The University of Minnesota is holding sessions for students to meet each of the four finalists for the dean of the College of Liberal Arts this week, bringing a search process that began with the announcement of a search committee last November to a close.

The search for a new dean began after the University announced the creation of a search committee last November to fill the position of the previous CLA dean, John Coleman, who left to become the vice chancellor for academic affairs and provost at the University of Illinois – Urbana-Champaign last July. The position has been held by Interim Dean Ann Waltner since July 3, 2023.

The meetings were originally scheduled to occur in Coffman Memorial Union, but the venue was changed to the auditorium in the old Bell Museum on the East Bank following the University’s decision to close buildings around the Northrop Mall in response to the pro-Palestine encampment on Monday.

The first finalist to be announced, who met with students, staff and faculty in the auditorium on Tuesday, is Celia Marshik, an English professor and the current dean of the graduate school and vice provost for graduate education at Stony Brook University, a public research university in New York.

During the meeting, Marshik discussed her vision for the future of CLA, which involves attracting the next generation of students, embracing other disciplines while strengthening disciplines central to the college, offering more transformational learning experiences, investing in CLA faculty and staff, and sharing stories to highlight the college’s impact.

On attracting the next generation of students, Mashik said the college has to find out what students need and take those needs seriously. Just as important, they have to communicate what the liberal arts are.

Mashik said a survey done by the University of Washington recently revealed most recently admitted students did not know what the humanities were.

“What this tells us is that the very students who are coming to us don’t understand what the disciplines are that make up the College of Liberal Arts,” Mashik said. “That’s an opportunity for us to be able to explain what it is we do better.”

Embracing other disciplines and strengthening central disciplines are important for adapting to student needs and allowing them to thrive across many different fields, according to Marshik. Part of this is allowing students to curate their studies and work across all of the different disciplines in CLA and accelerated degree programs that allow students to graduate in four to five years with a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree.

Providing students with transformational experiences beyond the classroom are important for making a lasting impact on students, according to Mashik. This looks like one-on-one relationships with faculty members, more learning abroad opportunities, undergraduate research and projects for students to do something for their community.

“The students today are passionate, they want to make a difference in the world,” Marshik said. “Giving them those opportunities to have an impact on their communities while they’re students can be profoundly transformational.”

On investing in CLA faculty and staff, Marshik discussed providing professional development opportunities to leadership in the college, building a community around a shared mission and goals by educating faculty and staff on how they can get involved in the college and campus community, and removing friction in the daily lives of faculty and staff. 

Marshik said financial investments in faculty and staff are also important, but didn’t discuss any ideas or plans for such investments during her presentation. According to a report released by the Faculty Consultative Committee last November, faculty compensation at the University ranks in the 15th percentile of the 34 public universities in the Big 10 and the American Association of Universities after adjusting for cost of living.

Marshik’s vision also includes sharing stories to amplify the college’s impact beyond statistics like time to degree and completion rates. People feel the value of a college by hearing or reading about the experiences of students or significant research coming from the faculty, according to Marshik.

“That’s how you change the public perception of what a university does for a city, for a state, for a country,” Marshik said. “It’s by bringing those stories of transformation and telling them again and again and again.”

In her current position as the dean of the graduate school and vice provost for graduate education, a position she has held since last June and previously as the interim from 2022 to 2023, Marshik oversees new curriculum proposals and updates and a budget of more than $8 million that includes university-wide funds for graduate tuition scholarships and tuition on research grants.

Marshik received her B.A. in English from the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities campus in 1992, her Ph.D. in English from Northwestern University in 1999 and was the chair of Stony Brook’s Department of English from 2014 to 2020. According to her profile on Stony Brook’s website, Marshik is a first-generation college graduate and the first in her family to receive an advanced degree.

The second finalist, announced Tuesday, is GerShun Avilez, an English professor and the associate dean for academic affairs at the University of Maryland (UMD), another public land-grant research university.

Avilez has held his position as the associate dean of academic affairs since last July, before which he was the associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion for UMD’s College of Arts and Humanities. He is also the founding director of UMD’s Frederick Douglass Center for Leadership Through the Humanities, which launched this year as a leadership program based in the humanities and focuses on social justice and equity.

Avilez has previously held academic appointments at Yale and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

He received his B.A. in English from Hendrix College, a private liberal arts college in Arkansas, in 2002, his M.A. in English from Temple University, a public university in Pennsylvania, in 2004 and his Ph.D. in English with a graduate certificate in africana studies from the University of Pennsylvania in 2009.

The next two finalists will be announced the day before they’re scheduled to meet with students, which will be held each day this week from Tuesday to Friday.

According to an email from Executive Vice President and Provost Rachel Croson, the University is allowing students to evaluate each of the candidates in forms that can be completed online after each session.

“Your assessment of the candidates is of great importance to me, so I hope that many of you will be able to arrange your schedules to participate in these visits,” Croson said in the email.

This story will be updated through Friday after the events of the finalists conclude.

Last January, the University of Minnesota’s Voyageurs Wolf Project posted to its Facebook about the amount of tagged wolves illegally killed in the Greater Voyageurs Ecosystem, located near the Canadian border in Minnesota.

According to the post, 37% of wolves with collars or ear tags killed by people are poached. If wolves killed for preying on livestock are removed that number inflates to 54%.

“Poaching is a common and persistent source of death for wolves in our area but this is not unique to our area whatsoever,” the post reads. “In many areas where wolves and people co-occur, poaching is a common source of mortality for wolves.”

