Dearest Reader,
In January this year I wrote a well received newsletter entitled “The Trial of President Claudine Gay” detailing the seismic takedown of the first Black person and second woman to be president of Harvard University, Claudine Gay. During a now infamous congressional hearing, Gay along with two other women serving as ivy league presidents from MIT and University of Pennsylvania, were skewered by House Republicans on campus safety, primarily regarding Jewish students. The fallout led to Gay’s resignation and that of UPenn president Liz Magill, while MIT’s Sally Kornbluth is still standing. What exactly is going on here, aside from genuine safety concerns? Although it may be hard to see, the GOP and many Pro-Israel Democrats are weaponizing the boogeyman of DEI (framed as lawless, oft incompetent women, African Americans, people of color), to suppress dissent against the status quo of men from the West above all the rest.
As of this week, The Forward and ABC News report that forces are still mobilizing against the MIT president. Kornbluth, who is Jewish, is being targeted by a Jewish alumni group for removal over diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, her handling of antisemitism on campus and pro-Palestinian protests. Additionally, the House Education and Workforce Committee is launching a formal investigation into MIT over antisemitism reports. Also this week 400 Pro-Israel Harvard affiliates signed a letter calling for “significant consequences” to protesters relative to “the alarming escalation of antisemitism.”
Once the war in Gaza kicked off, college campuses became a simmering cauldron of dissent to U.S. foreign policy arming Israel. Even after the preliminary ICJ ruling of ‘plausible genocide’ in January and impending ICC warrants for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes (three Hamas leaders are also facing arrest), American policy has not changed. But certainly in recent weeks college campuses have become ground zero of resistance to Israeli apartheid writ large with antiwar encampments popping up everywhere. Analysis of 553 protests between April 18th and May 3rd nationwide found 97% of the protests and encampments have been peaceful. Although this reality could be hard to tell, based on the frazzled zeitgeist and sensational media coverage that serves media ratings and political agendas more than students or anyone fighting to for justice in this gory conflict.
After the shocking Hamas attacks in Israel on October 7th and the vengeful Israeli counter offensive beginning October 8th, fears, complaints and incidents of prejudice have sharply risen for Jews, Muslims and Arabs. According to recent analysis by the American Jewish Committee, two-thirds of Jews in the U.S. feel less safe than they did a year ago. Antisemitism, defined in this article as hostility to or prejudice against Jewish people, and Islamophobia seem to be surging across the West. Indeed, complaints of anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian discrimination or hate in the U.S. has risen 180% as of January 2024.
With all this in mind, a serious schism at this moment is how some choose to define antisemitism. The definition I offered above is what most of us have understood it to be for centuries, but a newer definition is creating some serious problems. In 2016 Jewish advocacy organization International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), an intergovernmental organization based in Germany, created an expanded definition of antisemitism as the following: “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” This definition from IHRA has eleven examples, which begins with “calling for or justifying the killing of Jews,” as well as, “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” and “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.” By this logic criticizing the Israeli state on almost any legitimate basis of human rights can be construed as antisemitic.
It should also be noted the prominent New York–based international Jewish NGO and advocacy group, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), changed its methodology in data collection on antisemitism after October 7. According to NPR’s extremism correspondent Odette Yousef, “the ADL started to include specific speech expressions in its audit of antisemitism, including certain anti-Zionist phrases and phrases that express support for Hamas. And for extremism researchers, [this] is not traditional.” Indeed, last fall the ADL started using the IHRA definition of antisemitism in its audit. So anytime people site recent ADL data of a mind-boggling 360% rise in antisemitism, one must pause to consider if that comports to reality on the ground. Antisemitism is absolutely on the rise, but fear is a helpful tool that actors like the ADL may wittingly use to galvanize anything from resources to congressional legislation in order to steer public opinion and political allegiance.
As I noted in my newsletter on Claudine Gay, there are certain key players responsible for the anti-DEI push on college campuses. Two critical evangelists for disrupting diversity initiatives are: Conservative journalist, activist Christopher Rufo of the Washington Free Beacon and billionaire Bill Ackman, a Harvard alumni donor who joined and ultimately led the chorus to oust Gay.
Rufo is the so-called mastermind behind the nefarious framing of critical race theory (CRT) causing widespread backlash to addressing systemic inequality in states like Florida. He seemingly came out of nowhere, gaining fame during the 2020 George Floyd protests as a conservative reporter turned activist. But Rufo didn’t come out of nowhere. Before setting fire to CRT, he was a fellow at the conservative think tanks Heritage Foundation and the Claremont Institute. Notably, Claremont is the West Coast home for conservative acolytes of Leo Strauss, a German-Jewish political philosopher with an elitist outlook that some argue favored fascism and certainly had a paternalist view of democratic citizens as sheep to be herded by more refined men.
Rufo also had a fellowship with the Discovery Institute, a think tank opposed to Darwinian evolution that lobbies to teach intelligent design (God as creator over evolution) at public schools. Arguably, he was always on trajectory to become an ideological, insider right-wing activist. After enjoying enormous success misconstruing CRT, villainizing any accountability for systemic racism, Rufo turned to the takedown of DEI. Rufo is the one who cast Gay as a plagiarist and has since opened the flood gates on accusing black academics of similar infractions. Without this shift Gay stays in office and Ackman stays in finance.
