#8 of 10, Part 2: Why might the idea that “DEI is antisemitic” gain traction among some Jewish Americans?
Part 1 asked: “Where did the idea that DEI is antisemitic come from?”
Photo by Lucas George Wendt on Unsplash
In this 8th installment of my series on DEI, democracy, and schools, I have taken a two-part approach to exploring the question, “Where did the idea that DEI is antisemitic come from?” If you missed Part 1, use this link to better understand the political background of the allegation where I:
Reveal the recent origins of the phrase “DEI is antisemitic” and its links to the Heritage Foundation
Explain Project Esther, which the Heritage Foundation created ostensibly to fight antisemitism, but which actually lays the groundwork for authoritarian rule
In Part 2 below, I will explore the personal impact of this question, and how schools can respond. I will:
Address some of the good faith concerns of individual Jewish families who don’t feel that “white” describes them and why
Recommend how schools can respond in this moment, particularly given the confusing recommendations recently issued by the Anti-Defamation League, guidelines that in themselves silence political dialogue in schools.
#8 of 10, Part 2:
To be sure, DEI is imperfect. It is a practice that grew out of the Civil Rights Movement to create racial equity in schools, which means it has historically focused on race first, though it has since evolved to attend to many different aspects of a person’s identity simultaneously. The term “diversity” used to be a proxy for “race,” back when an ideology of colorblindness dictated how explicit we could be when talking about race in mainstream spaces. Even in the 2000s, the term “white” was rarely heard in racially mixed company. I have found that I was not alone in having been socialized to whisper when talking about race.
The field of diversity moved away from the oppressor/oppressed binary two decades ago
Diversity ideology was more binary in the late ‘90s, partly because race was more binary. In the field of post-colonial studies, it was more common to divide groups into oppressor and oppressed, a framing that originated from the work of Franz Fanon, which helped to elucidate international dynamics created by colonialism. But over the past two decades, the field of diversity work has evolved in the United States, to focus less on the international colonialism that shaped the current moment. It has become more about individual, personal identity; evolving to see all people as carrying multiple intersectional identities, some of which may be oppressed and others which may be privileged.
Here is an example of how this type of intersectional analysis might play out in a diversity training, and why:
A person who identifies as a White lesbian, for example, may experience oppression as a lesbian while experiencing racial privilege as a White person. She may have privilege as a cisgender person, while experiencing oppression for her gender non-conformity. While being White ensures her general safety, particularly with regard to law enforcement, she may regularly experience bullying and rudeness unexplained by other factors besides her unwillingness to conform to feminine norms of gender presentation. The fact that she is working class means that has less privilege and protection than she would have if she was middle class or wealthy. But being White has meant that she has experienced trust and presumed innocence throughout her life.
Why break down the analysis in this way? The practice of seeing all parts of one’s identity alongside the systemic positioning that results from those identities is not meant to punish or rank people. It’s a way to help each of us develop a richer awareness of our own identities within the context of a larger system. When I taught students working towards their masters’ in counseling psychology, for example, it was important for students to think about the intersecting layers of their identities—and to understand how their identities might impact their comfort with certain patients, their easy empathetic connection with some over others. It helped students understand and correct for biases in treatment and in systems. It helped them change automatic behaviors that they might not otherwise be aware of. It is a way of understanding and engaging with the complexity and diversity of human experience.
It is a broad generalization to say that if you’re White you’re privileged and if you’re not White, you’re oppressed. It’s even more crude to suggest that if you’re White you’re an oppressor. Every individual has a complex interconnecting network of identities that impact their power in the broader society. And yet, we live in a highly racialized society in which whether a person is Black or White continues to have a profound effect on a person’s life. We live in a society where Blackness has been denigrated, made inferior, and even criminalized for most of 400 years. We also know that people who are Black, trans, disabled, or LGBTQ experience laws, policies, and systems of enforcement that make life more challenging and often more dangerous for people with those identities.
No individual White person made that happen, which is why calling a person—especially a child—an “oppressor” simply for being White is not pedagogically or politically helpful. Yet DEI tries to help people from mainstream groups understand this history so that they can continue to be in relationship with people whose lives are governed by an unfairness that can be hard to see from the mainstream. DEI tries to help us see this—and tries to help our institutions correct for this historical wrong in which identity has such an outsized impact on a person’s life. This means helping everyone talk honestly and openly about race.
For Jews, race has always been complicated.
European-descended Jews were not seen as White prior to World War II, much like Italians and several other European ethnic groups. But in 1943, several Jewish organizations successfully petitioned the INS to change the policy marking European Jewish immigrants as “Hebrews” and to reclassify them as “White” (Goldstein, 2008, p. 192). Writer Karen Brodkin writes that she could feel this shift from Jewishness being primarily aligned with Blackness to Jewishness being primarily aligned with Whiteness in the 1950s in New York City when she suddenly was supposed to go to the “White” school.
