’Deeply troubling:’ Professors send letter, petition over hiring process of U Holocaust and Genocide Center director

NINA MOINI: Another of the top stories we're following, a hiring controversy at the University of Minnesota is getting widespread attention in the academic world. A group of professors at the U are calling on the administration to follow through on a job offer to a scholar whose hiring it recently froze.

Raz Segal is an Israeli historian who was offered a position at the helm of the U's center for Holocaust and genocide studies. But because of an article he had written where he called Israel's siege of Gaza genocide, two board members of the center resigned, and the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas protested the choice, along with other Jewish community members. They argue that Segal's views are extreme and that he had justified the Hamas October 7 attack on Israel.

In an interview with MPR News, Segal, who is Jewish himself, said, that's not true.

RAZ SEGAL: I have said exactly the opposite. I've described the Hamas-led attack on Israel as a case of mass murder, as war crimes, as crimes against humanity. I've been very clear on this for months and months on end.

NINA MOINI: Now, the U said in a statement that it is considering the views of those who objected to Segal's appointment. For his part, Segal says he's still interested in the position if the university decides to move forward.

Yesterday, the U's chapter of the American Association of University Professors sent a letter to the administration asking it to do just that. Sumanth Gopinath is the president of that chapter and an associate professor of music theory. He's on the line now. Thanks for being here, Professor.

SUMANTH GOPINATH: Thanks so much for having me.

NINA MOINI: Absolutely. Can you tell us a bit about why you and other professors decided to send this letter?

SUMANTH GOPINATH: Yes. We're concerned about what happened for a number of reasons. A normative hiring process was undermined due to a political position that this candidate made, and that is undermining the basis for academic freedom, which is the sort of basis for which we do the work we do so that it can be independent of political interference. That is something that we're really concerned about it. We think it will have a chilling effect on discourse and work at the university, in part because hiring could be subject to political litmus tests.

NINA MOINI: Yeah, and let's talk about that hiring process and how it typically works at a place like the U. How common is it for university administration to get involved in a decision by a college search committee?

SUMANTH GOPINATH: I've never heard of it happen, certainly while I've been at the university. I've been teaching here for 19 years. And I can say that the search as it was run, as far as I understand it, was conducted according to the norms of searches. The committee did its due diligence in trying to understand who the candidates were who applied for the position. They read cover letters and CVs and sample work, and they interviewed candidates over Zoom, and then they interviewed candidates in person and got to know each of them. It was a very thorough process. They produced a report that would give strengths and weaknesses of each candidate, and those were given to the dean who, ultimately, has the hiring authority to decide on the position.

So it was a very normal process, and I think the fact that the intervention happened at the last minute as a result of the upper administration is highly unusual. So I've never heard of it happening at the university. There are other sorts of situations that I've heard of elsewhere, but it's rare and troubling.

NINA MOINI: And your letter cited an example from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign from 10 years ago. Can you tell me a little bit about what happened there?

SUMANTH GOPINATH: Sure. I'm not an expert in that case, but the basic gist of it was that a literature scholar named Steven Salaita was hired at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, but due to extramural statements made over Twitter, also concerning the conflict in Israel and Palestine, led to his being effectively unhired by the university, and it had a hugely negative impact on his career. He essentially, as far as I know, left the field, at least temporarily and possibly permanently.

NINA MOINI: So what impact does it have on a university when a group like yours expresses public disapproval, like in the case that you mentioned?

SUMANTH GOPINATH: Sorry. Could you repeat that again? I didn't totally follow.

NINA MOINI: Yeah, just disapproval-- I'm sorry-- of the administration's interjection in this process.

SUMANTH GOPINATH: Well, we're still hopeful that our intervention could actually result in a reversal of the process, that the pause would be unpaused, and that the hire could go through as originally proposed. So we don't we don't take such actions lightly. We're not eager to get involved in, I don't know, internal bickering and to sort of publicize it for the public. But this is a serious situation, and if it were to proceed in the way that we fear would be the worst-case scenario, which is that Professor Segal's hire did not go through, I think it would it would be viewed very poorly for the University of Minnesota. We could be subject to sanctions or censure, rather, by the part of an organization like the American Association of University Professors, the national organization of which our branch is a campus chapter and I'm the president of.

NINA MOINI: Yeah. So what do you make of the university's argument that because this is a community-facing position that it has to take criticisms into account in a situation like this? How do you think universities should be approaching polarizing viewpoints?

SUMANTH GOPINATH: Well, I think, for the first part, we have to appreciate that the search process did originally take into account a range of viewpoints and was very extremely thorough. But the other piece of this is that if you're going to kind of be involved in canvassing a wide range of opinion, you actually have to have an accurate understanding of what that opinion is and which communities are affected by the work of a center for Holocaust and genocide studies. That includes the range of diverse opinion within the Jewish community as well as other communities who are affected by the history of genocides-- the Armenian community, the Roma community, Indigenous communities in the United States. There's a lot of constituencies who are affected by and invested in the work of the center.

So I think outside community sort of input is essential and a valuable thing, but it needs to be represented accurately and conducted in a way that's responsible. And I think this, what we're seeing here, is a kind of end run around normative processes.

NINA MOINI: OK, and we will keep following what happens here as it unfolds. We do appreciate you coming on with us and sharing your perspective, Professor Gopinath.

SUMANTH GOPINATH: Well, thank you. Thank you again for having me. I appreciate it so much.

NINA MOINI: Sure thing. That was Sumanth Gopinath, associate professor of music theory at the University of Minnesota and president of the U's chapter of the American Association of University Professors.