RSS
US Government Investigates George Mason University Over DEI Reverse Racism Claims
George Mason University students walking across campus on December 12, 2024. Photo: Dion J. Pierre/The Algemeiner
Arlington, Virginia —The US Department of Justice has launched an investigation into whether George Mason University (GMU), located in the Northern Virginia region, based its decisions on whom to hire and promote on racial identity under the pretense of promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
“It is unlawful and un-American to deny equal access to employment opportunities on the basis of race and sex,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a statement on Thursday announcing the probe. “When employers screen out qualified candidates from the hiring process, they not only erode trust in our public institutions—they violate the law, and the Justice Department will investigate accordingly.”
Dhillon sent a letter to GMU leadership on Thursday demanding answers “based on information that GMU may be engaged in employment practices that discriminate against employees, job applicants, and training program participants based on race and sex in violation of [the Civil Rights Act]. Specifically, we have reason to believe that during Gregory Washington’s tenure as president of GMU, race and sex have been motivating factors in faculty hiring decisions to achieve ‘diversity’ goals.”
The letter came a week after the US Department of Education announced a separate investigation into GMU “based on a complaint filed with [the Office of Civil Rights] by multiple professors at GMU who allege that the university illegally uses race and other immutable characteristics in university policies, including hiring and promotion.”
The inquiry, announced on July 10, was prompted by multiple incidents that GMU faculty came forward to formally report. The revelations they disclosed include “equity advisors” who gerrymander the racial demographics of every academic department to ensure that racial minorities — a category from which DEI advocates have historically excluded high achieving Jews and conservative people of color, arguing that in success they have achieved “white adjacent” status — are hired and promoted at higher rates than whites, even when doing so means discounting a white candidate’s record of accomplishment and intellectual ability.
GMU’s racial preferences regime has the backing of the university’s highest authority figures, the Education Department charged, arguing that university president Gregory Washington has ordered his subordinates to impose “specific mechanisms in the promotion and tenure process” which “recognize the invisible and uncredited emotional labor that people of color expend to learn, teach, discover, and work on campus.” Washington has also said explicitly that officials must hire a minority “even if that candidate may not have better credentials than” a competing applicant. Additionally, a GMU Task Force on Anti-Racism and Inclusive Excellence operates “diversity cluster hire initiatives,” a method of hiring racial minorities which involves bypassing traditional hiring procedures.
“Despite the leadership of George Mason University claiming that it does not discriminate on the basis of race, it appears that its hiring and promotion policies and practices from 2020 to the present, implemented under the guise of so-called ‘diversity, and inclusion,’ not only allow but champion illegal racial preferencing in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” the Education Department’s acting assistant civil rights secretary, Craig Trainor, said in a statement. “The Trump-McMahon Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights will investigate this matter fully to ensure that individuals are judged based on their merit and accomplishment, not the color of their skin.”
The Education Department’s investigation continues the Trump administration’s offensive against a higher education policy regime which emerged in the 1960s to remedy racial inequality in the US but has since evolved to incorporate ideologies which conservatives say promote antisemitism, racial segregation in campus housing, reverse-discrimination, and anti-capitalism.
In June, James Ryan resigned as president of University of Virginia (UVA), a move which the US Justice Department stipulated as a condition of settling a civil rights case brought against the institution over its use of racial preferences in admissions and hiring, a policy it too justified as advancing DEI.
Ryan drew the scrutiny of the Justice Department, having allegedly defied a landmark Supreme Court ruling which outlawed establishing racial identity as the determinant factor for admission to the university as well as a series of executive orders US President Donald Trump issued to shutter DEI initiatives being operated in the public and private sectors. Such programs have been accused of fostering a new “anti-white” bigotry which penalizes individual merit and undermines the spirit of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement by, for example, excluding white males from jobs and prestigious academic positions for which they are qualified.
Another DEI-adjacent policy was identified at UVA in 2024, when the Equal Protection Project, a Rhode Island based nonprofit, filed a civil rights complaint against the university which argued that its holding a BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) Alumni-Student Mentoring Program is discriminatory, claiming no public official would think it appropriate to sanction a mentoring program for which the sole membership criterion is being white. UVA later changed the description of the program, claiming that it is open to “all races, ethnicities, and national origins” even as it stressed that it was “created with BIPOC students in mind.”
