NLG Detroit & Michigan Condemns
Climate of Neo-McCarthyist Repression at University of Michigan

April 3, 2024 :

Dear President Ono and Board of Regents,

In an email to the University of Michigan community on March 26, 2024, President Ono wrote: “we will begin seeking feedback from the university community on a draft policy governing disruption of university operations, including academic and social activities, events, gatherings, and celebrations.” We welcome the opportunity to provide feedback as the Detroit & Michigan chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.

We also note that the university’s decision to distribute trespass warnings on March 28 to students who allegedly participated in the protest at the honors convocation, to implement the draft policy at the March regents’ meeting, and to implement the draft policy at the April 1 event with Motaz Azaiza, belie the fact that the invitation to provide feedback by April 3 is transparently a sham process. Nevertheless, these matters are of utmost importance to our university and the broader community, and we will proceed.

Founded 87 years ago as the first racially integrated bar association, the National Lawyers Guild comprises lawyers, law students (including a student chapter at Michigan Law), Jailhouse Lawyers (incarcerated legal experts), and legal workers. Our members come from diverse racial/ethnic and religious backgrounds. The Guild’s mission is to use law for the people, acting as the legal arm of social justice movements and the conscience of the legal profession.

In the storied history of our national organization and local chapter, Guild lawyers supported the New Deal, prosecuted Nazis at Nuremberg, fought racial discrimination and Jim Crow laws, officially represented the American people in the founding of the United Nations, represented many targeted by the House Un-American Activities Committee, innovated legal strategies for the Civil Rights Movement, and defended liberation movements. Throughout its history, including the present day, the Guild has defended the rights of people to protest social injustice domestically and globally, including the rights of people in Michigan.

It is from this historical perspective and expertise that we offer you our feedback on the proposed policy.

Proposed Anti-Protest Policy

President Ono’s March 26, 2024, email to the university community said, in part: “I am proud of our university’s history of protest. But none of us should be proud of what happened on Sunday [referring to the anti-genocide protest at the honors convocation]. We all must understand that, while protest is valued and protected, disruptions are not.”

It should not require a degree in history or law to recognize the number of times a major social injustice has been rectified in U.S. history without disruption: we know of none. Indeed, not only disruption, but often civil disobedience, has been a necessary precursor to the most important and necessary changes in our society. It would be impossible to list all the examples when disruptive protest did lead to social progress (the abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, the prohibition of child labor, abortion rights, the AIDS epidemic, etc.), but one notable example should suffice.

In March of 1970, the Black Action Movement (BAM) protested racial discrimination on this university’s campus by disrupting that year’s honors convocation. At the time, university administration and donors were unhappy with the disruption. Now the university acknowledges BAM as “arguably the most influential in shaping the university’s diversity efforts and policies today.” We suggest that you look to your own history and your own morally courageous student leaders for guidance.

Because it is common knowledge that protest is routinely disruptive, the university’s proposed policy is already widely known as “the anti-protest policy.” Many have already noted that the vague and broad language of the proposed policy invites abuse and discrimination in application, and makes it virtually impossible to be certain one is in compliance. Are sports fans expected to not make noise or stand up at a sporting event? This would be a violation of the policy, as written, and illustrates the absurdity of what is transparently an exercise in political repression.

The proposed policy would not even meet your own goals. It would not deter disruptive protests. Anyone with their feet on the ground can predict that this policy would not result in your events, celebrations, or meetings proceeding without interruption of the status quo. This is because your students are grappling with the largest social, moral, ethical, and legal questions of this moment in history: Genocide. Famine. War crimes. Crimes against humanity.

These realities shock the conscience – or they should. And yet, in the face of questions of this magnitude, you respond with a policy curtailing rights and enacting punishment and repression against those students engaged in principled protest.

This, too, is nothing new. Students and youth have always been at the forefront of the pressing social and moral issues of the day, and of major social change, with universities and other institutions trailing far behind. Your own students are harbingers of how future generations will view this historical moment, and your role in it.

If enacted, all that the proposed “anti-protest policy” would accomplish would be more bad press for the university and our state, unwarranted and harmful punishment for your student leaders – Jewish, Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian students among them–and an acceleration of the neo-McCarthyism already rising at an alarming rate in the state and nation.

