U administration overstepped authority in revoking Raz Segal’s job offer

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This article was submitted on behalf of several members of the University of Minnesota’s College of Liberal Arts. Their names are below.

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In a powerful rebuke of University of Minnesota Interim President Jeff Ettinger’s and Provost Rachel Croson’s unauthorized and unprecedented attempt to prevent College of Liberal Arts Interim Dean Ann Waltner from hiring Raz Segal as faculty director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies (CHGS), elected faculty representatives of CLA’s legislative body overwhelmingly passed a no-confidence motion in Ettinger and Croson’s leadership on June 20. The Faculty Senate followed suit on June 26.

Waltner extended an offer to Segal on June 5, in accordance with the CLA Constitution, which stipulates that the dean, not the provost or the president, has sole hiring authority for directors of CLA research centers. Ettinger disregarded these limits on his authority when he rescinded Waltner’s offer.

Segal received his job offer following a standard search in which the CHGS Advisory Board was closely involved. Those leading the search advertised the position in national publications and also invited robust community participation. Five thousand people on the CHGS Listserv — including more than 3,000 people outside the university community — were invited to attend finalist talks and submit feedback. Ultimately, experts on the faculty search committee “enthusiastically recommended” Segal. Waltner then made the offer to Segal to join our faculty and direct CHGS. All of these processes followed CLA’s long-established protocols.

Objections to Segal’s hire that bypassed these protocols subsequently emerged from two CHGS Advisory Board faculty members who resigned from the board in protest, from the daughter of center founder Stephen Feinstein, and from the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas. All opposed Segal’s directorship on the basis of his political views. They point to his defense of campus protests in support of the human rights of Palestinians, as well as an October 2023 article in which he characterized Israel’s actions in Gaza as “a textbook case of genocide.”

In a June 10 letter, Ettinger notified Segal that he was revoking both the offered faculty position and the directorship. (Some media have erroneously reported that Segal is still being offered a faculty position. As of this writing, no such offer has been tendered.) In overruling an offer in response to political disagreements with opinions the candidate draws from his scholarly expertise, Ettinger and Croson are in violation of the university’s governing policies, delegation of powers, established hiring procedures and academic freedom.

According to the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), the most credible and respected standards organization for academic rights, academic freedom is the principle that protects scholars, in all aspects of their academic work and expression (including extramural public speech and writing), from outside “interference from political figures, boards of trustees, donors, or other entities.” This principle makes universities centers for autonomous thought and truth rather than extensions of political interests. Incidentally, this is why faculty at the U hold varying views on the situation in Gaza and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Revoking Segal’s hire is a clear violation of academic freedom and sabotages the university’s academic reputation.

Ettinger has erroneously suggested that the public-facing nature of CHGS means that its directorship is not protected by academic freedom. This distinction between a faculty member’s research or views, and directing a collegiate center that interacts with the public, is supported by neither the AAUP nor the university’s own governing documents. AAUP affirms that faculty have academic freedom when speaking or writing “as participants in the governance of an educational institution.” And section II of the University of Minnesota Board of Regents’ academic freedom and responsibility policy makes clear that protections of academic freedom extend to “professional duties” faculty members undertake for the university, such as directing centers. Indeed, according to the university’s core mission, all work at the U is intended as public, a mission that does not in any way abrogate (and in fact depends on the rigorous upholding of) the protections of academic freedom.

The CLA Assembly’s no-confidence vote indicates the severity of Ettinger and Croson’s violation of the principles of academic freedom and the procedures of shared governance. This overstepping cannot be allowed to stand as precedent. To restore the university’s reputation and credibility, the administration must reverse course and invite Segal both to join our faculty and to become the next director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

Signatories: Timothy Brennan, professor, cultural studies and comparative literature, and English; V.V. Ganeshananthan, associate professor, English; Keya Ganguly, professor, cultural studies and comparative literature; Claire Halpert, associate professor and director, Institute of Linguistics; Susanne M. Jones, professor, communication studies; Nora Livesay, Ojibwe People’s Dictionary editor, American Indian studies, and Nathaniel Mills, associate professor, English.