Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is often said to have written his master’s thesis on “Holocaust education,” but it reportedly de-emphasized the uniqueness of the Holocaust, and of Jews as victims, in favor of a broader view of “genocide.”
The story of Walz’s thesis could be yet another example of an aspect of his life that has been exaggerated to suit a political narrative. He is often described to Jewish groups — who are nervous about the Democratic ticket — as having written his thesis on “Holocaust education.”
Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV), for example, told a “Jewish Women for Kamala” Zoom call on Thursday evening that Walz “literally wrote his master’s thesis on Holocaust education.”
But the official title of Walz’s thesis is “Improving human rights and genocide studies in the American high school classroom.”
The title does not mention the Holocaust at all, because — according to a report by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) — its goal was not to focus on the Jewish experience of persecution, but rather to use the Holocaust to teach about other genocides, an pedagogical approach that was controversial at the time and which remains so today.
JTA wrote:
The thesis was the culmination of Walz’s master’s degree focused on Holocaust and genocide education at Minnesota State University, Mankato, which he earned while teaching at Mankato West. His 27-page thesis, which JTA obtained, is titled “Improving Human Rights and Genocide Studies in the American High School Classroom.”
In it, Walz argues that the lessons of the “Jewish Holocaust” should be taught “in the greater context of human rights abuses,” rather than as a unique historical anomaly or as part of a larger unit on World War II. “To exclude other acts of genocide severely limited students’ ability to synthesize the lessons of the Holocaust and the ability to apply them elsewhere,” he wrote.
He then took a position that he noted was “controversial” among Holocaust scholars: that the Holocaust should not be taught as unique, but used to help students identify “clear patterns” with other historical genocides like the Armenian and Rwandan genocides.
Few would disagree that one lesson of the Holocaust is that genocide should be prevented — that “never again” not only refers to Jews, but to anyone.
However, as some scholars argued at the time, the risk of de-emphasizing the suffering of Jews is that the dangers of antisemitism will be ignored — and that the “genocide” label will be abused to accuse Israel, falsely, of “genocide” against the Palestinians, turning the victims of the Holocaust into perpetrators.
That was one reason that then-Harvard professor Ruth Wisse, who fled the Holocaust in Europe, found refuge in Canada, and became a leading authority on Yiddish literature, opposed a chair in “Holocaust studies” at Harvard.
Wisse explained in 2020 (emphasis added):
Nothing I am saying here questions the obligations of commemorating the dead and establishing every detail of the historical record. Rather, the potential for corruption begins with the impulse to make the Holocaust a universal symbol of evil, Nazism synonymous with “hatred,” and Holocaust education a redemptive American pursuit.
…
In the early years of planning the [Holocaust] museum project, [survivor Elie] Wiesel was defeated in his attempt to keep the focus on anti-Semitism. He eventually quit the Holocaust Museum commission, but without going public about his scruples.
…
Support for Holocaust education was presumably intended to show opposition to anti-Semitism, but intentionally or not, this “opposition to hate” feeds the hideous ideology it pretends to resist.
…
The liberal conscription of the Holocaust as a moral exemplum was misguided from the start, and as presently conceived, it conceals rather than confronts anti-Jewish aggression, falsifies both the nature of anti-Jewish politics and the nature of the Jewish people, advances political causes under false pretenses, and cultivates identification with victims rather than with the soldiers who protect and, if necessary, liberate the victims.
Wisse said that the Holocaust should instead be taught in the context of how it was overcome — specifically, by American soldiers fighting against the Nazis, just as Israelis fight to protect their new freedom.
“Now as ever, only the will to fight for the good can defeat the forces of evil, and a peace-loving people that does not train for self-defense will suffer the fate of the Jews of Europe,” she wrote.
Walz’s thesis should not be regarded as antisemitic; no such dissertation would ever have passed.
But it is likely inaccurate to call it a thesis on “Holocaust education” instead of what it claims to be: a shift away from “Holocaust education” and towards a more general “human rights and genocide studies.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of “”The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days,” available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of “The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency,” now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.