SJP maintains that the students are innocent despite law enforcement finding cause to charge them with rioting and trespassing, and one rioter with assault.

By Dion J. Pierre, The Algemeiner

The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities has reportedly suspended and demanded financial restitution from seven pro-Hamas activists who were arrested for commandeering the Morrill Hall administrative building on Oct. 21, an action which aimed to pressure school officials into enacting a boycott of Israel.

According to a statement from Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and other anti-Israel campus groups posted on social media, seven of eight students charged with misconducting themselves on that day have been “found guilty” by a university disciplinary tribunal.

Each has been fined about $5,500, the statement further alleged, and suspended for periods ranging from one to five semesters.

“Alongside arbitrary suspensions, the university intends to withhold the transcripts of those arrested,” the statement continued.

“This means for the duration of the suspension the students are unable to transfer to a different institution without forfeiting the credits they have rightfully earned and paid for. To even be readmitted after suspensions, the students have to do 20 hours of community service and write a 5-10 page essay about the ‘difference between vandalism and protest.’”

A spokesman for the university declined to comment on the matter, saying “federal and state privacy laws prevent the university from confirming or commenting on any specifics related to individual student discipline.”

Instead, the university pointed The Algemeiner to the university’s “Student Conduct Code and its Administrative Policy: Resolving Alleged Student Conduct Code Violations, as well as the Twin Cities campus-specific Student Conduct Code Procedure,” noting that “together, these outline how disciplinary processes work, from collecting and investigating facts to initial recommendations regarding discipline, through appellate rights and hearing options.”

Students for Justice in Palestine is getting out ahead of the matter, however, and calling on its followers to deluge university officials and local lawmakers with demands that all charges against the students be dropped.

SJP maintains that the students are innocent despite law enforcement finding cause to charge them with rioting and trespassing. One student was charged with assault, according to The Minnesota Daily.

Additionally, it was alleged that protesters — 11 in total, three of whom are alumni — held university employees working inside Morrill Hall captive, barring them from leaving the building “for an extended period of time.”

“Spread the word!” the group said in a statement. “Talk to your friends, email your professors, don’t let this go silent!”

The October incident was not the first commandeering of a university administrative building this semester.

Last month, a mob of Students for Justice in Palestine members invaded and occupied the Westlands administrative building at Sarah Lawrence College in New York and vowed not to surrender it unless school officials adopt the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.

The action was apparently precipitated by the college’s declining to accept SJP’s divestment recommendations — which aim to compromise Israel’s national security and leave the world’s lone Jewish state vulnerable to jihadist extremists.

“Westlands is occupied,” SJP said in a series of statements published on Instagram during the occupation.

“Students have occupied Westlands to demand immediate action on the genocide of Palestinians. Administration has failed to meet our disclosure deadline. Westlands residents are safe: they can come and go at will. We need your support: Walkout to the south lawn, bring food donations, sign divestment proposal.”

SJP also called on students to obstruct justice to prevent the quelling of their activity, imploring them to amass “as many bodies blocking doors as possible” and instructing them to wear “mask [sic] and indiscernible clothing, hats, scarves, etc to support the student intifada.”

In that time, National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP), which coordinates activities at individual colleges, cheered the insurrectionist behavior, using the same incendiary language as the students.

The occupations of the campus buildings come amid concerns that the over 150 pro-Hamas groups operating on colleges campuses and elsewhere across the US are planting the seeds of domestic terrorism.

“The movement contains militant elements pushing it toward a wider, more severe campaign focused on property destruction and violence properly described as domestic terrorism,” researcher Ryan Mauro wrote in a recently published report, titled Marching Toward Violence: The Domestic Anti-Israeli Protest Movement, a project of the Capital Research Center (CRC).

“It demands the ‘dismantlement’ of America’s ‘colonialist,’ ‘imperialist,’ or ‘capitalist,’ system, often calling for the US to be abolished as a country.”

Drawing on statements issued and actions taken by SJP and their collaborators, Mauro made the case that toolkits published by SJP herald Hamas for perpetrating mass casualties of civilians; SJP has endorsed Iran’s attacks on Israel as well as its stated intention to overturn the US-led world order; and other groups under its umbrella have called on followers to “Bring the Intifada Home.”

Such activities, the report explained, accelerated after Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7, which pro-Hamas groups perceived as an inflection point in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and an opportunity.

