We got another memo from the president of the University of Minnesota, Rebecca Cunningham. We’re failing!
I am writing to you today, as our Twin Cities campus is now the subject of two federal investigations involving allegations of antisemitism: a U.S. Department of Education investigation and a pending U.S. Department of Justice task force campus visit. We also received a failing score on the Anti-Defamation League’s latest campus antisemitism report card.
This is a response to Trump’s search for reasons to punish every university. He doesn’t care about human rights, and neither does the ADL. This is not about antisemitism; it’s a right-wing policy to silence anyone opposing the genocide committed by Israel or promoting the rights of the Palestinian people. I’m sure there is antisemitism to be found on campus, because this is America and it’s simmering everywhere, but the university administration does not endorse it and it is not the majority view here. I support this part of the memo.
There is absolutely no place for antisemitism at the University of Minnesota. In accordance with our institutional values, we firmly and aggressively reject any and all forms of hatred directed toward members of our Jewish community.
Good. That’s official. But what we’re witnessing is a conflation of opposing the actions of the state of Israel with antisemitism, and we have to also defend the right or our students and faculty to oppose and protest the criminal actions of Israel.
The disappointing part of this memo is that it nowhere even mentions Palestinians or the policies of Israel — it just buries them under the label of “antisemitism”. I hope this isn’t their approach when the federal Trumpian investigators descend on campus. Be forthright: we defend the rights of both Jews and Palestinians to exist.
You know what’s interesting? A Holocaust scholar summarizes the antisemitism he witnessed in the White House.
This is a witch hunt!
A very old human activity.
Witches can be anything. Witches, old women, cats.
Modern day witches are commies, Antifa, DEI, Woke, Muslims, Gays, etc..
The Trump/Musk main witches are Trans people.
Scientists, Federal government employees, Public Health workers, and Vaccines.
Anyone can be accused of being a witch.
I’m a witch, according to the Trump/Musk fascist regime.
FWIW, this was predicted by several people including IIRC, Robert Reich.
Fascists always try to control all institutions in the society they are going to take over and wreck.
One important one are the colleges and universities.
Look at what their forerunners did, the German Nazis.
They took over the universities and purged them, especially of the Jewish professors.
They also took over the xian churches.
The Catholic church, about half of Germany after they annexed Austria, just rolled over and gave up easily.
The Pope Pius XII signed a treaty with the Nazis, the Reichskonkordat, This treaty said the Catholic church would leave the Nazis alone if they left the church alone. It greatly aided Hitler’s rise to power.
Strangely enough, it survived World War II and is still the law in Germany.
I find the easy conflation of the totality of Jewish peoples with the state of Israel and its government looks an awful lot like antisemitism.
Kind of like how Americans in WWII assumed all Japanese people were just genetically loyal to Hirohito, so it was okay to lock up second generation Japanese-Americans.
No surprise.
Just be calm, honest, fair, and objective.
And don’t bother trying to appease these fascists. As the Chinese found out with our tariffs, that never works.
If they want to cut university funding they will just do it.
They will make something up, just flat out lie, if they want to.
It is what they did with Canada.
They are claiming Canada is a source of the fentanyl that is in the USA. The fact is that Canada is a negligible supplier of fentanyl to the USA.
There are 4,000 or so colleges and universities in the USA. The US DoJ can’t attack them all while also attacking all the Blue states.
“There are 4,000 or so colleges and universities in the USA. The US DoJ can’t attack them all while also attacking all the Blue states.”
But if they can cow enough significant ones that may be sufficient. Hence the apparent concentration of attacks on Columbia University and detention and threatened deportation of Mahmoud Khalil, a legal permanent resident and Columbia student. It should be interesting to see if ICE will obey a habeas corpus request.
raven@2: The funny thing about the Reichskonkordat was, that the Nazi government didn’t really give shit about it. Pius’ encyclical complaining about the Nazis still not being nice to the Catholic church is frequently cited as an act of resistance against the Nazis by the Vatican, when Catholics try to pretend their church was a force for good back then…
My grandfathers reply to anyone claiming the Catholic church was anti-Nazi was usually: “You haven’t been to Bavaria* before the war!”
Something like Germany’s bible belt – only Catholic.
