Professor Sherry is a professor emerita at Vanderbilt Law School. In 1997, she and Professor Daniel Farber wrote a book, Beyond all reason, criticizing critical race theory. Perhaps their most controversial argument was that critical race theory, in denying the existence of objective merit and attributing all group differences to racism, was implicitly anti-Semitic in its failure to explain the success of American Jews without resorting to anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.
Professor Sherry (who, by the way, is a liberal politician), wrote a short sequel, DEI and Antisemitism: Bred in the Bone. Here is the excerpt:
Last October, progressive Jews were shocked by the crude anti-Semitism displayed by their former left-wing political allies. After Hamas terrorists tortured, raped or killed more than 1,200 Israeli civilians and took about 200 hostage, some progressives — especially on college campuses — celebrated. They chanted the Palestinian mantra “from the river to the sea,” seeking to wipe Israel (and the Jews) from the face of the earth. The number of anti-Semitic incidents on campus has increased dramatically, both among students and faculty. A Stanford professor forced Jewish students to the back of the room and labeled them “colonizers.” Jewish students had to barricade themselves inside a Cooper Union library, and Jewish students at MIT were told by faculty to avoid the university’s main lobby for their own safety. Many university presidents who had previously sent campus-wide emails condemning George Floyd’s murder, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the overturning of Roe v. Wade and countless other world events, they suddenly discovered the Kalven Principles and said that it would be inappropriate for them to take a stand, or made weak statements about how the situation in the Middle East was complicated. This double standard continued when some universities responded to student calls for Jewish genocide by invoking the principles of free speech, principles that had been notably ignored when the speech in question was directed at other groups. Most DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) campus offices, especially at the most elite universities, had nothing to say about the growing anti-Semitism.
This essay explains why no one should have been shocked, or even slightly surprised, by the progressive response to the massacre. Progressive or “woke” culture – as exemplified by critical race theory, Ibram That these related movements have now publicly exposed their anti-Semitism is no surprise: anti-Semitism is rooted in their bones.