Internal docs detail pressure campaign targeting Israeli American Raz Segal, who wrote groundbreaking op-ed on Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza 

August 6, 2026, New York – The University of Minnesota (UMN) has paid Israeli American scholar Raz Segal $250,000 as compensation for rescinding its job offer to head the school’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies (CHGS) in 2024. Internal documents confirm that the University’s revocation was based on Dr. Segal’s First Amendment-protected speech under pressure from donors who objected to his criticism of Israel’s assault on Gaza, particularly his description of it as a genocide – an opinion now widely shared by scholars, legal experts, and human rights groups. 

“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,” said Prof. Segal. “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.”    

Prof. Segal is Associate Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies and Endowed Professor in the Study of Modern Genocide at Stockton University in New Jersey, where he also directs the Master of Arts in Holocaust and Genocide Studies program. On June 5, 2024, after an extensive search, the University of Minnesota offered him the CHGS director job and a tenured faculty position in the history department. Search committee members praised his scholarship, fundraising ability, international connections, and vision for the center. 

But on June 7, two professors resigned in protest from the CHGS advisory board. One of them, Bruno Chaouat, a former director of the center, falsely accused Prof. Segal of “justifying Hamas’ atrocities.” This grotesque lie sparked a smear campaign led by the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) of Minnesota and the Dakotas, which accused him of holding “extremist” views. The University initially defended the hiring, saying the search committee “enthusiastically recommended” Prof. Segal after “broad consultation among stakeholders.” But on June 10, only five days after the school made the offer, interim president Jeff Ettinger pulled it. 

In July 2024, the Center for Constitutional Rights submitted a public records request seeking information on the University’s reversal. The documents obtained shed light on the pressure put on university administrators by anti-Palestinian donors – a rare glimpse at the kind of behind-the-scenes machinations that often result in punishment for scholars and students who advocate for Palestinian rights. For example, donors claimed in an email to Ettinger on June 9 that Prof. Segal used tropes “offensive to Jews” and warned that fundraising for the center “would grind to a halt” if he were hired. On June 10, just a few hours before Ettinger pulled the offer, an email to him said “Jewish donors” would “withdraw their support from the U.” 

The documents also reveal that administrators knew that it would be wrong to withdraw the offer. Tellingly, the university’s initial response to the JCRC included this sentence: “We do not apply political litmus tests in hiring, but seek to find the very strongest scholars for our positions.” While the line was subsequently dropped – the chief PR officer warned that “defending the candidate too much at the moment can be risky” – it suggests administrators were aware that they would be violating a core tenet of academic freedom if they rescinded the offer. 

“UMN 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. “This settlement is a huge victory for Dr. Segal and the First Amendment, and should inspire all of us to fight back against the institutions that have retaliated against thousands of people for speaking out against Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in order to hold them accountable for unconstitutionally repressing speech—and for their complicity in genocide.”