Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt rebuked Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) during a Feb. 8 speech at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, directly blaming the leftist ideology for growing anti-Semitism.
Haidt’s attack on DEI came after being asked whether he agreed with proposals to diminish the role of “DEI bureaucrats” that ultimately diverge from the “pursuit of truth and academic integrity.” In response, Haidt declared he agreed with the reduction of DEI influence and pointed out the short road between the race-obsessed ideology and recent outbreaks of anti-Semitism.
“When you teach kids to see in a certain way, and you emphasize identity, the inevitable outcome in terms of anti-Semitism is: ‘Jews are white, Jews are oppressors, it’s okay to kill Jews because that’s just resistance,’” Haidt said, highlighting that some professors have characterized Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel as a mere act of decolonization. “I now think that identitarianism is completely incompatible with the mission of a university. Any organization that embraces identitarianism becomes mired in conflict.”
The legacy media has taken a different approach, both before and after a deluge of campus anti-Semitism followed the brutal Hamas terrorist attack on Oct. 7. CNN host Fareed Zakaria brought on comedian Jon Stewart, who gaslighted CNN’s audience by downplaying DEI initiatives. Within a month of the Hamas terrorist attack, Zakaria tried to deflect blame for campus anti-Semitism from the DEI left onto Christians.
CNN host Sarah Sidner also defended DEI on the air by attacking Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) for his opposition to the ideology. CNBC journalist Jennifer Elias even panicked at the news that some corporations were rolling back their DEI programs.
Haidt is not the first to note the relationship between DEI and anti-Semitism. During the January 2024 European Jewish Association Delegation, X owner Elon Musk spoke to The Daily Wire editor emeritus Ben Shapiro about the “fundamentally anti-Semitic” nature of DEI. Similarly, Shapiro discussed the danger of demonizing people as an “oppressor class” based on their background.
Billionaire hedge-fund manager Bill Ackman has also laid into the discriminatory ideology: “I came to learn that the root cause of antisemitism at Harvard was an ideology that had been promulgated on campus, an oppressor/oppressed framework, that provided the intellectual bulwark behind the protests, helping to generate anti-Israel and anti-Jewish hate speech and harassment.”
Conservatives are under attack. Contact ABC News (818) 460-7477, CBS News (212) 975-3247 and NBC News (212) 664-6192 and demand they report on the dangers of leftist DEI ideology infecting corporate America
