End DEI

Bari Weiss

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.

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. 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). 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.

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. 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. 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.

Over the past two decades, I saw this inverting worldview swallow all of the crucial sense-making institutions of American life. It started with the universities. Then it moved on to cultural institutions—including some I knew well, like The New York Times—as well as every major museum, philanthropy, and media company. Then on to our medical schools and our law schools. It’s taken root at nearly every major corporation. It’s inside our high schools and even our elementary schools. The takeover is so comprehensive that it’s now almost hard to notice it—because it is everywhere.

Including in the Jewish community.

Some of the most important Jewish communal organizations transformed themselves in order to prop up this ideology. Or at the very least, they contorted themselves to signal that they could be good allies in the fight for equal rights—even as those rights are no longer presumed inalienable or equal, and are handed out rather than protected.

For Jews, there are obvious and glaring dangers in a worldview that measures fairness by equality of outcome rather than opportunity. If underrepresentation is the inevitable outcome of systemic bias, then overrepresentation—and Jews are 2% of the American population—suggests not talent or hard work, but unearned privilege. This conspiratorial conclusion is not that far removed from the hateful portrait of a small group of Jews divvying up the ill-gotten spoils of an exploited world.

It isn’t only Jews who suffer from the suggestion that merit and excellence are dirty words. It is strivers of every race, ethnicity, and class. That is why Asian American success, for example, is suspicious. The percentages are off. The scores are too high. From whom did you steal all that success?

Of course this new ideology doesn’t come right out and say all that. It doesn’t even like to be named. Some call it wokeness or anti-racism or progressivism or safetyism or critical social justice or identity-Marxism. But whatever term you use, what’s clear is that it has gained power in a conceptual instrument called “diversity, equity and inclusion,” or DEI.

In theory, all three of these words represent noble causes. They are in fact all causes to which American Jews in particular have long been devoted, both individually and collectively. But in reality, these words are now metaphors for an ideological movement bent on recategorizing every American not as an individual, but as an avatar of an identity group, his or her behavior prejudged accordingly, setting all of us up in a kind of zero-sum game.

We have been seeing for several years now the damage this ideology has done: DEI, and its cadres of enforcers, undermine the central missions of the institutions that adopt it. But nothing has made the dangers of DEI more clear than what’s happening these days on our college campuses—the places where our future leaders are nurtured.

It is there that professors are compelled to pledge fidelity to DEI in order to get hired, promoted, or tenured. (For more on this, please read John Sailer’s Free Press piece: "How DEI Is Supplanting Truth as the Mission of American Universities.”) And it is there that the hideousness of this worldview has been on full display over the past few weeks: We see students and professors, immersed not in facts, knowledge, and history, but in a dehumanizing ideology that has led them to celebrate or justify terrorism.

Jews, who understand that being made in the image of God bestows inviolate sanctity on every human life, must not stand by as that principle, so central to the promise of this country and its hard won freedoms, is erased.

For Jews, there are obvious and glaring dangers in a worldview that measures fairness by equality of outcome rather than opportunity.

What we must do is reverse this.

The answer is not for the Jewish community to plead its cause before the intersectional coalition, or beg for a higher ranking in the new ladder of victimhood. That is a losing strategy—not just for Jewish dignity, but for the values we hold as Jews and as Americans.

The Jewish commitment to justice—and the American Jewish community’s powerful and historic opposition to racism—is a source of tremendous pride. That should never waver. Nor should our commitment to stand by our friends, especially when they need our support as we now need theirs.

But “DEI” is not about the words it uses as camouflage. DEI is about arrogating power.

And the movement that is gathering all this power does not like America or liberalism. It does not believe that America is a good country—at least no better than China or Iran. It calls itself progressive, but it does not believe in progress; it is explicitly anti-growth. It claims to promote “equity,” but its answer to the challenge of teaching math or reading to disadvantaged children is to eliminate math and reading tests. It demonizes hard work, merit, family, and the dignity of the individual.

An ideology that pathologizes these fundamental human virtues is one that seeks to undermine what makes America exceptional.

It is time to end DEI for good. No more standing by as people are encouraged to segregate themselves. No more forced declarations that you will prioritize identity over excellence. No more compelled speech. No more going along with little lies for the sake of being polite.

The Jewish people have outlived every single regime and ideology that has sought our elimination. We will persist, one way or another. But DEI is undermining America, and that for which it stands—including the principles that have made it a place of unparalleled opportunity, safety, and freedom for so many. Fighting it is the least we owe this country.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/end-dei-bari-weiss-jews

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A media giant tried to diversify its staff - white workers sued

After more than 20 years of working for his hometown newspaper, the Democrat and Chronicle in Rochester, New York, Steve Bradley was laid off amid pandemic-induced cost-cutting in May 2020. He was crushed, but he eventually took a communications job for a local school district.