Bill Ackman joined the anti-woke bandwagon just recently, to great success. Ackman, a Harvard grad and hedge fund manager worth $4.6 billion, donated several million to the University and feels entitled to dictate the rules of academic freedom like some kind of…dictator? Ackman outlandishly declared DEI as “the root cause of antisemitism at Harvard,” which is preposterous on its face given that DEI centers antiracism. He has since moved on to undermine DEI on other college campuses, calling it anti-capitalist and racist (against white people) plus made a pledge to tackle ‘problems with how our media operates.’ Aside from being disingenuous, the man is a hypocrite. He pushed Claudine Gay to resign on the basis of plagiarism because of relatively benign citation errors and some poorly paraphrased research conclusions (that she voluntarily corrected). Meanwhile his wife, a former MIT professor, was found to have even more egregious plagiarism in her work. Ackman’s wife, Neri Oxman, plagiarized sentences and whole paragraphs from Wikipedia, technical documents and other scholarly sources in numerous instances, including her doctoral dissertation—no serious accountability followed.
In the midst of all this confusion around defining antisemitism and framing DEI as the primordial source of anti-Jewish hate, Congress has begun to codify these distortions into law. Led by the GOP, the House recently passed a bill 320 to 91 called the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act in support of Israel under the pretense of protecting Jewish Americans. This legislation sponsored by the ADL as far back as 2018, follows the IHRA definition of antisemitism, conflating criticism of the state of Israel with prejudice towards Jewish people. Though the Senate has yet to pass the legislation, it’s likely they will. In which case we may end up with a dicey situation where Americans cannot criticize Israeli policy even on the basis of empirical fact vis-à-vis human rights groups, the United Nations, ICJ and ICC conclusions for fear of being smeared at antisemitic or worse.
In fact, this is so concerning the civil rights watchdog American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has put out a statement on the issue and how this bill will ‘chill free speech.’ Also notable is Rep. Jerry Nadler, the most senior Jewish member of the House, proud Zionist and ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, loudly voted against this bill saying, “this bill threatens to chill constitutionally protected speech. Speech that is critical of Israel—alone—does not constitute unlawful discrimination.”
And just last week Rep. Nadler voted against another bill concerning Israel that passed the House 224 to 187. Innocuously titled the Israel Security Assistance Support Act, the bill was introduced by cynical, warmongering, Old Testament-loving Republicans after Biden paused a single arms shipment for the first time in this bloody war. The pause was a flaccid attempt to deter the IDF’s Rafah invasion (which proceeded anyway), currently threatening the lives of over one million displaced Palestinians in Gaza. The bill asserts Israel get whatever weapons they want from any unspent security assistance within 30 days and those who do not accommodate will find themselves in the hot seat, international law be damned—including the President. Again, Rep. Nadler voted against this bill saying, “Unfortunately, the unhelpful measure put on the floor by Republicans today was not a genuine attempt to protect Israel's security, nor to successfully direct offensive weapons to Israel. Rather, it contained several poison pill provisions aimed at causing division within the Democratic Caucus and among supporters of Israel.”
As Congress is having a full on pro-Israeli/MAGA Republican fascistic takeover, Bill Ackman (along with comedian Jerry Seinfeld’s wife, Jessica) expanded his anti-DEI mission to include donations to Israeli counter protesters. A counter protest connected to Ackman’s and Seinfeld’s donation at UCLA, may have directly or indirectly supported a ruthless, violent mob attack by dozens of off-campus adults against students at their peaceful antiwar encampment. The bloody assault lasted for hours before police intervention, leading to rolling consequences including the chancellor facing a congressional committee this week on May 23rd and reshuffling of campus security.
Ackman also made a donation to a University of North Carolina (UNC) fraternity who fought to ‘defend’ the American flag against pro-Palestine students who attempted to raise a Palestinian flag on campus. Within days UNC announced the divestment from ‘divisive’ DEI programs so the the $2.3 million earmarked for that work be redistributed towards ‘public safety.’ It’s hard not to see this as an abrupt redirection of funds leading to layoffs, limited programming and eventual elimination DEI on campus altogether.
So far Ackman has evangelized his mission with modest pushback, but a glimmer of hope emerged this month when he attended a high net worth private event. The 40-person private session, held during the Milken Institute Global Conference, was a meeting with high powered financial executives including some of Wall Street’s most senior executives of color. The cohort urged him to reconsider his position on DEI, warning he could undermine diversity programs across the country. At the very least, this confrontation speaks to an awareness and concern to save diversity initiatives in a period where DEI, affirmative action, and other means of creating equity are under threat.
The key to fully understanding the utility of a DEI boogeyman is the Southern Strategy. In the early 1960s, as backlash to civil rights, Republicans began advocating for a new approach to grow support in the south. The Southern Strategy sought to increase political power among white lawmakers by appealing to racism against African Americans within the white community—and it worked. The South Strategy like all these anti-DEI and less than genuine pro-Israel maneuvers are fundamentally about power and control. Whose experiences matter and whose do not. Ever since the 1960s, the GOP has weaponized race and racism against black people (and POC) in order to consolidate power. The moves to suppress dissent against white entitlement or Israel whether in Congress, on campus, in the workplace, in primary education, in media and so forth, are a weaponization of the Southern Strategy on an unprecedented scale.
By attacking DEI, some allies to Israel or those simply in favor of the status quo can be prejudice without any serious blowback. ‘I’m not racist or sexist, I just don’t support CRT or DEI or affirmative action…or free speech?’ Furthermore, we cannot lose sight of what a liberal college education represents for an informed democratic electorate. Ongoing retaliation against academics and students serves to undermine the value of critical thinking and resistance to oppression by those who seek to consolidate power in our democracy. This is fundamentally undemocratic. Although the game of maintaining white supremacy through gaslighting on DEI is clearer, it remains far from transparent. My hope is that the electorate gets hip before dissent becomes an ever more elusive path to justice.
With Love During End Times,
Agunda