By flooding the internet and college campuses with agitprop and staging activities — protests or vandalism — they hoped to manufacture a critical mass of youth support for their ideas, thus creating an army of revolutionaries willing to adopt Hamas’s aims as their own.

The result has been a series of the kinds of incidents seen in academia throughout 2024 fall semester since Hamas’s onslaught.

In October, when Jews around the world mourned on the anniversary of the Oct. 7 atrocities, a Harvard University student group called on pro-Hamas activists to “Bring the war home” and proceeded to vandalize a campus administrative building.

The group members, who described themselves as “anonymous,” later said in a statement, “We are committed to bringing the war home and answering the call to open up a new front here in the belly of the beast.”

On the same day, the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC) issued a similar statement, saying “now is the time to escalate,” adding, “Harvard’s insistence on funding slaughter only strengthens our moral imperative and commitment to our demands.”

More recently, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) student wrote a journal article which argued that violence is a legitimate method of effecting political change and, moreover, advancing the pro-Palestinian movement.

As The Algemeiner has previously reported, pro-Hamas activists have already demonstrated that they are willing to hurt people to achieve their goals.

Last year, in California, an elderly Jewish man was killed when an anti-Zionist professor employed by a local community college allegedly pushed him during an argument.

At Cornell University in upstate New York, a student threatened to rape and kill Jewish female students and “shoot up” the campus’ Hillel center.

Violence, according to a report by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), was most common at universities in the state of California, where an anti-Zionist activist punched a Jewish student for filming him at a protest.

The post University of Minnesota suspends, fines pro-Hamas rioters appeared first on World Israel News.

The faculty group said storming the building was a ‘brave move by students’ and a ‘peaceful protest’ against the ‘administration’s complicity with the Israeli state’s genocide in Gaza.’

By Jessica Coestescu, The Washington Free Beacon

University of Minnesota professors condemned school administrators and law enforcement for stopping a violent anti-Israel mob that stormed a campus building, destroyed property, and barricaded doors, trapping terrified employees inside.

“This sort of overreaction is a direct result of the militarized response that this administration has adopted,” political science professor Teri Caraway said during an Oct. 24 Faculty Senate meeting.

Student protesters assembled on a campus lawn on Oct. 21 before a group descended on Morrill Hall around 4 p.m.

Once inside, masked individuals broke windows to access locked offices and spray-painted security camera lenses, according to the university.

Police were called in to ensure the safety of the trapped employees and because of the ongoing property damage, arresting 11.

University president Rebecca Cunningham in a schoolwide message the next day provided a thorough accounting of the events.

She said the mob’s “threatening behavior and destruction of property” created “a terrifying experience for many of our employees.”

“These actions endanger safety, erode the fabric of our University community, and undermine the legitimacy of important causes that our students, faculty and staff care so deeply about,” Cunningham wrote.

She reiterated her remarks at the beginning of the Oct. 24 meeting. She again thoroughly described the events and further detailed trapped employees’ experiences.

“The situation involved intimidating employees in their workplaces, hampering their ability to move about freely, and destruction of university property,” Cunningham said during the meeting. “I had many very frightened staff on Monday.”

“I would ask people to think about, as you sit in your offices, how that would feel for you right now if that occurred in your workplace,” she continued.

“This was not a peaceful protest and not a First Amendment-protected activity. These activities clearly crossed the line into illegal activity.”

But later in the meeting, several professors criticized the administration’s response to the “protest” and were concerned that students’ “free expression” was being suppressed.

They also argued that the “security-based response” disrupted learning and demanded that police officers be held accountable.

“It seems to me that the administration is eager to hold students accountable for their actions,” Caraway said. “The students have been suspended as of today, by the way, and that the cops are let off the hook.”

She said her “colleagues on site during the protest” saw at least 20 squad cars, 100 officers, and a SWAT team. “They entered Morrill Hall with their weapons drawn,” she said. “No wonder, you know, it was chaotic.”

Caraway also criticized police for arresting a student journalist who was present. Cunningham said at the top of the meeting that officers detained a reporter for five minutes before releasing him.

Caraway told the Washington Free Beacon the student was detained for at least two hours.

“There needs to be, you know, accountability, not just for the students, but also for trained law enforcement officers who should know better,” Caraway said at the meeting. “What sort of disciplinary actions would be taken against the officers?”

In response, Cunningham told Caraway to imagine herself trapped in the building with the violent mob.

