This piece was originally published in the Jewish Journal. See the original publication here - Link.
The blend of antisemitism based on woke culture has taken a significant hit in its overt and institutional dimensions.
The impact of Trump’s measures against “wokeism” is reminiscent of the effect of Israel’s Operation Grim Beepers on Hezbollah. In both cases, these are dramatic and highly effective moves against strategic threats to Israel that have been building up over years - even if they did not completely eliminate the threat or its potential for recovery.
Woke culture has deeply influenced the discourse of minorities in the United States in their (fundamentally justified) fight against discrimination and racism. However, as its influence grew, it became apparent that the movement’s agenda is far more radical, ideological, and ambitious than merely advancing minority rights. The central tenets of the woke movement - “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) - originally intended to correct social discrimination, have been transformed into puritanical goals that must be achieved at any cost.
The result is that woke culture today challenges the political and social fabric of the United States and other Western liberal democracies. For example, the DEI content introduced into American educational systems not only fails to promote the pluralistic education it claims to support, but in practice it advances a dogmatic, superficial, and distorted perspective. DEI’s approach alienates young Americans from their country by portraying the United States as a racist nation born of sin. This viewpoint may help explain the nonchalant reception of American flag burnings by young people on college campuses following Oct. 7.
DEI has led to the complete politicization of universities and the private sector at the expense of meritocracy. Israeli academics have been among the first to suffer from this. Proponents of woke culture act as agents of chaos, openly calling for the defunding of the police - without offering any alternative means for maintaining public order. It has reached the point where woke culture even dismisses basic scientific criteria; even leading journals influenced by this ideology, such as Nature, have begun to subject scientific articles to ideological scrutiny.
Woke culture promotes a superficial worldview that divides the world into oppressors and oppressed based on class and skin color. The implications of labeling Jews as “white” and “privileged” within this discourse manifest in a wide array of overt and covert forms of discrimination. Woke culture enables cooperation between American Islamist organizations ideologically aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood and radical progressive groups - those at the forefront of efforts to promote boycotts of Israel and to effectively erase Jews from the public sphere. Jewish students feel insecure on campuses, fearing verbal and sometimes even physical attacks, and Jewish communities are increasingly experiencing isolation.
Many Jews hide their Jewish identity or their support for Israel. Since Oct. 7, many have felt betrayed by colleagues who either do not understand their plight or choose to ignore it, resulting in their exclusion from public and professional spaces. The pro-Hamas variant of antisemitism undermines the Jewish establishment and even threatens Jewish identity, posing a clear threat to Jewish life in America.
At the heart of American Jewish thought was a longstanding disregard for the significance of labeling Jews as white. Under the shadow of woke discourse, antisemitism has come to be seen by many Americans as a “rich people’s problem” that does not demand urgent action — in some progressive circles, it is even regarded as a necessary part of the internal struggle against racism and discrimination.
Since taking office in January 2025, President Donald Trump has spearheaded an aggressive campaign against DEI initiatives, marking a clear “anti-woke” turn in federal policy. In a rapid series of decisive actions - executed within less than two weeks — his administration issued an executive order that called for the sweeping dismantling of the federal government’s DEI programs. This order mandated that all federal DEI staff be placed on paid leave pending eventual layoffs and required the removal of all DEI-focused web pages from agency sites. In parallel, the administration moved to end affirmative action in federal contracting by revoking legacy orders and eliminated initiatives such as DEI-related training and diversity targets in performance evaluations. Furthermore, Trump directed the Attorney General and other agency leaders to produce a report outlining a strategic enforcement plan targeting DEI practices in the private sector, and revoked 78 previous executive orders related to these initiatives.
Furthermore, Trump established a special task force to combat antisemitism on college campuses, following a report released in December 2024 by the House Education and Labor Committee that exposed American universities’ failures in addressing the phenomenon. In the spirit of the new zeitgeist, Harvard University, for instance, agreed to adopt the definition of antisemitism as set by an international task force commemorating the Holocaust (IHRA); Yale University began using advanced security measures in response to rising antisemitism; at Columbia University, a law school faculty member lost her tenured position after allegedly discriminating against Israeli students; and even the United Nations launched a new program to combat antisemitism.
The blend of antisemitism based on woke culture has taken a significant hit in its overt and institutional dimensions. However, the cluster of ideas underlying woke culture might experience a resurgence, as it has not yet been dislodged from the hearts of its adherents. There is concern that if the future political climate again permits it, the Jewish community and Israel could find themselves, to their detriment, at the center of a sweeping backlash.
Moreover, unlike Operation Grim Beepers - where thousands of Hezbollah fighters were targeted in a focused manner with almost no collateral damage — the actions against woke culture have been total and aggressive. Many within the Jewish communities in the United States are also worried about actual “collateral damage” to the liberal values that form the foundation of Jewish identity in America, such as LGBT rights.
Therefore, the American Jewish community has a historic and important role to play. On the one hand, it must seize this unprecedented opportunity to launch a pincer movement that will prevent the resurgence of left-wing antisemitism even when the political climate changes. The community needs to do so through a response that reflects broad consensus and frames antisemitism as a symptom of a much larger challenge that threatens American values and interests. On the other hand, the Jewish community must serve as a voice of reason, working to preserve and promote the values that underpin American pluralism, and to advance the rights of minorities and vulnerable populations in a “sane” manner. In other words, it must act against the “industry of DEI” while simultaneously upholding diversity, equity, and inclusion as important values.
Comentarios