Rebecca Golbert is the Executive Director of the Helen Diller Institute.
President Donald Trump’s executive order that professes to combat antisemitism on university campuses by withholding federal grants for academic, scientific and medical research has woven the fate of Jews into the destruction of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
For the Trump administration, dismantling DEI programs apparently is key to its plan to combat antisemitism. By deeming diversity programs responsible for the resurgence of antisemitism on college campuses, the Trump administration posits the reverse to be true: If DEI is rooted out, antisemitism will miraculously go away.
But until universities can meet the order’s seemingly impossible terms, the Trump administration will pull millions, or even billions, of federal dollars from the fundamental, groundbreaking research that keeps our top institutions at the forefront of academic scholarship and scientific discovery across the world.
No person and no community will come out on top with such dangerous thinking and illogical policies in play.
Jews have done their share of complaining about their exclusion from DEI initiatives on college campuses — and there is some real truth to their arguments of feeling isolated from progressive campus communities.
However, Trump’s attack on DEI in the name of combating antisemitism will only serve to isolate Jews further, severe them from their natural allies on progressive issues and ultimately leave them more vulnerable to attack.
Jews will yet again become the scapegoats.
DEI aims to rectify years of built-in discrimination in the workplace and in education. But as part of its strategy, the Trump administration posits antisemitism as a unique form of discrimination that differs from racism, sexism, xenophobia and homophobia. Hence, the president can demand the dismantling of diversity initiatives in the name of combating antisemitism.
This bizarre framing risks turning everyone against the Jews.
I don’t believe that Trump truly cares about combating antisemitism. He articulates antisemitic ideas whenever it’s politically expedient — blaming the Jews if he loses an election, embracing white supremacy at Charlottesville, using antisemitic tropes of greed and money and trying to make Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy grovel as a Jew would before a king.
Trump has also done away with the very program within the Department of Education (with plans to dismantle the Department of Education as well) that would more seriously investigate antisemitism on college campuses.
I do believe that Trump truly cares about dismantling DEI. By inverting logic, he and his allies claim they will end “forced discrimination” with the eradication of DEI programs. Destroying DEI fits with his ethos that white Christians are the true minority that has experienced overt discrimination. Other than a few Jews in the Trump administration who appear to be doing his bidding, Jews have no part to play in white Christian nationalist narratives.
The Trump administration’s conflation of antisemitism, universities and DEI initiatives into a single political agenda does real harm to people, communities and institutions.
Antisemitism is, indeed, prevalent on university campuses, and university administrations are seeking serious, long-term solutions to the needs of Jews on campus.
DEI leaders have some soul-searching to do and should be thinking about how to address antisemitism and how to add Jewish belonging to their broader mandate to combat discrimination and celebrate diversity. However, dismantling DEI forecloses the possibility of any progress, while ignoring the real need of other communities to be seen and heard.
Jews will find themselves alone, without allies. And in this, the Trump administration may reveal itself to be one of the cruelest regimes the Jews have experienced. Trump may succeed in dividing Jews from the rest of progressive, democratic society, in alienating Jews from the universities that so many have called home and found to be ladders of opportunity, and in separating Jews from one another. The Jewish community could become so splintered that we hardly acknowledge one another.
I hope that we can wake up to reality before these social and political cleavages become irreparable, before it’s too late to restore our shared values and before our universities are cut down at the knees — all in the name of combating antisemitism.