Then, two years later, he received a startling message.

Sitting in the bleachers at the school softball field in July 2022, Bradley took a phone call from an unknown number. He listened as J. Nelson Thomas, an employment lawyer he had never met, presented a jarring claim: Bradley was laid off because he is white.

Now, Bradley is one of five named plaintiffs in a proposed class-action lawsuit that claims the country’s largest newspaper publisher “discriminated against non-minorities” to achieve diversity goals. Filed in August in Virginia federal court, the suit alleges that Gannett fired white employees, denied them opportunities for advancement and replaced them with less-qualified minority candidates as the company sought to diversify its workforce.

The case is among the first to test the legality of corporate diversity practices in the wake of a June Supreme Court ruling that struck down affirmative action in college admissions. That decision has sparked a wave of litigation aimed at racial considerations in the workplace, including claims that corporate efforts to increase diversity have disadvantaged white employees.

For Bradley, 56, the decision to pursue legal action wasn’t easy. He had always thought it was good that Gannett was working to boost diversity. But he also “wanted to be judged” based on his work and the work of his team, he said, not his race.

“Somebody needed to stand up to them,” Bradley said in an interview. To know “that the decision was made because of how I look? I’m not okay with that”.

In a statement, Gannett declined to discuss the lawsuit but said it “always seeks to recruit and retain the most qualified individuals for all roles within the company”.

“We will vigorously defend our practice of ensuring equal opportunities for all our valued employees against this meritless lawsuit,” Polly Grunfeld Sack, Gannett’s chief legal counsel, said in an email.

Private employers have been barred for decades from making employment decisions based on race. Long-standing legal precedent has allowed companies to take targeted, temporary steps to mitigate historic racial inequalities in their workforces.

But the recent ruling on university admissions suggests that it’s “no longer appropriate to be looking at someone’s race for the benefit of diversity,” said Devon Westhill, president and general counsel at the Centre for Equal Opportunity, a conservative think tank.

While the vast majority of Americans are in favour of equal opportunity, “the way in which it’s practiced really is divisive,” Westhill said. “It foments resentment.”

In recent years, claims of race-based discrimination by white workers have made up only about 11 percent of charges submitted for review by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, according to data obtained by The Washington Post. But now many legal experts expect those numbers to soar. Westhill said race-based employee affinity groups, fellowships and grant programs exclusively for minorities are especially likely to face legal challenges, as are company policies that tie executive compensation to diversity targets.

Those targets are intended to promote racial and gender equity, which remains a struggle in corporate America. Women and people of colour hold less than 14 percent of C-suite roles across Fortune 500 and S&P 500 companies, according to data from executive search firm Crist Kolder Associates. Last year, American women earned 82 cents for every dollar earned by white men - a gap that worsens for women of colour, according to data from Pew Research Centre.

Leon Prieto, a professor of management at Clayton State University, said discrimination claims from white people often fail to acknowledge “the historical context” of workplace discrimination. “Historically speaking, many corporate cultures have been rooted in biases that favour Americans of European descent over others,” Prieto said. “This has been well-documented.”

Indeed, the earliest efforts to tackle racial disparities in the workforce began in the 1960s and ’70s, when companies used racial quotas to combat those biases in hiring, Prieto said. Such quotas were later deemed unconstitutional; Prieto said some companies still overly emphasise racial diversity among new hires instead of taking the more modern view that “DEI [diversity equity inclusion] is not just about hiring ethnic minorities, it’s about embracing all talent”.

“A myopic focus on quotas doesn’t really address inclusion efforts,” Prieto said.

In the wake of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of Minneapolis police in May 2020, Gannett was among scores of corporate giants that made sweeping commitments to increase workforce diversity.

The media juggernaut, which owns several hundred daily and weekly newspapers across the country in addition to its flagship publication, USA Today, repeatedly expressed aims to “reach racial and gender parity with the diversity of our nation,” according to the lawsuit. Along with other goals, the company set a target of increasing the number of people of colour in leadership positions by 30 percent by 2025.

https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/a-media-giant-tried-to-diversify-its-staff-white-workers-sued-20231108-p5eicq.html

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Elites Are Confounded by Populist Sentiment

American populism’s rise is directly connected to the failures of our self-styled elites. American elites have in numerous instances missed the coming of important crises, some of which they have caused. Average Americans have borne the brunt of these crises. Today’s populist rise is simply the people’s recognition of the elites’ hypocrisy and culpability in what they have had to endure.

In less than a generation, America has undergone a series of important crises across virtually every aspect of life.

Just fifteen years ago, the nation’s finances collapsed; the economic system teetered precariously. The collapse wiped out families—foreclosing houses, businesses, and opportunities. The recovery was long and painful; many folks never did. (READ MORE from J.T. Young: Democrats Begin Scapegoating Biden)

There is a division between elite and populous. It is one that elites seek: after all, without their separation from the populous, they could not be an elite.

