff may help explain the rising frequency of antisemitic incidents on college campuses as well as the association between college and graduate education and higher levels of antisemitic attitudes.
Rather than promoting diversity and inclusion, universities may be contributing to an increase in anti-Jewish hatred by expanding DEI staff and power.
While DEI staff are supposed to prevent hate/bias incidents directed at any student group — in fact, they have “ethical, legal, and practical obligations” to do so, it appears that “not only do DEI staff fail to attend to Jewish concerns, including scheduling events on Jewish holidays, but there have been reports of diversity officials expressing antisemitic attitudes.”
For example, 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.”
His punishment — he was reassigned to work on STEM education efforts for Google.
The methodology used by Heritage to examine the anti-Semitism of DEI officials consisted of available Twitter accounts. Of the “633 tweets regarding Israel, 96% were critical of the Jewish state. Of the tweets regarding China, 62% expressed favorable sentiment.”
It turns out that “DEI have a disproportionate interest in Israel relative to China and are far more likely to be critical of Israel than they are of China” — the communist nation where totalitarianism reigns supreme with “severe internal repression of political dissent and private corporations,” where Muslim Uyghurs are forced to donate their organs, and Falun Gong are tortured in Chinese labor camps.
Surely those who are “genuinely interested in human rights around the world [as the DEI operatives claim] have many more reasons to be paying attention to China than to Israel.”
Unsurprising, DEI staff engage in standard anti-Israel sentiment with the use of the word “apartheid” although the only apartheid in the Middle East comes from the Arab world, not Israel where “Arabs are proportionately represented in the Knesset and head all their municipalities, schools and religious courts.”
Furthermore, in the Israeli national election of 2021, the Ra’am Party became the first Arab party to join a governing coalition. In addition, “Arabs hold 10 seats in the 24th Knesset, four of which are held by Ra’am. Israeli Arabs have also held various government posts and one Arab currently serves on the Israeli Supreme Court.”
Yet, according to the Heritage Report, “public communications of DEI staff embrace the genocidal phrase from the river to the sea” which means the eradication of Israel.
How comfortable DEI organizations are with Critical Race Theory sheds enormous light on the trajectory of their biases.
Crystal Borde, Vice President, Diversity + Inclusion at Vanguard Communications in an article titled “How to Contribute to Black Lives Matter Dialogue with a DEI Lens” is an illustrative example.
Filled with anti-American attitudes about “systemic and structural racism in the United States” Borde asserts that “these organizations no longer want to be neutral in this fight against inequities and injustice.”
They want to contribute and support the conversation and reflect the best standards of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in their communications. But this is a complicated, layered conversation with a long traumatic history and generations of impacted communities. How can communicators help their organizations find the best messaging, strategies and tactics to contribute to this conversation?
And they are not confining themselves to colleges. Timothy Nerozzi explains how “a public school system in Michigan spent 21 days teaching adults in the district how to be good ‘equity’ allies, with a direct call for them to join a Black Lives Matter political protest.”
To the uninformed, Black Lives Matter is an avowed Marxist organization that is bent on destroying America, and is filled with hatred for Jews and Israel.
Yet, at the University of Louisville, the DEI are proud to share their commitment with BLM because “White supremacy and anti-Black views have no room in our classrooms, meetings, conferences and scholarly work.” Thus, the Department of Comparative Humanities at the University supports
Black Lives Matter and the fight against systemic racism, anti-Black oppression, white supremacy, and police brutality. We will seek to increase the number of African American, Indigenous, and immigrant faculty, staff, and students in our department and at the university.”
It is no accident that as universities have become more “woke,” anti-Semitism finds a comfortable haven. In an all too familiar scene “during a student-government meeting, protesters slurred Jewish students with conspiratorial charges that the Israeli military has trained American police how better to kill blacks. Campuses now routinely ignore student antisemitic smears; indeed, universities and colleges are becoming the incubators of progressive hatred of Jews.” At a recent Rutgers webinar, lies about Israel and Jews abounded as Middle East studies professors engaged in unbridled hatred.
Where are the outcries from the diversity, equity, inclusion staff?
Anti-Semitism is now a staple of the woke activism on campuses across the country . In actuality, “campus anti-Semitism… stems from ‘woke’ black activism. ‘Woke’ politics is a radical ideology with roots in a strain of black nationalism that rejected the civil rights movement’s goal to promote racial integration throughout American society.”
More telling is the fact that “[w]okeness’ paranoia of whites is… structured similarly to Jew hatred, priming black nationalists to articulate anti-Semitism as they would anti-whiteness.”
In a nutshell, the Jew is the enemy because of his religion and his skin color. Consequently, “the toxicity of anti-Semitism, reminding us that even among American blacks, a group once allied with Jews in the struggle for civil rights, can manifest behind a veil of ‘woke politics’ and ‘diversity.’ Thus, [r]ace-nationalist demagogues pour contempt on Jews and depict them as a hidden force guiding human events to the misfortune of others.”
It was inevitable that the Left would create yet another avenue to spew their vile beliefs and thus was incubated the diversity, inclusion and equity programs that have not only infiltrated schools but businesses as well.
In fact, the “number of people devoted to DEI efforts has grown to about 45 people at the average university.”
At the University of Michigan, for example, 163 people were identified as having formal responsibility for providing DEI programming and services. At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), there were 13.3 times as many people devoted to promoting DEI as providing services to people with disabilities. At Georgia Tech, there were 3.2 times as many DEI staff people as history professors. At the University of Louisville, the ratio of DEI personnel to history faculty was 2.9. The University of Virginia had 6.5 DEI staff for every 100 professors.
And yet, the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion folks stand mute in the face of bigotry against Jews. It would appear that the DEI programs at universities are merely the handmaidens of racist BLM activists and other radical Leftist proponents.
Eileen can be reached at middlemarch18@gmail.com
Image: Pixabay
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