Star Tribune
University of Minnesota pauses search for Holocaust center director amid controversy
The University of Minnesota is pausing its search for director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies — days after it offered the job to Israeli historian Raz Segal and two longtime board members resigned in protest.
“In the past several days, additional members of the University community have come forward to express their interest in providing perspective on the hiring. … Because of the community-facing and leadership role the director holds, it is important that these voices are heard,” the university said in a statement Monday. Interim President Jeff Ettinger has paused the selection process, the statement added, “to allow an opportunity to determine next steps.”
Segal is associate professor of Holocaust and genocide studies and endowed professor in the study of modern genocide at Stockton University in New Jersey. Among other things, the resigning board members took issue with an article called “A Textbook Case of Genocide,” which he published in Jewish Currents less than a week after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel killed 1,200 Israelis and Israel retaliated.
“Israel’s campaign to displace Gazans … is yet another chapter in the Nakba, in which an estimated 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes during the 1948 war that led to the creation of the State of Israel,” Segal wrote. “But the assault on Gaza can also be understood in other terms: as a textbook case of genocide unfolding in front of our eyes. I say this as a scholar of genocide, who has spent many years writing about Israeli mass violence against Palestinians.”
Israel’s offensive has killed more than 36,700 Palestinians as of Monday, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count.
Board member Bruno Chaouat wrote to university leaders this weekend that his understanding of the core mission of the center is to educate people on the history of the Holocaust and of genocides in order to raise awareness and prevent further dehumanization and violence.
“Professor Segal, by justifying Hamas’s atrocities … days after they occurred (via a perverse allegation that Israel was committing a genocide), cannot fulfill the mission of the Center,” wrote Chaouat, a French professor and previous interim director of the center. “He has failed to recognize the genocidal intent of Hamas. He does not understand that a movement like Hamas is inherently fascist and represents precisely what CHGS stands against. Finally, he does not understand the specificity of the history of antisemitism — which, as you will easily concede, is a sine qua non to educate the community and our students about the extermination of the Jews.”
Board member Karen Painter, a music professor, also resigned Friday in protest.
By Sunday morning, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas sent an advocacy alert citing the Jewish Currents article, calling Segal an anti-Zionist and encouraging recipients to call or email Ettinger, Provost Rachel Croson and the Board of Regents to voice their concerns.
Segal did not immediately return a message seeking comment Monday evening.
The director of the center would also hold the position of the Stephen C. Feinstein Chair in Holocaust and Genocide Studies. The late Feinstein’s daughter, Rebecca Feinstein, opposed Segal’s hiring but said she had also asked the university to delay its search until next year, when tensions could cool down over the Israel-Hamas War. With so many campus protests, “everything is too much of a hot topic. … You can’t do a search in this kind of environment,” she said.
This article includes information from the Associated Press.
Star Tribune
Man sentenced to more than 30 years in murder of fellow resident at West St. Paul group home
A 43-year-old man was sentenced to more than 30 years in prison Friday for stabbing to death a fellow resident at a state-operated mental health group home in West St. Paul.
John C. Adams II was found guilty in September in Dakota County District Court of intentional second-degree murder in the death of David Rahn, 68, in 2020. Adams will get credit for 1,777 days already served on his 367-month sentence, and was ordered to pay $2,088 in restitution.
According to the criminal complaint, Adams stabbed Rahn dozens of times in the early morning of Feb. 17, 2020, at the home in the 1500 block of Christensen Avenue. After a staff member heard Rahn scream for help and called 911, police found Rahn unresponsive on the floor of his bedroom with stab wounds to his face, neck and back. He was pronounced dead at the scene, and his death was ruled a homicide.
Adams at first claimed self-defense and later said Rahn had stabbed himself. But the medical examiner found evidence that the victim had tried to fend off the attack. Police found a bloody kitchen knife and a pair of blood-soaked gloves inside bags left at a Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses across the street.
Adams was convicted of third-degree assault in 2001 in Hennepin County for smashing a glass in a woman’s face in downtown Minneapolis. The court found him to be “a clear danger to the safety of others” and mentally incompetent to stand trial. His sentence was set aside in exchange for him being put under Security Hospital supervision for at least three years.
In October 2018, Adams was granted provisional discharge from the Security Hospital to the home on Christensen Avenue, but that discharge was revoked less than nine months later for violations of the discharge conditions.
The home of one of three group home operated by the state Department of Human Services for people civilly committed for a mental illness and then discharged from a DHS treatment facility.
Staff writer Paul Walsh contributed to this story.
Health insurer UCare has reached an agreement with HealthPartners clinics, which will allow thousands of patients to continue seeing the same doctors without switching health plans next year.
The two companies announced the agreement Friday evening. The terms are effective immediately.
“As mission-driven organizations, UCare and HealthPartners share a commitment to improving health outcomes for our community, and the organizations’ ongoing collaboration reflects that shared goal,” a joint statement said.
The clinics had been out of network for several years, but UCare had waived rules that would have blocked patients from making appointments. UCare said it would start enforcing the network rules Jan. 1.
Star Tribune
Man charged in Brooklyn Park homicide had connection to 2022 Mall of America fatal shooting
A 19-year-old Coon Rapids man, who played a role in a 2022 fatal shooting at the Mall of America, is facing murder charges in connection with an apparent targeted shooting earlier this month in Brooklyn Park.
Citing witnesses, surveillance footage and cell phone data, prosecutors say that Marquan D. Tucker waited in a parking lot Dec. 7 before opening fire on two people when they exited a business in the 8000 block of Brooklyn Boulevard.
The two victims returned fire, though one was wounded and the other, Ramone R. Blue, 23, of Stewartville, Minn., was killed. The complaint, filed Friday, offers no motive for the shooting.
The shooting happened about seven months after Tucker was discharged from court monitoring related to the 2022 fatal shooting of 19-year-old Johntae Hudson in a department store at the Mall of America, according to court records.
Tucker was charged with third-degree riot in the case and was adjudicated as delinquent, or found guilty, court records said. He was one of three teens who confronted or chased Hudson into the store where the shooting happened. The two teens who carried guns received long prison sentences.
Tucker was being held Friday at the Hennepin County jail. It wasn’t clear if he yet had an attorney.
According to the criminal complaint:
Surveillance video shows a black BMW pull into the parking lot in Brooklyn Park around 1:30 p.m. on Dec. 7. As the two victims exit a business, a man leaves the passenger seat of the BMW, hides behind another car and fires about 16 shots. The gunman then flees in the BMW.