After World War II, when White identity was beginning to coalesce around life in the newly built suburbs, European-descended Jews were increasingly considered White for the purposes of home ownership and mortgage qualifications. People who were considered White at that time were allowed to live, work, and go to school in communities with other White people, where wealth was concentrated. This was a time when Black people could not live in those areas because of redlining, restrictive covenants, and outright racism. Jews who were considered White benefited economically from the racist structure of the United States while Black people (including Black Jews) did not.
As American Jews were admitted into universities, White neighborhoods, White schools, unions, and government structures, they acquired social capital and power that rendered them—as a group—more powerful than they may have individually felt, having faced so many political and economic hurdles simply getting into the US—or living as a minority in their communities. For students born in the last 30 years, these challenges might seem like ancient history, but for their parents and grandparents, it likely feels all too easy to return to that history.
Race is a double-edged sword
As diversity practitioners created programming for students to learn more about the ways that people have been racialized in the US—and how this has impacted them and their families generationally—European-descended Jews have been asked to reckon with this history. But because Jews—even those Jews who spend their lives in predominantly White spaces—don’t always experience themselves as having full membership in Whiteness, it has sometimes been a struggle for some Jewish people to identify with being White. W.E.B. DuBois called this the “double-edged sword” of race—it both gives a person their identity and takes it away. People can identify as they like, but it’s how others perceive them—and the ideas that others have about their group—that determines how they get treated. A person may not identify as White, but if others see them as White it will have a big impact on their life.
This has led to conflict and frustration in some diversity programming when a Jewish person looks White and gets treated as White but experiences their Jewishness as vitally distinctive from other non-Jewish White people. It’s also hard because Jewish identity has been racialized as part of Whiteness, just like Irishness or Italianness. A person may be ethnically Italian, but racially—in the US—they are White.
This could be said—and has been said—about Jewishness too. But Jewishness is not experienced by Jewish people as an ethnicity. It’s a religion, an ethnicity, a culture, and a peoplehood. As an ethnicity, it doesn’t fit into the box of “European ethnic.” In pre-World War II Europe, Jews were rarely granted citizenship of the countries in which they lived. “Jewish” was both their ethnicity and nationality—not that of the country in which they lived.
Jewishness also doesn’t fit into the religion box defined by Christianity because it is not defined by belief or by affiliation with a synagogue. A person may not practice Judaism as a religion, but that doesn’t render them un-Jewish. This way of understanding Jewish identity is widely misunderstood because Christianity forms the template for religious identification in the US. And while many DEI practitioners do understand this, some do not. Just like most non-Jewish professionals, awareness of this history varies greatly from person to person.
Frankly, as a scholar of Whiteness, I can attest that it can be hard for anyone to identify with being White when it is being seen critically as a category that has historically marked one as superior, legal, and legitimate in contrast to those not categorized as White. Being asked to contend with a racial identity that one did not ask for can be challenging, especially when it carries so much negative history. It can be embarrassing and shameful to look closely at how one’s skin color may have created many advantages. Beyond that, many people experience some form of oppression, which is often connected to a part of their identity that is meaningful to them, and one which they want others to recognize. For some Jews, it can be hard to account for one’s privilege that comes from access to Whiteness while also explaining that anti-Jewish oppression affects the experience of being White.
Complicating matters further, the way that young people today understand their Jewishness likely differs greatly from their parents, who differ from their parents. Young people might proudly identify as Jewish but experience different levels of meaning and trauma associated with that identity. After October 7, for example, many parents demanded affinity spaces for Jewish students in schools. But as many DEI practitioners have told me, Jewish students didn’t want those spaces—and rarely did they access them. For better and for worse, Jewish assimilation to American cultural identity has been so thorough that for many young Jews today, their Jewishness does not feel like an oppressed identity that requires additional supports.
That said, because of the much-contended war in Israel, Jewish identity in the US feels like it’s in flux right now, and I could imagine increasing numbers of young Jews seeking judgement free spaces to wrestle with their identity questions. Stereotype threat is heightened. A Jewish affinity space may or may not serve that purpose of granting Jewish students room to explore their identities with nuance and curiosity. I know one student who went to their Jewish club at school, only to be met with outside speakers who insisted that being Jewish meant they should support Israel without condition. For that teen, this was an affront to their values and identity as a Jew. Young Jews today are grappling with being a part of a group—a group associated with a country (Israel) that is very much in the spotlight. Now more than at any point in the last 30 years, young Jews know that whatever their personal beliefs or feelings regarding Israel, they may be seen by others as representative of Israel or responsible for its actions. This association is cemented by the argument that a critique of Israel is an affront to all Jews everywhere.
In my experience in the US, most people who critique Israel do not want to hurt Jews.
And yet for many Jews, it’s hard to hear critiques of Israel without wondering whether someone’s disregard for Jewish safety may underly it. This is a quandary that is tearing apart many school communities. If we define antisemitism one way, it’s everywhere. Parents are telling schools that they believe their children are unsafe because of antisemitism — a concern that often leaves school officials confounded because they are not accustomed to seeing a political critique of another country’s actions conflated with hatred for a group of people in the United States, even one somehow associated with that country. School officials are further confounded by the idea that political critique of a country would translate into hatred for that group in the US; that has not typically been the case with other international conflicts.
