Abe Foxman led the Anti-Defamation League [ADL] for twenty-five years. During his tenure he relentlessly pushed radical far-left political agendas. Some of the things he is most notorious for is his war against Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ, as well as aggressively downplaying the Ukrainian Holodomor (1932-1933) and the Turkish Genocide of Armenians, Greeks, and other Christians (1915-1923).
Now Foxman has joined with David Harris, a former leader of the World Jewish Congress [WJC] in calling for the dismantling of Diversity Equity and Inclusion [DEI] bureaucracies at Universities.
The current leadership of the ADL and WJC are calling for pro-Jewish reform of DEI policies at Universities. However, Abe Foxman says DEI “cannot be fixed.”
Foxman says that the end result of DEI is, ““bias, illiberalism, reinforced, legitimized and institutionalized antisemitism in many institutions.”
Abe Foxman:
It has built a huge funded bureaucracy which is today difficult to change or amend. Efforts by communal Jewish organizations to include the Jewish community or soften its impact on antisemitism have failed. It cannot be fixed, it needs to be scrapped and replaced by a vigorous implementation of our civil rights laws that are color blind, and apply equally to all. If necessary some civil rights laws can be amended and strengthened. DEI was developed to eliminate bias but sadly it created bias.
David Harris:
DEI has evolved into a mammoth, ideologically-driven presence on many campuses, some of which have literally hundreds of staff working exclusively in this space. Accordingly, I don’t believe that outside efforts, however well-intentioned, that nibble around the edges or simply seek to add Jews to the DEI agenda, address the heart of the problem. DEI today poses a major challenge to liberal understanding of American societal aims, so the goal of rethinking it conceptually is far more urgent than just trying to get along with it.
