Israeli Genocide Scholar Who Lost University of Minnesota Job Over His Position on Gaza Reaches $250k Settlement - U.S. News
NEW YORK - When Israeli American scholar Raz Segal received an email on June 10th, 2024, rescinding a job offer to head the University of Minnesota's Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, he was opening his front door to an Al Jazeera crew that had come to interview him for a documentary on Israel's decline in global public opinion since the war in Gaza.
Segal, looking at his phone in shock, let them in. As the crew was setting up the lighting, he was trying to figure out what had happened and where to go from here.
At the end of last month, after a lengthy legal battle, the university agreed to pay Segal a $250,000 settlement. Segal accused the university of caving to pressure from donors and some Jewish community leaders after he published an article that accused Israel of perpetrating a genocide in Gaza less than a week after the Hamas-led October 7 attacks.
"It's obviously not a lot of money – for them it's nothing, but that's not the point," Segal tells Haaretz. "The point is that people understand the university recognized that our claims are strong and backed by an enormous amount of evidence."
In a statement, the University of Minnesota confirmed it had reached a settlement agreement with Segal, which "contains no admission of liability or wrongdoing by either party," a typical feature of agreements like this. "The university remains focused on advancing our core educational mission and promoting thoughtful inquiry across all of our centers, departments and programs."
Although the university doesn't acknowledge wrongdoing, Segal says the settlement is still a success at exposing crude donor interference. He compiled dozens of emails sent to the university by filing public records requests, which the university was required to honor as a public institution. He says it's clear there was an organized effort to keep him out of the job, as many of the complaints followed the same template.
"These donors could have sent a message to the president: 'Call me in five minutes.' They didn't. It's all spelled out in the emails," Segal says. "They're shameless. They don't care."
Offer rescinded within five days
On October 13, 2023, Segal published an op-ed titled "A Textbook Case for Genocide" in Jewish Currents, a left-wing magazine. The job offer from Minnesota, made five days earlier, was rescinded by the university's leadership, who cited community concerns. "Because of the community-facing and leadership role that the Director holds, it is important that these voices are heard," then-Interim President Jeff Ettinger wrote in the 2024 email to Segal.
Today, Segal is a tenured professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Stockton University in southern New Jersey, where he also directs the program's master's degree. Speaking with Haaretz from his home in Pennsylvania, Segal said he knew his appointment could provoke backlash from some, but he assumed that the committee hiring him was a show of confidence in him. "Naively, I thought the university would stand behind its decision," Segal says.
In emails obtained by the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represented Segal in his case against the public university, members of the search committee praised his scholarship, experience and fundraising abilities and confirmed his appointment with "almost unanimous (and enthusiastic) support."
Two days after the offer was sent to Segal, however, things began to turn, when professors Bruno Chaouat and Karen Painter resigned from the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies' advisory board in objection to Segal's hiring. Segal was accused of "justifying Hamas' atrocities five days after they occurred" and for blaming "Israel for the rape and murder of 1,200 civilians."
Segal refutes these charges. "Nowhere have I ever justified any actual violence, by anyone, in any circumstance. I've written on numerous occasions that Hamas' actions constitute war crimes and mass murder."
News of the resignations spread to the broader Jewish community, as some local leaders and donors sent emails to voice their objections to Segal's hiring. Ethan Roberts, deputy executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas, charged Segal with being an anti-Zionist and of rejecting Israel's right to exist. "His appointment as director is just as offensive as appointing Byron Donalds, who recently praised Jim Crow laws, to lead the African American Studies Department."
One donor questioned Segal's ability to "engage in community outreach." Another warned of donors "who will pull there [sic] pledges to the university" if the hire goes through.
Others in the Jewish community came to Segal's defense. Beth Gendler, executive director of the local group Jewish Community Action, emailed university leadership "to reject the claim that one discrete part of the Minnesota Jewish community can speak for all of us."
"Exceptionalizing the Jewish community and using us as an excuse for limiting academic freedom, and for excluding other impacted communities, endangers Jews and contributes to the erosion of democracy that we are seeing play out nationwide," Gendler wrote.
Position still empty
Segal's legal ordeal actually started by agreeing to take a less prestigious job at the university.
On the day the offer was rescinded, he spoke with the provost. According to Segal, the university kept stringing him along, while he agreed to take a position in the department that wasn't the directorship. When they ended communication, he and his legal team decided to take action.
Apart from the emails from donors and some Jewish leaders uncovered during discovery, Segal said he felt there was an effort to block his hiring that preceded the controversial op-ed. The search committee asked whether he was an Israeli citizen, which he found out of bounds for prospective employer to ask.
"They are dividing between 'good Jews' and 'bad Jews' like me who were criticizing Israel," Segal says.
He says that centering concerns of a small minority of donors and Jewish representatives sidelines other communities that university and genocide studies programs are supposed to serve.
"In the Twin Cities and in Minnesota, there's a large Armenian community, and Indigenous communities. Maybe they should think about whose lands the university sits on," he says.
Raz SegalIf a donor can come and dictate to a university what will and won't be on its website and who it can or can't hire, it's the end of the university.
Segal said the current state of the program, which remains without a director and has taken a significant PR hit, proves this myopic view.
"Who would want to take this position now? No serious scholar will take it. The only person they could find would be some kind of Holocaust scholar who'll do and say exactly what the JCRC tells him to," he says. "I guess organizations like the JCRC prefer to damage Holocaust and Genocide Studies so a 'bad Jew' like me won't be the director."
'Detrimental for Jews'
Despite settling with the University of Minnesota, Segal's trials are not over. He's facing new attacks from within Stockton University.
One donor sent a letter to the university and the governor of New Jersey deeming the Holocaust and Genocide Studies program webpage as "misinformation," because it mentions Israel committing genocide. The page has since been taken down.
"The page mentions Sudan, the Rohingya [people of Myanmar], Russia-Ukraine – the opposite of accusations that there's an overfocus on Israel," Segal says. "Arguing that Israel is exempted from standards of any other country is not only detrimental for Jews, but for Holocaust memory, from which genocide studies emerged."
For Segal, donor intervention is about more than Israel. It is about democracy, free speech and the future of academia.
"If a donor can come and dictate to a university what will and won't be on its website and who it can or can't hire, it's the end of the university."