The Minnesota Department of Education says it is “pausing next steps” on a genocide education working group after pushback over the removal of a Muslim activist.
In a statement to Sahan Journal, the agency said it had received feedback on the process to develop the Education on the Holocaust, Genocide of Indigenous Peoples, and Other Genocides Working Group, including the processes to select and notify members. The agency said it is “working with the co-chairs to determine a course of action that will set this group up for success and ensure it can fulfill the important work entrusted to it by the legislature.”
Asma Mohammed, the activist who was appointed to and subsequently removed from the working group, expressed cautious optimism about the pause.
“I’m hoping this is a good-faith effort,” she said. “I’m hoping it’s not just to postpone it until people forget about it.”
The working group, a bureaucratic behind-the-scenes process mandated by a 2023 state law to define “genocide” and create education resources, went viral on social media on April 17. Mohammed, the advocacy director for Reviving the Islamic Sisterhood for Empowerment, who led Minnesota’s effort to vote “uncommitted” in the presidential primary, tweeted that she had been accepted into, and then removed from, the working group. She provided documentation of her communication with the Minnesota Department of Education and two different lists of working group members — one that included her name and one did not.
“I was the ONLY Muslim woman,” she wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Joe Eggers, co-chair of the working group and interim director for the University of Minnesota’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, said he was unsure what had happened with Mohammed’s removal from the working group and found the communication about it “troubling.” Many Minnesotans from different backgrounds have come to the state because of genocide and violence, he noted.
“I understand and respect the concern for representation on this committee,” he said. “I wish this had been done in a better way, that we wouldn’t have this sort of fallout. I’m appreciative of the time to make sure that we can make this right.”
The working group’s other co-chair is Laura Zelle, director of Holocaust education for the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas. Ethan Roberts, JCRC’s deputy executive director, told Sahan Journal that Zelle and JCRC supported the pause.
“There’s plenty of time to do this work,” Roberts said. The committee’s final report to the Legislature is due in November 2025. “I think they will be able to get those resources out on time for our schools.”
The working group’s pause illustrates a quandary at the heart of the protests rocking U.S. college campuses and Democratic primary votes: Who gets to decide what counts as genocide? Whose tragedies are recognized? And what is the appropriate response?
Genocide definition controversial
In May 2023, the Minnesota Legislature passed a law mandating education on the Holocaust, genocide against Indigenous peoples, and other genocides. But the definition of “genocide” became politically supercharged after October 7, when the militant group Hamas staged a brutal attack on Israel, killing more than 1,100 Israelis and capturing 240 hostages. Israel responded by declaring war and launching airstrikes on Gaza. Since then, more than 32,000 Palestinians have been killed, including 24,000 women and children, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
The war, lopsided casualty counts, and the United States’ support for Israel have outraged many supporters of Palestine, who have described Israel’s actions as “genocide.” Genocide scholars have said that the word, as defined by a 1948 United Nations treaty, requires intent, which is difficult to prove. In January, the International Court of Justice found it “plausible” that Israel may have committed genocide and ordered the country to prevent genocide, but did not demand an end to its military offensive.
But many Jewish leaders have found the accusations of genocide to be abhorrent and antisemitic. Roberts said that to use the word “genocide” to describe the war in Gaza was to “weaponize” against Jewish people a word originally coined to describe the Holocaust.
“Hamas has genocidal intent,” Roberts said. “I don’t agree that Israel is committing genocide in a war it doesn’t want and didn’t start.”
‘Everybody should have a knowledge of the dangers of mass murder’
Representative Frank Hornstein (DFL-Minneapolis), the son of Holocaust survivors, introduced a bill mandating genocide education to the House Education Policy Committee in March 2023. The bill came at the urging of JCRC.
Roberts told Sahan Journal that a Holocaust education mandate had been a priority in his community for a long time. It was “very painful for the community” when the first draft of Minnesota’s revised social studies standards omitted any mention of the Holocaust, he said. “We don’t want to ever be in that position.” He said it was also important to honor genocides against Indigenous peoples, given Minnesota’s history.
The bill was personal for Hornstein. He told the committee that when his mother was in hospice, he asked what cause he could support in her name. She asked him to create a Holocaust memorial lecture at their synagogue. Carrying the bill was a way of honoring his mother’s wish, he said.
The committee hearing featured moving testimony from Dora Zaidenweber, a 99-year-old Holocaust survivor.
“Not only all students, but everybody — everybody in Minnesota educated — should have a knowledge of the dangers of mass murder, that mass murder can happen,” she said.
The bill, as Hornstein originally proposed it, focused on the Holocaust and genocide against Indigenous peoples. But it also said students should learn about how people around the world have been affected by genocide, including genocide of enslaved Black people in the Americas, as well as genocides in Namibia, Armenia, Ukraine, Cambodia, Guatemala, Rwanda, Darfur, Myanmar, and Yugoslavia, “and other historical and contemporary cases of genocide and mass violence, especially those experienced by communities expelled from, resettled in, migrated to, or living in Minnesota.”
“We want to focus on best practices, and some of those best practices include going beyond the Holocaust to include the study of other genocides,” Hornstein told the education policy committee.
Committee members cited a rise in antisemitism as a reason for the bill’s importance, and praised its inclusion of many Minnesota communities. The committee voted to advance the bill to the education finance committee on a unanimous bipartisan vote.
The language naming specific other genocides was later removed without consulting with JCRC, Roberts said, which he called “regrettable.”
But Eggers, who testified for the bill that day, told Sahan Journal that the broad language had been intentional.
