How to improve university EDI policies so they address Jewish identity and antisemitism

Thoughtful reflections and suggestions how EDI policies can be inclusive of Jewish identities:

According to Statistics Canada, police-reported hate crimes against Jews rose by 82 per cent in 2023.

In the months following Oct. 7, 2023 and the subsequent war in Gaza, university campuses across Canada became sites of tension, protest and divisions.

Jewish students and faculty increasingly reported feeling alone, excluded and targeted.

As our research has examined, despite these urgent realities, Jewish identity and antisemitism remain largely invisible in the equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) frameworks of Canadian higher education.

These frameworks are meant to address the ongoing effects of historical and structural marginalization. Emerging from the four designated categories in Canada’s Employment Equity Act, EDI policies in Canadian universities tend to centre race, Indigeneity as well as gender, with limited attention to religious affiliation.

Canadian higher education’s primary EDI focus on racism and decolonization is important, given the history of exclusion and marginalization of Black people, Indigenous Peoples and people of colour in Canada. Yet, this framing inadequately addresses the historical and ongoing antisemitism in Canada.

A cross-university study of EDI policies

To understand this oversight, we conducted a content and discourse analysis of the most recent (at the time of the study) EDI policies and Canada Research Chair EDI documents from 28 Canadian universities.

Our sample included English-speaking research universities of more than 15,000 students and a few smaller universities to ensure regional representation.

We focused on how these documents referred to Jewish identity, antisemitism and related terms, as well as how they situated these within broader EDI discourses. We found that, in most cases, antisemitism and Jewish identity were either completely absent or mentioned only superficially.

Three patterns emerged from our analysis:

1. Antisemitism is marginalized as a systemic issue: Where it appears, antisemitism is generally folded into long lists of forms of discrimination, alongside racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia and other “isms.” Unlike anti-Black racism or Indigenous-based racism, which often have dedicated sections and careful unpacking, antisemitism is rarely examined. While EDI policies can be performative, they still represent institutional commitment and orientation. Not specifically considering antisemitism renders it peripheral and unimportant, even though it remains a pressing issue on campuses.

2. Jewish identity is reduced to religion: When Jewishness is acknowledged in EDI frameworks, it is almost always under the category of religious affiliation, appearing as part of the demographic sections. This framing erases the ethnic and cultural dimensions of Jewish identity and peoplehood and disregards the ways in which many Canadian Jews understand themselves. The lack of understanding of Jewishness as an intersectional identity also erases the experiences of Jews of colour, LGBTQ+ Jews, and Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews.

While some Jews may identify as white, some do not, and even those who benefit from white privilege may still experience antisemitism and exclusion.

The recent scholarly study, “Jews and Israel 2024: A Survey of Canadian Attitudes and Jewish Perceptions” by sociologist Robert Brym, finds that 91 per cent of 414 Jewish respondents in the overall study believe that Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state — a response Brym believes indicates that the respondent is a Zionist, echoing a broad definition of the term. (Three per cent of Jewish respondents opposed the view that Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state, and six per cent said they didn’t know).

For most Canadian Jews in the study, Brym writes, “support for the existence of a Jewish state in Israel is a central component of their identity.”

But Zionism presents a challenge for EDI for several reasons. Firstly, Zionism enters into a tension with (mis)conceptions of Jews as non-racialized people within anti-racism discourses.

Secondly, some scholars and activist movements address Zionism largely as a form of settler colonialism.

While debates over the historical sources of Zionism and their political implications are legitimate and evolving, the danger arises when debates shift to embodying and targeting Jews as individuals. Furthermore, “anti-Zionist” discourses, often amplified in student protests, risk flattening the diversity that exists under the Zionist identification.

3. Pairing antisemitism and Islamophobia: In the EDI policies we examined, antisemitism is rhetorically paired with Islamophobia: In nearly every case where antisemitism was mentioned, it was coupled with Islamophobia. This rhetorical symmetry may be driven by institutional anxiety over appearing biased or by attempts to balance political sensitivities. Yet it falsely implies that antisemitism and Islamophobia are similar or are inherently connected.

While intersectional analysis of antisemitism and Islamophobia can yield insight, this pairing functions as an avoidance mechanism and a shortcut.

Failure to name, analyze Jewish identity

The erasure of antisemitism from EDI policies affects how Jewish students and faculty experience campus life. Jews may not be marginalized in the same way as other equity-seeking groups, yet they are still deserving of protection and inclusion.

The EDI principle of listening to lived experiences cannot be applied selectivity. Jewish identity is complex, and framing it narrowly contributes to undercounting Jewish people in institutional data and EDI policies. Simplistic classifications erase differences, silence lived experiences and reinforce assimilation.

By failing to name and analyze Jewish identity and antisemitism, universities leave Jewish members of the academic community without appropriate mechanisms of support. The lack of EDI recognition reflects and reproduces the perceptions of Jews as powerful and privileged, resulting in a paradox: Jewish people are often treated as outside the bounds of EDI, even as antisemitism intensifies.

The question of Jewish connection to Israel or Zionism introduces another layer of complexity that most EDI policies avoid entirely. While criticism of Israeli state policies is not antisemitic, many Jews experience exclusion based on real or perceived Zionist identification. Universities cannot afford to ignore this dynamic, even when it proves uncomfortable or politically fraught.

What needs to change

If Canadian universities are to build truly inclusive campuses, then their EDI frameworks must evolve in both language and structure.

First, antisemitism must be recognized as a form of racism, not merely religious intolerance. This shift would reflect how antisemitism has historically operated and continues to manifest through racialized tropes, conspiracy theories and scapegoating.

Second, institutions must expand their data collection and demographic frameworks to reflect the full dimensions of Jewish identity: religious, ethnic and cultural. Without this inclusion, the understanding of Jewish identity will remain essentialized and unacknowledged.

Third, Jewish voices, including those of Jews of colour, LGBTQ+ Jews and Jews with diverse relationships to Zionism, must be included in EDI consultation processes. These perspectives are critical to understanding how antisemitism intersects with other forms of marginalization.

Fourth, the rhetorical pairing of antisemitism and Islamophobia, while perhaps intended to promote balance, should be replaced with a deep unpacking of both phenomena and their intersections.

Finally, universities must resist the urge to treat difficult conversations as too controversial to include. Complex dialogue should not be a barrier to equity work. The gaps we identified reveal how current EDI frameworks can exclude any group whose identities fall outside established categories.

In a time of polarization and disinformation, universities must model how to hold space for complexity and foster real inclusion.

Source: How to improve university EDI policies so they address Jewish identity and antisemitism