Goodbye, DEI?

Anti-Semitism might be the ideology’s fatal flaw.

“Twenty years ago, when I was a college student, I started writing about a then-nameless, niche ideology that seemed to contradict everything I had been taught since I was a child,” began journalist and independent media darling Bari Weiss in a November 7 entreaty that didn’t get nearly enough attention at the time.

“It is possible I would not have perceived the nature of this ideology — or rather, I would have been able to avoid seeing its true nature — had I not been a Jew,” mused Weiss. “But I was. I am. And in noticing the way I had been written out of the equation, I started to notice that it wasn’t just me, but that the whole system rested on an illusion.”

“What I saw was a worldview that replaced basic ideas of good and evil with a new rubric: the powerless (good) and the powerful (bad),” simplified Weiss. “It replaced lots of things. Colorblindness with race-obsession. Ideas with identity. Debate with denunciation. Persuasion with public shaming. The rule of law with the fury of the mob.”

In “End DEI,” Weiss proposed it simply: “It’s not about diversity, equity, or inclusion. It is about arrogating power to a movement that threatens not just Jews — but America itself.”

This particular missive appeared in the Tablet, though Weiss normally writes for her flagship independent publishing house, The Free Press.

Started by Weiss and her partner Nellie Parker Bowles after the former parted ways with the New York Times in 2020, the Free Press has risen above a myriad of other growing alternative media arbiters to distinguish itself as an outlet dedicated to responsible, nuanced, fact-based reporting.

Matt Taibbi’s Racket News is another such growing concern.

Independent media outlets are where media consumers go to get the “rest of the story,” as Andy Rooney used to call it. From Taibbi, Weiss, and a few notable others, news consumers worldwide can learn a bit about some of the major geopolitical earthquakes and domestic policy kerfuffles mostly avoided by mass media outlets.

Since the October 7th terrorist attack on Israel by the forces of Hamas, and the subsequent wave of anti-Semitism that immediately followed, the Free Press has been a place to get a balanced view of the Israel/Hamas conflict.

Weiss and her team have provided a platform for a variety of viewpoints, from the mother of one of the young women still being held hostage by Hamas to ex-Muslims explaining why anti-Semitism seems to be such a virulent part of radical Islamist ideologies.

In “We Were Taught to Hate Jews,” a group of essayists including some who, like Salman Rushdie, might face death if their real names and whereabouts were revealed, recently explained why anti-Semitism is a cornerstone of some of the most repressive, and regressive, regimes on the planet.

“The following five ex-Muslims grew up in Canada, Europe, and the Middle East, but they were all indoctrinated, they say, with the same views on Jews and Israel,” began the Free Press. “They remember a childhood shot through with antisemitic moments ranging from the mundane (one woman recalls her aunt claiming Jews put cancer in her vegetables at the market) to the deadly (a former extremist went as far as to pick a location in London for a terrorist attack he planned to carry out at 17).”

“These hateful ideas, repeated by their family members, religious leaders, and teachers, are part and parcel of the same animus, they say, that fueled Hamas’s attacks on October 7,” explained the outlet.

That Weiss has began to aim the excesses of DEI is understandable. She is hardly alone.

“DEI Drives Campus Antisemitism,” observed Heather MacDonald for the Wall Street Journal on December 6, 2023, adding that, “Gerrymandering Jews into an ‘oppressed’ class won’t save universities from a malevolent ideology.”

“Tuesday’s House hearing on campus antisemitism ratcheted up the pressure on American universities: counter the anti-Israel vitriol that exploded in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack or risk losing philanthropic and government support,” noted MacDonald. “The leading approach is sure to fail: doubling down on the ideologies and practices that led to the pro-Hamas fever in the first place.”

“The real issue on campuses isn’t antisemitism but the anti-Western ethos that has colonized large swaths of the curriculum,” she wrote. “Elite schools once disdained Jews because they were seen as outsiders to Western civilization. Now they are reviled as that civilization’s very embodiment. Students explain that their hatreds come from what they learn in class — that the West is built on white supremacism and oppression. Israel is cast as the Western settler-colonialist oppressor par excellence.”

In “Woke Antisemitism: How Progressive Ideology Harms Jews,” author David L. Bernstein made equally poignant observations.

Unfortunately, the Israel/Hamas conflict is not likely to end soon.

“In Dueling Remarks, Biden and Netanyahu Spar Over Gaza’s Future,” wrote David S. Cloud, Carrie Keller-Lynn, Summer Said, and Andrew Restuccia for the Wall Street Journal yesterday. “Israel’s prime minister says he won’t allow the Palestinian Authority to take over Gaza.”

Between the lines, Israel has no plans to give up until Hamas is eradicated from Gaza. Who will rule afterward is a matter of some debate. The conflict could get a great deal uglier as well. Strangely, the more brutal the behavior of Hamas, the harder Hamas sympathizers in the U.S. and around the world rally for their side.

“A Hamas spokesman suggested Sunday that the terror organization could kill all of the presumed 137 hostages in its custody if Israel does not accede to its demands,” reported Joel B. Pollak for Breitbart on December 10.

“It is not clear if Hamas would deliver on that threat,” he noted. “The hostages are the only leverage that Hamas has over Israel, and it uses them as human shields. The Hamas leaders in exile — in luxurious accommodation in Doha, Qatar — would also likely keep the hostages alive to ensure that Israel negotiates with them, rather than killing them (as it has promised to do, eventually).”

And while the conflict waxes on, anti-Semitism in the U.S. continues to rise shockingly. As this happens, more and more academics, journalists, political analysts, and others — Jewish and non-Jewish — alike will come to consider the downsides of DEI.

“People were to be given authority in this new order not in recognition of their gifts, hard work, accomplishments, or contributions to society, but in inverse proportion to the disadvantages their group had suffered, as defined by radical ideologues,” noted Bari Weiss. “According to them, as Jamie Kirchick concisely put it in these pages: ‘Muslim > gay, Black > female, and everybody > the Jews.’”

“I was an undergraduate back then, but you didn’t need a Ph.D. to see where this could go,” predicted Weiss. “And so I watched, in horror, sounding alarms as loudly as I could. I was told by most Jewish leaders that, yes, it wasn’t great, but not to be so hysterical. Campuses were always hotbeds of radicalism, they said. This ideology, they promised, would surely dissipate as young people made their way in the world.”

“It did not,” as Weiss and others have concluded.

This new strain of anti-Semitism doesn’t seem to be waning; if anything, it is gathering in intensity.

Perhaps Weiss is right: Anti-Semitism threatens more than the safety of Jewish Americans. It may threaten everything Americans hold dear — now and in the future.

(contributing writer, Brooke Bell)