Antisemitism at the U of Minnesota

-but there was no smoking gun (1978-1989):

My Personal Experience As A Jewish Woman at The University of Minnesota

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By

Nancy Hartevelt Kobrin, Ph.D.

I offer this essay with the hopes of being able to contribute to the United State Justice Department's investigation into antisemitism at the University of Minnesota, one of ten schools now under scrutiny. I do not know whether this essay will be of any help, but I believe it is important for investigators to recognize that antisemitism at the U of MN has a long and complex history. My perspective is shaped in part by my experience of suing the University under the Rajender Consent Decree, which was intended to promote and advance women, particularly those who had earned doctorates from the University of Minnesota. The University had no difficulty hiring men with U of MN Master's and Doctorate degrees into legitimate academic positions, including tenure. However, because I was a Jewish woman the situation was much more complicated. But here I am getting ahead of the story.

Recruited to the University of Minnesota on a Bush Fellowship (1978)

In 1977, I was recruited to the University of Minnesota on a prestigious Bush Fellowship for my doctorate in Western Islamic Literature of Hadith, written in aljamía, Old Spanish in Arabic script. Aljamía "parallels" Ladino (la'az), Old Spanish in Hebrew script, which I had previously studied under the late Professor David Romey at Portland State University, yet another university under investigation for antisemitism.

I eagerly anticipated beginning my doctorate in an area that sparked my intellectual curiosity. I was honored to receive the Bush Fellowship. Before applying, I had written three times to the professor who taught aljamía, the late Professor Anwar Chejne, but I never received a reply. I later learned that he had never trained a doctoral student. Initially, I did not think it was odd that he had not responded or that he may have been reluctant to accept a Jewish student. He would have known I was Jewish from my name and my prior work in Ladino.

Chejne authored The History of Muslim Spain, a five-hundred-page text published by the University of Minnesota Press in 1975. This was long before 9/11 and the widespread academic interest in Islam. At that time, I was naively engaged in convivencia (coexistence) and fascinated by the Islamic component in medieval Spain, where the three Abrahamic faiths allegedly coexisted. I had not yet developed an interest in jihad, which would come later while I was completing my thesis, when suicide truck bombs exploded in Lebanon.

Elsewhere, in my second book, Penetrating the Terrorist Psyche, I have written about how the text, The History of Muslim Spain, omitted any mention of jihad, including the case of Tariq Ibn Ziyad, who came on jihad and conquered Spain in 711 AD. The book whitewashed the Muslim invasion of Spain.

The reality was that, initially, Chejne did not want to train me because I was Jewish, though this was never explicitly stated. There was an 18-month delay in obtaining photocopies of the aljamiado hadith texts I was to work on. The chair of the department of comparative literature who was also the co-chair of my dissertation (he shall remain anonymous in this essay), eventually intervened and forced Chejne to hand over the materials so I could begin my research.

My treatment was inconsistent—sometimes supportive, sometimes exclusionary. The department chair facilitated my dissertation fellowship and later helped me secure admission to psychoanalytic training at the Institute for Psychoanalysis in Chicago, as he wrote one of my letters of recommendation. He also helped me remain at the University as Director of Graduate Studies, despite my non-tenure-track status.

The Academic Conference in La Marsa, Tunisia 1983 

As part of my doctoral requirements, I had to present my work internationally. By this time, Chejne was very ill with primary amyloidosis, a a genetic blood disease associated with the Mediterranean gene pool. I practiced bikur holim, the Jewish custom of visiting the sick, and even donated blood for his transfusions. This gesture led to an unexpected shift—I was suddenly treated like family. Blood has a special meaning in the Middle East. I was honored to eulogize him at his funeral, though I later realized how naive I had been about his initial reluctance to train me. Should any graduate student have to give blood, quite literally in order to be "accepted"?

Before his passing, he gave me his invitation to present at a conference in Tunisia. The engraved invitation in gold came from the Saudi-funded event. I later learned that Yasser Arafat was residing nearby, having been expelled from Lebanon with his PLO. At the conference, I was the only Jewish attendee among hundreds.

In Tunisia, women attendees were not given their own hotel rooms or, so I was told. I was placed with Professor Consuelo López-Morillas, a known PLO supporter and perhaps even a member. She taught at Indiana University which just so happened to be my undergraduate alma mater. Professor Alvin Rosenfeld, who founded the Department of Jewish Studies and the Institute for the Study of Antisemitism at Indiana University, told me years later about López’s antisemitism. Unbeknownst to me, I was essentially under surveillance while in Tunisia.

After completing my doctorate and assuming a non-regular faculty position as Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of comparative literature, I was now a quasi-faculty member. I invited my colleagues to my daughter's Bat Mitzvah, again naively thinking that professors who engaged in cultural theory making might actually be interested in Jews, Judaism and a significant cultural rites of passage. None attended, except for the department's secretary, a devote Christian woman who found the service deeply moving. This experience encapsulated the department—a group that allegedly prided itself on cultural expertise yet engaged in performative, hypocritical identity politics. They were armchair Marxists, nothing more. They had zero interest in learning about Jews and Judaism and chose to openly hate Israel as an alleged "colonial" entity, never recognizing that we Jews are an indigenous people.*

Suing the University in 1989 for Sex Discrimination

There was no "smoking gun" for antisemitism in my legal case, yet I pursued a lawsuit against the University for sex discrimination. I repeatedly discussed the antisemitism with my leftist Jewish lawyer. My case twice reached the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, and I ultimately petitioned for certiorari before the Supreme Court. I won on the first appeal, and the University offered me a paltry settlement of $17,000. I requested my job back instead of money, but they told me I would have to sue again. The Supreme Court, with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the bench, declined to hear my case, and I lost.

