The Subcommittee on Antisemitism and Anti-Israel Bias of the Jewish Advisory Committee at Stanford University issued a 128 page report on May 31, 2024.  The 12 members–faculty, staff, graduate and undergraduate students, an alumnus, and two rabbis–deserve high praise for their work.

The Subcommittee presented a surprisingly bold recommendation in a section titled Rethinking Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.  It challenged one of Stanford’s most important objectives underpinning its academic mission:  Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.  

Stanford’s commitment to Diversity began decades ago, more recently morphing into DEI, the acronym for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.  DEI programs have focused on, and continue to emphasize, the recruitment of BIPOC  (Black, Indigenous, People Of Color) faculty and staff, and the enrollment of BIPOC undergraduate, graduate, and post-doc students.  DEI programs culminated in IDEAL, Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity in a Learning Environment, which provided new slots to increase BIPOC programs on campus.  The number of DEI faculty and administrators at Stanford increased from 80 in 2021 to 177 in 2024.  The University has established departments, centers, institutes, and degree programs in every racial and ethnic category on campus.

In Rethinking Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, the Subcommittee writes: 

In the longer-term, we make a different recommendation.  We believe that this identity-driven approach to belonging and inclusion is anathema to the University’s educational mission, and that it ultimately works to the detriment of the very groups it seeks to aid.  Among other things, these DEI programs tend to propagate oversimplified histories and promulgate ideologies about social justice without subjecting them to the critical inquiry that is a core aspect of a university education.  

In other words, the Subcommittee has been charged with how to counter antisemitism and anti-Israel bias within a fundamentally flawed system, and thus has been unwittingly tasked with recommending how to fix the very system that has failed our Jewish and Israel community members, among many others.  In that spirit we offer the radical proposal of moving from DEI programs as presently constituted to a pluralist framework that benefits individuals from all backgrounds…  (pp. 106-07)

To summarize, DEI is a fundamentally flawed system, anathema to the University’s educational mission, and has failed the Jewish community on campus.

Apart from the writings of several scholars at the Hoover Institution who have criticized DEI, the Subcommittee report is the first serious internal challenge to Stanford’s DEI policy.

The Subcommittee’s report  will be filed in the Stanford Archives and largely forgotten.  But it’s a start, however small, in recommending corrective action.

 

Alvin Rabushka is the David and Joan Traitel Senior Fellow, Emeritus at the Hoover Institution.