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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.