On Mar. 3, Ellie Avishai hopped on a call with a senior colleague from the University of Austin in Texas. She was shocked when the colleague informed her a recent LinkedIn post of hers—an anodyne post of maybe 100 words, mostly a quotation and congratulation, which she had not given much thought to previously—had gotten her into big trouble with a university funder. In her post, which dealt with diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, she wrote that "we can have criticisms of DEI without wanting to tear down the whole concept of diversity and inclusion."

That ran contrary to some higher-ups at the university. They tore up their contract with Avishai's educational organization, the Mill Institute, severing ties with Avishai and her team the very day she got the call.

Avishai, who lives in Toronto, recently published an account of this in Quilette, which brought its own wave of flak online—did she not know the UATX, whose website says they "champion academic freedom," was right-wing coded? That she would have to toe a line that pleases its ideological backers? But as Avishai explains to The CJN's opinion editor, Phoebe Maltz Bovy, on The Jewish Angle, the idea of advocating a hardline political stance in a classroom is entirely antithetical to the Mill Institute's vision of education.

Credits

• Host: Phoebe Maltz Bovy
• Producer and editor: Michael Fraiman
• Music: "Gypsy Waltz" by Frank Freeman, licensed from the Independent Music Licensing Collective

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