“It was our suggestion to leave the language vague in terms of what genocides are,” he said. “It gets very contentious amongst communities: what is a genocide, what is not a genocide. These sorts of things tend to derail conversations.” The legislation also provided language about “mass violence” to capture experiences that might not meet the legal threshold of genocide. “It was our way of maybe hopefully avoiding some of that contentious conversation.”
The final version of the law requires education for middle and high school students on the Holocaust and genocide of Indigenous peoples, as well as unspecified other genocides and incidents of mass violence, by the 2026-2027 school year.
It also called for a working group of 12 to 21 members that would include representatives from the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, the Tribal Nations Education Committtee, and community groups, as well as teachers and a representative from teacher preparation programs. The working group’s role would be to identify resources, materials, and professional development opportunities for teachers, as well as to develop model lesson plans.
According to the law, the working group must hold its first meeting no later than September 1, 2024.
‘Where are the people whose voices should be here?’
Mohammed applied to be on the working group. She thought she was well-qualified for the role: Through her work at RISE, she had partnered with the National Council of Jewish Women and Jewish Community Action to create trainings on Islamophobia and antisemitism. She’d also worked as an educator, and had served on a previous state working group.
And she thought it was important to represent Muslims, and people of color more generally. Too often, mass acts of violence against people of color are not considered to be genocide, she said.
“My school didn’t even cover slavery as a genocide,” Mohammed said. She also wanted to represent a Muslim perspective on the current war in Gaza. “I think that including a pro-Palestinian voice on the group is incredibly important.”
On March 28, she received an email and a call from the Minnesota Department of Education, congratulating her and welcoming her into the working group. When she saw the list, she did not recognize names of any other Muslim women. But she also perceived other problems with the group’s representation.
“Where are the Palestinians?” she asked. “Where are the Black folks? Where are the African descendants of slaves? Where are the people whose voices should be here?”
Then, on April 15, Mohammed received another email from the Minnesota Department of Education.
“An email was inadvertently sent to you on March 28, 2024 indicating acceptance on the working group,” the email read. “This email was sent in error. MDE had high demand for the working group, and we have selected all members at this time. We will let you know if future opportunities arise.” The email was signed “Minnesota Department of Education.” In response to queries from Sahan Journal, MDE declined to identify who had decided to remove Mohammed from the working group.
Mohammed wrote back, asking if the email was sent in error.
“We sincerely apologize for this clerical error,” the Minnesota Department of Education replied, and provided a link to an updated list that omitted Mohammed’s name.
“This is ridiculously disappointing,” Mohammed wrote back. “I was the only Muslim woman on the working group. And to be sidelined like this is disturbing.”
Mohammed told Sahan Journal she thought it was critical to include Muslim voices in the working group, to represent not only Palestine but Bosnia, the Uyghurs in China, and forcible displacement of Muslims in India.
“Islamophobia is a real cause of genocide,” she said. “I want that to be reflected in the working group.”
She had hoped the working group would provide educators with tools to help students whose families are experiencing acts of mass violence now.
“I think that kids do need to know about Holocaust, and I think that we need to know that it can never happen again. And it’s happening now,” she said. “I think that when we teach our kids about the Holocaust, we teach them about what happens before the Holocaust: how we create a culture in which people are dehumanized.”
But she had lost the opportunity to help facilitate that, she said.
“I don’t get to do that anymore, because someone made a decision that my voice is no longer valued at the table,” she said.
Backlash to removal
Many of Mohammed’s supporters on social media, including the Minnesota chapter of the Council of American-Islamic Relations, called on the Minnesota Department of Education to reverse the decision.
At the same time, Senator Julia Coleman, R-Waconia, the ranking minority member on the Senate Education Policy Committee, issued a statement calling for the Minnesota Department of Education to keep Mohammed off the working group. She pointed to October 9 tweets from Mohammed, days after Hamas’ attack on Israel, which she described as “antisemitic.”
In one tweet, Mohammed wrote: “I can’t have anyone in my life who supports Israel, the IDF, or the occupation. Please let the door smack you in the head on the way out.”
Mohammed called the accusations of antisemitism a “ridiculous assumption,” noting that she has a history of interfaith organizing with “anti-Zionist Jews.”
Roberts declined to comment specifically on Mohammed’s removal, but said it was important for the Minnesota Department of Education to make sure that members of the group could work well together.
“We want to make sure that everyone who’s on the committee is there to be collaborative, and keeping the kids front and center,” he said. “That’s what the work is about.”
Eggers said it was unfortunate that someone who had wanted to share her voice in the process “was included and then excluded for seemingly no reason.”
“My hope is that this can be rectified in some way,” he said.
Next steps?
The first working group meeting, scheduled for April 30, was canceled. Eggers and Roberts said they were not sure what next steps would be or whether the roster of working group members might change.
Roberts said he hoped the Minnesota Department of Education was taking time to figure out how to structure the meetings thoughtfully and engage a facilitator. Ultimately, he said, he hoped the working group could provide teachers with the confidence and resources they would need to teach thoughtfully about the Holocaust and other genocides.
Genocide education was not just about reciting names of concentration camps, he said. “It’s, are you a better human being and a better citizen who’s able to think critically and make decisions that are moral and with empathy and humanity? That’s the goal. And the working group is so important in preparing the teachers to do that — I would argue — sacred work.”
For Eggers, pausing the work provided an opportunity to create a better working group.
“A body that doesn’t represent Minnesota, that’s trying to tell a Minnesota story, is inherently going to fail,” he said. “To me, figuring this out and how to restructure this is paramount to the actual mission of the committee.”
For Mohammed’s part, she’d like to see the process start from scratch.
“I don’t think I need to be the person on it,” she said. “I think that there need to be Palestinians. I think there should be Black folks on it. But I think the process needs to be started over.”