One significant moment during the trial was when the former department chair, by then at another university, gave a deposition in my favor from Geneva, Switzerland. Yet the department remained opposed to my continued presence.

The Origins of Woke Literature at the University of Minnesota

At the time, the phrase "From the river to the sea" had not yet become THE antisemitic rallying cry, but antisemitism was alive and well in academia in 1978, manifesting in the antisemitic texts that later became central to what is now called Woke Literature.

It is difficult for me to acknowledge that, while the department chair treated me with professional respect, yet confusingly he was also instrumental in introducing antisemitic critical theory. One of the first things he did when he himself had been recruited to be the chair of the department, was to go to the University of Minnesota Press where Chejne's white washed History of Muslim Spain had been published. The new department chair collaborated with the University of Minnesota Press to translate and publish a series of texts that promoted antisemitic narratives, effectively establishing the foundation for Woke Literature and its identity politics. The strategy was successful.

Back then, terms like "PC" or "Woke" did not exist, but their presence was palpable. From my first encounter with the department chair, I felt sweat rolling down my back as I instinctively sensed that I had caught him in a bad mood and I would have to walk on egg shells. I rarely spoke in the department to ensure my survival.

No graduate student should have to endure such an experience.

I actually put the name of the chair of the department into ChatGPT recently because I did not trust my perception of this antisemitism to see what his relationship was to Woke Literature. I self-doubted. Was I imagining this connection concerning antisemitism at the University of Minnesota? ChatGPT’s reply was that he was not a "social activist" but rather a “bridge” through all the work that he had done which also involved the University of Minnesota Press.

Looking back, I now see that I intuitively understood the department's destructive ideological bent and agenda. It was not about genuine scholarship or activism; it was about indoctrination.

The department was not a bridge but a spark that ignited the campus climate we see today, where Israelis and Jews globally continue to bear the consequences.

U of Minnesota, Somalia and Islamic Antisemitism

Tangential to the antisemitism experienced at the U of MN, it is important for me to state that the thirty years I spent in Minnesota turned out to be informative in one specific way. Since I had done my doctorate in Islamic literature, I moved from studying convivencia to jihad.

Working and researching on my own while I was commuting to Chicago for analytic training at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, I began thinking about the mind and body language of the jihads. Before 9/11 I had sent an email to the Institute for Counter Terrorism (ICT) at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC now called Reichman University) in Herzliya, Israel. A counter terrorist expert replied, and we informally worked together.

In 2005 the Sheriff of Hennepin County, Minneapolis had heard about my work and invited me to teach his deputies on Radical Islam. He also allowed me to conduct prison interviews to learn about the prisoners, many of whom were Somali, and their early childhood and exposure to violence. As is well known by now Minnesota had received many Somali and Sudanese refugees.

At the same time in 2007 a Somali born Jewish young man came out blogging that he lived in Mogadishu with his Somali born Jewish mother. My fifth book, The Last Two Jews of Mogadishu Living Under AlShabaab’s Fire, is about the formerly persecuted Jewish community in Somalia.

In 2016 a young Somali man reached out to me as he was studying at the ICT to become a counter terrorist expert. He was perhaps the first Somali to study in Israel. He is now in the inner circle of the president of Somalia as a consuelor.

In 2023 I was then invited by a young scholar to visit officially Somaliland for their international book fair on account of my fifth book. While I was greeted by all, I could nonetheless feel a palpable antisemitism lurking below the surface. In these countries, the citizenry has not been educated to give up conspiracy thinking and they do not know Jews.

From this unique perspective concerning Somalia, I see a direct link to the Islamic antisemitism that found fertile ground in Minnesota, embodied by the likes of Ilhan Omar. The activities of the neo-Marxist departments at the University of Minnesota did not act to “inoculate” students against this horrendous antisemitism. Instead, it tragically fueled the flames. A full investigation into not just the current antisemitism at the University of Minnesota but more importantly its roots and history which have contributed to and shaped violent rhetoric and physical acts of violence on campus is long overdue and warranted. In order to dispel antisemitism from academia, one must know its roots and history at those institutions. Justice, justice, thou shalt pursue.

 *See Ben M. Freeman's groundbreaking new book completing his trilogy entitled The Jews: An Indigenous People. https://www.amazon.com/Jews-Indigenous-Ben-M-Freeman/dp/1916797474/ref=sr_1_1?crid=ZGIXTVG7YNCA&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.0ToTyPffeALOywpczdCKvnoPyVqjSc_oDhxxfbd-_Q8.drrSi2whVUH2d9ZTpjh0IuwPrnV-ZMU0g6FZinQMnS4&dib_tag=se&keywords=the+jews+an+indigenous+people+ben+freeman&qid=1741933659&sprefix=ben+freeman%2Caps%2C221&sr=8-1