On Feb. 10, 2022, the gray wolf in Minnesota became a federally protected species again after a district court reversed a Fish and Wildlife Service decision removing the species from the endangered and threatened species list in November 2020. 

The gray wolf has since been listed as a threatened species, which means it may become an endangered species in the future throughout its habitat range. Under this status, they can only be killed in defense of a human life.

Panic over an allegedly out-of-control wolf population threatening deer populations, ranchers and pet owners in northern Minnesota has created an opening for groups to gather political momentum in the state. Hunters for Hunters (H4H) is one such organization, which is spreading misinformation about wolves in Minnesota.

On its website, H4H says it is a watchdog group protecting the rights of hunters and landowners in Minnesota. The group wants wolves to be removed from the federal endangered species list, claiming the population in Minnesota has gotten out of control. Members of other wildlife organizations see it as a political movement pushing to spread panic about wolves in the state.

H4H was founded October 2023 by friends Dillan Porter and Kyle Weber to give better representation to hunters, landowners and deer enthusiasts in Minnesota, according to Steve Porter, Dillan Porter’s father and an H4H board member. Dillan Porter and Weber serve on the H4H Board of Directors as the chair and secretary respectively.

“We knew that hunters were going to come out of the woods absolutely upset at the deer versus wolf numbers, and the problems they were seeing,” Steve Porter said.

According to its website, the group’s goal is to “fully realize” its constitutional right to hunt and fish in Minnesota and secure its outdoor heritage and traditions through policy and wildlife management.

In the group’s Facebook group, ‘Wolf Watch — Hunters for Hunters,’ illegally killing wolves is openly discussed in the comments.

“It is very sad but trying to get wolves delisted and a season put on is a waste of time,” Garrett Miller wrote. “If the people want results you take matters into your own hands and keep your mouth shut!”

“What is it going to take to get the DNR n government to delist these over populated killers??? Shoot to kill is the immediate resolution,” Dave Theisen wrote. “No time for these politicians to decide. F— ’em.”

Porter said the organization does not endorse people advocating for others to poach wolves.

“We don’t endorse it, we don’t want it,” Porter said. “That’s just frustrated people talking. You know what I mean? They’re just frustrated.”

Despite the group having the ability to remove comments condoning illegal activity, these comments remain. 

Steve Porter and Hunters for Hunters

Jared Mazurek, the executive director of the Minnesota Deer Hunters Association (MDHA), said he has never seen Dillan Porter speak anywhere.

“It’s always Steve Porter, he’s the face of that organization,” Mazurek said. “He’s an interesting guy, you know?”

Steve Porter owns a deer farm business in northwestern Minnesota called Steve Porter’s Trophy Whitetails, where inquiring customers can pay to hunt farmed deer or purchase fresh doe urine, according to the business’s website. Designed by Dillan Porter, the website has a tab titled ‘Know Your Rights’, which currently leads to a blank webpage.

“Steve Porter is a joke,” web user Eric Halverson wrote on a Google review for Porter’s farm. “He routinely encourages bullying and inconveniencing DNR agents on his Facebook account. He has been caught violating deer transport laws related to [chronic wasting disease]. Take away his license to operate already.”

According to Mazurek, Steve Porter used to travel around the state with some of his deer and host educational programs at schools and other venues.

In 2019, the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) issued an emergency rule banning the transportation of farmed whitetail deer within the state for 30 days to prevent the spread of chronic wasting disease (CWD). Two more emergency rules followed this, one in 2020 and another in 2021.

According to the Minnesota DNR, CWD is a fatal disease occurring in the brains of deer, elk, moose, reindeer and caribou. There are no vaccines or treatments available to treat CWD.

In an open letter to the Minnesota House of Representatives from March 15, 2022, Steve Porter said the government was lying when it said the transportation restrictions were intended to curtail the spread of CWD. Instead, Rep. Rick Hansen and the DNR were doing whatever they could to destroy his business.

“My stress is through the roof,” Steve Porter said. “When should I start shooting my animals and dragging them into a pit??? Rick Hansen, will you come and assist in shooting and burying my clean healthy animals?”

In the letter, Steve Porter said his business incurred $179,000 in financial damages from the three DNR movement bans. Steve Porter’s Trophy Whitetails is still operating.

“He likes to say that his deer farm is out of business,” Mazurek said. “But no, he can continue to run that until he decides to retire or passes it on.”

Steve Porter serves as the secretary on the Board of Directors for the Minnesota Deer Farmers Association (MDFA), a networking organization for deer farmers in Minnesota.

On Dec. 28, 2023, MDFA filed a lawsuit against the State of Minnesota for allegedly infringing on their constitutional rights by passing legislation in 2022 prohibiting new deer farms from opening and restricting the transfer of captive deer to immediate family members.

To raise money for the lawsuit, MDFA held a fundraiser selling straws of deer semen partially supplied by Steve Porter’s farm for $500 each, or the choice of any three for $1,000, according to a flier for the event. Silver tablets stamped with the Ten Commandments were also sold for $50 each, which came with a complimentary copy of Porter’s DVD, titled “Whitetail Deer — Evidence of God’s Creation.”

In a video posted to the Steve Porter’s Trophy Whitetail Facebook page on March 11, Steve Porter discussed the lawsuit and accused MDHA and the DNR of working together to run deer farmers out of business.

