How universities are failing Jews
JVL Introduction
Raz Segal, an Israeli-American scholar of Jewish history and Holocaust and genocide studies, wrote an assessment of Israel’s war in Gaza last year called A textbook case of genocide.
He had recently been offered a job directing the University of Minnesota’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Under pressure from groups based outside the university its administrators soon caved in and rescinded the job offer.
Segal writes about his case in the wider context of many universities in the US behaving disgracefully in relation to student encampments in solidarity with the Palestinians. Allegations of antisemitism without foundation have been made and accepted as a reason for calling in police to violently disband the encampments and to discipline students involved.
Of course it is Palestinian scholars who are generally the first to be targeted in this way as well as other Arabs, both Muslims and Christians.
But in the name of combatting antisemitism many Jews have been arrested and disciplined too, “even as those Jews organized Shabbat prayer services and Passover Seders; engaged in interfaith discussions; and joined in solidarity, as anti-Zionist Jews, with people protesting nationalist and racist violence”.
Segal points out that so many university administrators “have utterly failed to understand the distinction between antisemitism and anti-Zionism — and therefore ended up reproducing an antisemitic stance themselves”.
The article is followed by a statement from the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) and its Committee on Academic Freedom in support of Dr Segal.
RK
This article was originally published by Forward on Thu 11 Jul 2024. Read the original here.
Accusing Israel of genocide cost me a job — just another example of a university failing Jews
The American academic system has shown itself unable to adapt to a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between Jews and Israel
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One more shocking example of McCarthyism. I note that the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas led the way.
Assuming these groups are representative of Jews in those areas then what we seen are Jewish groups specifically aligning Jews with Israel’s genocide and thus inviting antisemitism
I am very interested in the role of Fathom think tank as an actor in these academic purges. Has anyone else looked at their website, with its list of former leftist as well as right-wing writers? More important, does anyone know their funders?
We need to investigate how these groups are funded and expose any connections to the state of Israel. A State which is promolgating the same policies of right wing organisations such as those in Britain, France and Germany of a totalitarian regime excluding anyone who does not conform to a specific DNA and Gene Pattern This is tantamount to Nazi policy in Germany in the 1930s and 40s and is a genocidal policy.