Escalation of Law Enforcement Violence, Intimidation, and Repression on Campus

In our role as lawyers for the people, we serve the University of Michigan community in diverse ways: training and mentoring the law student chapter of the NLG, offering “know your rights” trainings, training and coordinating volunteer legal observers to document misconduct by law enforcement, providing legal advice, assisting with jail support, and coordinating legal representation in the courts for activists who are plaintiffs or defendants. In these roles, we have witnessed an escalation of repression in the administration’s response to protest over the past year-and-a-half, unlike anything seen on campus in recent prior decades.

We are alarmed by the escalation of force used by the university at protests. We are alarmed by the growing number of Division of Public Safety and Security (DPSS) officers deployed to police protests, and the number of law enforcement personnel the university calls to campus from the state, the county, and neighboring jurisdictions. We have not seen such disproportionate shows of force on campus in recent memory.

Our trained legal observers have seen violent mistreatment of protesters by law enforcement; violence targeted toward women wearing hijab; forcible removal of hijab; police use of a metal barrier to violently force protesters to the ground without warning; denial of access to water, food, toilets, and medical care resulting in a student losing consciousness; refusal of DPSS officers to provide their names or badge numbers to members of the public; and elevated security at regents’ meetings resulting in a stifling atmosphere of suppressed dissent.

We are also aware of a series of visits, from last November through this week, by DPSS officers and detectives at the doors of students and staff, and even the confiscation of electronics. These tactics are mere fishing expeditions that further the McCarthyist atmosphere of intimidation and repression on campus. Student protesters have been confronted by DPSS, at their residences or while moving through public university buildings, with trespass warnings that, in some cases, could prevent them from attending their own graduations. We concur with the ACLU of Michigan in their letter to you of December 23, 2023, that the trespass warnings preventing students from attending regents’ meetings arguably violate the Open Meetings Act.

DPSS has requested warrants for arrest and prosecution of over 40 students on misdemeanor and felony charges, which carry the threat of imprisonment. We stand ready to defend these students against punitive overreach by the university administration. Meanwhile, the threat of extreme charges hangs over them, undermining our societal principles of free speech and protest. Is this the legacy for which you wish to be remembered?

One Palestinian student was recently singled out in a university-wide email when she privately expressed her grief and anger at the killing of 14 more family members in Gaza. Despite knowing that the student is no threat to anyone’s safety and that the student has herself been doxxed and threatened multiple times, after this email from administration, she was targeted for police surveillance that put her in actual danger of the kinds of threats to bodily safety that the email was purportedly intended to prevent, to say nothing of the psychological harm perpetrated by this administrator on your student. We understand that the issues at hand are difficult, but failing to address them with the sensitivity and nuance they require is a neglect of your responsibilities as university leaders. It addresses neither the real nor imagined threats to student safety on campus. It contributes to a false narrative of ethno-religious divisions, when the reality is far more complex.

All of this chaos, suppression, and division is unnecessary. The administration could have chosen at any time in the last six months to sit down and meet with student leaders, as students requested. To instead escalate repression, carceral violence, and antagonism towards and among your own students is unwarranted and unconscionable.

“The Palestine Exception”: Bias and Discrimination by Administration

We ask ourselves, since disruption is historically nothing new, why has the university’s response escalated to such a degree? Why is the university now choosing to crack down on free speech and protest so viciously and heartlessly? The answer appears transparent, given the totality of the facts. First, the university appears to adhere to “the Palestine exception” as it is termed in the new documentary about university administration attacks on student speech about Palestine and Israel. In no other conflict on the globe do U.S. university administrators exhibit such blatant bias towards the interests of the state of Israel, even against their own students.

For example, President Ono’s email about the protest at the honors convocation sets up false dichotomies between students protesting and those being honored, and between students protesting and Jewish students, when those dichotomies do not comport with reality. Doing so only contributes to tensions on campus. Many of your own Jewish students have pointed out that treating Jewish people as a monolith is, in fact, antisemitic and contributes to risks of real harm to Jewish students. Leading Jewish commentators have noted that conflating protests against Israeli policy and the Zionist political ideology with antisemitism is also, in itself, arguably antisemitic and as such, harmful to your Jewish students.

No government or nation can be above criticism. Indeed, last weekend, thousands of Israelis marched for a ceasefire. Why, then, when your own students call for a ceasefire, do you accuse them of antisemitism?

We point to the recently released survey of 1,435 members of the university community conducted by tenured UM faculty members. On the question of antisemitism, one respondent wrote, for example:

UM’s anti-Muslim pattern is more obvious, but it's [sic] anti-Jewish racism shows up when it elevates Zionism and conflates it with all of Jewishness making Jewishness a racial monolith. This harms Jews and pits Muslims and Jews against one another needlessly and foments friction for both Muslims and Jews, as well as those who might be racially profiled as such.

