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Editor’s note: Since the barbaric Hamas attacks against Israel on October 7th, American universities have become an undeniable locus of Jewish hatred within our nation. Much attention has deservedly been paid to radical campus groups like Students for Justice in Palestine who call for the genocide of the Jews and cheer the terrorists of Hamas. What has received less attention—but should in fact rank as the universities’ worst offense—is the Jew hatred promoted by official departments and institutes of the universities themselves. In the case of our campuses, Jewish hatred is “the call coming from inside the house.”
The Freedom Center is exposing these academic institutes and programs as “The Top Ten Jew-Hating Academic Departments” in a new report. We will be publishing one school per day as a series on Frontpage. The Department of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota is #5 on our list.
Just a glance at the website for the University of Minnesota Department of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies reveals it to be a highly politicized unit of the wider university, dedicated to progressive activism. The site declares that “As a place where research, education, and social change go hand in hand, GWSS identifies, analyzes, and challenges structural inequalities, while imagining and creating just and transformative futures for all.” Instead of searching for truth and knowledge, the Department openly acknowledges that its vision includes “social change,” “challeng[ing] structural inequalities,” and “creating just and transformative futures for all.”
So it should come as no surprise that, like much of the progressive left, the Department of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies (DGWSS) is a vile font of Jewish hatred on the University of Minnesota campus.
Just six days after the brutal and barbaric Hamas attack on Israel, in which innocent civilians were brutalized and raped, parents killed in front of children, children killed in front of parents, bodies gleefully mutilated by terrorists on camera, DGWSS released a “Faculty Statement on Palestine” in which they described the massacre as “Hamas fighters” (not terrorists) who “brought down border fences.” The statement went on to demonize Israel and its defensive response to the worst attack in its history as “not self-defense but the continuation of a genocidal war against Gaza and against Palestinian freedom, self-determination, and life.” The statement declared “We stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people and with Palestinian scholars and organizers.” DGWSS might as well have said, “We stand with Hamas.”
The statement goes on to make clear that the Department stands for Palestine, and only Palestine. “We strongly reject media coverage that condemns either side or seeks to tell a one-sided story of an unprovoked terrorist attack,” it states. “Israeli leaders are wielding a violent power that subjugates the Palestinian people and constructs them as dehumanized terrorists, upon whom any bloodshed can be meted out.”
Ironically, the Department even claims that its glorification of Hamas “fighters,” who raped and brutalized innocent Israeli women en masse is a stance for feminism. “As scholars and solidarity workers who seek justice everywhere, we respond to the call of Palestinian feminists and Palestinian freedom fighters for transnational solidarity and assert that Palestine is a feminist issue,” claims the statement. “None of us will be free unless the Palestinian people are free and Palestinian land is liberated.”
Unsurprisingly, the statement goes on to “reaffirm support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement,” a genocidal attempt to isolate and destroy the world’s only Jewish state.
At the very end of the lengthy diatribe against Israel, one sentence appears to apparently mediate the clear tension created by an academic department putting forth such a horrific and anti-Semitic tirade: “This statement reflects our individual views and we do not purport to speak for the University.” This caveat is obviously a lie. Individual professors in the department could have put out a statement under their own auspices and promoted it on their personal social media accounts. Instead, DGWSS chose to place it prominently on the official department webpage of the University of Minnesota website, where it remains several months later, amended only by a brief note, added on November 20th, 2023, which states, in part, “This statement was written collectively by the tenured core faculty of the Department of Gender Women and Sexuality Studies." This statement does not reflect the position of the University of Minnesota.” That legalistic note seems unlikely to reassure Jewish and Israeli students who are forced to take classes within the Department.
Largely in response to the DGWSS statement, the U.S. Department of Education is now conducting an investigation into whether the University of Minnesota has violated federal anti-discrimination law due to anti-Semitism on campus.
The investigation was prompted by a letter sent to federal officials by former University of Minnesota regent Michael Hsu and law professor Richard Painter who argued, according to MPR News, that the DGWSS statement “is antisemitic because it condemns Israel while justifying the terrorist attacks by Hamas.’”
“This is not about being pro-Palestinian,” Painter told MPR News. “This is about official statements of departments on websites paid for by the Minnesota taxpayers that justify the actions of Hamas.”
For its politicized use of official university resources to promote anti-Semitism and glorify Hamas, the University of Minnesota Department of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies belongs on the list of the worst Jewish-hating academic departments in America.
Previous articles in the series:
[1] ‘Jew-Hating’ Asian American Studies Program is Exposed at Northwestern University.
[2] UIUC’s Department of Latino Studies Endorses ‘Jew Hatred’.
[3] U. Maryland Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies: A Case Study in ‘Jew Hatred’.
[4] University of Colorado-Boulder Ethnic Studies Department: Shilling for Hamas.
[5] UNC Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies: Celebrating October 7th.
