Should antisemitism be included in diversity, equity and inclusion training at universities? Are Jews an oppressed minority or a highly successful ethnic group?
These questions were being asked long before the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre, the subsequent war, the spike in antisemitism and the pro-Palestinian student protests, but the debate has intensified since.
Now it’s coming to a head in the Legislature with AB 2925, which would require DEI programs in the California State University and California Community College systems to add antisemitism awareness training. (The University of California system could also be covered if the Board of Regents gives its stamp of approval.)
AB 2925 was introduced in response to post-Oct. 7 tensions on campuses by Assemblymember Laura Friedman. Assemblymember Josh Lowenthal later signed on as her co-sponsor. Both represent districts in Southern California.
The work of college DEI offices includes creating anti-bias training for faculty and staff and supporting underrepresented minority students and faculty.
Friedman discovered that the offices weren’t prepared to work with Jewish students dealing with antisemitism.
“We had reports that students had reached out to their DEI programs at school to talk about their concerns” and found that the “people who were handling these programs had never really been trained in antisemitism and didn’t understand what the concerns were,” Friedman said.
The bill would require trainings to address discrimination against the five most-targeted groups in California, as determined by hate crimes statistics from the state Attorney General’s Office. In the most recent report, from 2022, the five groups were, in order, Black, gay male, Hispanic, Jewish and Asian. The 189 anti-Jewish hate crimes, though, outpaced any other religious group, even though Jews comprise a tiny percentage of the state population, an estimated 3%.
“I think it’s unfortunate that this bill is needed,” Friedman said. “It was shocking to me that antisemitism is not routinely included in DEI programs, that Jews are not seen as being a marginalized or discriminated against group, when we know that so many hate crimes are committed against Jews.”
DEI as a movement grew out of efforts to address racial discrimination and can be traced to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination based on race or national origin, and Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 prohibits discrimination based on sex. Jewish, Arab Muslim and Sikh students became separately protected only in 2004 under both Title VI and Title IX, though Jews of color were included in the earlier protections.
DEI offices at campuses began to burgeon after a 2003 Supreme Court case that affirmed the constitutionality of race-based college admissions, and DEI programs have since become common at businesses and nonprofits. (Last year, the Supreme Court ended race-based college admissions, with mixed effects so far on college DEI programs.)
The concern that DEI programs aren’t taking antisemitism seriously isn’t limited to lawmakers. According to a December report in Jewish Insider, former Anti-Defamation League national director Abe Foxman said DEI is “based on a faulty premise — that racism is a function of oppressed and oppressors [and] that all white people are oppressors and all people of color [are] oppressed.”
Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, co-founder of the campus antisemitism watchdog Amcha Initiative and a lecturer who teaches Hebrew at UC Santa Cruz, critiqued DEI in a 2023 article for the Jewish journal Sapir.
She said that DEI college offices don’t include antisemitism because they view Jews as part of the white oppressor class rather than as a discriminated minority and that they fail to understand what the State of Israel means to American Jewish identity.
Since Oct. 7, the clamor has only grown. DEI programs have been increasingly in the crosshairs after testimony by university presidents on how they are handling post-Oct. 7 tensions on campus drew ire from alumni and donors. And DEI has long been a target of right-wing politicians who harshly criticize race-centric initiatives as biased.
Not everyone agrees with those criticisms. Many who have followed the rise in antisemitism see the value of DEI.
About a month after the war began, former ADL vice president Stacy Burdett testified before the Republican-led House Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development, which has held multiple hearings related to university and public school antisemitism. Burdett spent almost a quarter-century at the ADL.
There’s a big difference in how Jews see themselves and how people see Jews.
She told the subcommittee that antisemitism on campus had “reached shocking levels” and addressed the ways that universities have — or have not — met the moment. But she also expressed her support for DEI.
“The fact that some DEI work should be more expansive, the fact that Jews may not fit neatly into the protected categories, shouldn’t be an excuse to burn down the house,” Burdett said. “Jews have always advocated for laws, policies and programs that protect Jews and all people.”
Jenny Small, associate director of Brandeis University’s Jewish education center, agrees that DEI has an important role to play on campus. But complicating the debate about including antisemitism is the discrepancy in how Jewish people view themselves and how they are perceived by others, she said.
“Many Jews see themselves as an oppressed minority” that has suffered persecution going back thousands of years. But “in the U.S., Jews are positioned as a group of power,” she said. “There’s a big difference in how Jews see themselves and how people see Jews.”
Those clashing perceptions make it more challenging to slot antisemitism awareness training into DEI. “Antisemitism is really tricky to fit in there, because it doesn’t operate in some of the same structured ways as racism plays out in America,” Small said.
Marc Dollinger, a San Francisco State University professor of history and chair of the Jewish studies program, said his views have changed since Oct. 7 about whether antisemitism awareness should be part of DEI training.
“A year ago, I opposed it,” he said. “Now I support it.”
Because DEI initiatives are focused on supporting underrepresented minorities, Dollinger said he never thought about the need for the same kind of support for white Jews, who do not face the same barriers.
“Today … oh my God, campus antisemitism is the lead national story for months,” he said. “We’ve got encampments, we’ve got police, we’ve got resignations of university presidents. I mean, this is unprecedented.”
Problems at S.F. State go back years, he said, with a long history of strife around antisemitism, much of it documented by J.
“We didn’t need Oct. 7 to know that Jews on this campus needed the extra support,” he said.
At the same time, Dollinger said the DEI response to antisemitism is robust at S.F. State, which has established formal ways to make complaints and has preexisting cooperation between administration and Jewish staff on understanding anti-Jewish bias.
“Things are not happening here without the right group of people getting word quickly, and then getting to give their feedback and perspective quickly,” he said.
At UC Berkeley, the administration institutionalized antisemitism awareness training in 2019.
A group of Jewish professors helped design a standalone program that explores the history of antisemitism and covers the racial elements of antisemitism, tropes like the blood libel and why Jews are often labeled as traitors.
Ethan Katz, a professor of history and director of Cal’s Center for Jewish Studies, was part of the group. He said the trainings had a “significant impact in the awareness of campus leadership at various levels in the aftermath of Oct. 7.”
If AB 2925 becomes law, other publicly funded colleges and universities might look to UC Berkeley as a template and model to incorporate antisemitism awareness into DEI.
“There’s no silver bullet,” Katz said. “We do think, in the end, education is fundamental to moving the needle.”
The California Legislative Jewish Caucus, of which Friedman and Lowenthal are members, flagged AB 2925 as one of its four top legislative priorities of 2024. The bill unanimously passed the Assembly on May 21 and headed to the state Senate with strong bipartisan support, Friedman said.