From news reports, the JCRC is aware that a settlement was recently reached between the University of Minnesota and Professor Raz Segal.

 

While the JCRC has no comment on the legal merits of the settlement, we believe critical context has been absent from much of the press coverage.

 

As have been broadly and accurately reported in June 2024, JCRC organized community opposition to the University of Minnesota’s offer to appoint Professor Raz Segal as director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. 

 

We did so openly, through a public action alert that encouraged Jewish community members and other concerned Minnesotans to contact university leaders. Hundreds responded. We are proud to have helped members of our community, including many U of M alumni, exercise their First Amendment right to make their views known to Minnesota’s flagship public university in a manner consistent with the U of M’s stated mission to be “conscious of and responsive to the needs of the many communities it is committed to serving….”

 

Our opposition was grounded in Professor Segal’s own public statements.

 

On October 13, 2023—six days after the deadliest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and two weeks before Israel began its major ground offensive—Segal outrageously wrote that “the assault on Gaza can also be understood in other terms: as a textbook case of genocide unfolding in front of our eyes.”

 

In a 2022 article, Segal absurdly claimed that Jews today are believed to be connected to the ancient Judeans “even though no evidence supports this assertion.”  

 

And as Jewish students across the country, including at the University of Minnesota, were reporting antisemitism and expressing fear for their safety, Segal called allegations that campus encampments posed a danger to Jews or were sites of antisemitism “baseless” and “actually absurd.” Although he acknowledged that some antisemitic incidents occurred, he tokenized them as “few and far between.” 

 

JCRC regarded these sweeping statements as deeply dismissive of the concerns and lived experiences Jewish students were reporting to us and our counterparts throughout the United States.

 

The issue was not whether Professor Segal had the academic freedom to express controversial opinions or hold a faculty position at the U of M.

 

The question was whether someone holding these views was appropriate to lead a Holocaust and genocide center with a longstanding, community-facing relationship with Holocaust survivors, their descendants, Jewish students, Minnesota’s broader Jewish community, and had been a longstanding partner to our organization. JCRC concluded that he was not.

 

We recognize that a minority of Jewish Minnesotans disagreed with us and supported Professor Segal. They had every right to express that position, just as the majority of Jewish Minnesotans who opposed his appointment had every right to express theirs. No responsible organization claims that every member of a diverse community holds an identical view.

 

JCRC’s description of itself as the “consensus public affairs voice” of Minnesota’s Jewish community does not mean unanimity. It describes our longstanding institutional role: JCRC is supported by both the Minneapolis and St. Paul Jewish Federations, governed by a broad and ideologically diverse community board, and charged with building consensus among multiple Jewish religious, political, and social perspectives. The existence of dissent does not negate that role.

 

In terms of the timing of our advocacy, on June 11, 2024, Interim President Ettinger invited JCRC to meet and the university confirmed that there would be greater community involvement in the search. JCRC then publicly asked the community to pause its protest messages. 

 

In a democracy, coordinated advocacy is a cherished and protected part of civic life. Jewish students, alumni, parents, faculty, taxpayers, and donors do not surrender their right to speak because they are Jewish. The university retained sole authority over its hiring decision; JCRC’s role was to ensure that the consensus concerns of our community were heard.