A Holocaust Scholar Called Israel’s Actions in Gaza ‘Genocide.’ It Cost Him a Job Offer

By Maggie Hicks

This month, Raz Segal learned that he’d been offered a job to run the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota’s flagship. It was an exciting career move for Segal, an associate professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Stockton University. Five days later, Minnesota withdrew the offer.

The problem, according to key players involved in the search, was Segal’s opinion of the Israel-Hamas war — namely an October 13 article he wrote arguing that Israel’s ongoing attacks on the Gaza strip were a “textbook case of genocide.” Local Jewish leaders said Segal’s views were too extreme to lead such a public-facing center. Two members of the center’s advisory board, both Minnesota professors, resigned over his appointment. The fallout led the university to pause its search for a new director. Officials cited a need to gather more community feedback.

But many academics and free-speech advocates see a dangerous precedent: an Israeli-Jewish scholar facing consequences for talking about Israel. The botched hire has prompted yet another debate about academic freedom — and what’s acceptable when it comes to criticism of Israel — as the war continues to influence American campuses.

Over the past nine months, faculty members have faced backlash for expressing pro-Palestinian views, supporting pro-Palestinian student groups, and helping to organize protests. Multiple professors have been arrested for participating in student-led encampments that appeared on more than 100 campuses in April, May, and June. Some colleges have shut down lectures by Palestinian scholars and disciplined faculty members for helping organize pro-Palestinian events.

If someone like Segal can’t criticize Israeli policies, “then who in the world is going to be allowed to speak about this?” said Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, an advocacy group.

A Normal Search

At first, Minnesota’s director search seemed like a typical academic hiring process. Staff at the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies began talks about finding a new director in early fall, before the start of the Israel-Hamas war, said Evelyn Davidheiser, director of the university’s Institute for Global Studies and a member of the center’s advisory board. The center has been under an interim director since its previous leader stepped down in 2022.

Davidheiser served as chair of the search committee. Six of the seven search-committee members came from the advisory board, she said. They each brought a specific expertise to determine who would be best to run the center and fill a tenured faculty position in the history department, which came with the director role, Davidheiser said.

Applications went live in November. The committee received 20 applicants and selected eight to participate in Zoom interviews, which took place in February. In late March and April, the committee invited four finalists to campus to talk about their research and vision for the center.

Segal was excited to be considered. The Minnesota center’s mission lined up well with the work he’s done at Stockton to connect with local communities affected by genocide, he said. Established in 1997, the center conducts research, collects artifacts from families and survivors of the Holocaust and other genocides, and hosts educational events.

Signs of trouble began to emerge before Segal’s visit in April. Rebecca Feinstein, the daughter of the late Stephen C. Feinstein, who founded the center, received a Facebook message from a University of Minnesota student informing her about the search. Feinstein said this was the first time she’d heard about it.

She scheduled a meeting with Davidheiser and expressed concern about Segal running the center given his views. She also suggested that the university cease the search altogether due to campus tensions about the war. Feinstein said Davidheiser reassured her and invited her to the candidates’ job talks. Feinstein agreed and attended them on Zoom.

The search committee collected feedback from people who attended the campus visits, Davidheiser said. The committee then compiled a report outlining the strengths and weaknesses of each candidate, and sent it to the interim dean of the College of Liberal Arts, where the center is housed.

Karen Painter, a music professor who teaches a course on music during the Holocaust and a former member of the center’s board, said she specifically protested hiring Segal in her feedback to the search committee. Segal’s views on Israel made him an “inappropriate” choice to run a center that does so much campus and community engagement, Painter said. She worried that it would’ve been difficult to get faculty members involved.

Painter said she wasn’t opposed to Segal joining the faculty. Hiring professors with a diversity of viewpoints encourages important debate and conversations, Painter said. Individual faculty members need to have academic freedom, she said, but that shouldn’t be extended to running public-facing centers.

“If the history faculty want to appoint someone who’s an extremist, that’s fine, it might even be fun for the students,” Painter said. Eventually, “the class is over and they move on. But the center just exists, there’s a mission to the center, this is an endowed professorship, living donors are honoring the founder of the center.”

Despite the concerns raised by Feinstein and Painter, the dean extended an offer to Segal on June 5. Segal presented a “clear set of strengths” to the search committee, Davidheiser said. Members who backed his hiring admired his vision for the center and that he wanted to do more than just invite speakers to campus, Davidheiser said.

Segal’s wide-ranging credentials were another plus, she said: At Stockton, Segal has worked extensively with both the Jewish community and other groups, including the Armenian and Indigenous populations in the area. Once the hire went public, things quickly started to fall apart.

Opposition Floods In

On June 7, Joe Eggers, the center’s interim director, sent an email to the advisory board, informing members that Segal had been selected for the position. That evening, Painter and Bruno Chaouat, another Minnesota professor, stepped down from the board in protest.

“There was no doubt in my mind that I needed to” step down, Painter said. “We need moral leadership.”

Painter and Feinstein argued that the hiring process needed more outside perspectives and that the university should have better publicized the search. The director of the center often works with Holocaust survivors and serves as a leader in Minneapolis’s Jewish community, Feinstein said. They should reflect the views of the “mainstream” Jewish population, she said. Feinstein also worried that Segal would steer the center away from its emphasis on the Holocaust and toward a more political direction.

