University of Minnesota pauses hiring of professor to head Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies who called Israel’s war against Hamas terrorists a ‘textbook example of genocide’ | The Gateway expert

The University of Minnesota has reportedly rejected plans to hire academic Raz Segal as the new head of the university’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies (CHGS).

Although they did not publicly announce the decision, the university received public backlash after two members of the center’s advisory board resigned. partially referring to Segals’ position after the Hamas terrorist attacks on October 7.

In an article in Jewish movements on October 13, just days after October 7, Segal called Israel’s military operation against Hamas “a textbook example of genocide.”

Segal wrote: “The attack on Gaza can also be understood in other terms: as a textbook example of genocide unfolding before our eyes. I say this as a genocide scholar who has written for many years about Israeli mass violence against Palestinians.”

Inside in one piece NJ Spotlight News Segal suggested that complaints from Jewish students about campus safety amid unauthorized anti-Israel protests were “unfounded” and that anti-Jewish student demonstrators were “not escalating anything” but were subject to “a vicious police attack against them.”

In the Los Angeles TimesSegal argued that the creation of the Jewish state “reproduced the racism and white supremacy that targeted the exclusion of Jews.”

According to The Jewish Insider, a spokesperson for the University of Minnesota told the newspaper that the director selection process had been suspended “to allow an opportunity to determine next steps.”

“Members of the university community have come forward to express their interest in providing perspective on the recruitment for the position of director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies,” the spokesperson said. “Because of the community-focused and leadership role the director plays, it is important that these voices are heard.”

According to an internal email obtained by the Washington Free Beacon (WFB), the interim dean of Minnesota’s College of Liberal Arts, Ann Waltner, extended an offer to Segal on Friday to serve as chair of the center.

Almost immediately, French professor Bruno Chaouat and music professor Karen Painter announced their resignation from the center’s advisory board.

WFB shared both Chaouat And From the painter resignation letters.

Chaouat wrote in part: “Professor Segal, by justifying Hamas’s atrocities five days after they occurred (via a perverse accusation that Israel committed a genocide), cannot fulfill the Center’s mission.”

“He has failed to recognize Hamas’s genocidal intentions. He does not understand that a movement like Hamas is inherently fascist and represents exactly what CHGS is against.”

Painter wrote that Segal “has positioned himself at the extreme end of the political ideological spectrum with his publications on Israel and Gaza.”

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