DEI at Barnard Means Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion of Antisemitism

During my new student orientation, a “DEI professional” engaged in antisemitic apologetics.

(Billie Grace Ward/Wikimedia)

I've cried twice in the past year. The first time was last November, when I listened to a teenage boy eulogize his sister who was murdered by a 16-year-old terrorist outside Jerusalem's Old City. The second time was one month ago, during Barnard orientation, as I witnessed a DEI coordinator justify hate speech, racialize Jews, and downplay antisemitism on Columbia’s campus.

Like many Jewish students, I took a gap year at a religious seminary in Israel. On the morning of October 7, I awoke to the piercing sound of an air raid siren and took refuge in a bomb shelter, unaware of the horrors unfolding just 50 miles south. In the following days, I watched from afar as my future classmates brazenly espoused antisemitic and discriminatory rhetoric.

While many of my peers are still adjusting to the ambient noise of New York City, every revved engine or ambulance siren triggers my fight-or-flight response. Most first-years spend their time thinking about parties and schoolwork. My mind is still consumed by images of incinerated houses in Kibbutz Be’eri and the sounds of artillery blasts.

I was heartened by Barnard President Laura Rosenbury’s convocation address to the Class of 2028. She emphasized Barnard's commitment to safeguarding free speech and explicitly acknowledged both the Israeli hostages and the plight of Palestinian civilians.

Graffiti I found outside Barnard’s convocation. The inverted red triangles are a symbol used by Hamas’s paramilitary wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, to mark Israeli targets. The term “intifada” recalls decades of brutal attacks against Israeli civilians. (Photos and caption courtesy of the author)

My hopes were quickly dashed.

The next morning, I attended my first required diversity, equity, and inclusion session. I expected cliché aphorisms and musings on intersectionality theory. While those were abundant, we were also shepherded through a series of problematic thought exercises. 

The instructor first asked us to raise our hands if we were low-income. She repeated the question for immigrants, first-generation college students, then queer people—identities one might hesitate to disclose, especially during orientation. There are few things more ironic than a “DEI professional” pressuring students to out themselves.

The instructor, who I later learned was a third-party contractor, also led a program on antisemitism and Islamophobia.  It began innocuously, with a straightforward—albeit oversimplified—definition of antisemitism, but soon veered into more insidious territory. 

First, she claimed that non-Jews can experience antisemitism, a term that specifically refers to prejudice toward and discrimination against Jews. 

Second, she asserted that “white Jews” have assimilated into mainstream American society. As an identifiable Orthodox Jew, I found this generalization inaccurate and offensive. While some Jews are white-passing, conflating an ethnoreligious group with a race is a glaring error—especially from a DEI specialist who had just lectured us on the perils of microaggressions. Racializing Jews is a tactic straight out of the Nazi playbook, and when one of my peers confronted her, she apologized for being “unaware” of said history.

Third, despite spending considerable time emphasizing the harm caused by Islamophobia and anti-Palestinianism, she neglected to mention the hundreds of documented antisemitic incidents on Columbia's campus. Hate of any kind should be condemned unequivocally, but when I asked the instructor for her rationale, she conceded that she had deprioritized antisemitism in light of  “time constraints.”

The final blow came when she asked the room if the phrase “from the river to the sea” constituted hate speech. My classmates responded with a resounding "no," and I watched as the faces of my fellow Jewish Barnardians crumpled. She then inquired if we knew the context of the phrase. Before I could retort that it was the rallying cry of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)—an internationally designated terror organization—one of my classmates piped up and informed us that it was a call for “Palestinian liberation.”

The instructor concurred, emphasizing that while the phrase is in a “gray area,” its usage is usually benign. Demanding the establishment of a Palestinian state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea is tantamount to calling for the destruction of the State of Israel and the genocide of its inhabitants. It is unacceptable that a DEI agent, empowered by Barnard, lent credence to the promotion of violence.

Tears welled up in my eyes. I felt the heat of my classmates’ stares and wiped my face, hoping to regain my composure.

But something inside me had shattered. I knew how to cope with war. Witnessing a mass indoctrination session in real-time? That’s a different battle altogether.

I wish I could say that the weeks since have been redeeming. On the first day of classes, I awoke to the clamor of my classmates chanting for an “intifada” mere hours after Columbia's Jewish community memorialized six civilian hostages murdered by Hamas. I walked through Barnard's gates while wearing an Israeli flag and was called a "fucking Zio," an epithet popularized by David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

(Photo courtesy of the author)

Later that week at Columbia's activities fair, a masked individual vandalized Students Supporting Israel's table. Columbia’s chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace also violated their suspension and distributed manifestos glorifying martyrdom and terror.

These anecdotes are but the tip of a proverbial antisemitic iceberg.

The Task Force on Antisemitism’s recent reports on antisemitic harassment at Columbia speak volumes about the need for comprehensive education on the nature of Jew-hatred and its contemporary manifestations. They recommend that Columbia’s orientation programs include “in-depth training on Title VI” and “an improved and more extensive list of resources students can access to learn about religious discrimination and bias,” both absent from the DEI workshop I attended.

I implore President Rosenbury and Barnard’s leadership to take responsibility for these damaging DEI sessions and work with the Task Force on Antisemitism to effectively implement its recommendations. Jewish students deserve better.

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Shoshana Aufzien is a first-year at Barnard College and the Jewish Theological Seminary. 

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