The university’s tactics were allegedly employed to hide other DEI programs from lawmakers and taxpayers, with Ryan reportedly moving and concealing them behind new names. He quickly exhausted the patience of the Trump Justice Department, which assumed office only months after the BIPOC program was reported to federal authorities.
Similar practices were notably alleged in a 2024 lawsuit which accused Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law of discriminating against white male applicants.
The complaint alleged that high-level officials went to great lengths to conceal the law school’s allegedly discriminatory hiring, going as far as banning frank discussions about them on a digital messaging forum to avoid “litigation risk.” This code of silence, it argued, enabled the rejection of a job application submitted by Professor Eugene Volokh, a “renowned legal scholar” who has taught law for three decades and is cited in numerous opinions issued by the US Supreme Court. Volokh also clerked for former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman ever to serve on the country’s highest court.
At the time, Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, founder of higher education antisemitism watchdog AMCHA Initiative, told The Algemeiner that, in addition to undermining civil rights, racial preferences have fostered antisemitism on college campuses. Admissions and hiring committees packed with progressive ideologues, she said, not only prefer non-white candidates but also aim to ensure that new hires are ideologically progressive — and, moreover, anti-Zionist. The effect of this, she explained, is that Jews in higher education, whom mainstream progressive ideology classifies as white, are also subject to discrimination, an issue The Algemeiner has covered extensively.
“Racial preferences pit racial identity against the meritocracy, and one of the reasons that Jews have become so prominent in academia is because it is a system that rewards talent, character, and grit. Jews tend to be well-educated and highly achieving, and when an institution’s primary concern is the quality of the individual as opposed to the color of his or her skin or perceived background, Jews excel,” Rossman-Benjamin explained. “What the university stands for, academic integrity and excellence, are values that have lifted Jews up in America, and, in addition to being critical for advancing humanity, they have been one of the most important sources of our strength in this country.”
She continued, “However, when you impose academic criteria that has nothing to do with those values and nothing to do with academic integrity but everything to do with a political agenda that really at its core is discriminatory and hateful — and antisemitic — you make the university not just a hostile place for Jews but also a hostile place for learning.”
Rossman-Benjamin further argued that progressives have effortlessly “captured” higher education institutions over the past several decades and that their predominance in academia and the explosion of antisemitism on campuses across the US are directly linked.
“What’s so interesting is that the way you know that contemporary progressivism is not just a fraudulent and bankrupt ideology but an evil one, is that it produces antisemitism,” she continued. “Antisemitism is a bellwether of its malevolence. If it were positive and healthy, it would lift people up — but it isn’t. In fact, it is hurting them in the deepest ways.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post US Government Investigates George Mason University Over DEI Reverse Racism Claims first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Blowing the Shofar for Mental Health in 5786
The blowing of the shofar, traditionally done on Rosh Hashanah. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
After nearly two years of a multi-front war in Israel, the toll on Israel’s mental health is staggering. Surveys and data show steep and widespread increases in PTSD, anxiety, depression, sleep disruptions, and addiction. Although the government has increased services, it is clear that not nearly enough is being done, with severe shortages of professionals and funding resulting in months-long waits for appointments for mental health care, even when it’s a matter of life and death. The heartbreaking rise in suicides among IDF soldiers, reservists, and first aid providers at Oct 7 attack sites underscores the unprecedented level of crisis.
Yet the sheer size of the challenge has, like never before, acted as a catalyst to force the topic of mental health out into the open. While there is so much darkness around us, this development — the willingness of the public, policymakers, educators, community leaders and military officials, to talk about issues that have for too long remained taboo — gives us a glimmer of light and hope. We must seize this moment and encourage the conversations to continue. We need to wake up to the needs around us.
Let’s make the coming new Jewish year, 5786 the year of mental health, in Israel and across the Jewish world.
Each year the sounds of the shofar on Rosh Hashanah call us to awaken to both personal and community needs. Our sages teach us that the set of shofar blasts during (or in some congregations, before) the silent Amida prayer hearken us to wake up on a personal level; while the later set of shofar blasts, during the chazan’s repetition of the Amida, call to us to wake up as a community.
This year, both sets of blasts should stir us to confront the crisis of mental health, for ourselves and for our people. The need has always been there, but it has increased due to the current difficult times for the Jewish people.
