Michael Rosen and ‘Elastoplast’ Inclusion: When Institutions Fail Jewish and Faith Communities

Michael Rosen’s public criticism of Goldsmiths, University of London this month has laid bare a deeper institutional failure - what the acclaimed author describes as “elastoplast” approaches to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI).

A Jewish academic and writer with an extensive body of work on the Holocaust and a family history shaped by it, Rosen accused the university of failing to honour its commitments to Jewish staff and students, specifically its pledge to meaningfully involve them in Holocaust Memorial Day commemorations. His critique carries particular weight given that it follows the Independent Inquiry into Antisemitism at Goldsmiths in 2025, which identified serious shortcomings in how antisemitism was recognised and addressed.

Rosen’s ask was straightforward: that the university uphold its commitment to involve staff and students in the planning of Holocaust Memorial Day events. Yet despite the existence of an organised group of Jewish staff at Goldsmiths, none had been approached.

As he explained to me in an interview, “as far as we know, no Jewish members of staff have been approached about Holocaust Memorial Day,” even though an informal network of around thirteen Jewish staff exists, many with deep personal, scholarly, and professional expertise directly relevant to Holocaust remembrance. Rosen himself has written extensively on the Holocaust, yet his knowledge - and that of his colleagues - was neither recognised nor sought.

When Rosen raised the issue formally with the university’s DEI team, he received an unsigned email stating that it was “not practicable” for the university to know which staff members might be relevant to approach. His response to me was blunt: “Hold it there. You’re working in a university. You’re being paid out of university funds. What is your job?”

For Rosen, this was not a logistical oversight but a deeper institutional failure: an organisation claiming commitment to inclusion while disclaiming responsibility for knowing, listening to, or engaging its own communities.

These events must be understood against the backdrop of the Independent Inquiry into Antisemitism at Goldsmiths itself. The 2025 report was commissioned following sustained complaints from Jewish staff and students about antisemitic incidents, hostile campus discourse, and the university’s inadequate responses when concerns were raised.

The Inquiry concluded that antisemitism had occurred and that the institution had failed to recognise, prevent, or respond to it effectively. Jewish staff and students described feeling marginalised, unsafe, or reluctant to participate fully in academic life. Complaints procedures were found to be opaque, slow, and distressing, often compounding harm rather than resolving it.

More broadly, the report exposed a structural gap between DEI rhetoric and institutional practice- particularly where antisemitism and faith-based identity challenge prevailing assumptions about what discrimination looks like, and who institutions imagine it affects.

One of the Inquiry’s key recommendations was that Holocaust Memorial Day activities be developed in consultation with Jewish staff and students. In its formal response, the university committed to funding and supporting an annual event led by Jewish staff and students. Rosen’s complaint highlights the distance between commitment and implementation- and, more significantly, a failure to recognise Jewish staff and students as authoritative holders of lived experience and knowledge.

Rosen framed this as a case of testimonial injustice, drawing on the work of Miranda Fricker: Jewish staff, he argued, were not treated as credible or authoritative knowers of their own history and experience. “They’re saying it’s not practicable to contact people,” he noted. “I find that quite extraordinary, because actually, it is your job.” In this framing, institutional process becomes a shield against responsibility rather than a mechanism for inclusion.

This response, Rosen suggested, reflects a broader pathology within contemporary DEI structures. Rather than centring the lived needs of marginalised communities, institutions prioritise surface-level representation alongside organisational risk management. Universities seek “safe people and safe names,” often preferring external figures with recognised authority over engaging their own staff and students. “That way they can cover themselves. Consultation becomes a compliance exercise rather than a relational practice.”

Instead of operating bottom-up—through open invitations, transparency, and recognition of internal expertise—DEI is reduced to what Rosen calls “elastoplast politics”: symbolic gestures applied after harm has already occurred. In this context, Holocaust Memorial Day risks becoming a reputational intervention rather than an opportunity for genuine institutional reckoning.

Crucially, Rosen located this failure within a wider pattern affecting other faith communities. Reflecting on Muslim experiences within universities, he pointed to a similar tendency to default to national or external representative bodies while overlooking local, embedded knowledge. “It’s not an either-or,” he argued. “It’s an and.” External expertise may be valuable, but it cannot substitute for listening to those already present within institutions and experiencing these dynamics daily.

The implications of this approach are structural rather than symbolic. Faith-based discrimination cannot be addressed through representation alone. “This stuff only happens at the grassroots,” Rosen insisted. Meaningful change, he argued, requires sustained listening, relationship-building, and trust - not curated visibility or managed inclusion. Without this, DEI risks reproducing the very hierarchies it claims to dismantle.

Taken together, Rosen’s intervention and the antisemitism inquiry at Goldsmiths expose a fundamental limitation of contemporary DEI frameworks. Faith may be acknowledged rhetorically, but it remains marginalised in practice. Communities are recognised symbolically, but not authorised as knowers. This dynamic extends beyond antisemitism, offering a lens through which to understand how Muslim communities—and other faith groups- experience institutional inclusion as conditional, procedural, and ultimately incomplete.

Goldsmith was asked for comment, but have not responded