“Unexpectedly.”
David Bernstein, Nicole Levitt, and Daniel Newman write at Quillette (paragraphs broken up for readability):
In 2019, the Counseling & Psychological Services (CAPS) division of Stanford University’s Student Affairs department launched a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) training program with a mandate to instruct students about institutional racism. Instead, the program provided a case study of how radicalized forms of social-justice indoctrination can fuel antisemitism.Earlier this year, Dr Ron Albucher, a Stanford psychiatrist and a former CAPS director, along with his colleague Sheila Levin, an eating-disorder specialist in the same department, filed complaints with federal and state civil-rights agencies regarding what they alleged to be “severe and persistent anti-Jewish harassment.” “Unfortunately, what we found was that the very program meant to help build an inclusive environment for all members of the Stanford community was, in fact, perpetrating the invidious discrimination it sought to eliminate,” wrote the complainants in an open letter published by the Stanford Daily last month.The dialog-based seminars organized by CAPS were primarily aimed at addressing racial injustice suffered by individuals classified under broad categories, including black, indigenous, and people of color. The organizers used these categories to break participants up into racially segregated “affinity groups.” Albucher and Levin were assigned to the group designated under the label “whiteness accountability.” In the sessions, the pair alleges, seminar committee members “maligned and marginalized Jews by castigating them as powerful and privileged perpetrators who contribute to systemic racism.” Meanwhile, seminar moderators “intentionally overlooked antisemitic incidents” happening on campus.. . . . While this marginalization of Jews is not intentional, Kaufman argues, it does flow directly from the unsettling idea that the world can be categorized in binary fashion, between oppressed non-whites and white oppressors. The corollary is that specific forms of bigotry directed against Jews qua Jews should not be called out. . . . Critical Social Justice presents as the antidote to bigotry. But in the increasingly radical form now taking root on campuses, it has become the proverbial cure that’s worse than the disease. And so while we applaud those progressives who call out the specifically antisemitic—and more generally anti-liberal—elements of CSJ, it has now become clear that it is the ideology as a whole that must be rejected.
A fascinating (and worrying) read, be sure to read the whole thing.
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