Not long after, America’s very health was threatened; our health care system teetered precariously. The threat appeared existential; many died. Virtually all were affected to some degree. The recovery is still ongoing.

COVID’s crisis spawned a governmental one. Local, state, and federal governments all ran amuck, assuming unheard of power and inflicting onerous — frequently contradictory, often harmful — mandates that affected people from home to school to business and all points in between.

Yet amidst government assuming unheard of power over average citizens’ lives, government seemed willing to relinquish control elsewhere. So busy imposing itself on normal citizens, it shifted focus from its normal functions. Policing, education, even the border — all were seemingly abandoned by government. The result was a social crisis — a catastrophic situation that continues to escalate.

Now, in the wake of Hamas’s unmasked evil in Israel, America finds itself confronting not only a horror abroad, but a homegrown one here: moral collapse in many of our supposedly elite institutions. Despite claiming to be places of higher learning, many college campuses appear to lack basic human decency in their unwillingness to distinguish between innocent victims and premeditated terrorism: an inability to distinguish between right and wrong.

Repeatedly during the financial crisis, Americans heard our elites exonerate themselves with “no one saw this coming.” Essentially the same excuse was trotted out for COVID: they neither saw it coming nor knew what to do when it arrived. When their pronouncements finally came, they were often wrong (recall the on-again/off-again/now-on-again of masking). Amidst the social crisis of border chaos and urban chaos, the elite again seem befuddled as to what is happening and why — spectators baffled by the obvious.

Yet even in these crises, elite fingerprints were discernible. In the financial crisis, they promoted the policies that led to it, and created and invested in the financial instruments that metastasized it. In the COVID crisis, so-called experts were involved in the gain-of-function research that increasingly appears to have been at the heart of the outbreak. The social crises America faces are not natural disasters; they are the result of elites’ conscious decisions to stand down law enforcement throughout society.

When government overreached during COVID, elites were falling over themselves for the power to impose their policies. What began with shutdowns became shout-downs of any and all who disagreed with them — even experts offering contrary data and conclusions that could have saved lives.

In the moral crisis on many American college campuses, elites are not simply witnessing and housing it in their midst; they are the moral crisis. Ideas that once went cloaked under hoods and sheets now preen publicly beneath caps and gowns. Instead of educated and educating elites, some of America’s top institutions appear to be matriculating a group of educated fools.

In each of these successive crises, it has been America’s populous — not its elites — that have suffered the worst. During the financial crisis, it was the populous who lost houses and savings: there were no bailouts. In COVID and government’s responding overreach, it was among the populous that small businesses were closed and children barred from public schools. In the social crisis of open borders and unsafe streets, it is the populous that pays the price of elites’ virtue signaling. And in the moral crisis, it is the elites’ colleges that get a pass on their moral bankruptcy.

There is a division between elite and populous. It is one that elites seek: after all, without their separation from the populous, they could not be an elite.

Our elites have succeeded in separation like never before. They are more connected, more single-minded in thought, more desirous of imposing their thought, and more able to do so — through media, culture, and government. Never have the rules between Thee and Me diverged more completely and clearly. (READ MORE: Biden’s Upside-Down Economy)

The only ones who do not see these incongruities are the elites themselves — because to them they are natural and desirable. Instead, they are surprised that from the people they have repeatedly victimized has come populism: a people’s response to what the elites have done and continue to do.

https://spectator.org/elites-confounded-by-populist-sentiment/

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Deadly coloniser: Iran’s tentacles threaten the free world

Despite the barbaric Hamas massacres on 7 October, extremist Muslims, the far left and the mainstream media predictably rallied to attack Israel. Although Jews have been indigenous to the land for more than 3,000 years, these groups brand Israeli Jews as non-indigenous colonisers. Such accusations turn a blind eye to Iran; a belligerent, imperialist coloniser with antisemitic, genocidal intent.

Iran’s patronage of its proxy Hamas led to the latest conflagration in the volatile Middle East, exposing the Islamic Republic’s radical Shia ideology that threatens Israel, Sunni Gulf Arabs and beyond. Yet Iran’s malign extra-territorial warfare has attracted little general attention.

In contrast, the egregious human rights violations within Iran’s authoritarian theocracy are well known, although executions of gay men and minors, or imprisonment of women for ‘bad hijab’, have not mobilised the left or feminists. During waves of unrest, protesters were killed, injured and arrested by ‘morality police’.

Recently increased surveillance and punishments for hijab transgressions are consistent with the hard-line views of current President Ebrahim Raisi, known as ‘The Butcher of Tehran,’ for his part in the mass executions of Iranian political prisoners during 1988.

