NYC Public Schools Think DEI Can Fix Antisemitism. It Won’t.

It’s no secret that history’s oldest prejudice is on the rise in the Big Apple. In 2024, the NYPD recorded an antisemitic attack every 25 hours. All in all, there were 345 antisemitic hate crimes, which constituted roughly 54% of all hate crimes reported in the city.

When it comes to combating these trends, the city’s Department of Education (DOE) has been missing in action. Parents, teachers, and students have repeatedly complained that the city’s public schools have done very little to address antisemitic incidents on their campuses.

Moreover, antisemitic propaganda — including an article from Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan declaring that “Jewish behavior has ill-affected Black people and others” — has dripped into school newsletters, materials, and mass emails at least five times over the past couple of months.

However, the DOE won’t sit on the sidelines for much longer. Its latest initiative? A new Jewish addition to the existing Hidden Voices social studies curriculum, which focuses on “centering diverse historical figures left out of typical textbooks.” In this case, that includes profiles of Jewish figures like WNBA player Nancy Lieberman and sex-positive therapist and talk-show host Ruth Westheimer. These profiles are intended to provide role models for Jewish students and introduce others to Jews’ contributions to society.

But don’t be fooled. This isn’t a serious attempt to battle antisemitism in New York City. It’s just a shallow gesture that lumps Jews into the very DEI bubble that helped create this problem to begin with. While Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives are often well-intentioned, this won’t protect the city’s Jews, it’ll just paint a bigger target on their backs.

Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, the historian behind NYC Public Schools’ “Hidden Voices” social studies curriculum made it clear that her “Jewish American” history segment is an identity-based curriculum — she told Chalkbeat New York that “these materials push educators and students to think about who identity-based curricula are for,” and that she hopes the program “invigorates [students] to commit to a pluralism and universalism that I personally think is the beating heart of a healthy community.”

Simply put, Petrzela argues that by lumping Jews — who she calls a “tiny minority” — in with other DEI groups, we can all learn more about each other.

Yet Petrzela’s approach ignores DEI’s fatal flaw. Most DEI programs root their philosophy in an oppressor vs oppressed binary, where the oppressed can do no wrong and the oppressors should be treated with contempt. This binary is especially dangerous for Jews because they rose from poverty and persecution around the world to become one of the most successful and enduring subgroups in the United States. Therefore, many DEI advocates, whether they know it or not, relegate Jews into the “oppressor” category.

New York City’s schools are no exception — after all, state-level officials are refusing to part with DEI, and the district’s Office of Student Pathways, which infamously sent a newsletter decrying the “genocide” in Gaza back in April, often uses DEI rhetoric.

These ideas cannot form the foundation of an effective “anti-antisemitism” plan. Institutions that hate Jews cannot teach people not to hate Jews.

The bigger problem? Even if the DEI apparatus were willing to give Jews a fair shake, this approach still wouldn’t be successful. Evidence suggests that DEI training fails to stop bigotry or intolerance. Instead, “when people attempt to suppress unwanted thoughts, these thoughts are likely to subsequently reappear with even greater insistence than if they had never been suppressed.” In other words, if applied here, DEI won’t serve to educate antisemitism away — it could make the problem even worse.

Unfortunately, the problem exists regardless of the quality of the educational materials. Research indicates that even when students have access to high-quality educational materials — like first-person accounts of the Holocaust — they don’t always become more tolerant of other people and cultures. In an experiment involving the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Houston, some students left slightly less tolerant than when they came in.

If New York City continues on its current path, it may create the very thing it aims to destroy. Fighting antisemitism will require more than teaching children about Jews. It will require a school culture that shows zero tolerance for hatred based on religion, ethnicity, or any other immutable category — that means vigorous policing of social media apps within schools and effective discipline for students who engage in antisemitic activity.

What it should not include is DEI. Identity politics cannot and will not end the antisemitic wave in New York’s schools and streets.

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Garion Frankel is a native of the New York metropolitan area and a Ph.D student in PK-12 educational leadership at Texas A&M University. He is a Young Voices Middle East History and Peace Fellow, and his articles can be found in outlets like Newsweek, USA Today, and the Houston Chronicle.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.