Judaism obligates us to take care of ourselves, including our health. We are permitted to violate Shabbat to help someone with mental health or illness (Shemirat Shabbat Kehilchata 32:26). Our daily prayers for the sick ask for a healing of the “nefesh and guf” — the soul and the body, with the reference to the soul coming first. Our tradition also commands us to care for the others in our midst; “Kol Yisrael arevim ze bah ze,” all of Israel is responsible for each other. This means that all of us, especially community leaders, including educators, rabbis, and Israeli government officials, must take responsibility and ensure mental health is being addressed directly and to a sufficient level.
While there is ample and serious research over the years linking religious practice, spirituality, and community to improved well-being — and Israeli data has also found that Orthodox communities and ultra-Orthodox are experiencing lower levels of stress than secular and traditional people — relying solely on these assumptions is insufficient and potentially dangerous. No one and no community is immune. Jewish leaders’ role now is to help start more conversations about mental health, normalizing the topic, as well as to encourage and help people to access professional help.
Mental health is not just an Israeli issue. Increased antisemitism and division over how Israel is handling the war are causing more stress, anxiety and fear in the Diaspora as well. Places with large and strong Jewish communities that have long felt shielded from antisemitism — places like my previous residence Teaneck, New Jersey — are now facing anti-Israel rallies and open hostility. For those who came of age at a time when outright antisemitism was waning in the United States, this marks their first encounter with overt hatred and violence. Clearly under such circumstances, leaders of synagogues, schools and community organizations must treat mental health with the same importance as security.
In both Israel and the Diaspora, we must expand our view of mental health beyond war-related trauma. It is also time to address depression, anxiety and other conditions in general, which have been very real issues but often not given adequate attention. In fact, even before the mental health situation worsened post-Oct. 7, studies showed that American Jews are at higher risk for mental health and trauma than the general population, a phenomenon that the American Psychiatric Association says is partly related to intergenerational trauma, including second and third generation children of Holocaust survivors. The emerging public conversation around mental health makes confronting these longstanding needs more feasible now.
For example, over the last two academic years, Ohr Torah Stone, the network of 32 educational institutions I oversee in Israel, has made counseling available to all students and staff. This initiative began in reaction to Oct. 7 and the war, which has taken the lives of 62 alumni and first degree relatives of our students and staff, pulled hundreds of our students, teachers and their families into ongoing reserve military duty, and disrupted the sense of safety for many, with regular air-raid sirens and losses in their communities. While many utilized these services to discuss those challenges, many others have sought counseling for unrelated issues, finally feeling safe enough to seek help. (These services remain free of charge, thanks to generous donors).
Dedicating 5786 to mental health will no doubt be uncomfortable and challenging, but it will also be transformative. Real change is what Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are all about; like true repentance, it requires us not just to pay lip service, but to actually behave differently.
The shofar is a stark reminder of this; it is a prayer unshackled by words, composed solely of raw sounds that penetrate our entire essence and being, commanding and inspiring us to change.
This year, let’s answer the shofar’s call by normalizing conversation about mental health in our families, schools, pulpits, and community programs. Let us implement programs to train educators and rabbis in basic mental health awareness, remove the stigma still surrounding these illnesses, and treat mental health with the same urgency as physical illness. In doing so, we have the ability to save lives and strengthen our people.
Rabbi Kenneth Brander is the president of Ohr Torah Stone, an international network of 32 religious educational institutions. He previously served as a vice president at Yeshiva University in New York, and is the rabbi emeritus of the Boca Raton Synagogue in Florida.
RSS
This Year, the World’s Hatred Can Be a Cause for Our Renewal
A Torah scroll. Photo: RabbiSacks.org.
It’s getting harder and harder to keep up with the conspiracy mill. Just when you think you’ve heard the wildest possible accusation against Israel and the Jews, some online influencer manages to take it a step further.
This past week, in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s tragic killing, the internet rumor machine decided to pin the blame on Israel. The theory goes like this: Kirk had supposedly shifted his stance on Israel, and for that crime, the Mossad took him out.
It sounds insane — because it is insane. Tyler Robinson, Kirk’s murderer, has already been caught, turned in by his own law-abiding and horrified family. His confession, shared in real time with friends over messaging apps, has been made public.
The motive couldn’t be clearer: Robinson, who came from a right-leaning family, had been radicalized to the far left through a relationship with a transitioning roommate. The murder wasn’t about Israel at all — it was about Charlie Kirk’s opposition to trans individuals.