“I also, again, would ask you to consider how you would feel in your office if, as you were typing at your computer, glass started shattering around you, and the air filled with chemicals, and people with ability to destroy things started shouting outside your office, not knowing exactly what’s going on,” Cunningham said.

“We have to restore safety, and I will not let our students, I will not let any of you, be intimidated, and I will not let my staff in the building be intimidated.”

A university spokeswoman told the Free Beacon that the chemical smell was from the spray paint the mob used on security camera lenses, “which was quite strong inside the building.”

Caraway didn’t comment on her remarks regarding the administration’s response and instead told the Free Beacon that her “question was about the student reporter who was detained by the police for at least two hours.”

“I observed that the deployment of such a large number of law enforcement officers increased the probability of such an unfortunate outcome,” she said.

Other professors echoed Caraway’s concerns about the administration’s decision to call in the police.

“It’s a pleasure to work at an institution where a number of departments were established as a result of protest, and I have to say that I’m really concerned as a BIPOC faculty member to think about this security-based response,” English professor V.V. Ganeshananthan said.

“I want to underscore Professor Caraway’s point about the security-based response [in] which, you know, we’re insufficiently addressing these students’ freedom of expression and also disrupting the learning activities that are going on on-campus.”

Sima Shakhsari, an anti-Israel professor in the Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies department, suggested she wanted to “make a [public] statement to condemn the administration” for subjecting students to “violence” by suspending and evicting them from campus.

Shakhsari has denied that Hamas terrorists raped Israeli women on Oct. 7 and was seen on campus attending an anti-Israel rally, chanting, “Globalize the Intifada.”

Caraway also cast doubt on whether staff members were actually trapped in Morrill Hall, telling the Free Beacon that a new video “paints a more complex picture of what transpired.”

An Instagram post by several groups, including the University of Minnesota Educators for Justice in Palestine, claimed the school administration was “lying about staff being held hostage.”

The Thursday post said that “kind and patient” protesters offered employees escorts and that staff “were free to leave” through one door that was left open.

The other exits were “blocked off to ensure the safety of the protesters.” It also claimed that anonymous employees said that “the situation was stressful, but the staff were never in any danger or held against their will.”

The post includes video of agitators offering to escort people out.

The professors’ defense of radical student activists reflects the prevalent anti-Israel rhetoric in higher education.

A September report by the AMCHA Initiative, a nonpartisan organization that works to combat anti-Semitism, found that Jewish students are 7.3 times more likely to face physical violence at universities with anti-Israel faculty groups.

After rioters stormed Morrill Hall, the University of Minnesota Educators for Justice in Palestine released a statement supporting the occupation and accusing Cunningham of falsely representing the riots as “distressing and disruptive.”

The faculty group said storming the building was a “brave move by students” and a “peaceful protest” against the “administration’s complicity with the Israeli state’s genocide in Gaza.”

Of the 11 arrested at Morrill Hall, 8 are students who received interim suspensions pending disciplinary proceedings, while the remaining 3 are alumni.

The charges they face include fourth-degree assault, damage to property, riot, and trespassing.

The post University of Minnesota used police to stop violent anti-Israel mob. Professors called the ‘militarized response’ an ‘overreaction’ appeared first on World Israel News.

Photos showed the doors of the building barricaded with chairs, tables and bike locks.

By JNS

Demonstrators who took control of a resident hall at the University of Minnesota last week ended up in handcuffs after law enforcement intervened, arresting 11 people.

The college issued a statement on Oct. 21 describing how a protest began on the lawn in front of Coffman Memorial Union before a group broke off and moved north into Morris Hall.

“Once inside the building, protesters began spray-painting—including covering lenses of all internal security cameras—breaking interior windows, and barricading the building’s entrance and exit points,” the college stated.

The disruptions prevented staff from leaving “with some being unable to exit the building for an extended period of time,” per the statement.

Protesters reportedly included members of UMN Students for a Democratic Society, which demands divestment from Israel, a request rejected by the university.

Photos showed the doors of the building barricaded with chairs, tables and bike locks.

Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.) wrote on X that “this behavior is unacceptable.”

He asked, “How are Jewish students supposed to feel safe—let alone attend class—when violent, pro-Hamas mobs are allowed to seize control of university buildings, vandalize property, and terrify students and faculty?”

This past spring, the school closed certain campus buildings due to pro-Palestinian protests and pro-Hamas tent encampments.

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The protesters, ranging in age from 18 to 26, were all arrested on probable cause charges of damage to property, trespassing, and rioting.

