Oh no! Our school is failing!

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.

This is not antisemitism