“Raz Segal has no idea what he would be getting into, and I think that he just does not have the capacity to take on that community role,” Feinstein said. “His views are too politically extreme that the mainstream Jewish community, he would have not been able to work with them.”

The news spread quickly from there. Richard Painter, Karen Painter’s husband and a law professor at the university, posted on X about the hire. The next day, he sent a letter to the university’s Board of Regents. In the letter, Richard Painter called Segal’s hire “reckless” and demanded that the university appoint a director who shares views with “the entire community” not “the extreme left or extreme right.”

Ethan Roberts, the deputy executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas, a local advocacy group, said he was tipped off by Painter’s posts. Roberts directed people to flood the inboxes of Jeff Ettinger, the University of Minnesota’s interim president, and other senior administrators. Hundreds did so.

Roberts said his organization partners closely with the center. During the previous director search, a member of the council was on the search committee. Though Roberts said he doesn’t expect the council to be involved in every university hire, the center’s director is an “outward-facing role” and especially important for the Jewish community outside of campus. To Roberts, it would’ve been “very difficult” to work with Segal.

“These academic departments have many, many, many professors who we don’t necessarily agree with,” Roberts said. “But the director of the center, somebody that we work so closely with, that person needs to represent the consensus view within the Jewish community and even within Holocaust scholars, which he clearly doesn’t.”

Davidheiser said having a council representative or another community member on the search committee would’ve been helpful. But it would’ve been difficult to tap a search-committee member who represents all the groups the center serves, she said. The committee considered feedback about whether Segal’s views would be a barrier to building relationships. Ultimately its members were hopeful he’d be able to bridge divides and connect with the community, Davidheiser said.

“We thought that there would be some questions about this,” she said, “but that, given his track record of working with the community in his current position, he would still be able to be an effective director of the center.”

On June 10, however, several news outlets reported that the university was pausing the search.

“In the past several days, additional members of the university community have come forward to express their interest in providing perspective on the hiring of the position of director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies,” the university said in a statement. “Because of the community-facing and leadership role the director holds, it is important that these voices are heard.”

The same day, Segal said he received an email from Ettinger, the university’s interim president, informing him that the offer had been withdrawn. Later, the university’s provost called Segal and asked if he’d still be interested in a faculty position in the history department, which Segal agreed to consider.

On Friday, at a Board of Regents meeting, Ettinger confirmed that “no employment offers for the center’s new director are currently outstanding.” Eggers will continue to lead the center and the university will start over on the director search. Ettinger said the process likely won’t begin until the 2025-26 academic year, when the university will have a new president.

‘A Very Scary Feeling’

Over the past week, many scholars have rallied in support of Segal. The university’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors sent a letter to the university’s current senior leadership as well as Rebecca Cunningham, the incoming president set to begin July 1, demanding the university “unpause” Segal’s hiring process. The decision, the letter says, “egregiously violates principles of academic freedom, faculty governance, and institutional norms.” A letter in support of Segal has also garnered hundreds of signatures, including faculty from Minnesota and Israeli universities.

The administration’s interference with an otherwise standard hiring process — in which Segal and other candidates were thoroughly vetted by fellow academics — is especially alarming, said Liliana Zaragoza, an associate professor of clinical law at Minnesota.

A center like this requires a diversity of perspectives, and the director position shouldn’t come with a unique caveat, said Michael Gallope, chair of Minnesota’s department of cultural studies and comparative literature.

“There are no ideological tests that we should be giving a director about supporting the State of Israel, supporting a specific military campaign, opposing a human-rights campaign for Palestinians,” Gallope said. “You cannot give a discriminatory test for a hire for an administrator that passes a political-advocacy campaign’s view. You cannot do that without destroying what the center is.”

As Segal sees it, the university’s decision was due to “purely political pressure.”

By giving into the demands of groups like the Jewish Community Relations Council, Segal said, the university is justifying outside interference. The council acted as if it represented the views of the entire Jewish community by opposing his hiring, Segal said, adding he received many emails from local residents who said they were excited for him to come to Minnesota. Caving to the council, Segal said, also diverts attention from the center’s mission to educate on both the Holocaust as well as other genocides that people across the world have experienced.

Segal had yet to decide whether he will accept the faculty position in the history department. At a time when many colleges have arrested student protesters and disciplined faculty members who are expressing views on the war, Segal said he’s concerned about the state of campus discourse.

“It’s a very scary feeling,” Segal said, “that the leadership of universities in the academic world, with very, very, very, very, very few exceptions, are legitimizing this brutal assault on academic freedom, on free speech.”

https://www.chronicle.com/article/a-holocaust-scholar-called-israels-actions-in-palestine-genocide-it-cost-him-a-job-offer

Read other items in this How Gaza Encampments Upended Higher Ed package.

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The Palestine Exception to Academic Freedom Must Go

The Brutalization of Israel Is Well Underway. If we do not act, collapse is only a matter of time

The Crisis of Ideology

The Gaza genocide as explicit policy: Michael Hudson names all names

The End of Innocence

Patrick Lawrence: Authorized Atrocities / Late-Imperial Duplicities

Gaza and the End of Western Fantasy

Seth Anziska on Dominant Orthodoxies