The definition of antisemitism we use has an impact on Jewish safety, but not in the way you might think
As schools work to navigate this quagmire, one of the most important things schools can and should do is decide how they define antisemitism. I don’t make this recommendation out of the blue—there are many institutions that don’t have official definitions of specific forms of hate. But proponents of one very specific definition of antisemitism are pushing for its adoption—and individual schools need to know that efforts to do so are not apolitical.
As we’ve seen, many conflicts now hinge on how that one term is defined. Harvard University, under extreme duress from a lawsuit filed by a Jewish alumnus, recently adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism in university wide policy. While Harvard is one of the first schools to codify a definition of antisemitism, it will not be the last.
Just this week, the ADL released “Six Asks for Independent Schools.” I had hoped such a guide might be truly useful, conveying meaningful and actionable steps that schools can take to keep their Jewish students safe. This guide, however, begins with a serious misstep, undermining its otherwise helpful guidance. In the very first ask, it says, “Use the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism when responding to reports/complaints of antisemitic harassment and discrimination in independent schools and to guide administrators and faculty in assessing whether educational programming and curricula has antisemitic content.” This one directive aligns the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) on a key issue with the Heritage Foundation, which has broadly emerged as an opponent of democracy.
Adopting the IHRA definition of antisemitism would be a broad overreach and misstep for any school. The IHRA definition renders any critique of Israel “antisemitic,” making it impossible to enforce without silencing an exchange of views on Israel—a fact often discovered in retrospect as schools try to apply this definition of antisemitism. Even the lead drafter of the IHRA definition of antisemitism, Kenneth Stern, says that the definition has been weaponized. The ADL’s guidance for independent schools neglects to mention that the IHRA definition is not the only definition of antisemitism endorsed by Jewish scholars and leaders, nor that the IHRA’s 'examples of antisemitism' includes some language regarding Israel that is widely contested.
The other prominent definition of antisemitism in the international Jewish community is the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (JDA), which was written in response to the IHRA definition because the framers foresaw that antisemitism would become increasingly impossible to identify if it were always conflated with political views on Israel. The JDA was created and signed by over 150 international scholars of Jewish studies and antisemitism, including several Israelis. The framers are clear that the JDA was created in response to the inadequacies of the IHRA definition; they wanted people to be able to identify antisemitism without conflating it with viewpoints on Israel. The JDA defines antisemitism as: “discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews (or Jewish institutions as Jewish).” (For more details on the debates around the different definitions of antisemitism, see my post here.)
Both definitions are legitimate, both are widely supported by Jewish leaders, and both would keep Jewish students safe in our schools. But one definition (the IHRA) would make it impossible to maintain freedom of expression about critiquing a foreign government, while the other (the JDA definition) would not.
For schools considering the adoption of a definition of antisemitism, it is critical to recognize the ongoing debate within the Jewish community about these very definitions. And as with any term that will invoke punishment or sanction if written into policy, it is critical to examine the potential impact of using one definition over the other to define antisemitism. How will it impact open dialogue and expression? Will students then be able to discuss differing views on international and national politics?
What can schools do?
We need to have open dialogue about Israel and Gaza in ways that allow everyone to say all the things they have to say—and that allow people to listen and hear each other.
Jewish students need spaces to consider the complexities of their own identities and viewpoints without fearing that their words will be weighed too heavily—or too lightly—against the needs of the community as a whole.
Supporters of Palestinians and Gaza should not be automatically branded as terrorists, members of Hamas, or even antisemitic (see part 1 of this post to learn more about how the Heritage Foundation is currently doing just this). Not only is such a leap unhelpful, it results in the further degradation of dialogue and free speech, hallmarks of a democracy that has proven to be a safe place for Jews—and other minority religious group members—to thrive.
Similarly, we need to be able to critique DEI without fearing that it will be made illegal. DEI is imperfect, as is democracy. But both exist to help us do and be better. I would like both a DEI and a democracy in which Jews are safe. And I believe the way to get there is to promote more conversation and exchange—not less. For that reason, I urge schools to continue to evolve and improve the practice of DEI, with awareness of the unique and shifting identities of Jewish students, as well as Palestinian, Arab, Israeli, and Muslim students—not to mention all the other students watching and needing to process what is happening in the Middle East. I encourage schools to continue to think intersectionally—and to continue to depart from binary ways of framing race and oppression. I encourage schools to consider the two definitions of antisemitism—and to consider the long-term implications of either before using them to develop policy or make decisions.
#CourageIsContagious
This week I feature US District Judge William Young, appointed by President Reagan, who on June 16 ordered the Trump administration to restore science and medical grants terminated by the National Institute of Health because they researched outcomes related to race, sexuality, and gender identity. Judge Young said to a Trump lawyer, “You’re bearing down on people of color because of their color. Have we fallen so low?” With this decision, Judge Young gives weight to the idea that the administration’s attacks on research and initiatives related to diversity are not only unethical, but illegal. May his courage empower us all to clarify our own idea of what is ethical in this confusing time.