“Jared and Bob Meier conspired and said, ‘Let’s take these guys down,’” Porter said. “‘Let’s pass legislation. Let’s trample their constitutional rights.’ So they did it, okay?”

According to Mazurek, MDHA took a hard stance against the transport of captive deer and supported the prevention of the further spread of CWD.

“He really took offense to that,” Mazurek said. “He’s been staunchly against us ever since. And he’s, in my opinion, doing everything he can to shut us down.”

Steve Porter specifically targets Mazurek in many of his social media posts.

“Does Steve Porter even care about wolves? Well, if you look back a little bit further on his Facebook prior to Hunters for Hunters starting, he had posts on there that were like, ‘Did wolves ruin your deer hunt? I still have hunts available on my private deer farm,’” Mazurek said. “So, for Steve, wolves are good for business.”

In a post Steve Porter made to his Facebook page on Nov. 20, 2023, he said his farm was sold out of deer hunts for the remainder of the year and 95% booked for 2024.

Wolves and deer

In a video Steve Porter posted to his Facebook page on March 22, he focuses on a bill currently in the Minnesota Legislature that would require the DNR commissioner to hold an annual wolf hunting season if wolves are removed from the endangered species list. The season and any other requirements would follow the goals set out by the DNR’s wolf management plan.

The wolf management plan was finalized in 2022 and contains research on the current wolf population, goals and strategies for the state’s approach to stewardship and guidelines for how the wolf population would be managed if they are delisted.

One of the plan’s objectives is to maintain a population of 2,200 to 3,000 distributed across most of its current range. If the population exceeds 3,000 across multiple consecutive years, and negative impacts attributable to wolves also increase, there will be an opportunity for public input on wolf management.

In the video, Steve Porter refers to this objective and claims the bill is effectively a 10-year ban on wolf hunting in Minnesota.

According to Dan Stark, the project manager for Minnesota’s wolf plan, the plan has a number of population thresholds, each with their own management options. The minimum wolf population that would have the option of a hunting season is 1,600.

The wolf plan states additional management options would be considered to address damage or other public concerns if the population exceeds 3,000, but it does not discuss prohibiting hunting seasons if the population is fewer than 3,000.

Stark said Minnesota has recognized wolf populations have recovered within the state. However, the federal listing of the gray wolf is the result of its status in other states and the administration of the Endangered Species Act.

“It hasn’t necessarily been about where wolves have been recovered, but where they haven’t recovered, and what threats there may be outside of where those core populations are in making decisions about delisting the entire species,” Stark said.

According to Stark, as the wolf population increased in Minnesota after being initially listed as endangered in 1974, there were enough conflicts that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service changed the wolves’ listing to threatened. This allowed for more flexible management and gave the government the ability to kill wolves if they prey on pets or livestock.

Peggy Callahan, the founder and executive director of the Wildlife Science Center, a nonprofit conservation organization, said the U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services often kills wolves in response to the exact thing people are upset about, such as livestock loss and wolves approaching people more frequently. 

According to the USDA Wildlife Service’s 2023 Wolf Damage report, Wildlife Services killed 248 wolves in response to verified wolf-caused damage, which is higher than the previous 10-year average of 179 wolves.

“Wildlife Service takes a lot of wolves and they do it in response to just about everything imaginable,” Callahan said. “They’ve taken an awful lot of wolves this year.”

Porter questioned the state’s approach to the Endangered Species Act, which he said called for a population of roughly 1,200 to 1,400, after which he said the process for delisting the wolves should begin.

“Then Minnesota says, ‘Yeah, we want between 2,200 and 3,000 in Minnesota,’” Steve Porter said. “Why would Minnesota double the amount that the Endangered Species Act calls for?”

Callahan said 2,200 is a minimum number and not a population goal.

“One of the things that I think is very positive about Minnesota is that they have not set a population goal because wolves have followed the deer population forever,” Callahan said.

According to Callahan, the deer harvest in Ontario, Canada, faced a similar decrease last year as in Minnesota. In Ontario, wolves are not protected and can be hunted.

“This is not a wolves and deer issue here,” Callahan said. “This is a winter issue.”

Callahan added the winter of 2022-23 was severe for deer, with deep snow accumulation on the ground harming the population in northern Minnesota.

“Deer are not native to deep snow like that,” Callahan said. “They moved up to the North Shore around 1900 and they’ve struggled.”

Department of Natural Resources

“When history looks back at this, it’s going to be unkind,” Steve Porter said. “It’s going to be known as one of the largest big game management failures ever, and the prize is going to who? The prize is going to Bob Meier with the Minnesota DNR. That’s who’s getting the prize for the biggest failure. And I hope you use that quote in the paper.”

Steve Porter said Bob Meier, the assistant commissioner of the DNR, is responsible for Minnesota’s wolves being listed.

“I think Bob’s been there long enough where he knows everybody,” Steve Porter said. “I think he’s connected with everybody, and so that’s my opinion. I believe Bob’s the one making the decisions.”

Meier, who supervises Fish and Wildlife Services, said the closest his job gets to wolf management is in handing out reports.

“There really is no puppetry to be done,” Meier said. “I mean, if anything, Hunters for Hunters are the puppet masters for the general public, fanning their flames about what is and isn’t true when a lot of the information they share is false.”

Meier said the DNR tries to work with all Minnesotans, and the people involved in H4H are no different than any other stakeholder in the state.

“They have a seat at the table should they want to come sit down,” Meier said. “They have never contacted us. I have never been officially contacted by Hunters for Hunters.”