Iran’s leadership applauded the vicious torture and murder on 7 October, and its fingerprints can be seen in the training, weapons and finance for Hamas in Gaza – about US$100 million annually with additional funding for its sister militia, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).

Hamas, PIJ and many Palestinian Arabs have been infected with antisemitic ideology from two sources. First, the wartime Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who collaborated with Hitler. Second, the antisemitic Soviet propaganda that inspired current Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to write his thesis on Holocaust denial while studying at the Patrice Lumumba People’s Friendship University in Moscow.

Little wonder that Hamas ideology incorporates an extermination jihad against Jews and Israel in addition to creating a global caliphate. These goals align with the ideology of Isis jihadis, who tried to secure a worldwide caliphate. With similar aims, Iran deploys the radicalised Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), sworn to Iranian expansionism and an ‘ideological mission of jihad’ to export the theocracy’s Shia revolution globally. Any attempts at reform or Westernisation are rejected in the drive to create a greater ‘Islamic civilisation’.

As part of Iran’s agenda of Holocaust denial, the regime has held international Holocaust cartoon contests and a conference with neo-Nazi participants.

Hamas is a minor example of the multiple, armed, Iran-backed proxy militias based in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Gaza, Yemen and Bahrain that form a string of conquests for their hegemonic patron. The largest militia, Lebanese-based Hezbollah, receives about US$700 million annually from Iran, and boasts a greater army than Lebanon itself, with drones and more than 130,000 surface-to-surface precision-guided and unguided rockets. Hezbollah was part of a coalition that won the 2018 Lebanese election, gaining a majority of seats in parliament and markedly increasing Iran’s regional expansion. During the Syrian civil war, the paramilitary fought for President Bashar al-Assad’s survival. Together with Iran-supported militias in Syria and a line of credit from Iran, al-Assad’s dependence on the Islamic Republic was ensured. At the same time, Iran began to colonise Syria by transferring Shia Muslims from Iraq and Lebanon to areas abandoned by Syrian refugees.

Unlike Hamas, Hezbollah has a global footprint, perpetrating suicide attacks and bomb plots in Europe, the UK, Africa, Turkey, the Middle East, Pakistan, Thailand, Indonesia and the US. The militia also has deep roots throughout Latin America, and is reportedly involved with drug cartels and money laundering.

In Iraq, several Iran-backed militias or Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMFs) together with allied political parties are bent on imposing a Shiite state and preventing the emergence of secular parliamentary democracy. Exploiting their advantage in the International Zone, Iran-sponsored PMFs have attacked the US and British embassies in Iraq, and two years ago bombed then prime minister, Mustafa al-Khadimi’s residence while he slept.

When the PMFs fought together with the coalition to destroy Isis, they were accused of committing such sadistic atrocities there was little difference between PMFs and Isis.

Another proxy militia, Yemen’s Iranian-allied Houthis, have fired deadly drones and missiles on Saudi Arabia and the UAE, causing massive worldwide disruption of oil supplies after the attack on Saudi Aramco oil facilities.

Training of Iran’s proxies is coordinated by the IRGC and its extraterritorial arm, the Quds Force (IRGC-QF). Comprising ground, aviation and naval troops, the IRGC, which reports directly to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, protects Iran’s missile program and nuclear facilities, and controls a significant portion of the economy.

The US has designated as terrorist groups the IRGC and IRGC-QF, as well as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Iran-backed PMFs. But the Biden administration’s perceived weakness associated with the humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan, inadequate response to escalating IRGC-QF maritime attacks, and appeasement of Iran during nuclear deal negotiations, has energised terror groups. Crucially, billions of dollars became available for the IRGC-QF because the US chose to ignore the Islamic Republic’s sanctions evasions.

As a regional and global threat, Iran tests the will and moral compass of the West. Simply placating Iran’s proxies won’t succeed. Israel tried to deal with Hamas by improving life in Gaza, where unemployment was nearly 50 per cent. They believed economic progress, stability, goodwill and growing social contacts would tame Hamas after Israel opened its gates to about 20,000 Gazans workers. Unfortunately, Hamas remained true to its foundational charter and patron’s ideology.

Gulf Arab states such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain fear Iran and seek peace and stability, but believe it prudent to form closer ties with their old adversary Qatar, a state-sponsor of Hamas that blamed Israel for the massacre and harbours Hamas rulers in Doha.

With the force of a tsunami, moral coherence was quick to drown after 7 October, and a shocking reversal of roles washed up when large demonstrations of Islamists and the far left blamed the victim for the genocidal terror, hatred and bestial impulses of the aggressor.

Nevertheless, the free world is waking up to the danger of an aggressive, colonialist Iran and its brutal jihadi proxies dotting the globe.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/11/deadly-coloniser/

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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