In this episode of “Top Story,” JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin is joined by Commentary magazine senior editor Seth Mandel to discuss the dangers inherent in woke ideologies like the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) mantra that seems to have taken institutions of higher learning, journalism and so much else in America by storm.
Mandel says Jewish groups like the Anti-Defamation League that are still invested in these toxic ideas should take the money they spend on them and devote it to funding more security for the Jewish community, including on college campuses.
Mandel also argues that the notion that Jews could be included in the DEI list of protected minorities is wrong. “It can’t happen,” he says, because Jewish security and DEI are “mutually exclusive.”
DEI, he continues, is part of a distorted worldview in which the Jewish people and their nation-state are labeled as “white” oppressors.
The capture of the institutions by proponents of DEI has led to the mainstreaming of antisemitism and hatred for Israel, Tobin says. However, it is also the key to understanding why “so much of our governing and chattering classes no longer believe in the value of strong America on the world stage or even in the foundational principles of American exceptionalism that made it a unique safe haven for Jews.”
Mandel asserts that the left’s embrace of myths about Jews and Israel being “colonizers” created an “educational structure built around an idea that inherently and unavoidably produces antisemitism.”
“That structure has to be changed if you want the culture on campus to change. You can’t keep having everyone’s favorite celebrity professors teaching them about the Jews being usurpers and then say, why does everybody seem so mad at the Jews all the time on campus?” he says.
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