House pets

One major concern allowing H4H’s influence to spill into residential areas is house pets, specifically dogs. 

In early April, H4H purchased billboard space, pairing a photo of a snarling wolf with that of a dog named Romeo. The billboard, which appeared near Proctor, Minnesota, reads, “Romeo was killed by wolves in his owner’s front yard in January.” 

“[Wolves are] killing dogs left and right in the city of Babbitt,” Steve Porter said. “They’re going into town and stealing the dogs at night because they ran out of deer.”

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Service’s 2023 Wolf Damage report, 14 dogs were verified to have been killed by wolves between 2019 and 2023, seven of which were killed in 2023. 

“Wolves eat hundreds of pets a yr they also eat deer fawns and moose and calves sheep and lambs they eat everything they can sink there teeth into,” Jack Ryder wrote on the H4H Facebook post announcing the new billboard.

According to Callahan, people need to take responsibility for their dogs regardless of whether they live by a freeway or in wolf country.

“My Jack Russell got picked up by a great horned owl and fortunately she was fatter than the owl suspected,” Callahan said. “It dropped her, but she was badly injured. Now what do I do? Do I shoot every owl I see? At what point here do we acknowledge that we’re living in a state with a complex predator system?”

Legislation

H4H’s website says it is a lobbying organization, though it has not publicly endorsed a single piece of legislation, according to Mazurek.

“If what they’re trying to project about wanting to protect our deer herd and get a wolf hunt back in the state of Minnesota is true, they’ve never been at the capitol,” Mazurek said. “They weren’t at the DNR roundtable. They’re not meeting with all of these other amazing, true wildlife conservation organizations.”

An amendment to a bill that would enact an immediate wolf season in Minnesota regardless of the animal’s federal protection status was introduced by Minnesota Sen. Nathan Wesenberg on April 11 and lost with a 35-30 vote.

Steve Porter updated his audience on the amendment’s status in the capitol but did not explicitly endorse it.

Wesenberg, a former wildlife biologist for the DNR, has appeared on H4H livestreams and with Porter in the past. During a stream posted to the official H4H Facebook page on Dec. 2, 2023, Wesenberg praised the organization.

“What Steve is doing with Hunters for Hunters is bringing people together and your voice is being heard,” Wesenberg said. “I have people here in central Minnesota asking me about Hunters for Hunters and what they can do, and what he can do is be your voice.”

H4H has held a number of events and listening sessions across the state, including multiple that featured U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber (R) as a guest speaker.

Callahan, who is not opposed to delisting wolves in Minnesota, said Steve Porter and his organization are encouraging a malicious approach to wolves that departs from any kind of scientific approach.

“This is not about predators,” Callahan said. “This is about politics, and somewhere along the way wolves became Democrats. And that’s what they’re going after: the Democrats.”

Meier said the state of the wolf population in Minnesota is about population management and politics do not result in sound natural resource management. 

“The legislature does a lot of great things for the environment,” Meier said. “But managing scientific issues should be left to the biologists.”

The University of Minnesota plans on closing the Vincent Hall math library by the summer of 2025, though the move is not welcomed by everyone.

According to an announcement on Jan. 24 addressed to the School of Mathematics from the University Libraries, the closure is the result of budgetary pressures on the libraries and the books will be moved to Walter Library starting this summer. 

The College of Science and Engineering (CSE) has plans to transform the space into a student-focused study area, but the move has not received universal support.

CSE Dean Andrew Alleyne said the library administration’s decision to close the library was primarily a result of budget pressures, though low use of the library’s collection also influenced the move.

“There’s low use of the collections, the actual texts, the books and everything that was there,” Alleyne said. “A lot of people use the libraries now more as a study space than a place to get reference materials.”

Alleyne believes the library’s closure will be a good opportunity for CSE.

“One of the things that we have in the college is an increased number of students coming in the College of Science and Engineering,” Alleyne said. “Math tends to be one of the key things that they need to know, and the ability to be successful in math really drives your retention numbers.”

According to Alleyne, the college is looking to transform the math library into a study space to support first-year students and students taking introductory math classes. 

“Functionally, that’s what it’s going to act as, this learning environment that currently we don’t have dedicated for mathematics,” Alleyne said.

Rhonda Zurn, the director of communications and marketing for CSE, said the new space will include a space for teaching assistants to hold office hours, spaces for tutoring and individual and group study spaces.

“Those are kind of the things that are driving the decisions,” Zurn said.

This decision was made after consulting with the college’s leadership and the math department’s leadership and referencing a survey that came out of the math department, according to Alleyne.

“One of the things that was pointed out [in the survey] was that, in terms of use, it is heavily used as a study space and as an undergraduate student space,” Alleyne said.

Dennis Hejhal, the creator of the survey and a professor in the School of Mathematics since 1978, said more than 88% of the 260 students surveyed said they would prefer the retention of a quiet study space if the library is removed.

“This is not a surprise,” Hejhal said. “It’s very important to students. They want this space. They’re paying money to have a quality space.”

However, Hejhal said over 70% of those same 260 students surveyed said they would prefer to also retain at least a scaled-down version of the math library, with 42% saying they strongly preferred this alternative.

“They always omit that part,” Hejhal said. “Why is that? That’s because it doesn’t fit with the plan. It’s an inconvenient truth. I say it matters.”

The survey was conducted from Feb. 9 to March 3, and it allowed students, staff and faculty to share additional thoughts they had on the matter.

