The University of Minnesota paused the hiring of a professor who wrote that Israel’s military operation against Hamas in Gaza after Oct. 7 was “a textbook case of genocide” to head the school’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies (CHGS), Jewish Insider has learned.
The pause, which has not yet been publicly announced by the university, came on Monday evening after two members of the center’s advisory board resigned in protest on Friday.
“The assault on Gaza can also be understood in other terms: as a textbook case of genocide unfolding in front of our eyes,” Raz Segal, an Israeli associate professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Stockton University in New Jersey, wrote in the Jewish Currents on Oct. 13. “I say this as a scholar of genocide, who has spent many years writing about Israeli mass violence against Palestinians,” he wrote.
A spokesperson for the University of Minnesota told JI that the director selection process was put on hold “to allow an opportunity to determine next steps.”
Minnesotan here. This has obviously been in the local news a lot.
The story is that the university received some complaints saying the university shouldn’t be hiring an anti-semite in this position; that coupled with the board resignations caused the university to pause the hire to give time for a review.
I don’t know how this will play out. The university is between a rock and a hard place; if you think they won’t be absolutely blasted if they proceed, I think you don’t understand the amount of heat that can and will be brought to bear. On the other hand, Dr. Segal is extremely qualified for the job and had indeed already been extended - and had accepted - an offer for the position.
Defenders of Israel’s actions still have far more firepower and political capital than the people who accept the UN’s findings that what Israel is doing qualifies as war crimes and genocide. I do not envy the university; they lose no matter what they do. I think they’ll take more damage if they continue and hire Dr. Segal, but I hope they take the ethically right path and being him in board.
What’s the hard place between genocide and not-genocide? Since when did a university give a shit about what a bunch of rich blowhards bloviate about?
You don’t know much about how universities work. I don’t mean that as a dis; I don’t know how else to say it.
Universities very much depend on donors. They depend on alumni. They depend on people going to their football games. This is one of the most succinct charts I could find:
39% of a public higher ed school’s income comes from donors and alumns. Someone’s doing the math right now and trying to figure out what percentage of their donors are going to stop their donations to the school; how many of the rich alumni will terminate their grant plans. I doubt if any are expecting [email protected] to step in and make up for the lost millions. And, when they’re shitting down programs because they can’t afford to run them anymore, or they’re giving out fewer grants to kids, those same people will be there to point the finger at the administrators and accuse them of causing the loss of revenue because of this decision.
You can be righteously furious all you want, but there will be a cost to the intuition. Personally, I’m getting sick of people who, like yourself, ignore the sheer power of Israeli lobby in the US. It’s not even a conspiracy theory; Israel, and people who support Israel in the US, have invested a lot of time and effort into building effective lobbying organizations at all levels. And the Palestinians have not. Mainly because Palestine has never been able to afford to, but also since the US is clearly in Israel’s pocket, there’s also not much political will to follow suit.
I hope they make the right decision and hire him, but it’s stupid to think it’s an easy decision. Doing so will likely cost people their jobs. Or did you completely miss the recent furor over university presidents being called to resign because they didn’t crack down hard enough on pro-Palestinian statements on campus? Fuck, even the new outlets labeled it “not taking a strong enough stance on anti-semitism.” Supporting Palestine is being defined as anti semitism.
Christ, take a look around, man. Taking a stand against the genocide in Palestine will you get crucified.
[^1] https://www.case.org/resources/giving-us-colleges-and-universities-increased-125-fiscal-year-2022
Another good source is Statista, but it’s harder to directly relate the categories to donations.
Another consequence of living in an oligarchy 😩
A self-perpetuating oligarchy. It’s always money.
It’s a choice between offering higher-ed opportunities to all income levels, or to only rich people. If you’re giving expensive educations to people who can’t afford it and aren’t paying for it, you have to get the money from somewhere. If you’re a public school, the government helps some, with grants and such, but as the stats show, tax dollars are a small percent of funding. If you’re private, you can give a big “fuck you” to poor people and only let the kids of rich people in.
I don’t have a solution for this, aside from saying that someone besides me needs to pay more taxes (corporations, rich people, etc). I’m not rich, so saying “tax the rich!” is basically saying “tax someone other than me more.” And, yeah, I think we need tax reform, and more income equality - the current discrepancy in wealth distribution is nauseating - but I don’t know how.
Things are badly broken, and it’s leading to the end of the American Empire era. I only hope whoever comes after us learns and does better.
Thanks for the explanation, that’s really shit, unfortunately
Since government funding has dried up and they rely more and more on alumni and other donations
I think their point is this should be an easy choice as a moral matter. The consequences shouldn’t be a factor in the choice. If we stopped making moral choices for fear of consequences we’d live in a poor world.