Five notes on the debate about antisemitism at the University of Minnesota

Nothing is simple. Everything is complicated.

The state Senate’s Judiciary and Public Safety Committee — led by chair Sen. Ron Latz, DFL-St. Louis Park — convened on June 25 in order to spotlight “anti-Israel and anti-Jewish incidents at the University of Minnesota.”

These were the words on the Senate’s published meeting schedule. They neatly convey the entanglement of Middle East politics with debates over the question of antisemitism, here in Minnesota as elsewhere. That leads to the first of several points worth making.

1. You can’t keep the Middle East out of a conversation about antisemitism.

Latz cautioned witnesses to stick to events at the U of M and not to get into Middle East affairs. But he repeatedly broke his own ground rules by grilling witnesses about their views on Hamas, its Oct. 7 attack, the future of Israel, and his (questionable) representations of some U departments’ statements condemning Israel’s war on Gaza. He described these, as well as various protest rhetoric, as calls for the “extermination of Jews in the state of Israel.”

Even putting aside such tendentious claims, if much of the evidence for antisemitism concerns stances toward Israel, Palestine, and various political ideologies — as everyone seems to acknowledge — then there is no narrow, local scope to maintain.

Apparently, however, you can keep Muslim student voices and all Palestinian Americans out of this conversation. That’s not too hard. Such students, who were insistently smeared as genocidal antisemites, were not there to defend themselves.

2. Every word in this debate is disputed.

You say “intifada,” and pro-Israel spokespersons say “terrorism.” Latz advanced personal interpretations of Arabic-language terms — intifada, which refers to an uprising, and thawabit, a concept including the right to resist occupation. The chair and various friendly witnesses described each of these as code for the mass murder of Jews, “terrorist antisemitic language” in Latz’s words. It’s safe to say that many others disagree.

That’s how it is with Israel and Palestine. For many, ambiguity is an enemy and almost every word is ground for information warfare. These problems were visible in a tense exchange between Latz and Beth Gendler, the leader of Jewish Community Action, as she contended that the definitions of Zionism, anti-Zionism, and antisemitism are disputed. He, apparently frustrated, responded by seeking to tarnish her as an apologist for anti-Jewish rape and murder.

3. Middle East politics makes for strange bedfellows.

Steve Hunegs, the longtime leader of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas, was the final witness of the day. Before the hearing, he could be seen jubilantly embracing Sen. Warren Limmer, R-Maple Grove. The JCRC long has made defending Israel its mission, and they will work with anyone who shares that mission.

The emerging division in the Jewish community over Israel and Palestine can’t be stifled, and it intersects with other cleavages to form two contending coalitions. On one side are the JCRC, Republicans, and some establishment Democrats. On the other are a diversity of identity-based social-justice groups, including JCA, and progressive Democrats. The reemergence of anti-Zionism among American Jews is driving this division wider.

Still, much of the conversation is familiar. In 1972, American and Israeli Jews met in Jerusalem and debated… wait for it… whether anti-Zionism equaled Jew-hatred. Many thought that it did. One prominent Israeli dissident, Simcha Flapan, cautioned in response, “There are many reactionaries who are pro-Zionist.”

4. Consistency is a constant struggle.

Oren Gross, a law professor at the U, and other witnesses remarked that, in liberal thinking, African Americans and other historically oppressed groups are authorized to define their own oppression, and that their experience of discrimination is deemed sufficient evidence of harm to them. So why not give the same consideration to Jews?

It’s a valid point. However, this whole discussion shows us how simplistic those precepts are. Groups who have suffered discrimination will disagree among themselves. Historically oppressed groups can be at odds with one another. The solution is not to extend problematic concepts, but rather to rethink them carefully.

5. Academic freedom is an orphan.

The U’s interim president, Jeff Ettinger, as well as Gross and another law professor, Richard Painter, testified, yet none of them forcefully defended free speech. In fact, the two lawyers ran over the idea with a truck, threw the truck into reverse, and then backed up. Gross, also an associate dean for academic affairs, was demagogic. He called Jewish antiwar protesters “Jews supporting Hamas” — which is absurd, and exactly the kind of terrorist-baiting rhetoric that fuels attacks on academic freedom.

Ettinger recently blocked the hire of a new faculty director of his school’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, after the JCRC raised a hue and cry because the search resulted in an offer extended to Raz Segal, an Israeli American historian. Segal had written an article calling Israel’s war a genocide. Ettinger occupied a middle ground at the hearing, as he defended his decision, unpopular with committee members, to negotiate a de-escalation of campus protests this spring. Ettinger had thrown the political establishment a bone by refusing to hire Segal, and he talked as if the JCRC might have veto power in a do-over search.

It seemed no coincidence when immediately after controversy erupted over Ettinger’s interference with academic freedom — which now has led to a faculty vote of no-confidence in him — Latz announced the antisemitism hearing,

A JCRC-approved search might still recruit a respected scholar. But then, the center’s director will be dogged by the perception they were hired because they met the JCRC’s political test. A comparative genocide studies center is relevant to multiple communities. Yet many continue to believe that any discussion of genocide ought to remain the turf of Jews — and specifically the right kind of Jews, the ones who continue to see in the memory of the Shoah a useful prop to support Israel.

It’s not a pretty picture.