But what’s truly disturbing isn’t the lunacy of the “Israel-killed-Charlie-Kirk” theory itself — it’s how quickly it spread, and how confidently it’s being repeated. Within hours of his death, the “story” was bouncing around online forums and social media feeds as if it were an established fact.
Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Green, Alex Jones, and now even Roger Stone — people who have no business being rabid antisemites, but somehow are — have all endorsed or amplified the accusation, lashing out at anyone who dares express doubt. It’s trash agitprop, taken to a whole new level.
And Charlie Kirk’s assassination isn’t the only story feeding the American far-right’s anti-Israel, antisemitic mill. More and more, leading voices on the far right have found it convenient to cast Israel as the villain in their fever dreams.
The “America First” wing of the MAGA coalition — once dismissed as fringe — is now loud, aggressive, and frighteningly influential. Millions of followers hang on their every word and are being conditioned to believe that Israel — which is to say, Jews — is the root of every American problem. It’s utterly bizarre.
What makes it even more bizarre is that Donald Trump — the political figure who mainstreamed this coalition — has been the most supportive president Israel has ever had. The embassy move to Jerusalem, the recognition of the Golan, the Abraham Accords — all happened under Trump in his first term.
And since returning to office in January, his administration has consistently given Israel the backing it needs, militarily and diplomatically, not least in the many international forums where Israel is relentlessly vilified.
Yet within the very movement that cheered him to victory, a dark current of raw Jew-hatred has been steadily gaining ground. It’s a toxic fusion of old-fashioned antisemitism with new-age conspiracy culture — a phenomenon that is as irrational as it is dangerous, and one that is now creeping into the mainstream.
And these conspiracies aren’t confined to the latest headlines. Last year, a twelve-hour so-called “documentary” titled Europa: The Last Battle went viral in far-right circles. It is, quite literally, a pro-Nazi propaganda reel, recycling every antisemitic trope imaginable — from “Jews control communism” to “Jews control capitalism” — and repackaging them as hidden truths that “they” don’t want you to know.
Today, clips from this monstrosity circulate on TikTok and X, and on chat groups, as bite-sized “red pills” for a new generation of extremists who’ve never so much as opened a history book but are utterly convinced that Jews are behind everything sinister and evil in the world.
This is where the so-called “horseshoe effect” becomes painfully apparent. On paper, the far right, the far left, and Islamist extremists should have nothing in common. They clash over economics, religion, culture, and even the very definition of freedom. Yet somehow, they all land in the same place when it comes to Israel and the Jews.
The far-right calls Jews globalist puppet-masters, the far-left brands Israel a colonial oppressor, and Islamists call for jihad until the Jewish state is wiped off the map. The rhetoric may differ, and the justifications may vary — but the target is always the same. Antisemitism and Israel-bashing are the one point of agreement uniting factions that otherwise despise each other.
Meanwhile, the space for sane politics keeps shrinking. Lucid, thoughtful voices — people who want to talk about policy, strategy, or actual facts (yes, facts, not conspiratorial fantasy) — are drowned out by the noise of inflammatory agitators. It’s no longer reasoned debate, it’s a shouting match where the loudest lie wins. And the only message that cuts across the political spectrum is that Jews are guilty.
It’s frightening to see conspiracy theories, old and new, gain traction so quickly, and to realize that for many, these fantasies have become “truth.” The reach and speed of digital antisemitism is unlike anything we’ve ever faced before.
And yet, the irony is that none of this is new. Antisemitism has always been obsessive, irrational, and cyclical. Each wave dresses itself up as “modern” — Jews are the antichrist, the infidel rejectors of Mohammed, anarchists, communists, capitalists, Zionists, globalists — but in the end, it’s the same old prejudice reheated for a new generation.
And paradoxically, as devastating as this hatred is, it almost always has a counterintuitive effect — it sharpens Jewish identity. History shows, time and again, that persecution pushes Jews to remember who they are, their covenant, and why their heritage matters.
We see it even now: since October 7th, Jewish immigration to Israel has risen, and real estate prices in Israel remain buoyant as more and more diaspora Jews purchase homes in the Promised Land. The very pressure meant to break us instead reminds us of where we belong.
This is precisely the message embedded in Parshat Nitzavim (Deut. 30:1-3): “And it shall be, when all these curses come upon you… then God will restore your fortunes and take you back in love. He will bring you together again from among all the peoples where your God has scattered you.”
