Minnesota’s universities seem to have forgotten philosopher George Santayana’s maxim: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Twenty-two years ago, St. Cloud State University settled a federal class-action lawsuit (Zmora v. State of Minnesota) that brought national attention to the campus and stained its reputation with antisemitism. SCSU was required to create a new position and hire a professor to develop Jewish studies and a communal awareness program about antisemitism; I was that professor.
Six years later, the Jewish studies program produced the unique community and university collaboration of “To Be Certain of the Dawn,” a Holocaust memorial program of choral and symphonic music that had been commissioned by the Basilica of Saint Mary as a gift to the Jewish community in 2005.
It was performed on both campuses by the SCSU Music Department with Saint John’s University and College of Saint Benedict faculty and students and the St. Cloud Cantabile children’s choir. Then 260 faculty, students and staff from the three universities went to Europe in the summer of 2008 and performed the piece in the Nazi concentration camp Natzweiler-Struthof in France. The SCSU archives has a 17-minute documentary, “Holocaust and Transcendence,” which illuminates what a university can do to repudiate antisemitism.
And the course “Antisemitism in America” was developed and offered by a university challenged to prevent the past from being repeated. Students taking the course fulfilled a graduation requirement of Liberal Education-Goal 7-Human Diversity. The course explored history, sociology, literature, religious studies and contemporary events to illuminate the “oldest hatred” in Western culture.
Then one year ago, SCSU announced that, due to debt and low enrollment, several programs would be canceled and that some tenured faculty positions would be terminated. Among the programs eliminated was Jewish studies.
State legislators are having public meetings to develop the new State Holocaust Education program, but SCSU — which educates 45% of Minnesota’s teachers — has eliminated Jewish studies. When Minnesota mandates Holocaust education in its public schools, what university will teach “Antisemitism in America” to prepare the teachers?
The University of Minnesota faces an investigation by the U.S. Department of Education of antisemitism on the Twin Cities campus following demonstrations after the Hamas massacre of Oct. 7, 2023, in Israel.
Currently, there are also public hearings about the revocation of the name of the school’s Nicholson Hall. A recent Op-Ed in The Minnesota Daily argues that the name of the building, which houses the university’s Center for Jewish Studies, should be changed as it is named after a man “who aligned himself with notorious antisemites.” It added: “Edward E. Nicholson is a reminder of the University’s darkest chapters.” Ironically, there is currently no course at the Twin Cities campus that teaches about the antisemitism for which Nicholson’s name might be removed.
Students are missing a vital intellectual challenge in civic responsibility. Three sample questions on antisemitism teach history as well as personal ethics: What is the connection between Henry Ford, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and antisemitism in the U.S. before World War II? What is the origin of the slang term “to jew someone down” and why is it so offensive? Why were white supremacists in Charlottesville screaming “Jews will not replace us?”
Maybe Santayana’s warning should be amended for our time: Those who cannot teach about our past are condemned to repeat it. A writer proclaimed in 1946 that “Minneapolis is the capitol (sic) of anti-Semitism in the United States” — a phrase that should be part of every Minnesota citizen’s basic literacy about the hatred of Jews.
Minnesota’s two public university systems must create and sustain courses on antisemitism in America.
Elie Wiesel, a survivor of Auschwitz, taught the world during his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, saying, “I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides.”
The urgent need to teach “Antisemitism in America” in Minnesota’s universities requires that we take sides and end the silence about the absence of this course.
Joseph A. Edelheit is an emeritus professor of religious and Jewish studies at St. Cloud State University and was the senior rabbi at Temple Israel from 1992-2001.
