Remarks by Northwestern 'DEI Evangelist' on college anti-Semitism draw rebuke from Holocaust expert
Northwestern Professor Alvin Tillery downplayed the rise of anti-Semitism on Ivy League campuses and accused Donald Trump of quoting Hitler in remarks made to The New York Times.
In response, Rafael Medoff said that the professor 'has not been paying careful attention as Jewish students have been assaulted on many campuses around the country in recent weeks.'
In a recent interview with The New York Times, a Northwestern academic caused controversy by appearing to downplay the rising tide of anti-Semitism on elite college campuses.
Alvin Tillery is a professor of political science and the director of the Center for the Study of Diversity and Democracy at the Evanston, Illinois institution. In statements made to the Times on Jan. 5, Dr. Tillery largely rejected the notion that anti-Semitism has occurred at Ivy League college campuses in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks against Israel.
Tillery told the Times : “No Jewish students have really been subjected to violence on most of these campuses.” Tillery reportedly gave two exceptions to this general statement: an assault at Columbia University and a bomb threat at Cornell University.
Dr. Tillery continued to state that he believed many younger Jews are anti-Zionists: “There’s a huge generational divide on campuses, and young Jews are in the movement to support Gaza.”
For Tillery, Republicans who support Jewish students “all serve a master in Donald Trump,” and continued to state that Trump is “quoting Hitler in his stump speeches.”
In response to a request for comment, Tillery told Campus Reform that he was speaking in reference to Ivy League schools and did not mean to minimize other events such as the assault at Tulane University. He also wrote that the reported anti-Semitic violence at Harvard University has been debunked.
“The incidents of violent antisemitism on college campuses that I mentioned in my op-ed are only a small sample,” he told Campus Reform. “Many other attacks have been reported in recent weeks—and many others have gone unreported because some victims are afraid to come forward. This is something that DEI advocates should be taking more seriously.”
The professor’s comments in the Times were almost immediately criticized by Dr. Rafael Medoff, who has written extensively about the Holocaust and is the founding director of the Davis S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies.
Medoff described Dr. Tillery in his Jan. 7 Jewish Journal article as a “leading advocate of the Diversity-Equity-Inclusion (DEI) campaign.” Medoff claimed that in Tillery’s LinkedIn profile, he calls himself a “DEI evangelist” and refers to the DEI space as his “life’s mission.”
Tillery uses the self-description, “DEI Evangelist,” in his X biography.
In response to the substance of Tillery’s comments, Dr. Medoff wrote: “It seems Mr. Tillery has not been paying careful attention as Jewish students have been assaulted on many campuses around the country in recent weeks.”
Medoff referenced physical attacks against Jewish students—including being shoved and punched—at Harvard Business School (Oct. 18), Tulane University (Oct. 26), the City College of New York (Nov. 2), UMass-Amherst (Nov. 3), and Ohio State University (Nov. 10).
He also cited other attacks at Cooper Union, City College of New York, Carnegie Mellon, UC Berkeley, and George Mason.
[RELATED: University of Minnesota under federal investigation for handling of anti-Semitism]
Campus Reform has recently reported that, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), documented anti-Semitic incidents on college campuses rose over 1,000% from Oct. 7–Dec. 7, 2023 in comparison to the same time frame in 2022.
Campus Reform has also contacted Dr. Medoff and Northwestern University for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