The medieval commentator Ramban, himself no stranger to the irrational hatred of Jews, famously explains that this is not a conditional promise, but a prophecy of how Jewish history will unfold. There will be exile and persecution, which will involve suffering and arbitrary harassment. But that will inevitably be followed by return — first to God, and then to the Land.
The pattern is clear: first, suffering → then, realization → then, return → and finally: redemption.
Seen through this lens, the curses of hatred and persecution, as absurd and cruel as they are, paradoxically serve as reminders of Jewish identity and destiny.
Antisemites, whether on the right or the left, think they are undermining the Jews. They might even believe that they have the wind in their sails, and that the destruction of Israel and elimination of Jews is within reach — but in reality, they are unwittingly fulfilling the covenant, driving Jews back to their roots, to their people, and to their land.
And that is the great irony of our moment. The digital swamps may churn out new lies every day, and millions may swallow them whole, convinced that Jews lurk behind every evil. But their obsession only proves the point recorded in the Torah. Our covenant endures, the pattern repeats, and the Jewish people remain.
Every wave of hatred that imagines it will finish us off instead becomes the backdrop for renewal — of faith, of peoplehood, and of attachment to our land. That is why Israel stands, why Jewish life flourishes, and why, no matter how loud the agitators shout, redemption is always on the horizon.
The author is a rabbi in Beverly Hills, California.
RSS
The PA Is Still Paying Salaries to Terrorists and ‘Martyrs’
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas holds a leadership meeting in Ramallah, in the West Bank, April 23, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mohammed Torokman
On Wednesday, the Palestinian Authority (PA) announced a new system of payments, which was supposed to be based on welfare needs and not as a reward to terrorists:
The Palestinian National Economic Empowerment Institution (PNEEI) announces the payment of financial allowances within the Social Protection and Care Program, starting from Thursday, Sept. 11, 2025, through authorized payment centers.
However, Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) has confirmed that payments were made via the PA post offices, as in the past, indicating that the post offices are the aforementioned “authorized payment centers.”
The PA’s post office ATMs are exclusively for paying terror salaries and allowances, as stated in an official announcement last year by the PLO:
Our people, families of the Martyrs and injured in the West Bank … on the subject of the payment of allowances for the families of Martyrs and injured … We call on the recipients of the funds to withdraw the large amounts that have accumulated for them at the post office, including the current allowance …
As we have emphasized before, the post office is not a regular bank like other banks and cannot hold funds, but is only a means of transferring allowances, and the funds cannot be held for a long period in the accounts of the recipients …
We wish mercy for the souls of the martyrs, recovery for the wounded, and freedom for the prisoners. [emphasis added]
[PLO Martyrs’ Families and Injured Care Establishment, Feb, 2024]
The PNEEI announcement above, stating that payments were made “through authorized payment centers,” was possibly its attempt to hide that the payments were made through the post offices, which are exclusively used for paying terrorists.
PMW has confirmed that families of prisoners and “Martyrs” have received payments through post offices as in the past.
Earlier this week, an online news site reported that it had received information from the Palestinian Authority indicating that the PA had stopped rewarding imprisoned terrorists and terrorist Martyrs’ families as in the past, but had moved them to a new welfare-based system, according to The Times of Israel.
The article also claimed that the “Welfare payments, which are now distributed by the extra-governmental PNEEI, have not yet been issued.” These payments, according to the article, would have been the payments to imprisoned terrorists and “Martyrs’” families.
However, the claim that PNEEI payments were not made this month openly contradicts PNEEI’s own announcement on its website that payments were made on Thursday. As stated, PMW has confirmed terror payments were made last Thursday at the post offices.
There were additional inaccuracies as well in the article, including a prominent mistake, defining PNEEI as “extra-governmental.”
Below are pictures and bios of all the PNEEI board members as they appear on its website. As can be seen, 10 of the 11 board members are employed in senior PA government positions, including one minister and six undersecretaries. Only one is an academic. Moreover, PNEEI answers to Mahmoud Abbas.
With senior government officers as board members, the article’s defining PNEEI as “extra-governmental” is another clear example of publishing PA claims without doing the minimal investigation to verify them.
Especially on a politically sensitive topic, such as the PA’s terror rewards, one would expect more careful journalism before publishing the PA’s claim to have reformed.
The author is the Founder and Director of Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article first appeared.