The Shipley School: When a Case of DEI-Led Anti-Semitism Runs Deeper
Rebekah Adens Ousted as DEI Head in Anti-Semitic Incident
The famous Philadelphia sociologist who coined the term “WASP” (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant), E. Digby Baltzell, wrote that, “the downfall of every civilization comes, not from the moral corruption of the common man, but rather from the moral complacency of common men in high places.”
The Shipley School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, has regrettably been home to a few mentally complacent people in high places, including a Hamas-sympathizing DEI Director who was fired in recent days, according to my sources, after “StopAntisemitism” posted some of her views on “X” (since made private).
In this essay, I will attempt to put into context how Shipley came to nurture such a hate-filled environment as an outgrowth of its embrace of DEI, as well as my own interactions with the school in an attempt to cause it to adopt a non-discriminatory stance on topics of race, anti-semitism, and viewpoint diversity (spoiler alert: my perspective was dismissed outright).
Now, in full disclosure, I am a graduate of Shipley (class of 1993). And I have a giant debt of gratitude that I owe to Shipley. When my family went bankrupt, the school provided me with a scholarship.
But my personal obligation to Shipley does not make up for the fact that for decades, the school has played host to a philosophical environment that has made it difficult for those that disagree with the left-leaning “inherited elite” Main Line progressive society that Baltzell references, to speak up.
This is especially true for outsiders like me who grew up on the wrong side of the tracks and happened to be Jewish! Yes, there really is a wrong side of the tracks on Philadelphia’s Main Line! And since my time at the place 35 years ago, the school has been unwilling to tackle the entrenched policies that silence dissent and invite bigotry.
Context
Based on the headlines from Penn and Harvard in recent months regarding faculty and administrative led anti-semitism in the wake of the October 7th attack on Israel which resulted in the firing of both university presidents, it should come as no surprise that Shipley, one of the “feeder” institutions to these elite universities, has adopted a similar administrative-led anti-semitic stance.
Due to the social justice movement in recent years, Shipley, like many other National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS), adopted a broad brush approach to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), which included, “conducting a full audit and review of the school’s curriculum to better include anti-racism and culturally-sustaining curricula for all students and grade levels” including “requiring annual diversity, equity, and inclusion training for all Shipley colleagues.”
On August 20th, 2020, Head of School Dr. Michael Turner wrote to the Shipley community to “thank everyone” for their “engagement on topics of racism and social justice, to outline the school’s response, and to state unequivocally that racism has no place at Shipley.”
As part of this effort, Shipley decided to expand its Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) to include the existing Director of DEI and four new DEI coordinators, “to assist in professional development for colleagues, support for divisional student affinity groups, assist in campus-wide programming, and provide family education throughout the year.”
This included mandated programs for community members including “the reading of How to be Anti-Racist by Dr. Ibram Kendi; participating in the Building Anti-Racist White Educators (BARWE) series and creating DEI workshops for colleagues.”
At the time, I reached out to Dr. Turner, to let him know my opposition to these programs, including a blog post (since taken down) that Shipley proudly put on its website, instructing families on “how to take whiteness out of their home.”
We had a very cordial conversation for an hour accomplishing absolutely nothing, which concluded with Dr. Turner telling me to accept what was happening as “an artifact of the time” and to “just let it go.”
I followed up to Michael with the following note (the abbreviated version is below) in 2020:
Michael,
It was a pleasure to connect this week. I am thankful we had the conversation, and look forward to our next discussion. As a follow-up to our discussion, I wanted to share a few thoughts in advance of reading the [forthcoming] Shipley Diversity Report. Granted, I realize, this will be an “artifact of the time,” as you say, but words have meanings, both in context and out of context.
With this in mind, I would like to share a few things I’ve been considering since our call, and also some personal stories from Shipley.
First, diversity of thought is downplayed as part of diversity -- in fact, it is rarely considered. Yet students can be discriminated against based on it, as much as they can be based on demographic and other identifiers (perhaps more so, since it is acceptable in many circles to practice discrimination of this sort, as I personally faced).
This topic is close to me because of Shipley. As much as I respect my time at Shipley and what it did for me and many fond memories of the school that vastly outweigh the negatives, I do not believe Shipley fully welcomed or invited intellectual freedom when I was a student. In my own experience, Shipley was “to the left” in pedagogy, and just as minorities may not have felt fully welcome in the past, I would say the same about those who expressed conservative viewpoints. In retrospect, I was absolutely a victim of discrimination. Other friends were as well.
As an example, consider how there was a backlash against me (from Shipley) when I went on NPR in the 90s while at Penn. At the time, I shared on a radio show that my high school’s English department -- I did not mention Shipley by name, but a teacher was listening and knew me -- did not prepare me as strongly as it could have for my English literature major because of substituting Toni Morrison and others for other classical curriculum. The result of this was to “cancel” the distribution of parts of my master's history thesis in the Shipley alumni newsletter after this. Yes, I can't make this up, as crazy as it sounds -- Main Line intellectual liberal pettiness.
I had previously voiced this same dissent while at Shipley, and I firmly believe that until the school graded exams blindly, as it did for the senior year December in English, that I was discriminated against for being an outspoken libertarian/conservative (I was a “C” English student until the blind exam, and then received an A+ and went on to be a straight A English student at Penn).
