No one should be punished for exercising their free speech rights. Suppressing speech will not make us, our organizations, or our college campuses safer. I stand against censorship, hate, and efforts to prevent any individuals or groups from participating in our democratic society—including those speaking out for Palestinian people.

What does queer mean? Who “counts” as queer? Who can say the word "queer?" These are questions that people have asked me for years. These days, I sometimes feel that people are afraid to ask so here are my thoughts. Yes, you can say queer even if you don't identify as queer. You don't have to be a member of the LGBTQIA2S+ community to be queer; same gender loving folx are sometimes the least queer folx in the room. (Yes, I said it!) Poly and kinky people are queer. Yes, asexual or ace individuals are queer.

“Am I using my anger, or is my anger using me?” I love this question from Layla Saad. If you're dumping unprocessed trauma or information onto colleagues or strangers online, you may be overwhelming or triggering them without realizing it. During difficult times, we must reconsider our ways of being in relationship and community with one another while allowing each other to feel the terror, rage, and injustice of the moment.

As my beloved rabbi recently reminded us, caring about human beings does not make one either pro-Israel or pro-Palestine; we can be both.

These days, the trauma, grief, and pain is profound and unprecedented for people of diverse races, faiths, nationalities, and ethnicities. As an American Jew with family in Israel, I am directly impacted by the Israel-Hamas war. Why has antisemitism been spreading like wildfire among progressives, and where do we go from here? That’s the question I seek to answer in this piece. I argue that the left’s longstanding exclusion of antisemitism from conversations about racial and ethnic oppression is both a CAUSE and an EFFECT of its tendency to deny, minimize and even justify Jewish suffering.

What we think is "scary" is often simply people who are different from us. As a young girl with scoliosis and kyphosis, the only representations I ever saw of people like me were “hunchbacks” in the movies. These were typically ugly and deformed men with extreme spinal curvatures like Quasimodo…. If you're dressing up for Halloween or costuming your kids, please remember that how you represent villainy, evil, and what's "frightening" has a significant impact on people with bodily, limb, or facial differences. From the Phantom of the Opera to the Joker to Dr. Poison from Wonder Woman, scarred and disfigured villains have been a persistent trope in Hollywood cinema.

I have intentionally paused my regular content in light of mass atrocities. What is happening in Gaza and Israel may feel like an ocean away to you, but it’s deeply personal to me. My family lives in Israel--not distant relatives but my immediate family. The effects of generational trauma affect not only Israelis and Palestinians but progressive American Jews like me, for whom both the genocidal violence of Hamas against Israel and Israel's genocidal "complete siege" of Gaza are trauma triggers.

Coming out is not enough; we need to create workplaces, classrooms, and communities that are safe enough, inclusive enough, and affirming enough for people to come out into. Coming out has been personally transformative and healing in my life, so I'm not raining on anyone's parade on National Coming Out Day. My point is that coming out has its limits as a political tool, shifting responsibility for creating LGBTQIA2S+ inclusion onto the very people who've been oppressed by cisheteronormative hierarchies.

The work of inclusion requires that all of us examine our “default settings.” Many white people don’t acknowledge that systemic racism exists; instead, we say that America is a society of equal opportunity…. “Not everything is about race,” we say. “There was unfairness in the past but everyone has the same opportunities now.” Whiteness is our default. We don’t recognize that we have internalized what Toni Morrison calls the white gaze, often imposing it in the workplace in ways that require people of color to expend energy and resources to accommodate whiteness.

When people ask me why I do diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) work, my answer is very personal. When I was in college and came out to my family, I was disowned and cut off emotionally and financially…. Many decades later, I love talking to leaders, teams, and educators about how we can give each other the gift of being seen, respected, and welcomed because I know what it’s like to feel invisible, disrespected, and unwelcome—even in the place I called home.

Racism does not require "malicious intent." If this is how you're defining racism, it's time to do your personal work to better understand structural racism and your role in it. There are 4 levels of racism: Internalized or Personal Racism, Interpersonal Racism, Institutional Racism, and Structural Racism. The most common understanding of racism is that it’s a form of prejudice and intentional bias in our personal interactions. But racism resides in our beliefs as unconscious bias; this is sometimes called internalized racism.

When people say that cisgender is a slur some of the questions I ask are: Do you know what cisgender means? Why do you believe it’s a slur? Do you think the term heterosexual is a slur? “Cisgender” is an adjective used to describe people whose gender identities "match" the sex they were assigned at birth. In other words, their gender identities align with what is socially expected for their birth-assigned sex.

Allyship means accepting responsibility for our mistakes instead of invalidating those who brought them to our attention. If you identify as an ally or accomplice and feel like someone from a historically excluded group has harshly criticized you for something you said or did, please take some time to process before responding or acting.

One of the oldest antisemitic tropes is the lie that Jews control the world and therefore are the cause of all of the world’s problems. How can you fight the rising tide of anti-Jewish hate? I’m so glad you asked! An important way to demonstrate your allyship is by educating others who use harmful language such as “wealthy elites” or “international elites.”

We will not be able to build a more inclusive future unless we take responsibility for our past. In many red and purple states, schools are now controlled by individuals whose goals aren’t educating students but indoctrinating them. Their tactics are so extreme that they invite comparison to the Soviet Union.

Black students carry the weight of intergenerational trauma and systemic racism into their classrooms every day. White students do not (although those of us who are racialized as white can and do experience trauma as well). Despite the impact of intergenerational trauma on Black children, current debates about teaching the history of racism are almost exclusively focused on the feelings of White children.

With an inclusive mindset ant the right tools and skills, any leader can build a more equitable and inclusive workplace. But creating meaningful and sustainable DEI change doesn’t happen overnight.

Making real progress on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging requires deep listening and authentic communication.

A 2022 study found that more than half of Jewish respondents experienced discrimination at work. In the US, we are now facing record high levels of anti-Jewish bias and violence, but antisemitism is still widely misunderstood and frequently overlooked in conversations about inclusion and justice.

Often described as the canary in the coal mine, antisemitism is a danger for everyone because it tends to fuel other forms of hate including anti-Black racism, xenophobia, misogyny, and transphobia. Anti-Jewish bigotry is a viral form of racialized hate. As Black antiracist activist Eric Ward puts it, “Contemporary antisemitism, then, does not just enable racism, it also is racism, for in the White nationalist imaginary Jews are a race—the race—that presents an existential threat to Whiteness.”

The diversity trainer Maura Cullen points out that as soon as we become self-absorbed, we diminish the odds of making authentic connections with others. How is this relevant to inclusive and equity-focused teaching? When we believe we’ve made a significant misstep as teachers, often our first response is to focus on ourselves. In this essay, I’ll explain why inclusive teaching is life-saving and show how it offers us tools to affirm the humanity—and the very survival—of the students who are in our care. As educators, one of the best ways to undertake this work is to shift our thinking from the “me” to the “we.”