By Jacob Gurvis, JTA

Eleven protesters were arrested Monday afternoon at the University of Minnesota after storming an administrative building and vandalizing it as part of an effort to push the university to divest from Israel.

The administration said they caused property damage and restricted access to the building.

The protest is the latest bout of campus activism to result in arrests during a new wave of anti-Israel activity this fall.

It echoed a similar demonstration at Columbia University last spring, during the nationwide pro-Palestinian encampment movement, when activists occupied a campus building, leading to a police raid and dozens of arrests.

The Minnesota protest was organized by the campus’ chapter of Students for a Democratic Society, a left-wing activist group that first rose to prominence in the 1960s.

The chapter has called on the university to end its policy of “neutrality” in its investing strategy, to divest from the country and to boycott its academic institutions, including by ending study abroad programs there.

In a post on X calling for students, faculty and alumni to “occupy” Morrill Hall, the university’s administrative headquarters, the protest organizers accused the school of “complicity” in “a year of the genocide in Palestine.”

It also demanded that the university grant “full amnesty for students, staff, faculty, and community members disciplined or fired for pro-Palestinian actions, including renowned genocide scholar Raz Segal.”

In June, the university rescinded an offer to Segal to serve as the faculty director of its Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, after he said Israel’s military campaign in Gaza was “a textbook case of genocide unfolding in front of our eyes.”

Last spring, activists at the school also set up a pro-Palestinian encampment, leading to protests, arrests and building closures.

The encampment was ultimately dismantled after organizers reached an agreement with the university, which led to a meeting with UMN regents to discuss their demand that the school divest from Israel.

The May meeting likely made UMN the first U.S. school with a major Jewish population to conduct a debate on the topic.

The university then announced in late August that it would “adopt a position of neutrality related to investing its Consolidated Endowment Fund,” adding that the decision “formally declines the request to divest from Israel-related investments.”

With the fall semester in full swing, and the Israel-Hamas war ongoing, some activists have renewed their efforts to push the university to divest.

The university said in a statement that protesters assembled around 3 p.m. on Monday and began entering Morrill Hall shortly before 4 p.m.

“Once inside the building, protesters began spray painting, including covering lenses of all internal security cameras, breaking interior windows, and barricading the building’s entrance and exit points,” read the statement.

“The full extent of the damage is unknown. A number of staff were working in the building at the time, and several people were not able to exit, with some being unable to exit the building for an extended period of time.”

At 4:39 p.m., the university sent an emergency alert urging those in the building to exit and others to avoid the area. Campus police entered the building about an hour later, according to the statement, and arrested 11 people.

A spokesperson for the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the 11 protesters were still in custody as of Tuesday afternoon.

The protesters, who range in age from 18 to 26, were all arrested on probable cause charges of damage to property, trespassing and rioting. One was given an additional charge of fourth-degree assault.

The protesters had arrived with tents, saying they would remain in the building until their demands were met.

“We plan to stay until they forcibly remove us,” Merlin Van Alstein, an organizer with the group, said before the arrests, according to CBS. “The people inside aren’t going to leave until they meet our demands or they are forced to leave.”

As part of the protest, the organizers referred to the building as “Halimy Hall,” named for 19-year-old Palestinian influencer Medo Halimy who, according to the Associated Press, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in August. (Israel’s military says it is not aware of the strike that killed him.)

Emily Boskof, the executive director of Minnesota Hillel, commended the university for its response.

“At Minnesota Hillel, our most important priority is keeping Jewish students safe — first, foremost, and always,” Boskof said in a statement, according to CBS.

“We appreciate the administration and law enforcement holding students accountable for any violations of the code of conduct. We are in close communication with university administrators to ensure that they’re doing everything possible to provide support and keep Jewish students safe.”

Boskof continued: “While these incidents grab attention online and in the media, most of the time, we are focused on the pride and joy of being Jewish.”

Early on Tuesday, the pro-Palestinian protest organizers called for two rallies, one at the county jail and one on campus, the latter of which was affiliated with Students for Justice in Palestine.

The group also told followers to “call in to demand the occupiers are released” and provided a script.

The script was headlined, “Let our people go!”

The post 11 pro-Palestinian protesters arrested at U of Minnesota for occupying and damaging administration building appeared first on World Israel News.

In a statement issued by the university, school officials used the term ‘thawabet,’ a key component of the ideology of the anti-Zionist movement.

