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The following column is by Goldwater Senior Constitutionalism Fellow Timothy K. Minella.
“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
Since the murder of 1,200 Israelis in the Hamas attacks of October 7, anti-Israel activists have shouted this slogan during countless demonstrations. Now this loathsome slogan has been put on display at the University of Arizona’s art museum.
If Palestine should extend from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, then it follows that the country that controls much of this territory must be destroyed. This slogan literally calls for wiping Israel—the world’s only Jewish state—off the map.
The sentiment in the piece, which prompted state Senator John Kavanagh to block the university’s request for authorization to issue bonds, in protest, shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. Earlier this year, radical students at UA established an “encampment” in an attempt to force the university to divest from companies doing business in Israel.
Unfortunately, the University of Arizona is only the latest institution of higher education to host anti-Israel and antisemitic outbursts.
In the spring, anti-Israel protestors occupied Columbia University, harassing Jewish students and forcing the cancellation of in-person classes. A swastika was drawn on benches outside of the University of Michigan’s Hillel, the Jewish student organization.
Why have prestigious institutions of higher learning become centers of antisemitism? A chief cause is the ideological crusade known as “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI), which has suffused nearly every aspect of higher education.
DEI cloaks its radical aims in feel-good buzzwords. Who would dare to speak against efforts to make institutions more “diverse” and “inclusive?”
But in reality, DEI promotes hatred and division. The ideology behind DEI teaches that society is a rigged system in which the “oppressors”—white people, men, and/or “cisgender” individuals—use law, culture, and institutions to subjugate the “oppressed”—“minoritized” persons, women, and/or “transgender” individuals. The power of the “oppressors” justifies “resistance” against them to end their position at the top of the social hierarchy.
In the upside-down world of DEI, Jews—a group that has endured the Holocaust and countless acts of repression—become “oppressors” because of their supposed proximity to “whiteness” and Israel’s alleged repression of the Palestinians. DEI thus tolerates “from the river to the sea” because the slogan calls for the “oppressed” to overthrow their “oppressors.”
We shouldn’t be surprised, then, that staff members charged with advancing DEI at universities are overwhelmingly anti-Israel. A study from the Heritage Foundation analyzed the Twitter posts of DEI staff members at 65 universities, finding that 96 percent of their posts about Israel portrayed the Jewish state negatively.
A senior DEI officer at the University of Michigan was recently accused of saying that Jewish students were “wealthy and privileged” and that “Jewish people have no genetic DNA that would connect them to the land of Israel.” The officer also allegedly claimed that Jews didn’t require assistance from the DEI office. (Michigan recently fired this staffer.)
The crusade to make universities more “diverse” and “inclusive” apparently doesn’t include Jews because of their “privilege.” Antisemitism doesn’t contradict the principles of DEI, but rather fulfills them.
To combat campus antisemitism, we must eliminate the DEI scourge from higher education. The Goldwater Institute, where I work, is advancing reforms that prohibit discriminatory and wasteful DEI programs at public universities. The Abolish DEI Bureaucracies reform prevents universities from operating DEI offices. The Freedom from Indoctrination Act prohibits universities from requiring students to take DEI courses that instruct them in the poisonous ideology that has led to an explosion of antisemitism on campus.
Students from all backgrounds deserve access to higher education free from discrimination and harassment. It’s time we take the first step in restoring equality of opportunity to public universities.
Timothy K. Minella is a Senior Fellow at the Goldwater Institute’s Van Sittert Center for Constitutional Advocacy.