When a Donor Decides What Scholars Can Say

By Andy — 2026-08-11 — Literary News

I read the email. Then I read it again. There's a particular feeling when you watch your employer vanish something you wrote by the next morning.

Last month, Stockton University removed language from its Master of Arts in Holocaust and Genocide Studies program webpage that described Israel's military campaign in Gaza as "an ongoing genocide." The catalyst was simple: a donor complained. John F. Scarpa—fortune made in cell phones and cable TV—wrote to the university president saying the text was "misinformation," that genocide in Gaza was "a matter of significant legal, political, and scholarly dispute."

The target, though Scarpa didn't name him directly, was obvious. Raz Segal, an associate professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Stockton, had written those words. He's also been hunted for two years. In late October 2023, Segal published an essay in Jewish Currents calling Israel's assault on Gaza "a textbook case of genocide"—not as opinion but as scholarly assessment. Six days after October 7, before the death tolls were finalized. Before the international consensus.

That single piece became his career bear trap. In June 2024, the University of Minnesota offered him a job directing its Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Five days later, the offer evaporated. Donors and advocacy groups mobilized. Two board members resigned in protest. The university's interim president—the same administrative cowardice we've seen at Harvard, Columbia, Cornell—reversed course.

Now there's a settlement. Segal received $250,000 from Minnesota. The money doesn't restore the position. The position sits empty still. What it does is acknowledge—quietly, in the language of financial settlement rather than apology—that the university violated his academic freedom to satisfy donors.

The pattern repeats. Universities frame donor interference as prudent "website homogenization" or balanced editorial review. They claim academic freedom protects classroom teaching and published research, but not "public-facing materials." This is technical sophistry. It's the difference between lying and lying about the lie.

What matters is the chill. Scholars self-censor in response to perceived institutional boundaries, not explicit orders. You don't need to fire everyone. You just need one name removed from a webpage. One job offer rescinded. One donor threat delivered quietly enough that deniability stays intact.

The University of Cape Town lost $15 million when it took positions critical of Israel's conduct in Gaza. Not from government pressure. From donors. The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism has become a tool to censor Palestine scholarship on campuses globally. It works because universities need money more than they need scholars who speak plainly about violence.

Segal told someone recently he wished he'd been wrong. That's what every credible scholar is thinking now. The better instinct, though, might be different. Not to wish you were wrong, but to know that saying true things has become professionally dangerous. That's not a commentary on genocide. That's a comment on where we've ended up.

The webpage stays rewritten. The settlement stays quiet.