Hejhal said the School of Mathematics held a vote among regular faculty members on whether removing the math library’s books would negatively affect the departments ability to maintain a quality educational environment for its students and faculty. With 12 of the 68 faculty members being absent, 67% of those who voted said it would.

According to Carolyn Bishoff, the science and math librarian, the off-site storage, which is currently under construction, is located on Como Avenue near the University’s ReUse center. The ReUse Center is a 45-minute walk from the Vincent Hall math library, according to Google Maps.

“It’s out of the way, but so is Wilson in comparison to McGrath Library,” Bishoff said. “So the movement of materials to the off-site storage facility is not going to be a barrier to people accessing those materials.”

Bishoff said the library has a shipping department that will be responsible for pulling books and delivering them to students, staff and faculty. All of the material will be requestable and the facility will be publicly accessible and include a reading room.

“Anything that goes there will be accessible,” Bishoff said. “It’s to create more room in the libraries because all of the libraries are pretty full.”

Mark Engebretson, the director of advancement for the Libraries Administration, said the materials that would be stored in the storage facility are books used infrequently, a qualifier determined by the librarians.

“Our librarians, they know which books aren’t used and which are, and ones that aren’t used very often are going to be in that facility,” Engebretson said.

According to Hejhal, the physics department had its library moved into Walter years ago. He said students have told him very few people visit the physics collection there to browse books.

“I think if our books wind up in Walter, or worse, the off-site storage, I think this kind of random creative browsing of books is basically going to be non-existent,” Hejhal said. “I don’t think it speaks very well of the University, and I don’t think it speaks very well of fostering mathematical creativity.”

Tadd Johnson became the University of Minnesota’s first-ever senior director of American Indian tribal nations relations in 2019.

“I was clear that my mission was to build relationships and trust between the University of Minnesota and the Minnesota tribes,” Johnson said.

Shortly after he settled into his office, the Mellon Foundation gave the University a $5 million grant, which created Minnesota Transform, a project that distributed the grant money to support decolonial and racial justice initiatives at the University and across the state. 

With the help of several interns in his office, Johnson and his interns secured just under $400,000 from that project to learn how the tribes in Minnesota felt about the University.

“What we did with that was kind of unusual,” Johnson said. “Wanting to hear from the tribes of Minnesota, we were in correspondence with the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council, which is actually a state agency, but it’s this kind of unique entity for a state agency in that it is run by tribal leaders.”

The Minnesota Indian Affairs Council represents 10 of the 11 tribes in Minnesota, according to Johnson. The only tribe that does not participate is the Upper Sioux. 

“We chatted with them and said, ‘Would you be willing to take these funds and get the views of the tribes? We’ll do whatever to assist you,’” Johnson said. “They agreed to that.”

Johnson said the money was sent to the MIAC Board, which distributed it among the tribes to train and support researchers.

From this work came the Toward Recognition and University-Tribal Healing (TRUTH) Report, a 554-page document released in April 2023 detailing the 160-year history between the University and tribes, including genocide, forced removals, land grabs, resource extraction, historical revisionism and the failure to teach the correct history of the land the University is located on. The report also lists several recommendations for the University on how it can begin healing that relationship.

The recommendations in the report include returning Indigenous lands, perpetual reparations to Indigenous peoples, adopting policies to increase Indigenous representation across all five campuses, full cost of attendance waivers for all Indigenous people, adopting policies that respect tribal sovereignty and cultural heritage, and more.

The report included financial, legislative and archival records as well as academic literature and Indigenous oral histories to demonstrate the University’s long history of mistreatment of Indigenous peoples. It also tied in the ongoing struggle for Indigenous rights and sovereignty.

The Project’s two co-chairs could not be reached for comment on this article.

Johnson, who became the first-ever Native American to serve on the Board of Regents, was on the Board while the report was being written. He said the report stemmed from a 2020 resolution passed by the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council calling on the University to improve its relationship with the 11 tribal nations.

“It was kind of like — sort of like my marching orders for the next — what I was going to do as the liaison to all the tribes,” Johnson said. “That was the first thing we were working from. I didn’t expect to get bumped up to regent, but I went from complaining to, ‘Now I’ve got to solve these things that I helped stir up.’ Life really is fair that way.”

Representation

The TRUTH Report recommends the Board of Regents adopt policies that would increase the representation of Indigenous people in the University’s faculty, staff and students across its five campuses. 

Karen Diver, the senior advisor to the president on Native American affairs, said the University has been hiring Indigenous faculty to meet this recommendation. 

One example is the first Indigenous faculty member in the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, Sheryl Lightfoot. Lightfoot was hired in September 2023 and serves as the chair of the United Nations (U.N.) Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which informs the U.N. Human Rights Council on the rights of Indigenous peoples.

“She’s internationally known for Indigenous rights,” Diver said. “She’s now faculty at the Humphrey School.”

According to Diver, another faculty member hired by the University was Kyle Hill, an assistant professor in the School of Public Health who focuses on Indigenous public health issues.

“Representation isn’t just about signage and land acknowledgments,” Diver said. “It’s ‘How are we reflected within, Indigenous peoples reflected within the institution?’”

Multiple faculty members of the Department of American Indian Studies declined to be interviewed for this article.

The representation of Native Americans within the student body has also increased, according to Diver.

“We’ve set records on the Twin Cities campus, the Duluth campus [and] the Morris campus,” Diver said.

