Fired local DEI director: DEI doesn't just tolerate antisemitism—it encourages it
Behind the Black reports on Dr. Tabia Lee's disputed dismissal from Cupertino's De Anza College, where she briefly served as faculty director for the Office of Equity, Social Justice, and Education. Today—amidst rampant anti-Jewish hate at higher ed institutions—Lee reflects on DEI's dangerous oppressor/oppressed dichotomy, and how the ideology has long supported vilifying Israel/Jewish people.
They’re coming for you next: Tabia Lee, a black woman who was fired as faculty director for the Office of Equity, Social Justice, and Education [OESE] at De Anza College in California has, as promised, refused to go quietly.
As I reported in March, Lee was fired because she took the word “inclusion” literally, trying to establish a color-blind policy that would provide some aid and comfort to the Jewish students on campus who were experiencing almost daily incidents of harassment and bigotry, simply because they were Jewish.
Her reward? She was herself harassed, with some calling her a “dirty Zionist,” then denied tenure, then fired.
Since then she has not gone quietly into that good night. In July Lee suited De Anza College, as well as ten specific school officials, charging the school violated her First Amendment rights, California’s Constitution, and its Common Law in censoring and firing her.
Her name came up again this week because she wrote a blistering op-ed for the New York Post, blasting not only De Anza for its racist DEI policies, but blasting the entire “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” movement as nothing more that a Nazi-like movement promoting bigotry and hate.
At its worst, DEI is built on the unshakable belief that the world is divided into two groups of people: the oppressors and the oppressed. Jews are categorically placed in the oppressor category, while Israel is branded a “genocidal, settler, colonialist state.”
In this worldview, criticizing Israel and the Jewish people is not only acceptable but praiseworthy. (Just as it’s OK to attack America and white people.) If you don’t go after them — or worse, if you defend them — you’re actively abetting racist oppression. I have never encountered a more hostile environment toward the members of any racial, ethnic or religious group.
…[The] outpouring of antisemitic hatred [after Hamas’ attack that tortured and killed more than a thousand people, including women, children, and babies] is the direct result of DEI’s insistence that Jews are oppressors.
Her solution? “Administrators and lawmakers need to get toxic DEI out of higher education.”
This article originally appeared in Behind the Black. Read the whole thing here.
Related:
Berkeley dean: “Never in my life” has antisemitism so pervaded local colleges
Bullying woke Stanford Law students and DEI dean beclown once-proud institution
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