Education Activist Says Wokeism Is a ‘Danger to Jews’ in CAMERA Webinar

Andrew Gutmann, a parent activist warning of the spread of wokeism in schools, explained that woke ideology is rooted in “Marxist philosophical foundations” and poses a “danger to Jews” in a September 29 CAMERA webinar moderated by Jonah Cohen.

Gutmann’s activism started in the summer of 2020, when Black alumni of Brearley School — an all-girls private school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan that his daughter attended — “shared their grievances … which they perceived to be racially oriented over decades” on social media. “Everything about the school … seemed to change after that,” Gutmann said. 

The school quickly expressed support for the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, urging students to protest. Brearley even sent out a community pledge for parents to sign, requiring them to “not only support antiracism initiatives in the school” but also agree to “teach them at home.” Gutmann and his wife refused to sign it, and the school pressured them, with the principal even threatening to bar Gutmann’s daughter from attending the school. The Gutmanns stood strong, but the principal said they would have to sign the pledge the following year and also attend antiracism sessions.

Gutmann said that “more than half of the families are unhappy with the direction of the school,” but were reluctant to speak out. Eventually, the Gutmanns switched their daughter to a different school, a decision she supported since her viewpoints were getting shut down in class, Gutmann said.

Gutmann decided to take action by sending a letter to every school family, urging them to speak up; he did not expect media attention would come from it, but former New York Times Opinions Editor Bari Weiss published his letter in her April 13, 2021 Substack newsletter, and it became “very widely read,” Gutmann said. Fox News asked him to appear on their network to discuss it, but he declined. The New York Post featured his letter on their cover, which helped spark “what was then the nascent parents movement,” as at that time most people didn’t know about Critical Race Theory (CRT).

But Gutmann didn’t fully understand the revolutionary component of wokeism until he and Paul Rossi, an educator exposing wokeism in schools, were provided access to 100 hours of leaked videos from the 2021 National Association of Independent Schools’ (NAIS) People of Color Conference (PoCC). The NAIS is a nonprofit that “influences everything” K-12 private schools do, according to Gutmann, and the PoCC is the “leading DEI [Diversity, Equity and Inclusion] conference for K-12 education” in the country. After watching these videos, Gutmann was able to decode the insidious nature of woke buzzwords, particularly: diversity, equity, belonging, inclusion and justice, all of which have different meanings to DEI practitioners.

To DEI practitioners, “diversity” is code for creating an “oppressor vs. oppressed dichotomy,” Gutmann said. They divide groups into different identities that are purportedly being victimized by a system of white supremacy. “Inclusion” urges schools to adopt “an antiracism, antibias, anti-oppression lens” in every aspect, including libraries and science classes. One video even showed a DEI practitioner referring to kindergartners as being “natural social justice warriors.” Another aspect of “inclusion” is “allyship.” “Everybody has to try to become an ally,” Gutmann said. “If not, then you’re an ‘oppressor.’”

The term “belonging” is an offshoot of inclusion, used to justify the creation of “safe spaces” on campus where “nobody can say anything that can harm me,” Gutmann explained. In his view, it’s “code for shutting down free speech.”

All of these buzzwords are used to achieve DEI goals of equity and justice and to tear “down the white supremacy culture.” For DEI practitioners, capitalism, liberalism, individuality, perfectionism and meritocracy are part of “white supremacy culture,” Gutmann said. These are “many if not all of the attributes that make our society free and good and prosperous.” 

“Justice” is what happens after Western society is torn down: the establishment of a “Marxist collectivist society” with the “formerly oppressed on top,” per Gutmann. “Effectively it’s reparations,” he added, “making up for centuries or decades or millennia of certain groups being oppressed.” 

Gutmann analogized the DEI agenda to China’s cultural revolution under Mao Zedong. “It’s terrifying when you realize how revolutionary this is,” Gutmann said, adding that it’s being taught “in schools all around the country.” “This is not about teaching about slavery or Jim Crow or Trail of Tears or what we did Native Americans or Holocaust education,” he said. “This is about revolutionary takeover of the schools.” 

And why is this bad for Jews? In Gutmann’s view, the DEI woke agenda is implicitly antisemitic through its promulgation of anti-Israel, anti-Zionist rhetoric. DEI practitioners don’t teach people that Jews are bad, but they do view Jews as white, and their goal is to “eradicate white supremacy culture.” Consequently, they view objectivity, respecting one’s elders, respecting one’s family and respecting one’s rabbi as being part of “white supremacy culture.”

He explained that his grandparents fled the Nazis in the 1940s and came to America speaking little English and with no money, forcing them to work menial jobs. But eventually, thanks to hard work and education, Gutmann’s family lifted themselves out of poverty. “That’s meritocracy and that goes against the ‘systemic racism’ narrative,” Gutmann said.

Jewish success despite Jews being the most persecuted ethnic group in world history contradicts the woke narrative, according to Gutmann. 

In the woke view, Blacks have underperformed in American society due to racism, while Jews have overperformed because they’re an “oppressor,” per Gutmann. But Jewish success despite Jews being the most persecuted ethnic group in world history contradicts the woke narrative, according to Gutmann. As such, DEI practitioners combine the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) with BLM and the #MeToo movement; to the woke, Israel is the colonial apartheid oppressor of the Palestinians, and thus the Jewish state must be torn down.

“It’s frightening,” Gutmann said. “It absolutely has implications.” 

Many people don’t speak out because schools have threatened to expel students if their parents speak out, and thus they’re afraid of getting canceled, per Gutmann. Additionally, attending private schools in New York City is seen as an “enormous status symbol,” the gateway to get into prestigious universities and obtain a prestigious Wall Street job, Gutmann said. Parents that “make waves” put threaten this.

He stressed the need for “more Jews to understand this ideology.” “We owe it to America who has been good to us … to preserve these [classical liberal] values,” Gutmann said. “We need to mobilize significantly more number of Jews … If we lose the liberal tradition, we lose the best home for Jews outside of Israel.”