Diver partially attributes this increase in representation to the Native American Promise Tuition Program that came into effect in fall 2022 and covers 100% of tuition for students who have a family income less than $125,000 and are enrolled as a citizen in one of the 11 tribal nations in Minnesota. 

Diver said the University created a housing scholarship for incoming Native American first-year students this year to further alleviate stressors, though there was not enough money for all students.

Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act

Another recommended action in the TRUTH Report is for the University to hire at least one staff position dedicated to Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) compliance and coordination.

Diver said the University hired Dylan Goetsch, a field investigator for the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council, through the Office of Native American Affairs to coordinate its approach to NAGPRA. 

“That’s actually really exciting,” Diver said. “That was a major priority of the tribes.”

NAGPRA is a federal law requiring federally funded institutions to return any human remains or items of significant cultural value within their possession to the tribes they were taken from.

“The NAGPRA coordinator will, like I said, work with all five campuses to do a thorough inventory,” Diver said. “We have points of contact on each campus. We are literally going to do a campus-by-campus review of every drawer, closet, box to try to figure out what we have.”

Diver said Goetsch is responsible for training contacts at each campus, who will organize their campus to undertake an inventory of everything they have which NAGPRA would require them to return.

“I think he’s coming up with all those protocols right now of how to get them started and what items do we need to help them look out for,” Diver said.

Cloquet Forestry Center

The return of the Cloquet Forestry Center to the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa is listed as another recommended action in the TRUTH Report.

The Cloquet Forestry Center is a roughly 3,400-acre plot of land used by the University as its primary research and education forest, located entirely on the Fond du Lac Reservation.

According to Diver, the forestry center is currently in the legislative process of being returned to the Fond du Lac Band.

The forestry center’s website says this process began in February 2023.

“It’s a complicated real estate transaction because the state of Minnesota owns some of the parcels,” Diver said. “They bought them for the purposes of the forestry center, but never transferred the title.”

According to Diver, the state purchased portions of the land for the forestry center’s use but never transferred the title of that land to the University. Therefore, the University needs approval from the state of Minnesota before it can give the land back to the Fond du Lac Band.

Another complication with the land transfer is Higher Education Asset Preservation and Replacement (HEAPR) funding is involved in the forestry center. HEAPR funding comes in the form of a bond allocated by the state government for the University. It is to be used for maintenance of existing buildings and properties and as a bond, it needs to be paid back with interest.

“The legislative request is to … defease the bonds,” Diver said. “It’s a fancy legislative term for ‘pay off the bonds.’”

Once the bonds are paid off, the land owned by the government will be transferred to the Board of Regents, according to Diver.

“We’re trying to get them all put in a nice package so it could go to the band in a package and not have separate processes for each parcel,” Diver said.

While the University is currently in the process of returning the land, it is also negotiating with the Fond du Lac Band to lease the forestry center and continue its research there.

“Yes, the band would like its homeland back, but it also recognizes the value of the University of Minnesota,” Diver said. “Nothing would change except the title of the land.”

Respecting tribal sovereignty

Another recommendation in the TRUTH Report is that the Board of Regents create Indigenous research policies that respect tribal sovereignty and treaty rights.

Diver said the Guidelines for Indigenous Research guidebook, published in September 2022 by the Office of Native American Affairs, was a response to the recommendations. The primary objective of the guidebook is for researchers to obtain consent from tribal and Indigenous people and to conduct research that meets both sides’ needs.

“Because that’s about respect for tribal sovereignty,” Diver said. “That was in the TRUTH Report. It’s about engagement, communication. It’s about respect. It’s all of those things.”

The guidelines were used as the basis for the Indigenous Research Policy, which was authored by Diver and will be voted on by the University Senate on April 25. This policy turns the guidelines official, meaning the University can enforce them if they are not followed correctly.

Moving forward

“I don’t want to say that there isn’t continued work to do, because there is,” Diver said. “I feel just really strongly that this institution is being responsive, and is committed to repairing those relationships.”

Johnson said the Board of Regents met last summer and agreed to make working with Native Americans one of its priorities for the following school year, but the process of picking the University’s next president consumed too much of their time.

“I think we need to get a little better organized,” Johnson said.

The Board of Regents will convene on June 15 and 16, during which Interim President Jeffrey Ettinger is expected to present his recommendations on the TRUTH Report.

“While it’s premature to get into all of those specifics before my public discussion with the Board,” Ettinger wrote in an email statement to The Minnesota Daily, “I can say that our recommendations will focus squarely on reinforcing our commitment to working in collaboration with tribal partners and, in particular, creating more opportunities for Native American students, faculty and staff.”

Ettinger said the University has been working to build and improve relationships with tribes and Indigenous peoples and address some of the TRUTH Report’s recommendations.

Addison Thompson, a second-year student majoring in biology and environmental science, said she is not convinced by the actions the University claims to be undertaking in response to the report.

“If you look at the wide range of students here, compared to how many people are supposedly benefiting from all of this, it isn’t actually doing that, but it seems more of a political thing to put out there,” Thompson said. “It seems like there’s no initiative.”

Dylan Young, a former University student body president at the Morris campus, said increased efforts to uncover and address Minnesota’s history have gone a long way. 

When evidence pointing to the bodies of eight to 10 American Indian boarding school students under the University’s Morris campus was uncovered, an advocacy committee was instrumental in prompting a greater administrative response, Young added. 

“There was a greater emphasis on explaining what the boarding school era meant for Native American people,” Young said. “Now, the University does a lot more events around it.”

