Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), which originated in the civil-rights movement with the aim of creating a level playing field for minority groups, is something we should all support. The reality of how it has played out over the decades is more complex.
Its intertwining with elements, particularly of post-colonial and Marxist critical theory, has led it into dangerous directions, one of which is toward the promotion of antisemitism. Most saliently, DEI has taken on board, along with its close cousin decolonization, a critique of Western knowledge and Western knowledge creation processes, and it is this that has opened the door to antisemitism, as set out below.
DEI plays its most consequential role in universities, which are the primary driver for the “long march through the institutions” of post-colonial and critical perspectives. But the most important part of the universities in promoting these ideas—their faculties of education—has often been left out of the discussion. The events at Cambridge University and its faculty of education over the summer have put them in the spotlight. It is relevant because it reminds us of their key role through teacher education in influencing the next generation of schoolchildren.
DEI challenges everything about the grounding of democratic societies in rationality. For DEI, the beneficial changes science has brought since the Reformation, the “fruits of Enlightenment,” become suspect. Yet it is this Western rationality that has led to real results for humanity—not only in the hard sciences but across a wide range of fields, such as psychology, economics, and yes, education.
The post-colonial influences within DEI repudiate Western modes of production of knowledge and Western criteria for judging the value and validity of knowledge. But DEI has no other set of criteria to replace them with. This leads to incoherence, with an unstable and unclear set of ideas used to judge the value and truth of knowledge. The validity of knowledge is based on who says something and where they are ranked in an oft-changing hierarchy of the oppressed, with, of course, Jews always at or near the bottom. The ranking is more important than the truth value of what is said and its pragmatic uses to society.
Except—and this is one of DEI’s many incoherencies—when the outcomes of Western knowledge serve to create benefits to the individual.
Most student teachers graduate not even realizing that other worldviews exist.
So, no one stops using their iPhone because Intel has a major R&D presence in Israel. Its incoherence leads DEI to its most fatal flaw: its susceptibility to conspiracy theories. Such susceptibility is not really surprising, as one of the triumphs of the Western scientific method was to demonstrate the regularity and predictability of the natural world, reducing the need to rely on conspiratorial thinking, such as blaming witches for unexplained phenomena.
Antisemitism, and its close corollary, conspiratorial anti-Zionism that demonizes Israel, is a strong feature of both the thinking associated with DEI (particularly in post-colonial theory) and its application in real life. To take one example, consider the failure, in most cases, of DEI offices internationally to respond effectively to the monstrous sexual violence associated with the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, typically either pretending that it had not happened or treating the victims with contempt.
Academia is increasingly dominated by a monoculture of ideas linked to DEI. In the arts, humanities, sociology and, certainly, in education, an attenuated and impoverished set of ideas drawn from postmodernism, Marxism, crude anti-capitalism and critical theory. Most student teachers graduate not even realizing that other worldviews exist.
Educators have a huge influence on the children who grow up to be the society of tomorrow. It could be that some in faculties of education may be more prone to adopting, uncritically, ideas from DEI in their work. This is because education has long been considered a “bastard discipline,” lacking a clear unified set of underlying concepts and largely borrowing from other areas, particularly psychology and sociology.
In the past, education as a discipline also had a tendency to be looked down on by more “prestigious” subjects as the bread and butter of the work of education faculties; the low status and pay of teachers in most societies reflect on those who train them, too. It could be that the (even if unstated) status anxieties of some of those working in faculties of education somehow make them more susceptible to the incoherent and conspiratorial aspects of DEI.
This is perhaps somewhat conjectural, but a number of albeit smaller-scale academic studies, such as by the Association for Jewish Studies in 2022, do suggest that teacher educators do not have the conceptual tools to support student teachers in understanding and combating antisemitism, particularly in the context of conspiratorial anti-Zionism.
There is little doubt, though, about the infiltration internationally of some of the teaching profession itself with anti-Jewish thinking. To take just one of many possible examples, the 2025 Brym Report on antisemitism in Ontario showed not just the deep antisemitism across schools in the province, but, incredibly, that nearly one in six incidents were initiated or approved of by a teacher. It seems almost perverse to suggest that the teacher educators who trained these teachers bear no responsibility at all for this.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. In fact, for many scholars in faculties of education of many different backgrounds, it does not. I know from experience that there are scholars who don’t adhere to the rejection of the foundations of Western knowledge. I also know that despite DEI and all the incoherence it brings, universities and their faculties continue to do excellent scholarship that makes a difference. This includes reducing prejudice, in addition to opening the horizons and opportunities of the marginalized. They can do this without dismissing the fruits of the Enlightenment.
Faculties of education can and do make an enormous contribution to society, and ultimately, to the lives of children. Yet if they are to thrive, they need to take a long, hard look at themselves and think again about their role in the academy; what criteria they use to judge knowledge and knowledge production; and perhaps recognize more explicitly that it’s the quality and rigor of ideas, and how they contribute to the societies that they are part of right now, that count in the work that they do as an academic community.
We should not let the incoherences of DEI and the threats of antisemitism that accompany it endanger the usefulness of that work.