Second, I know you have prepared me for the forthcoming diversity statement that will likely advocate for anti-racism, equity, and other similar concepts at Shipley. But from my own experience based on three of my children in different secondary schools in Chicago, these diversity statements and agendas end up “canceling” those who disagree, and instilling fear in those who would challenge them. In short: they silence dissent, including those that dispute the notion of pervasive and systematic racism. Even noted conservative black scholars have been effectively shut out of the conversation.
As the noted Stanford African American economist and social theorist Thomas Sowell points out in his article, “Discrimination, Economics, and Culture,” one could, “... fill a book with statistical disparities that have nothing to do with discrimination.” Sowell gives plenty of examples, including the sport of basketball, in which he suggests that participants in that sport “are not in proportion to their representation in the general population of the United States.”
Surely most people do not think the NBA is racist against whites, Asians, or Hispanics, yet I suspect the diversity consultants Shipley hired and the board members behind it would advocate for equal outcomes — always in accordance with their representation in the general population — when nowhere in life would society expect equal results. Why do Germans produce great cars? Why do Mormons have higher net worths than other religious groups?
In an anti-racist environment, my experience has been that viewpoints such as Sowell’s are silenced, including those that disagree with "equity".
Equity is not about natural distributions -- it is about artificial manipulation. But given Shipley's direction and our mutual interest and love of intellectual freedom and discourse, I would urge Shipley to consider doing the following:
Including in its diversity statement that diversity of thought and philosophy is foundational to diversity -- which includes the ability of those who may disagree with statements and policies to have a voice, and to in fact welcome dissent as part of a diversity agenda
Just as with minorities, the LGBTQ community, and others, ensuring that conservatives feel welcome at Shipley as well (if any group has been discriminated against in the past at Shipley, it was vocal conservative students)
Consider running a survey of students, parents, faculty (and even alumni) on their perspectives on the tolerance of both conservative and liberal perspectives in the school
Asking the same group about whether they feel they can fully “speak their mind” on topics of diversity, and seeing if there are any correlations that can be drawn from this
A Predictable Response
Michael’s response, to be expected, was polite to a fault, but he ignored my requests, and instead doubled-down on the school’s DEI initiatives.
Instead, Shipley’s Diversity Plan that was published shortly thereafter included, “as a first step in a comprehensive curricular review, adjusted the Pre-K through 12th grade Social, Emotional, and Ethical Development (SEED) curriculum to include a focus on identity building, cultural competence, and anti-racism [emphasis added], as well as physical education and sustainability.”
This effort would include “adding content to its handbooks pertaining to race and identity in order to leverage school policies” and “driving both swift and lasting change at Shipley…to create equity [emphasis added] and a sense of belonging for all members of the Shipley Community.”
Shipley’s Diversity Plan included a glossary of terms including:
Anti-racism
“Anti-racism is defined as the work of actively opposing racism by advocating for changes in political, economic, and social life. Anti-racism tends to be an individualized approach, and set up in opposition to individual racist behaviors and outcomes.”
Equity
“Equity exists as a condition that balances two dimensions: fairness and inclusion. As a function of fairness, equity implies ensuring that people have what they need to participate in school life and reach their full potential. Equitable treatment involves eliminating barriers that prevent the full participation of all individuals. As a function of inclusion, equity ensures that essential educational programs, services, activities, and technologies are accessible to all. Equity is not equality; it is the expression of justice, ethics, impartiality, and the absence of discrimination.”
In short: Shipley adopted the same philosophy of “equity” or “equal outcomes” that led to the dismissal of the Presidents of Harvard and Penn in recent months based on their embrace of anti-semitism, including the hiring of Rebekah Adens to lead the DEI charge at Shipley.
And we know, of course, how incredibly tolerant DEI is of Jews, thanks to David Bernstein’s excellent book that is making waves, Woke Antisemitism (disclosure: I chair the Strategic Advisory Council of the Jewish Institute of Liberal Values, where David serves as Founder and CEO).
The New DEI Head Share Her Views
Despite her role to drive “healing” in the school, Adens had no compunction about sharing on “X” her blatant anti-semitism. Some highlights of her now “private” X account are below:
Conclusion
Given the appointment of Adens, it is perhaps no surprise that In the wake of the October 7th attack of Israel by Hamas, Shipley’s response was to hold a “Vigil for Peace”.
And it’s also no surprise Adens would let her own anti-semitic views out in the open as she did (as well as condoning multiple incidents of anti-semitic activity within the school, despite her supposed role to drive "inclusion").
Thomas Sowell once stated that “Ours may become the first civilization destroyed, not by the power of our enemies, but by the ignorance of our teachers and the dangerous nonsense they are teaching our children.”
Going forward, Shipley, like Harvard and Penn before it, faces a choice: to paper over this recent “transgression” or to re-evaluate its commitment to the “Equity” component of DEI which has put formal policy to an academic and intellectual environment which is teaching, in Sowell’s words, “dangerous nonsense.”
Perhaps Adens and Turner, like Claudine Gay and Liz Magill (former Presidents of Harvard and Penn), ought to consider the words of one of their icons:
“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time." - Maya Angelou