Elon Musk said that he believes diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies inherently involve discrimination and are “fundamentally anti-Semitic,” amid the growing anti-Semitism in major Western cities and on college campuses.
In an interview with commentator Ben Shapiro on Jan. 22 at the European Jewish Association Conference in Poland, the owner of X (formerly Twitter) said people should “always be wary of any name that sounds like it could come out of a George Orwell book.”
“Diversity, equity, inclusion, these all sound like nice words. But what it really means is discrimination on the basis of race, sex, and sexual orientation, and it’s against merit,” Mr. Musk said. “Thus, I think, [it] is fundamentally anti-Semitic.”
During the interview, Mr. Musk noted that the solution to address this DEI problem is for universities to focus on merit. “It doesn’t matter whether you’re a man, [or] woman, what race you are, what beliefs you have. What matters is how good are you at your job or what are your skills?” he said.
“We just have to get rid of the rule that you that if you’re weaker, you’re automatically good. That obviously makes no sense,” he added.
Earlier in the day, Mr. Musk toured the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Oswiecim, Poland, where at least 1.1 million people, mainly Jews, were killed by Nazi Germany during World War 2.
Mr. Musk said he was shocked to see pro-Hamas rallies across major Western cities and college campuses, including elite universities like Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, where he attended.
“All of the riots that were in the major cities and college campuses, I think, was a shocking wake-up call to any sort of civilization or civil-minded person. [It’s] really quite a shock,” Mr. Musk said.
‘DEI Just Another Word For Racism’
This is not the first time the tech billionaire has raised concerns over DEI initiatives. On Jan. 11, Mr. Musk questioned DEI hiring in the airline industry in response to a series of tweets by author James Lindsay that detailed the various DEI policies implemented by Boeing.“Do you want to fly in an airplane where they prioritized DEI hiring over your safety? That is actually happening,” Mr. Musk said in a post on X.
In another post, he wrote: “People will die due to DEI,” referring to the recent midair accident involving Alaska Airlines’ Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft.
On Jan. 4, he criticized this controversial initiative, saying, “Discrimination on the basis of race, which DEI does, is literally the definition of racism.”
In his long post, Mr. Ackman pointed out that “the root cause” of anti-Semitism at Harvard is the DEI movement “that had been promulgated on campus.”
“Under DEI’s ideology, any policy, program, educational system, economic system, grading system, admission policy, (and even climate change due [to] its disparate impact on geographies and the people that live there), etc. that leads to unequal outcomes among people of different skin colors is deemed racist,” Mr. Ackman said.
“As a result, according to DEI, capitalism is racist, advanced placement exams are racist, IQ tests are racist, corporations are racist, or in other words, any merit-based program, system, or organization which has or generates outcomes for different races that are at variance with the proportion these different races represent in the population at large is by definition racist under DEI’s ideology,” he continued.
Mr. Ackman called the DEI movement itself racist. “DEI is racist because reverse racism is racism, even if it is against white people (and it is remarkable that I even need to point this out). Racism against white people has become considered acceptable by many not to be racism, or alternatively, it is deemed acceptable racism,” he said. “While this is, of course, absurd, it has become the prevailing view in many universities around the country.”
“An ideology that portrays a bicameral world of oppressors and the oppressed based principally on race or sexual identity is a fundamentally racist ideology that will likely lead to more racism rather than less,” Mr. Ackman said. “A system where one obtains advantages by virtue of one’s skin color is a racist system, and one that will generate resentment and anger among the un-advantaged who will direct their anger at the favored groups.”
