When Israeli-American Holocaust scholar Professor Raz Segal opened the email from the University of Minnesota withdrawing his job offer, he was stunned.
"At first, I was really shocked. In a way, maybe I shouldn’t have been, right?" Segal told The New Arab. "I was ridiculously naïve to think this would work."
More than two years later, the University of Minnesota has paid Segal $250,000 to settle his legal claims after it rescinded an offer for him to become director of its Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies (CHGS) and a tenured associate professor of history.
The settlement does not include an admission of wrongdoing. But for Segal, it is a modest victory over an institution that he says bowed down to a crude campaign of donor pressure, sacrificing academic freedom and proper hiring procedures because of his public warnings about Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
"This is a win. It’s a small win, but it’s a win that we shouldn’t really celebrate," he said. "Its significance is that it does show people that there is a possibility to push back and to fight back against very powerful institutions like the University of Minnesota."
The university’s June 2024 offer followed a faculty-led search process. It was withdrawn five days later by interim president Jeff Ettinger, who told Segal that further members of the university community wished to provide "perspective" on the appointment.
Days prior, two professors had resigned in protest from the CHGS advisory board and falsely accused Segal of "justifying Hamas’ atrocities".
At the centre of the backlash was Segal’s October 2023 essay, in which he described Israel’s assault on Gaza as "a textbook case of genocide". Israel’s genocide in Gaza has now continued for nearly three years, killing more than 73,300 Palestinians and devastating the enclave’s civilian infrastructure.
Documents released after a public-records request by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) expose an intense lobbying campaign by donors, pro-Israel activists and legislators against Segal’s appointment.
One donor wrote: "We cannot allow someone like Raz Segal, a blatant anti Zionist, to head the department of Holocaust studies," adding that many would pull their pledges if the matter was not addressed. Another warned that appointing him would "almost certainly make fundraising for this Center grind to a halt".
For Segal, the correspondence lays bare the political calculations behind the university’s reversal.
"They showed donors in an unashamed way, dictating to the university what to do under threat of pulling their funding, which is quite remarkable," he said. "I think these emails really speak for themselves as kind of crude and unashamed donor interference."
The records also show that Natan Paradise, then director of the university’s Centre for Jewish Studies, discussed an anticipated "volley" of donor complaints coordinated with the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas (JCRC), even after the university had withdrawn the offer.
Segal said the episode showed "this complete disregard of academic freedom, absolute disregard of shared governance". He argued that Ettinger had no authority to overturn the offer produced through the academic hiring process.
In the rescission letter, Ettinger referred to objections from community members. But Segal said the explanation was procedurally baseless and selectively framed.
"The point is that there is no procedure in the hiring process that required any consultation with any community. This is an academic and professional hiring process […] So the basis to tell me that he’s withdrawing the offer because of community members, has no basis," he said.
"What’s at stake here is the recognition of settler colonialism," Segal added. "This is Israel’s genocide in Gaza. It’s part of the ongoing Nakba, which is the ongoing Greater Israel project, which is a very clear settler colonial project. If we come to terms with that, God forbid, we might have to think about all the other settler colonial projects."
Segal said Ettinger had effectively adopted a "good Jew, bad Jew" framework promoted by the JCRC and donors: "Raz Segal is a bad Jew that is anti-Zionist, as the donors argued in their emails, and anti-Zionists are bad Jews."
The university has not admitted liability. Yet, Segal said, the size of the payment might lead some to conclude that it recognised the strength of claims that it had violated academic freedom, his constitutionally-protected speech, shared governance and university regulations.
The case comes amid widespread retaliation against pro-Palestinian advocacy on US campuses. "Universities have fired hundreds and hundreds, and probably thousands of people, because of their pro-Palestine advocacy," Segal said. Many, he added, lacked the job security, time, legal representation or public profile to fight back.
"Denial of Israel’s genocide in Gaza is actually complicity," he said. "When you deny the genocide and you take part in suppressing the right discussion about genocide, you become complicit in the genocide – and that, of course, is anti-Palestinian racism."
Still, Segal believes the settlement, alongside other recent legal wins for academics and students, offers grounds for persistence.
"I do think that if we poke enough holes, and if we persist, then yes, maybe, one day, this balloon will blow up. And we might then discover that there wasn’t much in it to begin with."