No confidence in that ‘no confidence’ vote at the U

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On June 26, the University of Minnesota Faculty Senate voted “no confidence” in interim President Jeff Ettinger and Provost Rachel Croson. The vote came after Ettinger paused the appointment of Prof. Raz Segal as director of the University’s Holocaust and Genocide Studies Center (HGSC). Those voting “no confidence” cited academic freedom as the main reason for their vote, which came in the final week of Ettinger’s tenure as interim president.

I strongly believe in academic freedom and faculty governance and reject canceling and boycotting. But that is not the issue here. In this case the process was not consistent with established practice, nor was the substantive outcome appropriate. Ettinger’s call to pause the appointment was a proper exercise of his authority. It rightly reflected the broader commitment of a public land grant institution to all the communities it serves.

The director of the HGSC needs to be not only an individual with strong academic credentials and a track record in Holocaust and genocide studies but also a person who will, as the job description had it, “work collaboratively on relevant projects with centers, departments, and programs in the College of Liberal of Arts and elsewhere at the University of Minnesota” and critically “engage in community outreach.” The director is also supposed to have a “proven ability to work across diverse audiences and disciplines.”

Appointments to this position in the past have involved robust and meaningful consultation and involvement of the community most relevant to the work and outreach of this center, namely the Jewish community. Meaningful and close consultation does not undermine the work the center can and should do with other communities in the state but reflects the historic and important role the broad Jewish community has played in supporting, funding and working with the issue of Holocaust remembrance and education in Minnesota. Generic consultation by listserv and open-ended invitation does not constitute robust engagement with the Minnesota Jewish community, or with any community, for that matter. Consultation “lite” should not be the policy of this university for any community-focused leadership role and should not be passed off as meeting this land grant institution’s obligation to engage with historically marginalized communities. Meaningful consultation with the broad Jewish community was simply not carried out here, defying a core goal of the center.

Substantively, this prospective leader of the Holocaust and Genocide Center failed to express unequivocal moral qualms about Hamas’ acts, which were recognized by hundreds of international law experts as amounting to war crimes, crimes against humanity and possibly genocide. Separately, Segal rejected as “baseless” the claims that the “Gaza Solidarity Encampments” posed a threat to Jews on university and college campuses. The 67% of all students (not just Jews) who identified antisemitism as a problem in a poll held last month across the nation’s top 25 universities and the 73% of Jewish college students who reported, as early as November of last year, that they had experienced or witnessed antisemitism since the start of the school year, may disagree, as would the numerous Jewish students who expressed fear linked directly to the encampments.

A leader of this center must be able to “engage the community,” “work collaboratively” and sustain constructive relationships with the center’s stakeholders. We should expect and assume that the leader of this university center that addresses the historic and contemporary legacy of the Holocaust would have the demonstrated capacity to engage and support our whole Jewish community, and the same for all our Jewish students, especially those experiencing antisemitism, fear and marginalization in recent months. Unfortunately, Segal’s track record indicates that is not possible here.

But what about academic freedom? The appointment to a tenured position and the appointment to the directorship of a center or an institute are at the University of Minnesota two distinct matters.

Defending academic freedom is critical in a democratic society and includes appointment to a tenured position, which is in the clear prerogative of the faculty. An intervention by the university leadership in a tenure or tenure-track appointment is unwarranted and impinges on academic freedom (bar, perhaps, rare and exceptional cases of which this is not one). But the appointment to an administrative role such as a directorship of a center adds a range of considerations that would be appropriate for any university leadership to evaluate.

Thus, for example, at the U the decision to appoint a dean is ultimately in the hands of the provost, not the faculty. What is true for appointing deans is also true for appointing directors of centers and institutions, especially those that are not merely inward-facing academic centers. Indeed, the university’s Board of Regents tenure policy precisely recognizes the separation between faculty appointments and administrative titles.

Here, President Ettinger explicitly, rightly and repeatedly said that he would defer to the faculty on whether they wanted to offer Prof. Segal a position in the history department. His objection, in other words, was not to the academic appointment to the faculty but rather to the appointment to the director position. The ball now proverbially lies with the history faculty, not with the university president, to extend a tenured offer.

Regrettably, the Faculty Senate chose the nuclear option of a vote of no confidence in this case. One cannot but wonder to what extent the fact that this was Ettinger’s last week in office helped the brave souls who voted no-confidence, as their vote was, for all practical matters, symbolic. One also cannot but wonder whether they would have been galvanized in quite the same manner had the appointment been for a directorship of other centers such as, for example, the Center for Race, Indigeneity, Disability, Gender and Sexuality Studies, if the relevant communities (internal and external) strongly objected to the proposed hire. One also suspects that Segal has become the darling of many faculty members, the majority of whom are not experts in the relevant subject matter, because of his political views.

The pause in the appointment of director for HGSC should be used productively by U leadership to reestablish trust and strengthen its ties with all members of its community, both on and outside campus. The University of Minnesota, particularly incoming President Rebecca Cunningham and her leadership team, must reaffirm that equality, inclusion and belonging belong to all on our campus, including, in no lesser part, to our Jewish students, staff and faculty. Intentional and concentrated work is required to return the university to the welcoming place it had been, and to ensure that it lives up to its full potential as a place of higher learning where we all belong.

Oren Gross is associate dean for academic affairs and Irving Younger Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School. Previous opinion coverage of this issue includes “Complications at U’s Holocaust Center,” by the Star Tribune Editorial Board on June 25, and “U administration overstepped authority in revoking Raz Segal’s job offer,” by members of the College of Liberal Arts on June 27.