Morning Wire XX
[0] With the ongoing war in Gaza, controversy over pro -Hamas demonstrations and anti -Jewish bigotry on college campuses has intensified, raising questions about the root of the radical movement in academia.
[1] In this episode of Morning Wire, we get some insight on that from a former diversity, equity, and inclusion director who was let go from her position, in part, she claims, due to her efforts to root out anti -Semitism on her campus.
[2] Thanks for waking up with us.
[3] It's November 26th, and this is a...
[4] the Sunday edition of Morning Wire.
[5] Joining us is Dr. Tabia Lee, senior fellow with Do No Harm Medicine.
[6] Dr. Lee, thanks so much for coming on today.
[7] Thank you.
[8] So in a recent opinion piece, you talked about how most people have been shocked by some of the anti -Semitism they've seen on college campuses.
[9] But for you, it actually wasn't that surprising in light of your experience in your role as DEI director for De Anza College in Silicon Valley.
[10] You wrote in an op -ed that you had seen this pattern of anti -Semitism long before the Hamas attacks.
[11] What did it look like on campus in your experience?
[12] Yes.
[13] You know, I have been an educator my whole life, and I had never seen a deeply entrenched anti -Semitism until I became involved in the California Community College system.
[14] And I want to stress that this is not something that, you know, is unique to De Anza College.
[15] It's throughout the system, and it's because of some of the ideologies that are in place.
[16] But how did that look?
[17] Right when I first started off, I did over 60 hours of needs assessment conversations.
[18] And I spoke with faculty, staff, as senior administrators, senior leadership.
[19] And over and over, it was mentioned that De Anza has a problem with anti -Semitism.
[20] And things were cited like flyers being dropped on the campus, anti -Semitic flyers with, you know, negative tropes about Jewish people.
[21] a couple of years before I came.
[22] Some people told me about how students had been invited to a Hanukkah event on campus, Jewish students.
[23] And when they arrived, there was no menorah, there was no mention of Hanukkah.
[24] There was nothing there besides Students for Justice for Palestine banners and posters and people wearing pins that stated students for Justice for Palestine and Free Palestine.
[25] I mean, the students were made to feel very uncomfortable because of that.
[26] Right.
[27] Another thing I was told about, again, this was before I arrived, but people told me that our Jewish student union had brought forth a resolution to the student government to adopt the IRA definition of anti -Semitism.
[28] And instead, their efforts were subverted in a counter resolution was brought forth from a group of students who were not Jewish.
[29] And then not only that, they ended up not even adopting, you know, a definition of anti -Semitism, but instead condemning Israel for its actions that they perceived were, you know, hurting the Palestinian state.
[30] And so all of these things were things people told me about that, you know, were kind of the context that I was coming into as I did my initial needs assessment conversations.
[31] And then I got to see it firsthand, you know, after those needs assessment conversations, we had this group called.
[32] the Equity Action Council.
[33] And they would meet every week, biweekly, rather, and they were supposed to help to make the campus a more equitable place.
[34] Now, in my understanding of equity, that means fairness.
[35] But I came to discover they had a very different understanding of equity and also of action because they took very little action as well.
[36] But we had student representatives from our local hellel who came and said, you know, hey, we're concerned about our Jewish students on campus.
[37] and we notice you all have a website where you say you stand against racism.
[38] We've made requests before, you know, could you please just put a statement up there?
[39] We see you have Black Lives Matter.
[40] We see that you have Stop AAPI hate.
[41] You know, given that anti -Semitism is on the rise, would you update the website to put that you, you know, stand as a campus against anti -Semitism?
[42] And they also gave us other recommendations to help make the environment more welcoming and inclusive of Jewish students, faculty, and staff.
[43] And the reaction from my staff and my supervising dean, when we took those recommendations back to talk about them, was shocking to me. I was told that it wasn't important for us to look at those recommendations that the website would absolutely not be updated.
[44] I said, well, you know, why not just put a statement on the website saying, you know, we stand against anti -Semitism?
[45] Why not just, you know, that's performative.
[46] You're not even having to do anything.
[47] That's a simple requirement.
[48] request.
[49] And they said that we absolutely won't.
[50] What we have is sufficient.
[51] You know, we're not going to focus on that.
[52] And basically the idea was expressed to me that, you know, Jewish people are white oppressors and that, you know, our focus was supposed to be on, quote, decentering whiteness is what they called it.
[53] And they wouldn't listen to anything that, you know, I had to say countering that that was rooted in historical fact or, you know, information about the diversity of the Jewish diaspora.
[54] They didn't want to hear any of that.
[55] So that's just some of the high.
[56] highlights.
[57] Wow.
[58] So it sounds like there were people blowing the whistle from the administrative level and maybe from the student level as well saying that there was some anti -Semitism, but there was also this deeply baked in bias against Jewish students or Jewish people.
[59] It sounds like in your department specifically, where was it that you saw the most pushback?
[60] So the bodies and organizations that were involved in some of the things I talked to you about were governance bodies.
[61] Student government.
[62] The Academic Senate, which is faculty representation, you know, my office, which was the Office of Equity, Social Justice, and Multicultural Education, and, of course, that Dean of Equity and Engagement, who ultimately made many of the decisions not to act and actually to oppose my acting about these things.
[63] And as I work to unpack it and understand it, that's where this whole idea that I've been really trying to teach people about at a broader level of understanding critical social justice, because it's not just at Diazza.
