By David Bernstein, Forward—
This June, two Jewish mental health providers at Stanford University alleged they were the targets of anti-Jewish harassment. Ron Albucher, a prominent psychiatrist and Sheila Levin, a clinical social worker, have filed a legal complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on June 15. The complaint alleges that Stanford University’s Counseling & Psychological Services’ Diversity, Equity and Inclusion program became a hostile environment for Jews. The treatment they experienced, the complaint holds, violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The complaint is a case study in the dangers of Critical Social Justice (CJL), a theoretical approach that asserts oppression is embedded in society’s systems and structures and that only the victims of oppression have the lived experience, insight and moral authority to define such oppression for the rest of society.
CSJ can be particularly hard to decipher because it cloaks its core ideology in the language of justice and equity. Who wants — or dares — to oppose such ideals?
But while CSJ purports to highlight existing racism in society, it sets up a false oppressed-oppressor binary that is used by some to portray Jews and other minorities as oppressors. The ideology thus becomes a source of oppression itself.
Antisemitic incidents within academia, I’m sorry to say, will keep occurring as long as the ideology that enables them goes unchecked.
According to the complaint, the CAPS DEI program has promulgated invidious notions of Jewish power, conspiracy and control, relying on “racial and ethnic stereotyping and scapegoating by describing all Jews as white or white-passing and therefore complicit in anti-Black racism.”
“Everybody started attacking ,” Levin recalled of a DEI meeting when Albucher had refused to read the assigned book, “White Fragility.” Continue Reading….
