A Campus Divided (The Academic Archivist)

In August 2017 an exhibit titled A Campus Divided: Progressives, Anti-Communists, Racism, and Antisemitism at the University of Minnesota, 1930-1942 opened in Elmer L. Andersen Library, the home of Archives and Special Collections at the University of Minnesota. The exhibit was a culmination of years of original research pulling from archival materials to tell the story of racism and surveillance of students on campus during the interwar years.

My involvement, as Archivist for the Upper Midwest Jewish Archives, dates back to 2013 when I befriended Professor (now Emeritus) Riv-Ellen Prell, who was then-director of the Center for Jewish Studies. In conversation she asked what, if anything, we had in the Upper Midwest Jewish Archives that related specifically to antisemitism at the University of Minnesota. I told her we didn’t have much – I had anecdotal stories from conversations with Jewish community members, but no concrete evidence of antisemitic policy by university administration.