Young said he strongly believes the University should thoroughly explore each TRUTH Report recommendation and work face-to-face with tribes.

“At the end of the day, the University claims to believe in having a strong relationship with tribes and wanting to reconcile the relationship,” Young said. “The tribes, through this report, put out the conditions of that and it’s time to meet them.”

The University of Minnesota is considering a research policy drafted last fall requiring researchers, faculty, staff and students to approach research with Indigenous peoples in a mutually beneficial way.

The policy was authored by Karen Diver, senior advisor to the president for Native American affairs, to establish a framework for researchers who want to work with tribal communities, resources and Indigenous people anywhere in the world. 

According to Diver, this policy is the first of its kind at any university.

Rachna Shah, the vice chair of the University and Faculty Senate, said the policy will be voted on by the Senate on April 25, when it will go to the University’s provost office and then to University administration to be implemented.

“I’m sort of looking forward and maybe predicting a little bit,” Shah said. “We have not seen any huge issues, so most likely it should go through.”

 Shah said if the policy is passed by the Senate, it should become an official policy by the beginning of the 2024-25 academic year.

“As an institution that’s been really committed to kind of healing those tribal relationships, this aligns well to bringing the University kind of in good relations with tribes and their expectations of how we behave with them,” Diver said. 

The policy is largely based on the Office of Native American Affairs’ Guidelines for Indigenous Research guidebook, which was published in 2022 and stresses obtaining consent and cooperating with tribes and Indigenous people on research that meets both sides’ needs.

Diver said each of the 11 American Indian tribes in Minnesota had a chance to review the drafted policy.

“The big thing for them is they don’t care so much about the granularity of research as they do the relationship and asking permission,” Diver said.

According to Diver, much of what gets studied in relation to tribes is studied because it is a researcher’s interest, not a tribal interest. 

“A part of the reason why these types of policies are necessary is that research was sometimes something that was done to tribes and not with tribes,” Diver said. 

Separate from the policy, Diver said the University’s Native American Affairs webpage plans to add a form for tribes to submit research requests to the University.

“I’m just trying to provide some good customer service here,” Diver said. 

Regent Tadd Johnson, the first Native American on the Board of Regents in the University’s 170-year history, said while the policy does not change anything that is currently happening, it solidifies what researchers are already doing and makes it permanent.

“Getting something in writing that’s going to be an important document for the years to come is a key to success with regard to having a trusting relationship with the local native nations,” Johnson said.

Johnson said this policy is part of a larger moment in Minnesota history, citing the increased representation of Native Americans in Minnesota’s government over the past decade.

“When it comes to Indian Affairs, our best days are ahead of us. Good things are happening, and more good things are coming down the path,” Johnson said. “That’s not because of those of us who work inside the system but those at the top who made the decision to have a regular dialogue with the tribes, and that has made all the difference.”

A hunter lobbying group is pushing for gray wolves to be delisted from the Endangered Species Act after a poor deer hunting season, though experts at the University of Minnesota say other factors are to blame.

According to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR), the 2023 deer hunting season saw around 158,600 deer killed by hunters, an 8 percent decrease from the previous season and a 14 percent decrease from the five-year average. 

Hunters represented by groups like Hunters for Hunters have lobbied the government to delist wolves so they can be hunted and the deer population can increase. 

On their website, Hunters for Hunters identify themselves as a watchdog organization dedicated to protecting the rights of hunters, landowners and sportsmen and women. 

Austin Homkes, a researcher for the Voyageurs Wolf Project (VWP), lives and works in the project’s study area, and said factors other than wolves are to blame for the decreased deer population.

VWP is a University research project studying activities of wolves during summer and their interactions with their environment in the Greater Voyageurs Ecosystem of northern Minnesota near the border of Canada, according to their website.

“It’s been a political thing back and forth for, you know, almost the better part of a decade now, of getting them relisted and back, and it’s just like a pendulum swinging back and forth,” Homkes said. “Right now there’s a strong push to get them delisted so there can be a hunting season.”

According to the International Wolf Center, an education and research organization based out of Ely, wolves in Minnesota were removed from the federal list of Endangered Species in January 2012 after their initial listing in 1974 but were relisted in December 2014. They were removed again in January 2021, which was reversed in February 2022. After the reversal, Minnesota’s gray wolves were classified as a federally protected threatened species.

According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a threatened species is any species that is likely to become endangered. As such, Minnesota’s gray wolves can only be killed in self-defense.

Homkes said VWP avoids intentionally framing things as right or wrong. Rather, he frames the situation as a matter of values.

“Yes, wolves eat deer,” Homkes said. “There are less of them because of the wolves, and some people don’t like that. They want more deer, and some people like that there are both predators and prey on the landscape.”

Joseph Bump, a professor in the University’s Department of Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Biology who studies wolves, said gray wolves are listed as threatened in Minnesota but as endangered in Wisconsin and Michigan. 

Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan make up the Northern Great Lakes Region, which has its own population segment of wolves. If one state were to delist gray wolves, the other two would as well. 

“Minnesota might do everything right, have all the numbers, have solid management plans and check all the boxes required by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, but if our neighboring states are not meeting the same criteria, wolves are not going to be delisted in the Great Lakes,” Bump said.

According to Bump, Minnesota’s wolf population has remained steady at around 2,700 to 2,900 wolves in recent years, making it the largest population within the lower 48 states.

