UM Fires Director of Multicultural Initiatives Over Anti-Semitic Comments

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The meltdown at the University of Michigan continues. Just a day after the home of a Jewish member of the Board of Regents was vandalized, the school has fired one of its top DEI administrators. Rachel Dawson was the director of the school’s Office of Academic Multicultural Initiatives (OAMI). She allegedly made anti-Semitic comments during a conversation at a conference.

She was accused of saying in a conversation at a conference in March that the university was “controlled by wealthy Jews,” according to documents obtained by The New York Times through a freedom of information request.

She was also accused of saying that Jewish students were “wealthy and privileged” and not in need of her office’s diversity services, and that “Jewish people have no genetic DNA that would connect them to the land of Israel,” according to the documents, which were part of a complaint from the Anti-Defamation League of Michigan.

The incident at the conference happened after two professors from other schools who had heard about a Jewish student having problems on the UM campus decided to approach Dawson.

Two professors who attended the event, Naomi Yavneh Klos, who teaches at Loyola University New Orleans, and another Jewish professor said they had heard about the “negative experience” of a University of Michigan Jewish student, Dr. Yavneh Klos said in an interview.

When they learned that a Michigan D.E.I. administrator was at the conference, they decided to approach her, Dr. Yavneh Klos said.

“I think my colleague wanted to know, ‘Does the D.E.I. office work with these students?’” Dr. Yavneh Klos said. “‘Should the student go to the D.E.I. office?’ She said no. Jewish students are all rich. They don’t need us. That was the gist of what she said. It was really horrifying.”

She discussed the exchange with a friend who works for the ADL and the friend recommended she file a report. For her part, Dawson admits she spoke to the two professors but claims the conversation went differently, saying she told the professors that both Palestinians and Jews had claims to the land.

The school responded to the ADL complaint by hiring an outside firm to attempt to get to the bottom of what happened. The firm concluded that while it couldn’t be certain (because there was no recording of the discussion and not other witnesses to it), the “weight of the available evidence” supported the ADL complaint.

At that point, the school’s president sent Dawson some kind of written warning, i.e. if you do this again you’ll be fired. The school also told her she’d need to attend some kind of anti-Semitism retraining. But when the administration informed the Board of Regents how they had handled the situation, one board member objected strongly to giving Dawson a second chance.

The next day, Mark Bernstein, a regent, wrote to campus officials, including the president, Santa Ono, saying that he was “disgusted” with the university’s response, according to the emails.

“It does not appear that Ms. Dawson has been held accountable in any meaningful way,” Mr. Bernstein wrote. “Of course, this makes a mockery of your/our commitment to address antisemitism and broaden our D.E.I. efforts to include antisemitism and/or Jewish students.”

There is a wrinkle here or maybe more than one. First, the offense happened off campus in another state and was part of a conversation with other professors but not part of an official communication or even a public statement. Second, because UM is a public university it’s covered by the First Amendment which means that even if you accept that Dawson said some very stereotypically anti-Semitic things about Jews, her comments would be protected speech.

Of course there’s some pretty glaring irony here. I can imagine how the Office of Academic Multicultural Initiatives might respond if another administrator had said something similarly dismissive and tone deaf about Black students or another minority group on campus. Would Rachel Dawson be defending that person on First Amendment grounds or would she be calling for their head on a pike? I don’t know for certain but I suspect it would be the latter.

Bottom line: The woke are not liberals. They won’t defend your right to speak if they disagree with what you say. On the contrary, they will seek to get you socially canceled and fired. Maybe they would be less aggressive toward others if they occasionally were forced to live by their own rules. If Dawson appeals and somehow keeps her job, she better be at the front of the line to defend the next conservative attacked for “hate speech” on campus.