Why did so many Jewish organizations buy into the DEI scam?

“Equity” ought to mean making sure that every person from every group has equal opportunity has a fair shake, but in DEI practice means that institutions must ensure that every social identity group achieves equal outcomes.

“Inclusion” ought to mean creating an environment where differences are welcomed and respected, but in DEI practice means accommodating the grievances of specific groups and paying short shrift to others.

In fact, DEI programs often have little to do with the words behind its initials but instead impart a distinct political program to its participants about power, privilege and disparity.

Many DEI programs map out identities on a “Wheel of Privilege,” assigning each identity either “privilege” or “oppressed.” In this simplistic formulation, black people and women, among others, are coded “oppressed” and white people and men are coded “privileged.” Such dogmatic practices condition young people to see Jews and other minorities, such as Asian and Hindu Americans, as oppressors even if the DEI practitioners, under pressure from Jewish organizations, pay lip service to the dangers of antisemitism and other forms of hate.

Many DEI programs establish racial affinity groups that divide up students by race and ethnicity whereby white students are told that they’re complicit in a white supremacist order and must therefore support allies in marginalized communities in tearing down the oppressive system, and whereby minority students are told that they’re oppressed by the system and must resist the current social order. Such exercises are deeply polarizing, fuel mass resentment and hurt the very people they’re supposedly trying to help.

Some DEI programs even insist that social norms like promptness, objectivity and perfectionism are “white supremacy” values, a view actively promoted by the country’s largest teachers’ union the National Education Association. Imagine the impact that such madness has on impressionable young minds and especially on disadvantaged minority kids who need to embrace the tools to succeed in our society and economy.

How are Jewish institutions responding to this approach? 

The current policy of many mainstream Jewish institutions is “reform, don’t abolish” DEI. By “reform,” Jewish organizations generally mean insinuating the Jewish narrative and experience with antisemitism into the DEI framework so that Jews are viewed as a protected group and not as part of the oppressive white establishment.

Adam Neufeld, Chief Impact Officer at the ADL, stated “One of our core asks for all colleges is that DEI policies and training include antisemitism—both classic forms and more contemporary Israel forms of antisemitism.”

Some adherents to what we call the “Integration Approach” argue that including Jews—a category-defying, historically-oppressed but high median-income minority–will force the DEI powers that be to reconsider the overly simplistic oppressed-oppressor narrative. This strikes us as wishful thinking, as we see no evidence that DEI + Jews is dropping its dogmatic entrails.

Other Jewish groups have adopted what we call the “Separate Track Approach,” which is to largely ignore the current DEI structure, no matter how flawed, under the theory that the current DEI framework cannot do justice to Jews and antisemitism. These groups instead push for separate training about Jews and antisemitism. Sara Coodin, Director of Academic Affairs for the American Jewish Committee, stated “It’s (DEI) not a lens that was ever constructed with the Jewish community, our history, our needs in mind, so we are seeing now what those shortcomings yield.”

In ignoring coercive DEI programs, however, the adherents of the Separate Track Approach fail to challenge the very source of the antisemitism problem—an oppressor-oppressed ideology that inevitably labels Jews as oppressors.

The sad truth is that the professionals running DEI programs rarely see Jews as deserving of protection and safety. A recent antisemitism workshop at the University of Pittsburgh held by the OEDI (Pitt DEI office), for example, was disrupted by five masked individuals who passed out literature attempting to discredit the Jewish workshop facilitators for their support for Israel. “At least five representatives from the OEDI stood in the back of the room throughout this short interchange, remaining completely silent,” stated a participant.

It’s hard to imagine that if protestors had intruded on a training about another DEI-designated marginalized community the diversity officers in the room would have stood idly by. In this framework, as British comedian and writer David Baddiel pointed out, “Jews don’t count.”

Both approaches–integrating Jews into radical DEI programs or creating a separate track for Jews–perpetuate the underlying conditions—the oppressed-oppressor mindset—that foster antisemitism.

While Jewish organizations say that they want to “reform not abolish” DEI, what they generally don’t mean by “reform” is attempting to change DEI programs so that they no longer embrace the oppressed-oppressor ideology.

We suggest that Jewish organizations rethink what they mean by “reform.” In her essay in the Washington Post, the African American political philosopher at Harvard, Danielle Allen, explains how a pluralistic vision of DEI went off the rails at Harvard. In 2018, she was one of three co-chairs of Harvard’s Presidential Task Force on Inclusion and Belonging. Critical of divisive DEI programs, Allen said that the task force “grounded the work in a broad commitment to pluralism. We wanted a diversity of views on campus, and we recognized that the sources of diversity are myriad. We cared as much about viewpoint and religion as any other source of diversity.” Allen’s approach was rooted in the first principles of true equality and the aims of the 1960s civil rights movement.

However, the Task Force’s recommendations were ultimately ignored. “The 2020 murder of George Floyd and intense surge of anti-racism work that followed it,” she explained, “led to the adoption of vocabularies and frameworks that made it difficult for a forward-looking pluralism to make headway … the racial reckoning of 2020 lost sight of that core goal of a culture of mutual respect with human dignity at the center. A shaming culture was embraced instead.”

Allen proposed a genuine reform of the DEI framework that would have placed viewpoint diversity at the center of the college’s DEI program, an addition that would automatically mitigate against embracing a highly illiberal, singular perspective on racism so common in these initiatives. Allen, however, lost her battle at Harvard, leaving the standard ideology-infused approach in place. And we all witnessed the impact on Jewish and Israeli students and faculty due to the loss of that battle.

What remains in most universities and K-12 settings is a highly illiberal form of DEI—one that invariably marginalizes and often demonizes Jews. The National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, the association for university DEI practitioners, states that “an anti-racism framework serves as a conceptual tool to examine the institutional and systemic practices necessary to confront systemic racism.” The Association claims to know the precise nature of the problem as well as the solutions for overcoming it. The Association’s resources don’t even pretend to uphold viewpoint diversity.

The recent disquieting New York Times expose of DEI run amok at the University of Michigan shows just how bloated DEI bureaucracies can ruin the entire culture of an institution. Michigan reportedly spends 250 Million dollars a year on its DEI program. Today, DEI constitutes a $9 billion a year industry in the US. The DEI consultancies that drive these programs have trained and enlisted true believers in the ideology.

Extracting the oppressed-oppressor ideology from DEI programs goes against the grain of current practice, and the people who make their living doing it aren’t going down without a fight. But it’s a fight Jewish leaders must have and win to secure the safety and thriving of Jews in our institutions.

Before Jewish groups work within or even ignore a particular DEI practice, they should at the very least do a deep dive and ask whether the DEI framework inculcates young people into a radical ideology that fuels antisemitism. And when they encounter the radical forms of DEI so common in education settings, they should truly attempt to reform them or oppose them altogether. Only then can they pursue a form of diversity that advances a more fair, just and inclusive society.

David Bernstein is the founder and CEO of the North American Values Institute (NAVI).

Phil Siegel is a serial for-profit and non-profit entrepreneur, private equity investor and philanthropist out of Austin, Texas.