The ideology of “social justice,” encompassing both critical race theory, extreme gender theory, and queer theory, has become the main administrative tool of universities, as well as of academic professional organizations, funding agencies, professional colleges, and all government or quasi-government agencies, including K12 education, school boards, and teachers’ unions. This ideology is based on the Marxist class conflict theory, but substituting race, sex, and sexuality for the economic classes of bourgeois capitalists and proletariat workers. What is retained is the basic distinction between oppressors and victims.
“Social justice” ideology is applied through the policies of “diversity, equity, inclusion” (DEI), as imposed by Prime Minister Trudeau in Canada and by President Biden in the U.S.
- “Diversity” means people with different skin colors, different sexes, and different sexual preferences, but not diversity of opinion, which is forbidden. Not all skin colors, not all sexes, and not all sexual preferences are welcome; only those who fall into the category of “oppressed” are welcome. Those who do not fall into the category are partially or entirely excluded.
- “Equity” means everyone has the same results and rewards, irrespective of their performance in the work. Equality of opportunity is replaced by equality of result. Merit is disregarded because it is assumed that all people are equally capable; any differences that show up are assumed to be due to prejudice and discrimination.
- “Inclusion” means that everyone must be “comfortable,” meaning they should never hear any word that makes them feel excluded or uncomfortable. No words, ideas, or gestures should ever be offensive to anyone of the victim class. Members of the “oppressor” class are believed to deserve and need to hear derogatory comments.
What DEI means in practice is that in our universities, the preferred categories of people are BIPOC (black, indigenous, people of color), females, and LGBTQ2S++). The unpreferred categories of people are whites, males, and heterosexuals. This is seen by “social justice” activists as compensating oppressed people for their suffering and punishing the oppressors for their allegedly evil ways. In other words, reverse racism, reverse sexism, and sexuality discrimination are regarded by the Trudeau Liberal Government and our universities as “social justice.”
In Canadian universities, “social justice,” as currently applied, means preferred admittance of minority students and female students, preferred hiring of female and minority professors, staff, and administration, and preferred funding and awards for members of the oppressed category. Whether grades are allocated on the basis of skin color, sex, and sexuality is as yet only suspected. But whites and males are vanishingly few on Canadian university campuses. This discrimination is in spite of the fact that “oppressor” whites make up the majority of the U.S., and there is an even larger majority in Canada. Males make up half of the population in both countries.
But if excluding the majority of the population were not enough, some minorities are viewed as enemies and excluded for the offense of being high achievers. Asians are labeled “white adjacent,” and Jews are labelled “hyper white.” (Historically, Jews were never classed as “white.” Only when being white became a bad thing were Jews so labeled.) Remember, those who perform at a higher academic, economic, and political level than others are deemed by “social justice” theory to have done so by discrimination against “marginalized and underserved” minorities.
Jews are, however, double offenders. Their national liberation movement, Zionism, and their homeland in their place of origin, Israel, are regarded as imperialistic and racist by university Marxists and race activists, as well as by Palestinians and other Arabs and Muslims. The theory was that Israelis are white Europeans and that they are oppressing Palestinian people of color. (This is the North American race-conflict model imposed on the Middle East.)
This racial phantasy ignored most of the facts. While many Israeli Jews immigrated from Europe and Russia as refugees, half of Israeli Jews immigrated from Middle Eastern countries where they were native Arabic speakers, deported by force when Israel was founded. This does not even consider the Ethiopian and Indian Israeli Jews. Furthermore, Arabs do not consider themselves people of color. Arabs have a long history of slave raiding in Africa and despise Africans as slaves. In Western countries, including the U.S., Middle Easterners were classified as Caucasians until recently.
With the “social justice” preference for “oppressed” minorities as students, professors, and administrators, Jews are increasingly excluded. Elite universities, where high-achieving Jewish students and professors had been prevalent, with their presence far higher than their miniscule percentage of the population, have seen a precipitous decline in the number of Jews. There’s also been a fierce resistance to large numbers of meritorious Asian students.
But Asians could at least claim to be people of color. Whereas, Jews of the diaspora are identified as white oppressors, and, as well, having a white oppressor home country. Furthermore, the majority of North American Jews support Zionism to one degree or another, seeing it as the Jewish national liberation movement and seeing Israel as their last refuge of safety.
Canadian and American Palestinian students, other Canadian and American Arab and Muslim students and professors, as well as Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim visiting students, have actively vilified Israel for decades. They championed the “boycott, divest, and sanction” Israel movement, lobbying for university student councils and university administrations to adopt policies to punish Israel. They have organized the widespread “Israel Apartheid Week,” spreading the demonstrable falsehood that Israeli Arab citizens are discriminated against.
The anti-Israel campaign is supported by other Canadian and American students, particularly far-left progressives, socialists, and communists, who imagine that Israelis are “colonial settlers” who have stolen the land of Palestinians, an inappropriate model derived from Lenin. Together, these groups form the “Red-Green Alliance” of far-leftists and Islamic supremacists. Canadian universities have large representations of this alliance, with the addition of sympathetic and activist professors from the 90% or so of professors who are far-leftists. Many courses now strongly reflect the views of this alliance.
Many student groups have supported BDS and Israel Apartheid Week, but not too many university administrations have adopted them as university policy. Student newspapers have also tended to be supportive of the Red-Green Alliance. For example, the McGill Daily student newspaper has published article after article condemning and denouncing Israel but, as a matter of policy, will not allow any article defending or supporting Israel to be published.
The Alliance has not publicly or explicitly criticized or demeaned Jews; they claim to be opposed only to the Zionists. (Although “diversity” officers are known to be highly antisemitic.) But the great majority of North American Jews do support Israel, and range from implicit to explicit to activist Zionists. Some have volunteered to serve in the Israeli Defense Force, and some have made Aliyah, migration to Israel.
October 7, 2023, was a turning point. Gazan jihadi terrorist organizations, Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, plus many civilians, invaded southwestern Israel and murdered more than 1,100 Israelis. The jihadis killed them in the most barbaric fashions: they cut their heads off; they tied fathers, mothers, and children together and burned them alive; the put babies in ovens; and they gang raped girls and women to death. They also took 200 hostages. The Gazans videotaped all of this and celebrated their great achievement—as did the Gazans who remained in Gaza.
This event was marked in North America by some university students and professors celebrating this great victory of “the resistance.” This was followed quickly, before any Israeli retaliatory strikes, with condemnation of Israel, anti-Israel demonstrations, and eventually unauthorized or illegal tent encampments at universities. Vandalism and building occupations were repeated from campus to campus and continue as I write in 2025. (Hezbollah, in Lebanon, immediately began shooting rockets into Israeli communities.) At some universities, Jewish students were blamed and harassed. At others, Jewish students and professors were blocked from entering. After all, “social justice” ideology told university communities that Jews were “white oppressors,” just like Israel.
Our universities, so protective of the delicate feelings of females, BIPOC, and LGBTQ2S++, do not seem to mind Jews being subjected to calls for the genocide of Jews (an objective listed in the Hamas Founding Charter), as in “From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free [of Jews],” and “Globalize the intifada,” which means violent attacks on Jews all around the world. Nor do they seem to mind Jewish students not having access to the education that the universities promised.
Antisemitism is back in a big way, reminiscent of the antisemitism and pogroms of the past. In the early 20th century, there were severe restrictions on the number of Jews admitted to McGill, Harvard, and other universities. Now, Jews are unpreferred as students and professors. The post-Holocaust period of civility is over. “Never again” is here again.
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