By Dion J. Pierre, The Algemeiner

University of Minnesota interim president Jeff Ettinger told the state senate on Tuesday that he signed an agreement to appease pro-Hamas student activists and end their illegal occupation of the campus despite not understanding the inclusion of an Arabic word justifying the use of violence against Israel.

The protesters and the university reached an agreement last month to end a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment — a collection of tents in which the students lived for several weeks and refused to leave unless the administration agreed to boycott and divest from Israel.

In a statement issued by the university, school officials used the term “thawabet,” a key component of the ideology of the anti-Zionist movement, which asserts its intention to eliminate Israel and establish a Palestinian state in its place.

“That was a mistake by our administration,” Ettinger told Sen. Ron Latz (D), who questioned him about the decision on Tuesday.

“The way things transpired that day, we ended up doing the final versions of that document at five in the morning. Those had been the topics — I mean they were kind of characterized by the students as their ‘demands’ — we looked at them as topics. But clearly, I didn’t even know what that word meant, so clearly to repeat that word then in a communication back was a mistake by the administration.”

In 2010, a founder of the terrorist group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Bilal al-Hassan, explained thawabet in an interview with the anti-Zionist website Electronic Intifada.

Al-Hassan explained that the concept historically represents opposition to United Nations Resolution 181, a decision rendered by the nascent body in 1947 which partitioned British Mandatory Palestine into Jewish and Arab states and led to the establishment of Israel the following year.

Thawabet, he continued, was central to the founding charter of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), a terrorist organization which evolved to be recognized as the official representative and governing authority of Arabs living in Gaza and the West Bank.

For al-Hassan, “liberating” Palestinians meant reversing the 1947 settlement and expelling Jews from the area.

In 1996, the PLO — led at the time by Yasser Arafat — voted overwhelmingly to remove the call for mass terror and elimination of Israel from its charter to signal that it was negotiating a settlement to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in good faith.

At the time, Arafat had met in person with two Israeli prime ministers, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, as part of the Oslo Accords, a peace process that was fervently supported by former US President Bill Clinton.

Arafat lobbied for the move, saying, as reported by The New York Times in 1996, that failing to do so would harm efforts to establish a Palestinian state.

This, al-Hassan told Electronic Intifada, was an ideological and tactical failure.

“The PLO was destroyed with the alteration of the charter,” he said. “The reason that the thawabet now play an important role in our struggle is that it is now an expression of a politico-historical position against the path of the negotiated settlement — that we usually refer to as the Oslo process — and against the Palestinian Authority’s engagement with this process, its departure from thawabet, and its retreat in the face of the ongoing Zionist colonization of our country. It goes without saying that goals of the struggle such as the return of the refugees and the liberation of the land and people are central pillars of thawabet.”

It is not clear why the University of Minnesota incorporated what has been understood to mean a call for violence and rejection of peace between Israelis and Palestinians into an official statement which, in addition to apologizing to the pro-Hamas protesters, granted them amnesty and promised a meeting with top school officials to discuss the possibility of divesting from Israel.

Latz noted during Tuesday’s hearing that the students had clearly stated their support for terrorism during the May encampment.

“I didn’t know what that word meant,” Ettinger repeated.

However, the University of Minnesota has given intellectual harbor to extreme anti-Zionist views before, appointing earlier this month an anti-Zionist scholar, Raz Segal, as director of the school’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies — a decision that Ettinger walked back after community organizations noted that Segal justified Hamas’ Oct. 7 atrocities less than a week after they were committed.

Ettinger, who was subjected to a faculty no-confidence vote revoking Segal’s appointment, will soon leave office. The University of Minnesota’s incoming president, Rebecca Cunningham, will be inaugurated in July.

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The ordeal comes as the public university grapples with high-profile anti-Semitic incidents—and a federal probe into complaints of anti-Semitism at the school.

By Jessica Costescu, The Washington Free Beacon

On Oct. 13, just six days after Hamas terrorists infiltrated the Jewish state and slaughtered more than 1,000 Israelis, Stockton University professor Raz Segal penned an op-ed accusing Israel of genocide.

Months later, the University of Minnesota tapped Segal to lead its Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, prompting resignations from members of the center’s advisory board.

On Friday, Minnesota’s interim College of Liberal Arts dean, Ann Waltner, extended an offer to Segal to serve as the center’s chair, according to an internal email obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The decision prompted immediate pushback from members of the center’s advisory board, with two members—French professor Bruno Chaouat and music professor Karen Painter—announcing their resignation from the board within hours.

