WASHINGTON — University of Minnesota interim President Jeff Ettinger said mistakes were made, but the school sought to protect all students and defend the right to free speech during the upheavals touched off by the Israel-Hamas war.
“We may not have always gotten it right … but I can assure you we tackled each challenge in a manner befitting of the seriousness of these issues,” Ettinger said during a hearing Wednesday in the state Senate on anti-Jewish incidents at the University of Minnesota.
The hearing mimicked congressional hearings held earlier this year in which university presidents faced barbed questions about how their institutions were combating antisemitism and ensuring campus safety.
The result was the resignation of University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill, followed shortly by Harvard President Claudine Gay’s announcement that she was stepping down.
Wednesday’s hearing, organized by state Sen. Ron Latz, DFL-St. Louis Park, was far more cordial in tone than the congressional hearings, but had the same goals.
Ettinger’s calm demeanor during the hearing may have been due to both an unflappable personality and the fact that this is the last week he will serve as interim president of the university. Rebecca Cunningham will become the school’s 18th president on July 1.
Yet Ettinger was definitely in the hot seat.
“This was freedom of hate speech that was allowed at the University of Minnesota,” said Sen. Warren Limmer, R-Maple Grove.
Latz accused the Ettinger of “incorporating terrorist and antisemitic language” in its response to the demands of campus protesters that resulted in an agreement allowing the university to hold finals and commencement exercises in peace.
Ettinger apologized for the use during negotiations of the Arabic word “thawabit” — a term used to characterize the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people that Latz maintained was used by Hamas to convey the destruction of Israel.
“I didn’t even know what that word meant,” Ettinger said.
But he defended his decision to reach a peaceful agreement that ended the encampment and chaos at the university and compared his actions to those of the University of Wisconsin, which resulted in violence and injuries that resulted when police tried to remove demonstrators from campus.
Ettinger also said he has met with Jewish students over their concerns and urged them to make formal complaints to the university.
A BB gun shooting and controversial hire
Ettinger also defended a pro-Palestinian post on the websites of several organizations affiliated with the university and the school’s Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature and Department for Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies.
Citing Board of Regent policy on academic freedom, Ettinger said “faculty and academic staff have the freedom to speak or write on matters of public concern, but the responsibility to ensure that when they speak, they are clear they are not speaking for the institution.”
As far as an incident a couple of weeks ago that involved the shooting out of windows of the Hillel House, a gathering place for Jewish students, Ettinger said that after “a thorough university investigation” of the shooting, which was done with a BB-gun, the perpetrators have not been caught. He also said “officers determined there was no public threat” because the building was empty.
Asked about a controversial new hire to head the school’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Ettinger said his employment offer had been rescinded and a search to find a new candidate would occur in the next academic year.
Related | University of Minnesota deal with pro-Palestinian protesters could serve as model for other strife-torn schools
And chalk drawings deemed offensive by some Jewish students? Ettinger said they were quickly erased.
Campus protests touched off by the Israel-Hamas war have resulted in an increase in reports of bias, racism and hate speech on campuses, including those of the University of Minnesota.
According to the university, there were 169 reports as of June 15 in this academic year. That compares to 55 reports in the 2022-2023 school year. Of the 169 total reports in this academic year, 99 can be attributed to the Israel-Hamas war.
Of those 99 reports, 54 concerned biases against Israel/antisemitism — with graffiti and vandalism the most common subject of complaint — and 33 reported biases against Palestine/Islamophobia, the university said.
Latz cautioned at the beginning of the hours-long hearing, which also featured student and faculty witnesses defending the university protesters as well as those critical of their actions, that the hearing was to be limited to the issue of antisemitism and not the Israel-Hamas war.
But those guard rails were quickly overrun.
Sen. Jim Carlson, DFL-Eagan, asked a student about Iran’s participation in the conflict and whether the war was really between Israel and Iran rather than Palestine and Israel.
“I’ve been told time and time again that the purpose of this hearing is to discuss Jewish students on campus and time and time again I find myself bogged down in various debates on serious international issues that are well beyond my expertise and, respectfully, that of most people in the room,” answered Zach Fischer of Jewish Voices for Peace, one of the student groups involved in campus demonstrations.
Emmer applies pressure
Although he has not been asked to testify in Congress, Ettinger has been pressured by a member of the U.S. House leadership, Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-6th District, who wrote the university president in late April as campus demonstrations were peaking about allegations of antisemitism and lawlessness at the school.
In a letter that attacked Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-5th District, for speaking to demonstrators at the university’s Twin Cities campus and at Columbia University, which is affiliated with Barnard College, the school attended by her daughter, Emmer asked Ettinger a series of questions.
The interim university president responded much as he did during Wednesday’s hearing, defending the university’s decision to recommend that the Hennepin County Attorney use clemency when prosecuting nine students who were arrested after refusing to leave an encampment at the school. Charges against those students were subsequently dropped.
Ettinger also told Emmer that the university was prepared for any further disruptions that might be caused by demonstrators and would deploy public safety officers, like it did when conservative Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett gave a speech on campus last fall and several protesters in the auditorium were quickly whisked away.
“Protests on our campus and across the country highlight the variety of lived experiences, identities, beliefs, and backgrounds within our communities,” Ettinger wrote Emmer. “The university respects and affirms individual rights to free speech and lawful protests consistent with our policies and conduct codes, and without causing harm to others.”
Student protests have subsided as most colleges are on summer break. But the Israel-Hamas war continues to rage, with a cease fire out of reach, so campus demonstrations may return.
Preparing for this, state legislators in New York, North Carolina and other states are resurrecting dormant laws that criminalize mask-wearing to penalize protesters who conceal their faces.
Meanwhile, members of Congress, mainly U.S. House Republicans, are ready to resume investigations of pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campus in the fall, which would occur right before November’s general election.
In addition, the University of Minnesota is one of dozens of schools under investigation by the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights for “national origin discrimination involving religion,” which will likely focus on antisemitism and Islamophobia in the Twin Cities campus.
Ana Radelat
Ana Radelat is MinnPost’s Washington, D.C. correspondent. You can reach her at aradelat@minnpost.com or follow her on Twitter at @radelat.
