By ELANA WARREN / Assistant Editor
In June 2024, the University of Minnesota offered but then rescinded the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies (CHGS) directorship to Raz Segal (AJW, July 2024). Now, the university has paid him a $250,000 settlement.
Segal, an Israeli and Jewish historian, is associate professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Stockton University, Galloway, New Jersey.
The University of Minnesota withdrew the job offer following pushback on Segal’s statements about Israel’s actions, such as calling Israel’s retaliation in Gaza following Oct. 7, 2023, “a textbook case of a genocide.”
Two CHGS advisory board members along with the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas (JCRC) and vocal community members protested the hiring of Segal.
In an Aug. 13 statement after the settlement was awarded, the JCRC wrote: “The issue was not whether Professor Segal had the academic freedom to express controversial opinions or hold a faculty position at the U of M. The question was whether someone holding these views was appropriate to lead a Holocaust and genocide center with a longstanding, community-facing relationship with Holocaust survivors, their descendants, Jewish students, Minnesota’s broader Jewish community, and had been a longstanding partner to our organization. JCRC concluded that he was not.”
Minnesota Public Radio News reported that University of Minnesota spokesperson Briana Reenshuler said regarding the settlement with Segal that neither party admits to any liability or wrongdoing and “the University remains focused on advancing our core educational mission and promoting thoughtful inquiry across all of our centers, departments and programs.”
In 2024, scholars and others protested the job offer withdrawal for violating academic freedom and integrity in the hiring process.
“[The University of Minnesota] willfully violated the First Amendment and its own commitment to academic freedom when it succumbed to donor pressure and revoked Dr. Segal’s job offer because he lived up to his values and called a spade a spade,” said Maria LaHood, deputy legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which represented Segal, in CCR’s statement following the settlement.
CCR claims anti-Palestinian donors pressured university administrators and that the administrators knew it was wrong to rescind the offer.
In the same statement, Segal said, “The attack against me by these donors presented a world turned upside down: my commitment, as a Jewish scholar of the Holocaust and the grandchild of four Holocaust survivors, to stopping a livestreamed genocide in front of our eyes posed, in their minds, a threat to Jews. That the University accepted this lie in its decision to revoke my job offer exposed its intellectual and moral bankruptcy, as noted in dismay by many faculty and students, including Jews, in their emails to the University. This settlement represents a successful refusal to accept the world of lies that blur an ongoing genocide, and a commitment to continue the intertwined struggles for truth, justice, and accountability — in Palestine and on our campuses.”
(American Jewish World, September 2026)