[64] as I mentioned, many other California community colleges and public and private universities throughout the nation, I've learned, you know, since my story broke and people have been hearing about it.
[65] And how long had you been in the DEI space?
[66] And did you see it transform over the course of your career?
[67] Yes.
[68] So my entire life, I've been working in the education field.
[69] And truly, I did not encounter this kind of understanding of social justice until I got to the California Community College space.
[70] I had been working in private Catholic universities and the capacity as an adjunct professor.
[71] But in those spaces, the type of social justice that have been, you know, worked on for hundreds of years through some of these institutions was a classical social justice approach.
[72] And it really aligned with my values and who I was as a person and a teacher, you know, and how I had taught my middle schoolers when I taught civics and social studies at English and in East Los Angeles public middle schools.
[73] You know, I never told any of my students that, you know, they were victims or that they were oppressed or, you know, that there was a power matrix and they were born into a certain section of it and the intersections of their different oppressions and privileges, you know, would kind of chart the way their life is.
[74] That's what a critical social justice approach does.
[75] Instead, I taught my students, you know, you can be anything, You can work with your community to enact positive change.
[76] You have agency as a human.
[77] You have free will.
[78] That's a classical social justice approach to teaching and learning and focusing, you know, on the individual and communities and equality of opportunity.
[79] Those are all like things that I had seen in the educational spaces, public and private that I had worked in.
[80] And, you know, prior to 2020, when I first got into the California Community College space as a teacher, That's when I started to see this critical social justice approach.
[81] And as I started to try to work to understand and define, you know, what does social justice mean to us?
[82] What does equity mean to us?
[83] As I heard the competing definitions on the campus from the individual teachers and faculty members there, I realized that some people were like me working from a classical perspective.
[84] And there were others who were far more vocal, mean -spirited, and actually making policy changes and so forth, who were on this critical social justice.
[85] you know, into the poll.
[86] It's very polarized.
[87] And I was shut out and my tenure review process was subverted by, you know, people who in writing, you know, would put down that I offended their ideological perspective.
[88] It was all about ideologies and I shouldn't be talking about controversial topics and so forth in the write -ups that I received.
[89] So that brings me to my next question.
[90] You were ultimately let go from your DEI director position.
[91] Did any of your colleagues stand with you during that time?
[92] Yes, and this is unfortunate.
[93] So the environment that a critical social justice, when it dominates a institution, what you see is a silencing, a shaming, and a shunning of anyone who steps out a line, who asks a question, who says, hey, is that really the thing we should do?
[94] Or, you know, oh, I just have some questions that I want to know, the clarification, you know, about why we're going to make this resolution towards racial healing and not include Jewish people and other people, for example.
[95] That was one of the discussions at the end with the Academic Senate.
[96] And there were a few courageous people who stood by me and who did work with me. We had a Heritage Month work group that was campus -wide.
[97] We made a lot of positive changes.
[98] That was actually supported by our student government.
[99] They made a resolution saying our work was important and needed.
[100] And then the academic Senate said, you know, this sounds like all the Jewish stuff you've been doing.
[101] So we're not going to support it.
[102] That was actually stated.
[103] And so the people that did stand by me and who did, you know, work with me, one of them was later accused of being racist.
[104] This person had been with the district for almost 40 years as a part -timer.
[105] So that's why they were able to let this person go.
[106] They were accused of being racist for writing their dean long emails.
[107] And it's, you know, just completely ridiculous, but careers destroyed and no longer able to work.
[108] And so they resort to these personal attacks, which are really damaging and hurtful.
[109] And in some cases, when they're able to join together and do a mass action like they were with me, they can eventually be successful.
[110] It's almost like gangs.
[111] They're like gangsters, not teachers.
[112] It's like a turf that they're protecting.
[113] And, you know, if you offend one of their bosses, you will be neutralized.
[114] Now, last question.
[115] I know many conservative -leaning people tend to be very wary of DEI, just for the reasons that you've outlined.
[116] In your experience, are your liberal colleagues also beginning to be wary of it, or is there still a pretty stark political divide there?
[117] Something that I've noticed is that the ideological extremes, like the extremes on the left and the right, and I'm neither, they are looking more and more like each other every day and more than they would even care to recognize and they need to really see themselves.
[118] I've seen on the left and on the right, just extreme intolerance for viewpoint diversity, intolerance for academic freedom, for freedom of speech.
[119] And it's on these both extremes, the far left and the far right.
[120] And that's who's ripping us all apart.
[121] When I see what's happening in our college campuses where we see faculty members encouraging students and students encouraging each other to celebrate the actions of a terrorist organization, Hamas, and there's celebrations.
[122] They're not protests.
[123] They're saying things like from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.
[124] And one of them I saw, students were saying, gas the Jews.
[125] All of these things are hateful and they're wrong.
[126] And it's rooted in this critical social justice ideology.
[127] And that's a danger for all of us, whether you're on the left or the right.
[128] And it's sickening to me. I've seen student groups who are far right groups and far left groups doing these activities.
[129] And soon those groups will be marching with each other and united in their anti -Semitism.
[130] These things need to be rooted out of our schools.
[131] All right.
[132] Well, Tabia, well said, thank you so much for coming on.
[133] That was Dr. Tabia Lee, senior fellow with Do No Harm Medicine.
[134] You can find more of her work at www.
[135] at www .doctort .le .com.
[136] This has been a Sunday episode of Morning Wire.