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.”
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 aniki@lemm.ee 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.
Thanks for the explanation, that’s really shit, unfortunately