“My understanding is that the core mission of the Center is to educate locally and internationally on the specific history of the Holocaust and of genocides in order to raise awareness and prevent further dehumanization and violence,” Chaouat wrote in a resignation email to colleagues explaining his resignation, which was shared with the Free Beacon.

“Professor Segal, by justifying Hamas’s atrocities five days after they occurred (via a perverse allegation that Israel was committing a genocide), cannot fulfill the mission of the Center,” Chaouat continued.

“He has failed to recognize the genocidal intent of Hamas. He does not understand that a movement like Hamas is inherently fascist and represents precisely what CHGS stands against.”

Painter echoed that rhetoric, writing in a Friday resignation email obtained by the Free Beacon that Segal “has positioned himself on an extreme end of the political ideological spectrum with his publications on Israel and Gaza.”

The ordeal comes as the public university grapples with high-profile anti-Semitic incidents—and a federal probe into complaints of anti-Semitism at the school.

Last week, for example, the Minnesota Hillel building saw its windows smashed in an act of vandalism. In January, the Biden administration launched an investigation into the school after faculty departments within the College of Liberal Arts posted anti-Israel statements to their websites.

Now, the university is scrambling to distance itself from Segal as faculty members revolt. In a Monday statement, a university spokeswoman said the school “paused” Segal’s appointment “to determine next steps.”

Segal, who did not respond to a request for comment, has rallied against Israel in the wake of Oct. 7.

In his Oct. 13 op-ed, published in Jewish Currents, he referred to Israel’s “assault on Gaza” as “a textbook case of genocide unfolding in front of our eyes.”

“I say this as a scholar of genocide, who has spent many years writing about Israeli mass violence against Palestinians,” Segal wrote.

“I have written about settler colonialism and Jewish supremacy in Israel, the distortion of the Holocaust to boost the Israeli arms industry, the weaponization of antisemitism accusations to justify Israeli violence against Palestinians, and the racist regime of Israeli apartheid. Now, following Hamas’s attack on Saturday and the mass murder of more than 1,000 Israeli civilians, the worst of the worst is happening.”

In a May interview with NJ Spotlight News, meanwhile, Segal dismissed complaints from Jewish students regarding campus safety amid unauthorized anti-Israel protests.

Such complaints are “baseless,” Segal wrote, adding that student protesters “aren’t escalating anything” and are subject to “a vicious police attack against them.”

In a January Los Angeles Times article, he argued that the creation of the Jewish state “reproduced the racism and white supremacy that had targeted Jews for exclusion.”

Painter, who began teaching at the University of Minnesota in 2007, told the Free Beacon that Segal’s appointment was entirely the decision of Waltner, who has served as the College of Liberal Arts’ interim dean since July 2023.

The search committee excluded representation from Jewish stakeholders, Painter said.

In particular, the university’s Center for Jewish Studies director was excluded from the search committee, according to Painter.

In her resignation email to provost Rachel Croson and interim president Jeff Ettinger, Painter argued the Holocaust center’s director should not be “someone who blames Israel for the rape and murder of 1200 civilians, and kidnapping of hundred more.”

“Educating the current generation of students about the Holocaust is critically important,” Painter wrote in the email. “Instead, an interim dean of CLA, despite substantial opposition from faculty and others, has offered the Holocaust center directorship to someone who will accomplish nothing of the kind.”

The Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas was also excluded from the search committee, despite its close working relationship with the Holocaust center.

The two have worked together to shape Holocaust education standards and benchmarks for state schools.

In an email to the University of Minnesota’s board of regents, Richard Painter, a law professor at the school and the husband of Karen Painter, also lambasted the decision to appoint Segal, whose “views on the Middle East conflict are extreme, and deeply offensive to many people who believe Israel has a right to defend itself.”

“It’s one thing to hire yet more instructional staff with such extreme views; there are numerous extreme left instructors in CLA already. Nothing new,” he wrote.

“It is quite another thing to hire an extremist to run the Holocaust Center. The last thing we need is a Holocaust Center director who blames Israel rather than Hamas for genocidal intent in the Middle East.”

Richard Painter, who served as chief ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration before launching multiple congressional campaigns as a Democrat, also lamented what he called a pattern of anti-Semitism at the College of Liberal Arts.