In the 2023 Minnesota DNR wolf population update, the estimated mid-winter wolf population was 2,919 wolves, plus or minus 800. Based on this, the DNR concluded the statewide wolf population was unchanged from the previous winter, indicating a steady population.

“I don’t think the wolf numbers have increased dramatically based on the data that the Minnesota DNR collects,” Bump said. “I do think more and more people use remote cameras, and I do think that on the scale that people monitor and hunt, you could have areas where there are high densities of wolves if they are denning in the area.”

According to L. David Mech, an adjunct professor in the University’s Department of Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Biology, wolves occupy roughly 30,000 square miles, or a third of the state.

“There is no reason to think that the wolf density, that is, the number that live in any given area, is going to be the same throughout that whole area,” said Mech, the founder and current vice-chair of the International Wolf Center. “Even though the wolf population in general over the whole state is fairly stable, that doesn’t mean that wolves in any given area are stable.”

Mech said the density of wolves in most areas depends on the density of the deer population, which also varies over a large area. 

According to Homkes, the deer population fluctuates a lot more with the weather than it does with wolf predation. Multiple harsh winters can lead to a decrease in the deer population while milder winters may lead to an increase.

“There’s not an excessive amount of wolves relative to what there’s always been,” Homkes said. “From our estimates the populations are fairly stable, both deer and wolves within normal fluctuations of both predator and prey.” 

Mech, who has worked with wolves since 1958, said he has seen the same kind of fear from hunters, that a poor deer hunting season is the result of wolves, many times before. 

“Wolves and deer have lived together forever,” Mech said. “I think that what we’re seeing by this one group of deer hunters now is the same thing we’ve seen over the last 50, 60 years of my career, and yet we still have deer and we still have wolves. I think we will continue to have them living together for many more decades here.”

The University of Minnesota is considering removing the name of Nicholson Hall, named after former Dean of Students Edward E. Nicholson, who secretly surveilled students and faculty and oversaw the repression of open debate on campus in the early twentieth century.

The request to revoke the building’s name was sent to Interim President Jeff Ettinger last fall from present and past directors of the Center for Jewish Studies. 

According to that request, the actions of Nicholson, who served as dean from 1917 to 1941, undermined the University’s goals of educational equality and intellectual openness by repressing free expression and open debate on campus and punishing students who sought civil liberties.

Any decision to revoke a University building’s honorary name starts with a request to the president of the University, who decides whether it should be sent to the All-University Honors Committee (AUHC), which then sends it off to the Namings and Renamings Work Group (NRWG) to deliberate a recommendation to the AUHC.

The AUHC is responsible for reviewing and recommending nominations for University honors, including the naming of buildings on campus, according to their webpage.

As part of the process, public comments from the University community can be submitted to the AUHC until 5 p.m. on March 18. According to Timothy Johnson, the current chair of the AUHC, the committee had received 323 comments as of Thursday.

“In the end, we just wanted to make sure, as well, that all the people had their say,” Johnson said. “That this was not a decision that was made by a small group of people, that we’re considering all input.”

The decision is a community decision, Johnson said. The committee debated whether to include the entire state but limited it to the University community due to resource constraints.

Mark Distefano, the current chair of the NRWG, which discusses potential issues like the revocation of a building’s honorific naming and makes recommendations to the AUHC, said while the public comments will be considered in the decision, the final decision will be made in accordance with the criteria outlined by the Board of Regents policy on renamings and revocation.

The Board policy requires any recommendation to revoke a naming to advance the University’s mission and guiding principles. The University’s mission, laid out in the Board’s policy, is to advance the learning and search for truth, share this knowledge in a diverse community through education and apply it to benefit people around the world.

According to the policy, one specific factor for a renaming or revocation request is whether the behavior of the individual after whom a University asset is named is inconsistent with the University’s mission or jeopardizes its integrity.

“We have to balance, you know, when we read the comments, we have to see how those fit into the criteria that the Board of Regents has set forth,” Distefano said.

 Riv-Ellen Prell, a former director of the Center for Jewish Studies, is responsible for the research supporting the request. Prell, a retired professor of American Studies, said that while repression of student life was common in the 1930s, Nicholson stands out as an exceptional figure.

 “I have never found a figure who worked not just to answer questions, but worked as actively with surveillance organizations as Nicholson did,” Prell said. “What I found in Minnesota was how extensive surveillance organizations were and how actively the dean of students was involved in it.”

According to Prell, Nicholson was part of a large surveillance effort from the 1920s and into the early 1940s that was anti-labor and anti-civil liberties. Prell said there were no documents that outlined spying as part of his position. Instead, Nicholson did this on his own.

Prell said not only would his actions be unacceptable today, but they were viewed as unacceptable in his time as well.

“He stopped being dean in 1941, so of course they appointed a committee to say, what should a dean of students be doing,” Prell said. “There is a confidential memo to the president that says, ‘His approach to students is not appropriate. We do not want to continue it. He was about punishment. That is not how to serve students.’”

Prell disagreed with those who said revoking Nicholson’s name from the building is an erasure of history.

“As a person who has devoted 40 years of my life to doing historical research, I completely reject any effort at erasing history,” Prell said. “This is not an erasure. If they choose to take Nicholson’s name off the building, I very much hope there will be a section about him and who he was.”

The AUHC is expected to have their recommendation submitted to the president by April. The president is expected to have a recommendation for the Board of Regents for their meeting in May, and the decision will be voted on during their June meeting.