Minneapolis, Minnesota - The University of Minnesota has agreed to pay an Israeli-American academic $250,000 for rescinding his offer to lead its Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies after he called Israel's assault on Gaza a genocide.

Dr. Raz Segal is an associate professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies and endowed professor in the Study of Modern Genocide at Stockton University in New Jersey.

The University of Minnesota offered him the job and a tenured faculty position on June 5, 2024, after a careful search. Five days later, it rescinded the offer after two of the center's advisory board members resigned in protest.

The Center for Constitutional Rights submitted a public records request, saying email communications revealed evidence of a pressure campaign to remove Segal over his First Amendment-protected speech.

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The emails show that some university donors suggested fundraising for the center would "grind to a halt" were Segal to be hired, directly pointing to his statements on Israel and Palestine.

Segal had published an October 2023 op-ed in Jewish Currents, in which he called Israel's brutal assault on Gaza a "textbook case of genocide unfolding in front of our eyes."

"We do not apply political litmus tests in hiring, but seek to find the very strongest scholars for our positions," the university initially responded to the criticism, before ultimately rescinding Segal's job offer.

"The attack against me by these donors presented a world turned upside down: my commitment, as a Jewish scholar of the Holocaust and the grandchild of four Holocaust survivors, to stopping a livestreamed genocide in front of our eyes posed, in their minds, a threat to Jews," Segal said in a statement after the settlement deal.

"That the University accepted this lie in its decision to revoke my job offer exposed its intellectual and moral bankruptcy, as noted in dismay by many faculty and students, including Jews, in their emails to the University," he continued.

"This settlement represents a successful refusal to accept the world of lies that blur an ongoing genocide, and a commitment to continue the intertwined struggles for truth, justice, and accountability – in Palestine and on our campuses."