On Oct. 13., for example, a group of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies faculty members released a statement that reaffirmed “support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement” and called on “students, colleagues, and friends around the country to call for lifting the siege, ending the occupation, and dismantling Israel’s apartheid system.”

Two months later, in December, the college considered an anti-Israel professor in the Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies department, Sima Shakhsari, for a top diversity, equity, and inclusion position, Jewish Insider reported.

Shakhsari denied Hamas terrorists raped Israeli women on Oct. 7 and was seen on campus attending an anti-Israel rally, chanting, “Globalize the Intifada.”

The post He accused Israel of genocide days after Oct. 7. The University of Minnesota tapped him to lead its genocide studies center appeared first on World Israel News.

Omar a representative of Minnesota praised the terror-supporting students for their violent actions against preventing a ‘genocide’ in Gaza.

The post WATCH: Ilhan Omar ‘moved’ by anti-Israel encampment at University of Minnesota appeared first on World Israel News.

The email also prompted recipients to watch speeches by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who has in the past accused “Satanic Jews” of controlling the world.

By World Israel News Staff

Nearly 400 emails accusing Jews of “selling blacks” were sent to the University of Montana (UM) staff and faculty on the eve of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, reports the Missoulian.

According to the report, the 380 emails called for recipients to print “a few hundred or thousand” attached anti-Semitic flyers to distribute around town. The flyers included a link to buy the book Jews Selling Blacks, a narrative that falsely blames Jews for the transatlantic slave trade.

The email also urged recipients to watch speeches by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who has in the past accused “Satanic Jews” of controlling the world and called them “blood-sucking parasites.”

According to a spokesperson at the university, the emails were reported promptly to the Montana Human Rights Network (MHRN), a nonprofit organization that aims to promote pluralism, equality, and justice.

“In this instance, the material references the Nation of Islam, which has a record of anti-Semitism, but only represents a small and specific subgroup and is not representative of all Muslim people,” MHRN wrote on their Facebook page, adding  “Bigoted ideas are dangerous to our communities, and the work to build coalitions that cross issues and identities is key to having a strong response to hate incidents.”

University of Montana President Seth Bodnar denounced the anti-Semitic emails for expressing “ideas that are against everything Martin Luther King, Jr. stood for and that are counter to our shared UM belief in the dignity of every person.”

“We believe in the freedom an education brings, but this freedom is only possible when we speak out against hate and continue the necessary work to be inclusive of all. We continue that work today on myriad fronts,” Bodnar wrote.

“The work of many on campus, including student groups, points toward a UM family that seeks to build a welcoming and inclusive campus for all. This is ongoing work that is, as the hateful email highlights, still necessary.”

“To all who received the email, we are saddened and diminished by this act of hatred, and we support you. We are investigating its origin and will take appropriate action,” he wrote.

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The “dictionary project was funded by the Nazi government with hopes of producing an Arabic translation of Adolph Hitler’s Mein Kampf,” according to Professor Katrien Vanpee.

By World Israel News Staff 

The Arabic Department at the University of Minnesota is “discussing ways to address the Nazi background of an Arabic-English dictionary that has been required for Arabic classes at the university for years,” reports Minnesota Daily

The publication at the center of the controversy is titled: Arabic-English Dictionary: The Hans Wehr Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic.

It was published in 1952 by a member of the Nazi party, says the Minnesota newspaper, citing the comments of Professor Katrien Vanpee, the director of Arabic language instruction at the university, as told by a student in the professor’s class.

“Hans Wehr’s dictionary project was funded by the Nazi government with hopes of producing an Arabic translation of Adolph Hitler’s Mein Kampf,” according to Vanpee, as reported in Minnesota Daily.  It is said to be the most widely used Arabic dictionary in the world.

Vanpee told her students that she would not be requiring it in her class, according to the report.

The professor’s comments came after “second-year student Rodrigo Tojo Garcia found information online about Wehr’s background after having already purchased the dictionary some months ago,” says the newspaper.

“I was amazed that it hadn’t come up, that no one had talked about it,” Tojo Garcia told Minnesota Daily.

“You would think with something like that, especially in the modern political climate… that someone would’ve mentioned at some point that Hans Wehr did this — but they didn’t. And that was a shocking thing to know,” he said.

“In addition to starting a dialogue with her students about the topic, Vanpee is also consulting and evaluating with Arabic instructors and faculty about listing the print dictionary as a suggested work rather than a required one,” reports Minnesota Daily.

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