I have absolutely nothing against the Jews. I almost married a Jewish girl (long story). But, as much as I detest antisemitism, it’s not against the law. We often allow neo-Nazis to march and stage protests. Nobody is arrested unless they turn violent. Look at the Charlottesville rallies in 2017. I’d rather antisemitism didn’t exist, but it does and probably always will.
My issues are with the Israel’s expansionist policies and the creeping ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Arab population. What hacks me off is that when I criticize Israel’s policies and brutal repression, I’m labeled an antisemite. I find it particularly galling when Americans bemoan what Israel is doing, but refuse to apply the same scrutiny to how the U.S. came into existence. The reply is usually something along the lines of that was different, a long time ago, or we had a legal right to Indian lands because the British and French ceded their colonial territories to us. One woman even told me that we gave the Indians full citizenship and the right to vote, what more do they want? That defense has so many holes that I’d really need to write a long, scholarly article in refutation.
Steve Shives here – Ask Mahmoud Khalil About Free Speech (If You Can Find Him) (Ten minutes long.)
PZ wrote: our Twin Cities campus is now the subject of two federal investigations involving allegations of antisemitism
I reply: This is just another of countless signs of the MUMP cult war on education! The head of the dept of education is an ignorant huckster person who runs the professional wrestling circus! if you dumb-down the sheople (to the ignorant tRUMP level) they will be unable to think critically and they won’t see how fascist this nation is being run.
Here are more examples of this fascist thuglike behavior:
https://azmirror.com/2025/03/11/repub/asu-receives-warning-letter-from-education-department-amid-gaza-protest-crackdown/
ASU receives warning letter from Education Department amid Gaza protest crackdown
By Shauneen Miranda – March 11, 2025
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/palestinian-activist-arrest-signals-columbia-university-collaborating-trump
Palestinian activist arrest signals Columbia University ‘collaborating …
The arrest and detention of a prominent Palestinian over the weekend from his home in New York City marks Columbia University’s shift from a complicit actor to a collaborator with Donald Trump’s …
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/columbia-complicit-trump-arrest-student-leader-mahmoud-khalil
Columbia complicit in Trump arrest of student leader Mahmoud Khalil
Columbia’s complicity. While alarm is growing at this government censorship and repression, there is also considerable anger at the silence and apparent complicity of Columbia University, which has been waging a severe crackdown on supporters of Palestinian rights in an attempt. . .
@ 8 Last I heard, he is being held at the Louisiana ICE Detention Facility in Jena, LA. That was yesterday, though. The number is (318) 992-1600.
I need to clarify my remark @9. I clearly divide the university community into two distinct and often opposing groups. The educators and students, who are interested in education. As opposed to the administration, who are mostly politically biased business weasels who haven’t a clue about how to run an institution focused on education instead of politics.
The Timothy Snyder article is powerful and (to me at least) revelatory.
So am I.
Still waiting for them to send me the vehicle that’s supposed to go with the title, though. Would be very handy when I need to do a bit of shopping, so long as it wasn’t during high winds.
Meanwhile, the US is, for the first time in quite a while, holding a political prisoner. When was the last time? Chelsea Manning during the Shrub administration?
@ ^ Bekenstein Bound : Guantanamo Bay? Still open BTW.
Does Julian Assange count?
Oh & arguably Hunter Biden.. Would he have faced such serious penalties had he been OTHER than Biden’s son? Okay that one is debateable and maybe not too but. Anyhow.
Owen Jones has just put out this – Trump LIES His Crackdown Is About Protecting Jewish Americans – Lara Friedman Exposes TRUTH which is 17 minutes long.
@12^ Rob Grigjanis
I never comment here but I felt I had to pop on and strongly second this. Antisemitism is a real thing that is all too common. The idea that this administration is actually concerned about antisemitism is laughable.
Trump and his goons are shameless in their use of transparently false pretexts to justify their actions. The result (and, I think, the motivation) for most of what they are doing is to deny people’s humanity and human values.
The Snyder article does a good job illustrating how the denial of the human values of any group (Jews, transgender people) denies the human values of all people and removes the most significant barrier from rationalizing the taking of power, resources or whatever from others.
Hedges is long winded, but this tells a lot and the Mr. Fish comic is great:
https://scheerpost.com/2025/03/11/chris-hedges-trumps-war-on-education/
shermanj @17: Not seeing the ‘long winded’. An excellent article, with not a wasted word.