DEI Efforts Must Protect Jewish Students or They’re Going To Fail
Weeks after being congressionally rebuked for failing to protect Jewish students, the University of California Los Angeles faces another instance of blatant antisemitism. Alicia Verdugo, Cultural Affairs Commissioner for UCLA’s Undergraduate Students Association Council, has been accused of discriminatory hiring practices, masking Jew-hatred under the guise of “anti-Zionism.”
This failure isn’t isolated. Last week, a University of Michigan DEI administrator was fired for claiming that Jews “controlled” the university, and that DEI offices shouldn’t help Jews because Jews are “wealthy and privileged and take care of themselves.” Similarly, the National Association of Independent Schools publicly apologized after a diversity conference featured antisemitic rhetoric so extreme that fearful Jewish attendees hid their stars of David.
These incidents highlight a disturbing trend: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) – a framework meant to make campuses safer and more welcoming – is instead being weaponized against Jewish communities. For those of us who see DEI as an ideal worth striving for, this betrayal is not only a failure to protect Jewish students but also a failure of DEI’s foundational principles.
A philosophical foundation of DEI is symbolic racism, the concept that prejudice can take insidious, socially acceptable forms beyond explicit hostility. Symbolic racism cloaks hatred in supposedly neutral language, allowing individuals or institutions to maintain discriminatory behaviors while avoiding labels like “racist.” For example, framing opposition to policies as mere respect for “tradition” can perpetuate systemic inequality without explicit hostility.
Symbolic racism isn’t just an abstract academic concept or a method of policing hidden intentions. By analyzing the real-world effects of policies and practices, corporate DEI initiatives have demonstrated that combatting symbolic racism provides concrete returns, including increased employee satisfaction and performance.
While many on the left have been hypervigilant against symbolic racism on the right, they have failed to apply the same scrutiny to left-wing prejudice – especially Jew-hatred.
Jew-hatred has always been remarkably adaptive to prevailing social, political, or cultural climates. Even the term “antisemitism” was first coined to make Jew-hatred sound like a legitimate political view.
Accordingly, very few modern antisemites explicitly say they hate Jews. Instead, they claim to simply be “anti-Zionist” (despite the overwhelming majority of Jews being Zionists) or regurgitate Soviet propaganda about “colonialism” and “imperialism.” The same people who recognize that Candace Owens doesn’t speak for most black people enthusiastically platform fringe extremists like Neturei Karta or “Jewish Voice for Peace,” thinking this immunizes them from accusations of Jew-hatred. “It’s ok; I have a Jewish friend.”
Even more concerningly, the very same DEI offices who should know better are enabling symbolic racism against Jews either by refusing to condemn it or by actively aiding and abetting it, ignoring antisemitic incidents, downplaying them as “complicated,” or worse, justifying them as merely critiques of Israel or “Zionism.” Both in and beyond higher ed, DEI initiatives have been weaponized against communities they were created to protect. Consequently, some are calling to reform DEI in higher education, while many others are rejecting it wholesale.
Having worked in higher education for nearly a decade, I’ve often defended DEI to skeptics, including friends and family, who dismiss it as “woke virtue signaling.” I’ve recommended resources (my favorite being Dr. Stefanie Johnson’s book “Inclusify“) demonstrating that DEI, when done properly, creates more inclusive and productive environments. Watching DEI offices fail to protect Jewish students, or worse, actively enable antisemitism, has made this defense increasingly and heartbreakingly difficult.
DEI’s critics often dismiss it as ideological control rather than a genuine attempt at positive social change. While some of these arguments are in bad faith, DEI’s failures are hard to ignore. With the incoming administration, the end of DEI is a real possibility.
For DEI to survive, higher ed must confront our failures. That means coming down on any institution tolerating Jew-hatred like the metaphorical ton of bricks. Accountability cannot be optional. Whether firing administrators tolerating Jew-hatred, overhauling DEI standards and training programs to explicitly address antisemitism, or demanding transparency in hiring practices, actions must match rhetoric. Anything less transforms DEI into a hollow set of buzzwords unworthy of public trust. We must live out the ideals we claim to champion.