We, the signatories to this letter, are members of the university community (undergraduate and graduate students, faculty and emeriti, staff, and alumni), members of Jewish Voice for Peace Twin Cities Chapter, and members of the UMN Educators for Justice in Palestine.
We are writing to call out the University administration for uncritically accepting the Trump administration's framing that draconian measures restricting curriculum and controlling campus life are now justified under the cloak of complying with Title VI obligations and the insulting pretext of “protecting Jewish students.”
UMN is one of 60 universities to receive letters from the Department of Education “warning of potential enforcement actions” for alleged Title VI violations involving claims of antisemitism. These “investigations” are a cynical cover for justifying the dismantling of higher education, and restrictions on free speech for visa and green card holders.
In her March 10 message "Combating harassment, bias and antisemitism," President Cunningham shared that the University joined the Hillel Campus Climate Initiative, assisted by the Academic Engagement Network (AEN), in response to advocacy from Zionist Jewish students and faculty groups and because the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) had given the University of Minnesota an "F" on its "antisemitism report card." What Cunningham failed to acknowledge, however, is that this initiative is not about antisemitic harassment or discrimination at large. It is uniquely focused on Palestine protests and activism on campus, and its primary purpose is to give administrators political cover for suppressing Palestine activism in the name of combating antisemitism.
At a time when the Trump administration is targeting academics and students for speaking out about Palestinians suffering under Israel's bombardment, we emphatically reject that solidarity with Palestinians is a threat to Jewish safety.
We recognize that anti-Jewish hate is a serious and growing threat in America and around the world. At the same time, we understand that conflating any critique of Israel with antisemitic hate crimes is a smokescreen for silencing authentic public debate over national and international affairs. We assert that smokescreen antisemitism – the practice of calling any and every critique of the Israeli state antisemitic – is antithetical to our First Amendment Rights. The insistence that Israel’s actions may not be questioned is anathema to both good governance and civic responsibility.
We are extremely concerned that the University administration has chosen to collaborate with ADL, AEN, and Hillel– organizations that are aligned with the state of Israel and do not represent all Jewish people. It is troubling that explicitly pro-Israel organizations are getting a direct line of communication and endorsed collaborations where all other Jewish organizations such as Jewish Voice for Peace are ignored. This is a clear violation of the university’s already questionable “institutional neutrality.” It shows that this neutrality policy is being selectively applied to suppress protest and academic freedom while elevating those supporting Israel’s genocide.
For its part, the ADL is not a credible source on antisemitism. By conflating anti-Israel political speech with antisemitic hate crimes, the ADL has discredited its own data gathering work. By smearing Jews who make common-sense appeals for peace in the Middle East, the ADL has embraced defamation and enabled attacks on the Jewish community. By refusing to censure right-wing antisemitism, even defending billionaire Elon Musk's recent Nazi-style salute, the ADL has aligned itself with those who pose the greatest threat to Jewish safety.
We insist it is our right to criticize the Israeli government for its genocidal conduct in the Occupied Palestinian Territories of Gaza and the West Bank. The United Nations General Assembly, the International Court of Justice, and several reputable human rights organizations make these same assertions. We insist that criticizing the Government of Israel is no different in any way from criticizing the leaders of any other nation, including the United States. We insist that our criticism of the government of Israel is wholly, and completely different in every respect from calling for the extermination of the Jewish people: singularly or en masse.
More than two million Palestinians are now homeless – the result of Israel’s genocidal campaign. Every hospital, market, mosque, school, university, library, and sewage treatment plant is flattened. Food, and drinking water are used as weapons of war. Millions of Jews – religious and secular – are sickened and appalled by this blatant extermination campaign. In fact, we believe that ascribing Israel’s actions as intrinsic to Jewish identity is antisemitic.
Last May, over 1,300 Jewish academics urged Congress not to codify the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism precisely because it erroneously conflates criticism of Israel (and anti-Zionism) with antisemitism.