Meanwhile, university administrators have contributed to, rather than sought to reduce the increase of discrimination and hate against Muslim, Arab, and South Asian students and community members in Michigan. Last week, all higher education institutions received a letter from the Department of Education stating that there has been “a nationwide rise in complaints of discrimination against students, including against Muslim, Arab, Sikh, South Asian, Hindu, and Palestinian students in schools,” and that schools receiving federal funding have a legal obligation to “provide all students a school environment free from discrimination based on race, color, or national origin, including shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics.”

Yesterday, on April 2, the Council on American-Islamic Relations Michigan Chapter (CAIR-MI) released a report, titled Gaza and the Rise of Bigotry Against Michigan Muslims, documenting the devastating rise in anti-Muslim bias and hate in our state since October 7–the highest rates since the chapter’s inception in 2000. CAIR-MI reports:

In the first two months following the attack on Gaza, CAIR-MI received an unprecedented number of complaints of discrimination. In fact, complaints to CAIR-MI rose by over 340% in the immediate aftermath of the attack on Gaza over the same time period in the three months preceding October 7. Overall in the 57 days following October 7th, complaints of discrimination against Muslims increased by a total of 300% over the same 57 day period in 2022.

Furthermore, the TAHRIR Coalition that has worked together for six months to demand dialogue with you is not a mere handful of students. It consists of over 90 groups, all calling for divestment of the university’s endowment from companies that indirectly support the genocide in Palestine. Regent Behm rejected the demand by falsely claiming that students said the university maintains a $6 billion direct investment in Israeli companies, when in fact the students’ analysis has always underscored indirect investments. Such public distortions of student claims by a regent are inappropriate and transparently reveal bias.

Your proposed policy does not protect against antisemitism. It is not designed to protect any students at all–it is designed to chill dissent and to punish. This is neo-McCarthyism–nothing more. It especially targets Palestinian students, staff, and faculty, and criminalizes their speech about Israel and Palestine. President Ono writes about protecting Jewish students who report feeling unsafe because of their discomfort with pro-Palestinian protest, but nothing about the feelings of Jewish or Palestinian students who are committed to advocacy for a ceasefire.

This irresponsible speech also undermines the real work battling actual antisemitism as our country faces a rise in white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups. We encourage you to address genuine instances of antisemitism on campus swiftly and strongly, and understand that advocacy for a ceasefire, against genocide, or for the end to apartheid in Israel is not antisemitic.

The relevance of this genocide to the university community should not need explanation. Yet, seeing no comprehension from the administration, we remind you that you have students directly impacted by the conflict in Israel and Palestine. We remind you that in Gaza, to date, three university presidents, 95 professors, and untold numbers of university students have been killed in likely war crimes. Every single institution of higher education in Gaza has been destroyed. U.S. bombs, weaponry, and funding have been and continue to be used to fund these crimes against humanity.

A member of your community noted in the recent survey:

Ono’s first statement about Oct 7 highlighted the UM connections to Israeli universities. Now that Israel has destroyed all universities in Gaza and murdered dozens of academics and hundreds of students, not a peep and a clear example of bias.

President Ono and regents, protest should disrupt–never more so than when matters of grave moral and global importance are at stake. In the case of the honors convocation protest, the university’s juxtaposition of an interruption of an academic celebration with the violent deaths of 40,000 people and annihilation of entire communities is breathtaking. How can there be any comparison?

We therefore demand that you withdraw the proposed anti-protest policy, rescind your request to the prosecutor to press charges against your student leaders, and meet the demands of the TAHRIR Coalition and the ShutItDown student leadership.

Sincerely,

Board of Directors, National Lawyers Guild, Detroit & Michigan Chapter

Sara Habbo, President

Mitchell Bonga, Vice President

Teri Whitehead, Secretary

Naomi Zikmund-Fisher, Treasurer, SSW ‘12

Amanda Ghannam, Dearborn ‘14

Denise Heberle

Meghan Hough, LS&A ‘18, Rackham ‘20

Emma Howland-Bolton, SOE ‘13

Holland Locklear

Donovan McCarty, Law ‘15

Shannon McEvilly

Jacquelyn Miller, SEAS ‘94

Akeem Pack

Alyx Pedraza

John Royal