The term “Semite” is a racist taxonomic invention of philology in 19th century Europe to justify the superiority of the Aryan race through scientific racism. It is predicated upon the civilizational othering of the “Semitic people” (those speaking Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Amharic) as a distinct racial category, inferior to the “Aryan race.” Similarly, Zionism, the political ideology that claims Jewish safety requires a Jewish-only nation-state, was a European invention that sought to remedy Europe’s “Jewish problem” through realizing the white supremacist desire to exile Jews out of Europe in the 19th century and early 20th century.
For the past 76 years, Zionism has been serving as the foundation of the ethnostate of Israel and the driving force behind the Israeli military's ongoing violence, colonization, and the erasure of Palestinian lives. From its onset, Zionism has been a colonial ideology: To garner support from the British colonizers, Theodor Herzl in his 1902 letter to Cecil Rhodes called Zionism “something colonial.” Furthermore, the Zionist formation of the settler colonial state of Israel and the forced exile of millions of Palestinians since 1948 is necessarily attached to the creation of a homogenous [European/Ashkenazi] Jewish identity, thus erasing and Whitening the history of Palestinian Jews (and other Arab Jews) in Palestine.
Reducing the Palestine-Israel settler colonial history to a “Jewish-Muslim conflict” not only distracts from this history, but it falsely projects antisemitism, a white supremacist hatred of Jews and Muslims alike, onto Palestinians. The conflation of Zionism with Judaism and the accusations of antisemitism against Palestinians (and by extension Palestine liberation activists) are not only historically erroneous, but they are politically-motivated projects led by the Zionist enterprise to persecute any critique of the state of Israel. The misguided “antisemitism initiatives” led by pro-Israel organizations on the UMN campus do not make Jews, Muslims, Arabs (Muslim, Christian, or Jewish), or other SWANA people safe on our campus. They only deepen division and increase incidents of anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish hate.
We demand the University of Minnesota pull out of Hillel’s Campus Climate Initiative. This Zionist project does nothing to end real antisemitism. It is a Trojan Horse to criminalize Palestine liberation activism on campus.
We ask the University administration to reject the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which falsely conflates anti-Zionism with antisemitism and creates further divisions and false sentiments of animosity.
We call on the University’s Board of Regents, President Cunningham, and Governor Walz to defend free speech, protect our constitutional right to protest, and not to suppress criticism of the state of Israel’s heinous crimes of genocide and apartheid in our name. From criminalizing and punishing pro-Palestinian liberation student protesters to disqualifying/unhiring faculty, firing staff, and removing Palestine-related departmental statements, the University leadership has suppressed academic freedom long before the fascistic policies of Trump’s regime. We deplore the University leadership’s appropriation of Jewish safety to justify the undemocratic practices that do not make any of us safe. Millions of Jewish people around the world have said it loud and clear: “Not in our name! Never again means never again for everyone!”
We ask the administration to meet with anti-Zionist Jewish students, faculty, staff, and community members in the Twin Cities and listen to our concerns about the so-called “Campus Climate Initiative.” Zionist pressure groups funded by the state of Israel, and/or those driven by the interests of the state of Israel and its expansionist project, do not represent the Jewish people among us. They do not make Jewish people safe. On the contrary, the Israeli state’s settler colonial violence in Gaza and the West Bank not only subjects Palestinians to ethnic cleansing, but it also jeopardizes the safety of Jewish people around the world. Whenever one group's safety is predicated on the unsafety of others, that is never true safety.
Jewish Voice for Peace, Twin Cities Chapter
UMN Educators for Justice in Palestine
Organizational Endorsements
Tzedek UMN
Students for Justice in Palestine, UMN
Students for a Democratic Society, UMN
Twin Cities Healthcare Workers for Palestine
Students for the Horn of Africa, UMN
UMN Incarcerated Workers' Organizing Committee
Mizna
Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism
Individual Signatures
Click here to see individual signatures
